Holy Smoke

by Frederick Ramsay

  Ali worked his way slowly down the Street of the Herbalists. He felt reasonably sure his disguise would not fail him. He’d been on this street in the past, of course. His brother had moved to Judea two years previously in what he assured Ali would be a profitable enterprise. Ali had expressed his doubts then, particularly as it had been made clear that the Egyptians were determined to stay. As he expected, their displeasure had turned violent. He had doubted his brother could manage on his own in the first place and now Achmir was dead. Ali could only wonder if a similar fate awaited him. He assumed someone would try, but who and when only Mazda knew.

  He nearly ran into the rabban of the Sanhedrin. He did not know why this strange old man should be in this place. If he guessed right it meant trouble. The sons of Moses had forgotten their origins. They no longer understood that the concerns of other nations were not theirs, that disputes were settled privately, that Hammurabi’s code provided all that was needed to deal with disputes among families, clans, and even nations if necessary. Only if and when the issue became an international concern, threatened power or the throne, were authorities expected to step in. Yet, here was the old man, moving from one store to the next, asking questions, nodding, probing, and interfering.

  Ali leaned against a wall. Not all of the shops were open, fortunately, or Gamaliel might very well discover what drew so many people to one of them. The rabban left. His posture and puzzled expression suggested he had not had a successful foray into the street’s secrets and intended to return later. That meant Ali had only a few hours to do what needed doing. Then he, like the rabban, would move about the city seeking answers. Gamaliel and his position in Jerusalem allowed him to be straightforward, even blunt in his questioning. Ali, on the other hand, must be careful, discreet. He could not reveal who he was or why he asked—a much more difficult assignment. Still, it had advantages. It might take longer, but he felt sure his information would be more accurate in the end. People with the information he sought would feign ignorance or dissemble with the rabban, but not so with Ali. A question carefully put after a suitable exploration of the subject would give him what he sought—the people he sought.

  ***

  Unseen by Ali or Gamaliel, a tall man wearing a checked red keffiyeh shared the shadows a few doors farther along the street. He, however, showed no interest in the rabban. His eyes were fixed, unblinking, on Ali. When the physician moved, so did he. He’d nearly missed him. Ali bin Selah was a clever man and had nearly fooled him with the change in his appearance.

  He rummaged around in his beard as if he might have lost some valuable in it at some time and had just remembered what it was. He frowned and signaled a bearded man at the street’s other end. He, in turn, worked his way through the crowd to him without once looking at Ali bin Selah. They met, conversed, and then, a decision made, the new man drifted back into the crowd to follow the rabban, his beard and face now covered with the keffiyeh’s long end. The first man stayed in place keeping watch on Ali. He would have to make his move soon: his was one of the two names written on the bit of papyrus that had arrived the previous week from Alexandria, and just in time.

  ***

  Ali watched the old rabbi leave and then made his way into one of the shops where the rabban had questioned the owner. They chatted about herbs and their uses. Ali finally elicited the information he needed. The rabban was on the trail of an apothecary. How would he know to do that? Loukas, of course. Loukas, must have said something, but what? The Greek was clever, certainly, but how could he have made such a connection and so quickly? It was a puzzle that Ali dearly wished to solve, but knew he probably never would. Not without revealing his presence in the city or his interest in the dead man. He did not wish to do either—not yet.

  When he approached the doorway of a second, closed shop, he sensed he was being watched. By whom? Them, of course. How had they found him out and how so soon? He shuddered. Had they gotten to poor Dawud before…? He wondered, not for the first time, if he wouldn’t have been better served staying with the north-bound caravan. He could have come back later with more men and a better plan, and then he would not have had to use Dawud. Too late for that now.

  The rabban could be a problem. How well did he know Loukas? Ali realized he’d need to find out. Loukas was an important source of information and something of a friend even, but…Ali allowed the thought to hang in the air.

  That the men he believed were now on his trail were connected to his brother’s murder was, of course, a given. That said, they all shared the guilt equally and they were all subject to retribution, not just the one or two who had committed the act. Everyone acknowledged that in a blood feud, all offending parties are liable without distinction or difference. He slipped into the shop and waited, standing to one side of a tapestry next to a sandalwood chest, which screened him from sight. When the stranger entered, he gave the tapestry a flick. The movement caught the man’s eye. Ali watched as he unsheathed his dagger and crept toward the fabric. He had the weapon poised to strike when Ali’s own knife entered just under the intruder’s rib cage and up where he knew a heart beat. The man died before he hit the floor.

  A knowledge of anatomy is always a useful thing to have.

  Ali dragged the body into the shop’s rear room and covered it with straw. Then he set about the business of erasing records, inventory, and indeed the very presence of its proprietor. It took just under an hour. Some of the inventory was too valuable to destroy, and that he packed in a sack which he would carry away, like a peddler. Had he done enough? What would people think when they found a body in the building? Did he care?

  He bent and removed the keffiyeh from the corpse and wrapped it around his own head. People, if they remembered anything at all, would recall the keffiyeh before the face. Two men in, one man out—the one wearing the checked keffiyeh left, therefore the first one must have perished. He piled whatever would burn into the center of the room. When he was finished, he added both straw and bitumen from a pot to the corpse and set the whole on fire. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—the ancient code, the code he lived by.

  Ali slipped out of the shop and made his way from the street to the next one below and into a small shop where secondhand merchandise could be purchased. If his first disguise had been penetrated, he’d need a new one. On the Street of Castoffs one could buy anything, even a new identity.

  Chapter XVII

  An irritated Gamaliel left the Street of the Herbalists. He’d discovered nothing he didn’t already know or couldn’t have guessed and had felt it necessary to purchase a sachet of leaves which, the shopkeeper assured him when steeped in hot water, would be both refreshing and stimulating to the mind. Also, the fact that half of the shops were not yet open increased his annoyance even more. The only useful information he gleaned from his foray into the market with its pungent aromas and exotic denizens concerned a single shop apparently run by a person with the unlikely name of Hannah. Is it truly Hannah? Hannah is a woman’s name. The prophet Samuel’s mother was named Hannah. It meant beauty or passion. Why would anyone label an apothecary’s shop after the prophet’s mother? Perhaps this man used Hannah as a descriptor, not a name. Surely a woman would not be peddling herbs and cures on the street. Then again, did it matter?

  None of the several people he interviewed could remember having seen or heard from this Hannah person for several days. The importance of that scrap of information lessened significantly when diluted by a follow-up statement that this person frequently disappeared for days at a time and the puzzling addition that in the past there had been a different man running the store. Apparently the store had changed hands. Therefore, this most recent absence did not raise any eyebrows. However, hearing who some of his customers were did raise Gamaliel’s eyebrows.

  “Who? Are you sure?” Gamaliel had asked a tall cadaverous shopkeeper whose name he could not remember.

  “Well
, you see, sir, most of the men and women who visit this area are known to us, regulars you could say, cooks from the palace and other eating places, or they are mixers of potions and poultices who come to buy particular items with special properties.”

  “Like?”

  “Oh, well, cooks want pepper from India, spices from beyond there, and you know about mustard, yes?”

  “Yes, I see. So, what marked his buyers as different?’

  “They were uninformed about what we sell here. You know, people who come to this street are seeking specific herbs which they name. Some are for cooking, some are for mixing or compounding medicines. The buyers are usually one or the other, occasionally both. But the men of whom I speak were neither. They came and asked for that shop, not for anything specific. They made their purchases and left. Many were foreigners, people from far away, beyond Parthia even. Maybe they traveled from beyond the Indus, if such a place exists.”

  “It exists. Anything else?”

  “Some of the customers came from the Roman barracks and some from the palace itself.”

  “Roman soldiers and the king’s servants, you say?”

  “They wore shabby clothes to cover who they were, but yes, I am sure.”

  Gamaliel knew then that he would have to return later in the day and visit this Hannah person, or whatever he called himself. He would bring some Temple guards with him. He did not like the thought of legionnaires or palace thugs needing disguises to visit a shop. Accosting them in that state could be embarrassing. Also, he didn’t like the look of some of the other consumers on the street. Herbalists seemed a strange lot.

  He had his house in sight when he again sensed someone behind him. That made it twice in two days. Well, not exactly. The other man had been following Loukas, not him, as it turned out. Still…close enough. He paused as if he might have forgotten something and turned half way round. Only a few people were walking the street in this residential area. He caught sight of the man, who seemed familiar, although he could not think why. That man had also stopped and, obviously out of place, knelt to adjust his sandal laces. He wore a dirty keffiyeh, and had most of his face wrapped in the same material.

  Yes, definitely, he would bring guards with him when he returned to the street. He pocketed his sachet and headed home.

  ***

  Gamaliel finished his noonday meal and proceeded to gather the items he would need for a second assault on the Street of the Herbalists. Benyamin announced that Loukas had arrived. Gamaliel had not expected him.

  “What brings you to the house of the rabban?” he asked. “Usually it is I who calls on you. Are you certain you can weather a visit into the center of orthodoxy, Physician?”

  “I will risk it. I came to tell you something about the dead man from the Temple that I believe is important.”

  “Good, and then I will tell you where the idea of a man who is simultaneously alive and dead has taken me. What of our dead man?”

  “He was only recently rendered a member of the faith.”

  “Sorry, you will have to be more specific than that. What do you mean, ‘only recently rendered a member of the faith’?”

  “His circumcision is recent and probably post mortem.”

  “What?”

  “I said, his—”

  “I heard you. He is not a Jew?”

  “Evidently not…unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “It is farfetched, but it is always possible that our killer wants us to think that and…ah…renewed the procedure.”

  “Would you care to speculate on the possibility of that being the case?”

  “No.”

  “Neither would I. Such a move requires more premeditation than I can imagine. It is possible but unlikely. The more reasonable explanation would be the killer—and now I accept we are looking at murder—wanted us to bounce around the ‘insane zealot in the Temple’ notion and not look farther. So, your idea that we skip that part of the investigation and search for the man’s identity is now officially blessed. It raises more difficulties for us, however.”

  “As long as it confirms my belief that the man was murdered and brought to the Temple, I am content.”

  Gamaliel paced to the slit window that gave light, but not access to his tiled front room. “Yes, but now what?”

  “We continue searching for that very thing—his identity.”

  “I have a possibility.” Gamaliel described his visit to the Street of the Herbalists and the conversations he’d had with several shopkeepers, and repeated his observation about the peculiar clientele the street attracted.

  “Now, before you go any farther,” Loukas interjected, “you should recall who I am and what I do. I am one of those peculiar people you noticed. It is a trip I make at least once a month. It is the source of most of the items I need to dose my patients.”

  “My apologies. In that case, perhaps you will accompany me back there this afternoon and help me locate an apothecary who is missing, is possibly our victim, and who, it now appears, has reluctantly and only lately become one of us.”

  “Certainly. I need a few things, as it happens.”

  “I plan to take a few guards with me as well.”

  “Guards?”

  “Yes, there is a certain aura of menace on that street and I would protect myself from it.”

  “From people like me, you mean.”

  “No, no, I didn’t make myself clear. A question for you—why would palace personnel and legionnaires need to wander the street in disguise?”

  “Palace personnel and Roman soldiers wander the street? Is that so odd? Many people go there for materials they use for cooking or curing.”

  “These men, I am told, are neither cooks nor healers. They visit one particular shop—in disguise, mind you—and leave. They do not shop at the other stores. They do not bargain. They visit this one shop, buy, and leave. I find that intriguing, don’t you? Something not right is going on there. I was followed home, by the way.”

  “Followed? By whom?”

  “I have no idea, but I think…no, I am sure I saw him first mingling among the herbalists and dealers. He was in conversation with another man also wearing an odd keffiyeh and—”

  “Stop. Wearing a what? An odd keffiyeh? The streets are full of strangers attired in all sorts of dress including keffiyehs of all shapes and sizes and, to my eye, all odd.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is so, but the second man reminded me of that fellow you purged yesterday. You are correct, of course. I do not travel about that part of the city as you do. Still, he did follow me. I am not brave enough to confront such a man, so I will take guards with me.”

  “If you wander into the Street of the Herbalists with guards from the Temple or the palace, you will learn nothing. Half of the shops will slam their doors and the remaining proprietors will lie.”

  “Then I must rely on you to keep me safe. Why does that not make me feel any better?”

  Chapter XVIII

  Thick acrid smoke filled the street, then lifted away with a passing breeze. It caused Loukas to cough. Gamaliel wound his shawl across the lower portion of his face and said nothing.

  “How can you stand this?” Loukas barked.

  “As my friend Jacob says—”

  “It is holy smoke, yes, you told me. That was not my question. I asked how can you stand it?”

  “It is a part of the city. We expect it as a sign that we are faithful to Ha Shem and he will be faithful to us in turn. You insist on dressing in the Greek style, though I can’t imagine why, and so you suffer. See, I have only to cover my face and the smoke is nothing. Don’t you have a remedy for coughing, Physician?”

  “Not on my person. When we get to the Street of the Herbalists, I will find one.”

  �
��They will have a potion?”

  “Or the ingredients, yes. I mix mustard with honey. It works well enough.”

  “Mustard is useful herb, I take it.”

  “Yes, it is particularly useful for problems associated with breathing and so on. One makes a poultice of it with the whites of an egg or some other carrier—water if nothing else is available—and applies it to the chest. It is also useful to relieve pain, runny noses, and rheumatism.”

  “I see. You did notice, I hope, that we are being followed.”

  “By the same person who tracked you to your house?”

  “It appears so. There is that ridiculous headdress, you see.”

  “He must not have anything better to do. He will learn nothing from following us that he did not know already.”

  “Which is?”

  “Where you live, that you know me, and you are interested in the goings-on at the Street of the Herbalists.”

  “Do you suppose that is important?”

  “Who knows what he thinks is important?”

  “Perhaps he waits for instruction and none comes, so he stays on the last task assigned,”

  “An interesting thought, Rabban. You amaze me. How did you figure that out?”

  “I merely guessed at—not deduced—one possible solution. It may also be that he has something specific in mind that can only be accomplished at a certain time, or place, or circumstance.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he wishes to cut my throat and a busy street would allow his escape. Maybe it is your throat he covets, Loukas.”

  “I do not find this line either comforting or reassuring. I prefer your original idea—he has nothing better to do.”

  “Then so be it. Pause at this jeweler’s shop while I walk on and see what he does. I will wait for you around the corner.”

  “Shall I accost him?”

  “No, we have had that pleasure once this week already. All it will accomplish is to create another substitute. Let’s stay with the one we know. Here is the shop.”