The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  I cast him an angry look that I hoped father did not notice. “So I was not the meek Jew that

  tradition demands!”

  “The Kid,” as Yehoshua was wont to call me, “climbed the tree, put on his brace, and

  followed the Romans.”

  The hands of Mother and sisters flew to their mouths with indrawn breaths. Father scowled

  at me.

  Yehoshua displayed infrequent humor under ordinary circumstances, but he seemed to relish

  goading me. “Our little brother caught sight of his tormentors at the crest of the hill. He unwound his sling from his waist and dug into the pouch of stones he is forever collecting to hunt small game.”

  Father rose up from the table and walked outside to sit under the awning as the setting sun began to throw long shadows across the dusty yard, still within hearing of our discourse.

  Mother herded the girls to the counter where they prepare our food, but Yehoshua seemed more than content with James as our audience of one. He leaned forward over the table toward our pious brother.

  “Shimon fit a good size stone into the sling, whirled it around in the air and let fly smack at the back of the head of the big bully.” He cast an innocent look at me. “Is that the way it was, Kid?”

  “You talk too much,” I told him. “Some day it will really get you into trouble.”

  Yehoshua continued undeterred. “Then he whipped another dozen or so stones at the Roman boys until they scattered down the slope and across the field, practically every one of them holding a bleeding cut delivered by our young marksman, here.”

  The expression on James’ face was unreadable. “You retold the Latin words they spoke, but you do not understand their meaning. Is this true, Shimon?” He had all but ignored Yehoshua’s provocative account of my aggression.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to have quoted their exact comments in Aramaic, plus every move that was made.”

  I wrinkled my nose in puzzlement. “I do not comprehend your meaning, James. Does not

  everyone relate what they have heard and seen?”

  “In general terms. But not as the Latin term verbatim, which means ‘word for word’.”

  I shrugged off a trait I had possessed since I could talk and was now second nature to me. “When I wish to recall an event, conversation or written words that I know, they appear behind my eyes as I originally heard and saw them. Like... a painting that moves and speaks.”

  “This is a rare gift, Shimon,” James advised me. “You must sharpen and use it well.”

  Yehoshua sat back, crossing thick forearms upon his rough singlet with that faint grin of accomplishment or pride, I could never determine.

  I was certain that my parents would chastise me for the tale my brothers had urged me to relate, but neither father nor mother spoke a word of it to me thereafter, perhaps at the intercession of Yehoshua, who might have felt guilt for his part in the telling. Or because of the serious conversation I observed between father and James on the night before he left us to return to Jerusalem.

  At fourteen years, Yehoshua was wide of shoulder, taller than most grown men, with a broad chest and limbs of prominent sinews. When lifting or running, the muscles of his arms and legs bulged like stout hemp rope under his taut skin darkened by the sun. Others claimed he was reserved and serious, but were also charmed by his easy manner and the shy smile which infrequently lit his countenance. To my mind, he was everything I wished to be--strong, handsome, and gentle. In my ninth year, he was my model and conscience, albeit occasional adversary to the scrawny, crippled, red-haired runt I perceived myself to be.

  James, as it happened, was my mentor and confidant. The caring elder brother who seemed to gaze down into the very depths of my being, unwavering in his love, accepting of my nascent flaws of character even as he attempted to bring me back to a straighter path with his good humor and sense of reality.

  Early the next morning, before he departed Nazarat for Jerusalem to resume his education for the priesthood, James took me to Sepphoris to introduce me to the elderly Rabbi who had taught at the Temple during the first year of James’ studies. At that time Rabbi Moshe was well into retirement, performing only the simplest of duties for the synagogue priests who ministered to the population of the city. Although initially reluctant to assume the task of tutor to a single, apparently average boy, my satisfactory answers to his preliminary examination of my state of knowledge, plus the small fee offered by my brother finally persuaded the old man to accept me as his student.

  My tutoring took place in the Sepphoris synagogue at the convenience of Rabbi Moshe, which required me to leave my duties at father’s shop at irregular times during the week. The resulting erratic schedule gave me a freedom of which I took full advantage, sometimes dallying among the merchant stalls in that magnificent urban center, engaging in games with boys I met there, or more often hobbling out on brace and stick to explore the far reaches of the forest off the road back to our home.

  By early afternoon one summer day, I had bagged a few quail which I stuffed in my back pack, then stopped beneath a shade tree to rest and eat a midday meal of bread and cheese. No sooner had I spread out my lunch, than I heard the whinny of a horse coming from beyond a steep

  cliff off to my left. Only Romans and Pharisees own horses, and I was not anxious to chance an

  encounter with either. I continued with my lunch to the increasingly frequent sounds of pawing hooves and distressed whinnies. Although fully intending to continue on my way back home after my repast, curiosity impelled me to at least see the occasion for the static sounds of the horse. The beast might have escaped the coral of a wealthy resident of Sepphoris, or thrown its rider and caught a hoof in some kind of snare or crevice. Regardless of the genus of its owner, the animal

  should not be left to suffer.

  The sun was behind me as I looked over the edge of the cliff into the afternoon shadow at its

  base. A beautiful chestnut mare had snagged her reins under a large, jagged rock, prancing around it trying to get free. The forelegs of the dumb animal had sustained bloody gashes from the entrapping boulder and the mare was panicked. She would surely die from loss of blood or thirst if someone did not cut her loose soon.

  I left my sack of game on the edge of the cliff and tried to maintain my balance stepping down its face with the aid of my stick. My feet began to slip from under me on loose stones and earth that threw me tumbling forward, out of control, down the steep slope. When I finally hit bottom, my mind seemed to be falling still. Blood was seeping into my eyes from a cut on my forehead and several other scrapes and gashes under my torn robe that was streaked with dirt. My bruised body ached from crown to sole from the tumble, yet miraculously, I had broken no bones. As soon as my head stopped spinning, I struggled to my feet, moving slowly toward the horse with arm outstretched to calm it. I stopped in mid-stride when I noticed a supine figure about 30 paces off to my right in the deeper shadow of the huge trunk of an uprooted tree.

  My bad leg began to give me pain immediately as I trotted towards the immobile rider, but my meddlesome nature prevailed over the familiar discomfort. I pushed on to stand above the facedown body clad in leather waistcoat over a short toga stained with grass and earth. I sensed a pressing urge to flee at the same instant that I recognized the Roman garb. My inquisitive character held sway again, and I knelt beside the unconscious form. With some trepidation, I rolled the rider on his back. His face was caked by dirt and dried blood from a gash on the side of his forehead, but his breath seemed normal. I retrieved his flagon from the mare that had become less skittish in the presence of a mobile human. As I bathed his face, I discovered not some unknown Roman as expected, but to my utter astonishment, the taunting bully who had led his friends to harass and beat me some months before. I must confess an initial reaction of glee at the boy’s predicament. If he did not regain his senses soon, and his family did not know where to look for him, he would die fr
om exposure or attacks from coyotes or some other bold carnivore that very night. Good for him, I thought, as I used my stick to stand above him, gazing down at the helpless boy, his visage all

  innocence and devoid of malice.

  Did I really wish to be responsible for his death? I would rather see him get whipped by his father for straying too far from their home and causing injury to a fine mare. I relished the thought of watching him endure a humiliating beating the same as he had nearly caused me. But leave him for dead? That seemed too harsh a retribution. I knelt again, slapping his cheek with unnecessary force in an effort to wake him. My flat-handed blows only succeeded in starting the blood flowing again from the deep laceration on his brow. I took his knife from the scabbard on his belt to cut a strip from his toga that I wound around his head to stem the bleeding. Then raised his head to drip water into his mouth from the flagon.

  The horse became skittish again when I dragged the Roman boy to its side and tried to lift the big bully onto its back. Finally, after several attempts, I began to tire. The dancing hind legs of the tall horse made the polished leather saddle a moving target, and the inert body of the husky boy too much for my waning strength. I had tried, I thought, with a certain amount of rancor. The boy’s fate was in the hands of his pagan gods. My intercession was not to be. I took the saddle from the horse and placed it under the boy’s head. I tossed the horse blanket over him, then started crawling up the steep bank of the cliff in the impending dusk.

  That climb was a great deal more difficult than my rapid decent. My energy was at a low ebb at the end of a day of walking and hunting, plus my futile attempt to lift the boy onto the mare. I stopped to rest, gazing down at my failure. Suddenly, an inordinate anger flashed through my mind and without even causing the thought, I slid back down the slope. I freed the horse, mounted

  her bareback from a boulder, and galloped off toward the Roman enclave in Sepphoris.

  Riding the bony spine of our family ass was more of a challenge than sitting the broad back

  of the Roman steed, who from her headlong gallop seemed to know the way to her home as well as I knew the road traveled for my lessons with Rabbi Moshe. Therefore, my canter to Sepphoris was swift and uneventful until the horse skidded to a halt in the stable yard of a huge mansion in the center of town. Several men were gathered in torchlight, mounted or holding the reigns of saddled

  horses, speaking in hushed tones, apparently awaiting some order or instruction. My arrival captured their silent attention for no more than an instant before they engulfed me in clamoring Latin and pulled me from the mare betimes I could speak, attempting to beat from me the answers to their shouted, unintelligible demands.

  The uproar in the yard soon brought the Roman Prefect of the Galilee region to the balcony of his house overlooking the courtyard. The crowd of soldiers and servants gathered around me became still as their leader explained his estimation of the situation to his master. Then the Prefect, a tall man of imposing stature, addressed me in Aramaic: “Have you assaulted my son and stolen his horse that you were unable to prevent from carrying you here?”

  “I found your son rendered unconscious by a fall from the mare, your honor. Since I could not lift him into the saddle, I came to tell you where he lies.”

  After addressing his men in Latin, the Prefect told me to lead them to his son, with the threat of instant death if I had not told the truth. A soldier threw me back on the horse, whence they all mounted their own steeds with flaming brands, urging me on to the place where the bully lay stricken.

  Our headlong gallop to the cliff was quick. I led the men to search along the foot of the steep slope where I was certain I had left the unconscious boy. I became disoriented in the darkness and meager light of the torches. After two or three passes up and down the area I became more and more flustered. One faction of the group began inciting the rest to kill me as ordered by the Prefect. The soldier in charge resisted that action, ordering the group to give me a torch and stand back while I sought the boy on foot, unhindered by their presence. At that point I was able to concentrate more fully on my recollection of the spot where I had left him. Not long after, I found the empty saddle, then the still unconscious boy who must have crawled behind the large boulder in his sleep.

  I called to the men who placed the boy on a litter in order to carry him back to his father. I dismounted, intending to make my way back to my home. The officer in charge had another plan in mind, however, indicating by gestures that I should remount and accompany them back to Sepphoris.

  During the next few days I became a prisoner in the home of the Prefect, albeit somewhat a guest, as I occupied a pleasant room in the house under the constant guard of a male servant. The Prefect himself, whose name I learned was Valentius, was still not wholly satisfied that I had not wounded the boy with my sling and stolen his horse that I could not control. The man came to question me several times regarding my tale concerning the discovery of his yet unconscious son.

  Vespasian, the bully boy who had caused me the beating, turned out to be a fair and honest individual, who became one of the most significant personages throughout my life. He returned my unthinking act of succor with friendship, a deed which all agreed had saved him from an early death.

  When he awoke from his injury, Vespasian was quick to corroborate my story. He requested my presence almost immediately, roaring with laughter at the irony of my rescue, considering the beating that he and his friends had administered. He infected me with the outrageous coincidence so that I joined in his mirth. Yet he never bothered to thank me for alerting his father to his predicament. His appreciation came in other ways, however, that were more long-lasting.

  Vespasian would not hear of my pleas to return home to my certainly distraught family at

  my five-day absence, although he did send a servant to inform them of my safety and whereabouts.

  Once awake, he recovered from his injuries slowly. When he had all but fully regained his

  strength, I was dismissed, or allowed to return home. I never knew.

  My family welcomed me back as though I had just been released from the captivity of

  demons, extracting every detail of my weeklong experience as though I had been sequestered in the palace dungeons of Caesar in the depraved city of Rome itself. No sooner than every last detail of my adventure been wrung out of me, I was back at work for father behind his carpentry shop.

  Several days later, while cutting branches from the trunk of a large maple, Vespasian rode up on the same mare from which he had fallen. In his fourteenth year, Vespasian was bigger physically, and quicker intellectually than men I had met who were many years older. We had spent much time together during his convalescence and had begun to exchange a rudimentary knowledge of each other’s language, which I embellish here for your complete comprehension.

  “Hail, Jew Boy,” Vespasian called in Aramaic from his lathered mount. “Is this your respite from scouring the woods for young Romans in need of deliverance?”

  “You have it backwards as usual, you big bully,” I bantered in Latin. “Succoring inept Roman horsemen is my respite from working with wood.”

  Father and Yehoshua stood behind me, aghast at the tone of my irreverent reply to one of our oppressive conquerors, much less a member of the Prefect’s family, regardless of age. Vespasian scowled at me in feigned anger until his composure broke into the hearty laugh he could conceal no longer.

  He jumped down from the saddle, towering above me, threw an arm about my shoulder, leading me and the horse to my father and brother. “This young reprobate has accomplished the questionable good deed,” he continued in broken Aramaic with which I assisted, “of saving my life.”

  “Which I have come to regret already,” I said.

  Vespasian tightened his grip around my neck in a playful strangle hold while introducing

  himself to father and Yehoshua.

  “And for no discernible reason has captured the interest of
my father, who requests his

  presence at our home to facilitate my learning your language.”

  It was later revealed to me that Vespasian had never related to tutors alone, but learned well and quickly when challenged by the competition of classmates. So, at the request of the Prefect and the stipend offered for my time, father allowed me to join my new friend at his lessons in Aramaic and Greek, whereby I was able to absorb a good deal of Latin in the process.

  One day upon entering the courtyard behind Vespasian’s home, I came upon him at swordplay with his training instructor, a balding older man in the short blue tunic of a soldier, the gold braid of his centurion’s rank sewn upon his chest, his narrow waist girded by a wide leather belt adorned with iron studs.

  I stood at one of the pillars under the portico watching their feints and parries with wooden swords. It was not until they stopped to rest that Vespasian spied my presence. “I have often thought of challenging you to a duel for your persistent insolence,” he called out to me, “but I know that Jews are not allowed to fight.”

  I returned the taunt as he now expected. “As usual, your ignorance brings you to an erroneous conclusion. Not only did David slay Goliath, he drove the Philistines out of Israel, and led his victorious army against the Moabites and Ammonites.”

  Vespasian threw his sword at my feet, grabbing the other from his trainer. “I know you are dangerous with the sling of a child, but let us see if you can fight like a man.”

  I could see the surprise on the face of the old soldier as I limped forward, my stick in one

  hand, sword in the other to engage Vespasian in physical, albeit harmless combat. The stalwart

  Roman youth had dismissed my leg as a handicap shortly after our cautious friendship began, treating me as any other boy a few years younger. He quickly knocked the sword from my grasp, laughing and deriding my obvious incompetence. When I regained the piece of wood, he proceeded to slap the broadside of his harmless blade against my arms and torso at will, but soon became bored with knocking my sword aside to inflict the minor pain that would turn to dark, aching bruises by nightfall. In order to elicit a challenging response, he started showing me how to parry his thrusts and move to get inside his own defense. The old soldier began adding his comments and suggestions to both of us in Latin, which Vespasian helped me to understand. Thus did his sword training become an unconscious way for both of us to move more easily between the two languages.