The Ironsmith (19 page)

Orpah had put on weight since her sixth child, so there was something truly imposing about her indignation over the sandals.

“What do you suppose he wants?” Deborah asked, with an almost childlike innocence of manner.

“Some other foreigner,” Orpah answered, with contempt. “No one
I
ever heard of. They should stay away—all of them. They have no business here.”

*   *   *

Since many people drew their water from the lake, there were only three wells in Capernaum, and village life revolved around the wells. If you wanted the news—who had died in the night or had a new baby or had come into a little money—you visited the wells. Thus, it was not very long before Deborah had learned everything the village knew about the stranger from Tiberias, even to where he was at that precise moment.

“He is in there,” said Jahleel, an old man, good for no work, who lived with his grandson. He spent his days hanging about the western well, watching the women and drinking weak beer. He was pointing across the square to a door beneath a green awning, a few tables scattered about in front of it. The entrance to Ezra's tavern.

“He has been in there…” Jahleel glanced up at the sun and then down at the shadow cast by the well's stone rim, “oh, half an hour. Though what he finds to talk about with Ezra is beyond me. Ezra's conversation is as bland as his beer.”

This observation was followed by a series of high-pitched squeaks, only just identifiable as laughter.

Deborah had but to linger, to mingle with the village women as they waited to fill their water jugs, until the door to Ezra's tavern opened and the stranger came outside.

Orpah had been right—the man was in disguise. His tunic was simple homespun, but it was too new. His beard was longer than the village average, and carefully cut. As he walked away, Deborah noted the glint of a ring on his left hand. Orpah had even been right about the sandals. He was a rich man from the city, trying to seem like someone else.

Deborah followed him, keeping in the shadows of buildings and out of sight. He went straight down to the water, climbed into a boat that was too sleek to have been built for fishing, and was rowed away. The boat was heading south, toward Tiberias.

And the last person this stranger from Herod's city had spoken to was Ezra.

Was that significant? Deborah wasn't sure. She decided it was time to go home.

*   *   *

“Hannah, did you mention to anyone that Noah was here? You wouldn't have been doing anything wrong, so I won't be angry. However, I need to know.”

Hannah shook her head, suddenly on the verge of tears. “No, Mistress. I would never…”

Deborah embraced her, the way one would a frightened child.

“I didn't think you would, but I had to be sure. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress—no.”

There was no escaping it. An explanation had to be made.

“Noah has been protecting the Master, and now evil men want to hurt him. The stranger today was one of those.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don't want you to do anything,” Deborah told her, kissing her on the forehead. “If someone asks you a question about Noah, or the Master, tell them the truth. I don't think anyone will ask, but you know nothing that can hurt either of them. For the rest, put this thing from your mind.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Deborah retired to her balcony. The afternoon was more than half over. In a few hours the fishermen would be returning and Capernaum would come back to life. At sundown the Sabbath would begin, during which nothing could be done.

Her mind kept returning to Ezra.

Why? If a stranger comes to a village, seeking information, where would he go if not to the tavern keepers? It was an obvious choice.

How long had the man been among them? Perhaps three hours. He had gone to Simon's house first and talked to his wife. Why? Because he knew that Simon was a follower of the Master and that Noah was the Master's cousin.

No, no. She was starting at the wrong end. The real question was, what had brought this man to Capernaum? Why did he appear just two days after Noah had left?

Answer: because someone had sent a message to Tiberias that Noah was here.

There could have been nothing easier. Boats went between Capernaum and Tiberias every day. By water, the trip was only a few hours.

So who had sent the message? Who knew that Noah was in Capernaum?

Herself and Hannah. Simon. Ezra. Anyone else, even if they saw him in the street, would probably not know his name.

Would Simon betray the Master's cousin and friend? No. Simon had his faults, but treachery was not among them.

That left Ezra. And his tavern had been the last place the stranger visited.

And what more convenient occupation for a spy than tavern keeper? Travelers are drawn to a tavern. All manner of people went in and out all day long. Ezra was particularly well placed to pass on information without drawing attention to himself. The conclusion was inescapable. Ezra was the Tetrarch's spy in Capernaum.

But what to do about it? When Noah came back, Ezra would send another message to Tiberias. She would have to warn Noah, and then he would have to leave and would be without a safe place in the world to hide his head.

Better, far better, to silence Ezra. The Tetrarch was hated in Capernaum—all she would have to do was to mention her suspicions to any one of perhaps fifty people, and Ezra would disappear forever.

Then Deborah would have his life on her conscience.

But perhaps she could leave the decision to Ezra. Yes, that would even be safer. Better by far to have the Tetrarch's spy in her power than to have him dead, in which case the men in Tiberias would only recruit another spy.

Deborah went downstairs and found Hannah.

“Go to Ezra's tavern,” she told her. “Buy a dozen jugs of beer and tell him they are too heavy for you to carry. Tell him I will expect him to deliver them personally within the hour.”

A quarter of an hour later, Hannah was back. “He will bring the beer as soon as he can get away, Mistress.”

So there was nothing left to do except to wait.

When he came, Ezra brought the beer to the kitchen door in a handcart. It was put away in a small cellar, and then he was told that the mistress was in the garden.

When he presented himself to be paid, Deborah was standing beside her grape arbor. She took some coins out of her purse and scattered them at his feet.

“You must pick them out of the dirt, Ezra. I am sure you have stooped even lower to collect your money.”

A tradesman becomes inured to the insults of the wealthy, so, hardly even allowing himself a reproachful glance, Ezra went down on his knees and began gathering up the coins. He had almost the last one before Deborah spoke again.

“Tell me, Ezra. How did the man from Tiberias know to come to Capernaum?”

“Lady, I know nothing about any—”

“Don't lie to me, please,” she interrupted sweetly. Under other circumstances her smile would have warmed a heart colder than Ezra's, but he understood at once that he was in mortal danger. “I know that you passed a message. For the moment I only wish to know how.”

“Lady, how can you—”

“I will tell you again, and for the last time, do not lie to me. You are aware of what will happen to you if it becomes known that you have been spying on us for your friends in the Tetrarch's palace. You will disappear into the sea, your corpse wrapped in a fishing net, weighted with stones. Now, if you wish to live, answer my question.”

One could see the struggle in Ezra's face. How could she possibly know? She knew. It didn't matter how. Which was more dangerous, to deny everything or to tell the truth? She was only a woman. Could he somehow bluff or frighten her? No. But would anyone believe her? Yes.

Watching his indecision, Deborah saw that she had guessed right. She felt a cold fury rising within her. This man had wanted to sell Noah to his enemies. For money. He had bartered with Noah's life as if the man she loved were no more than a basket of fish.

Yes. She had it within her to kill Ezra. If he did not confess, this would be his last Sabbath.

And perhaps Ezra saw this in her face.

“There is a boatman,” he said at last. “His name is Ruben. He makes the journey from Tiberias every day and always takes a meal at my place. Sometimes he brings me orders—I don't know from whom—and I tell him whatever I see. In Tiberias they had wanted to know about the preacher. And now they want to know about this fellow Noah.”

He was still on his knees, and now he really looked like a beggar. The fear in his eyes made them shine like wet stones.

“Lady, I am only Ezra, the fisherman turned tavern keeper. These people could crush us all with a word. What was I to do?”

“I can't answer that question, but I can tell you what you will do now.”

Deborah leaned forward and put her hand on Ezra's shoulder. It was a gesture not of love or forgiveness or even pity, but of authority. She was like a queen accepting the submission of a subject.

“You will make no more reports about Noah. You will never again whisper his name in this boatman's ear. He can come and go, and you will be blind to it. More than that, you will tell me everything these men in Tiberias tell you. Everything. Do you understand me?”

“But, Lady, what if they learn that I have betrayed them? They will surely put me to death.”

“They may never learn, Ezra, but that is in the future. If you do not do as I bid, you will have no reason to fear them because you will already be dead.

“Now—will you obey me?”

“Yes, Lady.”

“Then we understand each other. If any harm comes to Noah, the very next day the fishes will be feeding on your eyes.”

She dismissed him without a word, with the merest wave of her hand. And when he was gone she went over to the bench beneath the grape arbor and sat down. Suddenly she bent over, put her face in her hands, and wept. It was like a spasm of pain and disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. The grief she felt after was dry eyed and sullen. It was for the loss of something within herself, and she knew not what.

 

15

The village of Gischala in northern Galilee was famous for its olives. Matthias knew it well, since his native village of Meroth was only a few miles to the south. His mother had been born in Gischala, so he had family there.

He used to think that everything good in him had come from Gischala, for he had loved his mother. He was not a man to cultivate sentiment, but even now, ten years after her death, tears came to his eyes whenever he thought of her.

Hers was the fate of the gentle and the meek. She had been given in marriage to a distant cousin, a man named Abiud, ten years her senior who had already worn out a wife. Matthias could still remember the way, when his father had had too much beer, he would lament the death of his first wife, praising her beauty and virtue. In fact, he had led her a wretched life, so that, if family lore was to be believed, she had been glad to die.

As he grew older, the brutality of his father's nature had intensified, possibly because it met no resistance. Abiud's children—Matthias had two elder half brothers and a sister—were terrified of him, as was his wife.

Matthias could not remember a time when his mother's face had not carried bruises. Twice Abiud beat her into unconsciousness.

Then, quite unexpectedly one Sabbath, she died. No one was surprised except Matthias, who was fourteen at the time.

She couldn't get out of bed that morning. His father became angry and began shouting threats and, finally, she got up. She went into the kitchen and sat down. A few minutes later blood began to pour out of her mouth. She collapsed to the floor and died.

Matthias knew, of course, that his father had killed her. He had beaten her once too often, or too savagely, and had given her a mortal injury.

He knew, but there was little a boy of fourteen could do. He could not match his father, so he waited.

After that Matthias never thought of him as “my father,” only as “Abiud.” He was a stranger and an enemy.

He waited for two years. Then one day he caught Abiud alone, sowing wheat in a field about a mile from the village. Matthias had provided himself with the wooden handle of a scythe, and he took his time beating this man to death. He broke a knee and both arms, then he went to work on the face. Finally he broke Abiud's neck, so that the head collapsed to one side. He never forgot the way his father first laughed and then, after the first blow struck, howled like a cur—and then, toward the end, how he begged for his life.

When Abiud was dead, his son ran away. It was a terrible sin to murder one's father, and the villagers would have stoned him to death. He did not stop running until he reached Sepphoris, where he joined the Tetrarch's army.

The army taught him that brutality was the price of order. The Tetrarch's rule depended on his soldiers. If there was a riot and the soldiers came out of their barracks and killed two hundred people, the next day people stayed in their houses and there was peace. Soldiers were men set apart. Necessary, but hated by everyone. The only loyalty was to your comrades and to the Tetrarch, and to the Tetrarch only so long as the soldiers were paid.

These were the conditions of life, Matthias decided. Where else could he go? What other kennel would hold him?

The first year was the worst. Recruits were drilled until they lost the power to think. One became a soldier by acquiring a soldier's reflexes. Thinking had no part in it. A soldier was better off without memories or feelings or thoughts. This was the hardest lesson to learn, and Matthias never really mastered it. What he learned instead was that you cannot escape the things you have done. They haunt your dreams.

Even wine, which he had hardly tasted before he joined the army, could not banish his dreams forever. You could drink until it was almost as if you were dead, until even your dreams were stilled, but you would always wake again. And it was not possible to be drunk every night.