Holy Smoke: A Jerusalem Mystery

by Frederick Ramsay

  ***

  The now familiar itch on the back of his neck prompted Gamaliel to pause and gaze back down the road toward Loukas’ house. A man stood motionless in the street staring back at him. His appearance labeled him as one of the Nation, yet there he stood with the gates about to slam shut and with no apparent intention of returning to his home to keep Shabbat.

  “What sort of Jew have we here?” he wondered.

  “Rabban,” the Captain of the Guards said, “we must hurry. They are closing the gate.”

  “Yes, yes, coming.”

  The party marched through the Sheep Gate and it banged shut behind them. For the residents of the city Shabbat had begun. The appearance of the star and the sound of the shofar from the Pinnacle may have marked the official start of Shabbat, but, for the practical-minded, the closing of the great gates into the city made the day a reality.

  ***

  The sound of massive doors slamming—those close by and those far away—echoed across the city. Except for one lone man, the street was empty. The sky darkened as the sun dropped over the western wall. He stamped his foot in frustration. The rabbi’s angry god had foiled him again. He cursed his luck and strode back down the road toward Bethany, his fists in tight white balls. Shabbat had no hold on him, and he was also sure that the stupid innkeeper would not care where he came from, when, or how, as long as he had money to spend.

  Chapter XXXII

  Gamaliel and Loukas said their farewells to the guards and assured them they would talk again after Shabbat. From now on, no work could be done until the next evening. Investigating murders, except those described in holy writ, would be work.

  “What then will we do for the next twenty-four hours?” Loukas kept Shabbat in theory rather than practice. He had convinced himself that if he moved slowly and his actions were not overtly selfish, he had satisfied the conditions of Shabbat. The fact that no shops were open, nor were merchants willing to transact business that day, made it impossible for him to do much anyway. His very thin piety was shared by a large percentage of the country’s rural population. Inside the city, not so many.

  “We will contemplate the greatness of the Lord. Do not make a face at me, Loukas. It is a very useful way to pass the time. You should try it. You might be surprised at the results.”

  “With respect, Rabban, I do not see how the solution to a murder, multiple murders which, in fact, may or may not be connected, can be forthcoming by shuffling through old sheets and singing psalms. There are facts to be analyzed and sorted. How does the death of this man Zach relate to the Temple man? Who is following us and why? And, once again the nagging question, why put a corpse in the Holy of Holies?”

  “I have found Shabbat to be the single most useful time in which to accomplish exactly what you suggest.”

  “So, you are not going to waste a day contemplating the mightiness of the Lord?”

  “Quite the contrary. That is exactly what I will do. I discovered over the years that often the best way to solve a problem is to ignore it for a time. Somehow, that part of my mind that I cannot control and which is silent most of the time seems to churn through details without any conscious effort on my part and the next day or the one after that, the answer pops into the part of my mind I do control. The beauty of the Lord’s commandment that we keep Shabbat is because we need it, not because He wants it. Our minds need it, and certainly our bodies need it. So, tomorrow we will rest and contemplate other things. We have food and drink set aside for us. We may stroll here and there and resist thinking about our problem. You will see, Loukas. You will see.”

  “Not even reading?”

  “Well, I think it might be permissible if we were to read selectively.”

  “Selectively? As in what?”

  “You might wish to start in Kings. My student Saul thought the murdered man might have some connection with the story of Joab. You do recall the story of Joab and his perfidious relationship to King David? No? Then you should start there. Personally I don’t think Saul is on to anything, but he is an astute young man and I always listen to him even when I don’t agree with what he is saying. You must meet him sometime. Then there is the story of Uzza and the Ark, and if you have time, take a peek at Exodus and the directions Ha Shem gives for the construction of the Tabernacle. You might find that useful.”

  “I don’t have any alternative, do I?”

  “None at all.”

  The two men ate their evening meal of cold lamb, beans spiced with pepper, and bread. They read until the light failed and then slept. For the morning, Benyamin had left them cheese, boiled eggs, another loaf, and goat’s milk that had been kept cool in the basement.

  “The Tabernacle, Gamaliel, there is a disjunction between what the Lord wished for and what King Herod produced.” Loukas said after they had settled in the atria near the small fountain.

  “Herod, Zerubbabel, Solomon, and David, if he had had his way. Men seem to think that the Lord will be pleased with us if we try to improve on his designs. It is the arrogance of humanity and it invariably ends in disaster.”

  “You think this Temple an extravagance and will end in disaster?”

  “I didn’t used to, but now I have my doubts. It is so large and ornate. The money spent on its construction would pay for who knows how many meals for the poor. It annoys me when our high priest turns a blind eye to the extravagance of the Temple party and obsesses over the teaching attributed to some rabbi or another. Oh well, there is no use in complaining about it. For better or worse the Temple will be finished as Herod planned for it to be. I hope that if I am correct in my thinking that it is overreaching, the Lord will forgive me for my too human vanity and let it pass.”

  “If He doesn’t?”

  “I will not allow myself to contemplate that possibility.”

  “Very well then, here is another question for you on this most unusual Shabbat. Why is it so important for the high priest and the kohanim to hold to the notion that the Temple man died at the hands of the Lord?”

  “You have crossed the line, Physician. I said we must not try to work on our puzzle this day.”

  “This is only peripheral to the puzzle, Rabban. There is no way the high priest’s version is the answer. Thus, my question is to a different point entirely.”

  “Ah? Very well. The simplest answer I can offer comes from scripture. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Add Proverbs and maybe Job to your reading list.”

  When Shabbat ended at the twelfth hour, Gamaliel lit some lamps and pulled sheets of papyrus from the stack on his writing table. “Now,” he said, “we can find out what the silent portions of our minds have uncovered for us.”

  “I must confess that I didn’t hear anything from that part. I regret that the noisy part that I control, as you say, stayed busy all day. I am sorry. I do not have your self-discipline.”

  “No matter. You tried. For now it is enough. What conclusions did your undisciplined mind discover?”

  “I think I want to know what was in that cup that you found on the roof. I want to know if it is the same substance that Draco drank, and if it is, as I suspect, I think the next thing we should do is to return to the Street of the Herbalists.”

  “Do you think we will be followed?”

  “I don’t know. There is only one way to find out.”

  “Indeed. As for my unconscious mind, it occurred to me that the innkeeper said something very significant when we asked him who had rented his rooms.”

  “You think the merchant is our man?”

  “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. He said ‘he was one of you.’ I wondered about that. This morning it came to me.”

  “I am not following. What?”

  “He assumed that because the man dressed like me, he must be like me. People mistake you for a Greek, do they not?”

  “All the time.”

  “And that is because you dress
in the manner of the Greeks. If you wore robes like mine, they would not think so.”

  “Of course. I am still not with you.”

  “As we approached the gate, I turned and looked down your road. There was a man standing there who would be ‘one of us’, if we were to guess at his nationality and profession.”

  “And?”

  “And he made no move to treat the day for what it was, or was about to be.”

  “Sorry…?”

  “He did not seem to be preparing for Shabbat, as his appearance suggested he ought. You see, we make sweeping assumptions based on what a person looks like. The fact that the innkeeper said his boarder was one of us meant we dismissed the idea that he might have been anything or anyone else.”

  “You think he was from another country?”

  “No, no, you miss my point. He wasn’t one of us at all. By dressing a certain way, our killer or killers could be hiding in plain sight.”

  “And you conclude?”

  “I think I have had a look at our killer—several looks, in fact, and so have you.”

  Chapter XXXIII

  Benyamin entered the atrium with a plate of fruit and the news that the captain of the Temple guard waited in the foyer. At least he thought that was who waited at the door. Since the caller had dressed for the street rather than duty, Benyamin confessed he couldn’t confirm it. Gamaliel ignored the fruit and motioned Loukas to follow. They met the guard and three of his subordinates at the door. As Benyamin had said, the guards were not in their usual dress. Instead, they had donned the clothes of working men and could pass for anything from drover to laborer, anything that is except what they were, four very fit and tough young men, including their captain.

  “Splendid, you are ready.”

  “As you requested, Rabban. You said we could help you find the killer of our comrade and the perpetrator of the obscenity in the Temple, and here we are.”

  “Indeed. Loukas, we will have company on our foray back to the Herbalists.”

  “So it would seem, but won’t we be a little obvious ? Six men who obviously have no place on the street careening around asking questions?”

  “We will not be together. These men will shadow us. If we are followed, they will be watching. If there is danger, they will intercede. You and I will be asking the questions.”

  “As to that, Rabban, you have the brains we need to solve this puzzle, but your very presence is intimidating. If you start asking questions, I doubt that you will get the answers you seek.”

  “How then?”

  “First, I think you should, like these men, and our killer if you are right about him, wear something other than your rabbinical robes and certainly remove your chain of office.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Good, then you should let me do the questioning. I will ask in Greek, as that is how I am known on that street. They may or may not know and certainly won’t care if I am of the Faith, but they expect me to address them in Greek.”

  “Will you know the questions to ask?”

  “You will tell them to me.”

  “It is not as easy as that, my friend. I think I shall be a contemporary of yours from…where shall I be from? Gaza. The innkeeper said one of his boarders came from there. They are enough like us for me to be one, but different enough to not raise suspicions.”

  “You were on the street some few days ago. As a man from Gaza or not, you are unmistakable. No, Rabban, on second thought, you are too hard to hide.”

  “I take your point. Yehudah, have you a suggestion?” The guardsman raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “Can we acquire a sedan, do you think?”

  “A sedan chair? You mean one with curtains?”

  “Exactly. I will sit in it. I will be your client from afar who wishes to remain anonymous, a person of mystery but possessing few scruples. You are making inquiries for me. My carriers here,” Gamaliel waved at two of the larger guards, “will park me near enough for me to hear. If I need you to pursue a particular line of questioning I will cough. You then will ‘consult’ with your patron.”

  “That will work, but first we must find a sedan.”

  “A far easier problem to solve than the murder of several guards and an invader of the Holy of Holies, I should think.”

  ***

  They found a curtained chair and with Gamaliel ensconced within its depths, the party made their way to the souk and the Street of the Herbalist. It wasn’t really a street, more a cul-de-sac off a larger street, but time and custom had declared it a street and so it was. Gamaliel had cautioned Loukas to begin the questioning slowly, and the term he used was glancingly, by which he meant that Loukas should try to avoid the obvious. Loukas shot him a sour look.

  Loukas spoke literate Greek, rather than the koiné heard on the street, and Gamaliel, much to his distress, could not always follow him, particularly as he remained confined in his chair and out of sight. In addition, the sun bore down and he dared not open the curtains, which increased his frustration. But by the time they had made their way halfway down the street, several items had become clear. The place he’d always thought of as Hannah was in fact called Hana. The pronunciation of the word by Ali had not been a reflection of his accent. He had pronounced it correctly. The word, one of the herbalists who hailed from the north somewhere— Gamaliel did not hear where—and said it was of his tongue, meant bliss.

  Bliss? Not beauty or passion, but bliss. Were they all that different? After all, when shifting from one language to another certain nuances of meaning can be lost. Could Hana, unlike its Hebrew cognate, Hannah, be a man’s name? Now that would be something he’d like to know, but who to ask? Gamaliel coughed.

  “Ask him if Hana is a man or a woman,” he murmured to Loukas.

  “Rabban, that does not make any sense. What pretext shall I use to ask it? We are in the middle of discussing the various proportions of hul gil and mustard—”

  “Find a way. Tell him your client is not quite right in the head, I don’t know, but find a way.”

  “Not quite right in the head. That part should be easy enough.” Loukas returned to his questioning. “Yes, I see, one to ten for small children. By the way, before it slips my mind, I am told there is an apothecary on the street, a woman, named Hana. Is that correct?”

  The shopkeeper grinned widely and displayed a set of extremely crooked teeth. “No, no, Hana was a man’s name. The person who kept the shop which is burned to the ground— you see over there—called himself Hana. I do not think Hana was his real name. Some of the other shopkeepers might know. He was not a friendly person.”

  “I see. Is there a reason why he was thought to be unfriendly?”

  The storekeeper’s eyes rolled to one side. “Aside from the fact he was an Egyptian and, to some of us, an interloper, he had something that some of the others wanted him to stop selling.”

  “He sold whatever it was to men from the palace and the Romans.”

  “I did not tell you that.”

  “No, of course you didn’t. And these people who resented the sales, would that have included you?”

  “I am a merchant. I do not like to see my business slip away to another, and yes, of course, I wished he would share his secret or stop selling it. I would feel that way about anyone I compete against, but I was not with those who may have felt more strongly, and I do not burn down shops.”

  “Of course you don’t. These others, who would they be?”

  The shopkeeper glanced over his shoulder and studied the street and his face became unreadable. “It is not for me to say, but….”

  “Yes?”

  “They called themselves Assyrians, but Parthia is what they meant, I think.”

  “Cough.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will return for some wild mustard in a while.” Loukas stepped up to the sedan chair. “Yes?”

  “Move on to the next store. Push very hard about this Hana person and what he was selling. Also, find out
where he came from.”

  “I don’t need to. We can leave, I think.”

  “Don’t…what do you mean?”

  “It is about the hul gil. I am convinced that this Hana had a more powerful variety, and he had a monopoly on its sale, or nearly so. Since he did not seem willing to share the secret or the product, he was murdered, you could say, to reestablish equilibrium in the marketplace. I am sure of it.”

  “But what of his origins?”

  “He is said to be from Egypt, but it is confusing. This shopkeeper intimated that Parthians were at odds with him. There is always prejudice in the market and Egyptians are thought to be less than honest.”

  “Are they?”

  “No more so than eighty of a hundred others who sell here. One must always be careful when purchasing anything, Rabban.”

  “Thank you for that. So, you think we are done here?”

  “Yes. And Yehudah is signaling that he has something to tell us. We should go.”

  Chapter XXXIV

  Gamaliel, borne like royalty, or perhaps more like a successful courtesan, left the street in style, carried up by two burly guardsmen and followed by a meager but well set up entourage consisting of the captain of the guard, Loukas the Physician, and one other. Their exit from the herbalists was noted by a few and tracked carefully by one man in particular. When they had disposed of the chair and found a quiet spot where they could sit and have refreshment, Gamaliel called them to order much as he would his students.

  “Yehudah, you signaled that you had seen something important. Were we followed?”

  “No, Excellency, it’s not that. I suppose we might have been, but I saw no evidence of that. What caught my eye was a person I thought I recognized. Then I wasn’t sure. It seemed so unlikely. Can a person have a double—I mean of course he could have a twin—but is there another way that could be?”

  “Possibly. It is more likely the person who seemed to be someone else is that person after all. You thought you recognized someone and then doubted it was the person you thought it was for some reason. Am I close enough?”