The Ironsmith

by Nicholas Guild

  It was at this point that the message ran into difficulty. Joshua’s peasant audience found it easy enough to identify the wicked—tax collectors, Herod, their landlords, soldiers, anyone who lived in a city—and they could look forward to a time when these would be overthrown and they themselves would be left in peace. In the kingdom of God they would live lives of plenty. The problem was that in the present they were poor.

  “If you have two cloaks and you see a man who has none, give him one of yours. Do not turn away the destitute, but feed and shelter them. The Law of God commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love the stranger as you love your own life.”

  The village householders, hearing such words, would turn away. They did not dispute with Joshua because it was obvious that he was a clever man, a learned man, and argument would be in vain. They simply stopped listening.

  Most of them.

  “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

  The man was perhaps twenty. His robe was of fine linen, embroidered at the sleeves and borders, and his hands had the look of never having done work. His eyes were anxious, but one gathered that this was not their habitual expression.

  When Judah looked at him, he had the sense of peering into his own face.

  “Keep the commandments,” Joshua answered him. “Honor your parents. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not kill. Love God. Show charity to the poor.”

  “I have never broken the commandments, Master.”

  Joshua studied him for a moment, as if trying to make up his mind about something.

  “Then give away all that you have.”

  It was as if the man had been slapped in the face.

  “But how can I do that?”

  “Your possessions are a burden to you. You cannot enter the kingdom of God until you are free of them.”

  The man seemed to struggle for words, but none came. At last, when he realized there was nothing else he could do, he turned and walked away.

  They watched him until he disappeared from sight.

  “He seemed very upset,” Judah said. “Perhaps he will think better of it and come back.”

  Joshua smiled and shook his head.

  “Riches, as you would know better than I, are very consoling. In a month he will have forgotten us. Or, if he remembers us at all, it will be with relief at his escape.”

  They never did see him again.

  But the incident must have remained on Joshua’s mind. A week or so later they were in a fishing village on the eastern shore of the Sea of Kinneret. Joshua had been there before and was known to the villagers, so at least in a few houses they were received as friends.

  Capernaum was just on the other side of the water, and someone had promised to row them across, the next morning. It was the last evening of their journey together.

  “How much money do you have left in your purse?” Joshua asked. He and Judah were walking along the shore, watching the birds dive into the water for fish. Joshua found the sight amusing.

  “I’m not sure. A few silver coins, no more.”

  “Then count them up.”

  There turned out to be eighteen drachmas and twelve shekels. Judah was a little surprised there was even so much.

  “Go into the village and give it away,” Joshua told him. “There are many poor here.”

  “All of it?”

  “All. It is time for you to strike off the last of your fetters.”

  So that was what he did. He left Joshua on the shore and returned to the house where they were to spend the night. The woman who was their hostess, whose name was Martha, accepted two shekels and sent her son with him that he might be directed to the houses of the poor.

  Judah experienced an odd sense of exhilaration. He knew the scattering of these coins meant nothing, for there was money enough awaiting him in Tiberias, along with the threads of his old life.

  Yet sometimes he felt he might never go back there. He imagined himself living as Joshua’s disciple forever. He knew this was impossible. He knew that one day Caleb would swoop down on this, his enemy, and everything would be over. Yet sometimes it was possible for days together to forget that Caleb existed.

  So, while he distributed his meager wealth among those who perhaps had never before even seen a silver coin, Judah was happy.

  Until an old man, sitting beside his doorway, shook his head as he regarded the three drachmas in the palm of his hand. The hand closed into a fist and he looked up at Judah with obvious resentment.

  “It is only the rich who make a game of charity,” he said.

  18

  Saul, Noah’s friend and host in Damascus, tended to regard him as a hopeless provincial. Saul was a trader in every imaginable commodity, whose business contacts extended as far west as Greece, and it was rumored—though he would have winked and denied it—that in the east he numbered among his customers the royal house of Parthia. He was also a Pharisee and learned in the Law and the Prophets, even if he preferred to read them in Greek translation.

  Greek was his first language. He collected the Greek poets and playwrights and was as likely to quote Sophocles as Isaiah. Around his table one saw as many Greeks and Romans as Jews. He was a man of broad sympathies, and his letters, which Noah always looked forward to receiving, were full of jokes and gossip and interesting interpretations of Torah.

  And Damascus was overwhelming. Noah had visited it twice before, but he simply could not adjust to the scale and diversity of the place. It made even Jerusalem seem like a village.

  “You should move here,” Saul told him during one of their walks to his warehouse. “A man of your skill would grow rich beyond counting.”

  “Thank you. I prefer to live among my own people.”

  “‘My own people.’ Listen to the man. Considered rightly, the Jews are your own people, along with the Greeks and the Anatolians and even the Romans. God is the father of us all. I keep the Law, as you know, but all men are my brothers. I believe that God gave us Torah that we might lead all the nations to Him.”

  “Yes, but thus far we have not been terribly successful.”

  “That is because men like you keep themselves shut up in Palestine. Do you realize that there are Greeks and even a few Romans who attend our synagogue? They are interested. The money for our new floor came from a Roman tribune. Wait until the Sabbath and you will see for yourself.”

  Noah made no reply. He always felt slightly dwarfed by Saul—by his vitality and his enthusiasms, and by the sheer physical presence of the man. Saul was tall and broad, with a thick, impressively cut beard, heavy, dramatic eyebrows, and the face of a bird of prey. He seemed all nose and eyes. One had the impression he could burn a hole through granite with those black eyes.

  Saul’s warehouse was across the street from one of the small Roman garrisons scattered throughout the city. This was probably not a coincidence, and he seemed on friendly terms with the soldiers, greeting some by name as they lounged around the entrances to the wineshops that lived by their trade. These exchanges were in Latin, in which Noah was halting at best but which Saul spoke with fluency.

  “Behold the legionnaires of Rome—poor children,” he said, switching back to Greek. “Farm boys, for the most part. Their commanders tell them they are masters of the world, but from the look of them they miss their mothers.”

  “Then they should go home.”

  Saul glanced down at Noah. His expression was at first fierce, as if offended, but quickly dissolved into a wide grin.

  “Then where would we be?” he asked. “Everyone complains about it, but, believe me, Roman rule is a good thing, particularly for us. The Romans guarantee Jewish rights in every city in their empire and, for the rest, as long as the taxes are paid and there is no trouble, they leave everyone alone. You prefer the Seleucids? Or the Herodians? May God deliver us from the sons of Herod!”

  “At least Antipas is a Jew,” Noah answered, with perhaps more emphasis than he intended. “One of our
own.”

  “Is he? Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  They both laughed.

  It was the impression of an instant, the sense of being watched. Something at the edges of his consciousness had alerted him, and Noah turned his head slightly to the right, just enough to allow him a glance at the arrangement of human figures along that side of the street.

  Two men in Greek dress were arguing—a friendly dispute apparently, at least that was what their gestures indicated. Three young men were laughing, sharing a skin of wine and flirting with a woman not quite so young. Their voices were loud enough to allow one to hear that they were speaking Latin. They were obviously soldiers from the garrison. A woman, about forty, was sweeping her doorstep.

  A man in his thirties was eating out of a small bowl, using his fingers. His tunic was belted with a rope, knotted at the left side. He seemed intent on his meal. Too intent.

  Was this man known to him? His face was half hidden, perhaps intentionally, as he bent over his bowl. No, there was nothing about him that struck a chord in Noah’s memory.

  It was with a flood of relief that he decided this could not be the man who had attacked him on his way home from Nazareth. This one was simply not big enough.

  In that brief moment, no longer than a few beats of one’s heart, Noah felt the world change around him. He was far from Galilee, and yet Galilee had caught up with him.

  “What would you say if I told you that I am being followed?”

  Saul appeared to consider this for perhaps the time it took to cover ten paces—they had turned the corner now and were almost at the door of his warehouse. Then he stopped and turned to look at his friend. His expression was detached and speculative.

  “I would not be surprised,” he said. “I am not surprised. You appear here in Damascus with no warning, and I have to wonder why. Were you suddenly seized by an impulse to see me? Charming as I am, I don’t think so. You are not the spontaneous type. And then there are those yellow patches on your face that look like fading bruises. Noah, what have you been up to?”

  “It’s a long and complicated story.”

  “All the better. I have plenty of time.”

  They went into the warehouse, which was huge and cluttered and strangely quiet, and Saul locked the door behind them. On the floor in his office was a square made of wooden planks, which he pushed aside with his foot to reveal a shallow well. He bent down, rolled up his sleeve, and reached inside to extract a jug, dripping wet, the contents of which turned out to be a wine dark as blood, delicious and strong. Saul poured some into two stone cups.

  “Taste it,” he ordered. He waited until Noah had taken two sips and then nodded. “Now. Tell me.”

  So Noah went through the events of the last few months, beginning with Joshua’s appearance at his workshop door and ending with the man eating on the street. When he was finished, Saul nodded, as if every word had conformed to his expectations.

  “And this priest,” he asked, “this Eleazar—do you trust him?”

  “No. He is the Tetrarch’s man.”

  “Good. Then you are finally learning cynicism. And this cousin of yours. What of him?”

  “Joshua may be a prophet. Or he may be just another poor fool. I don’t know. But I do know that his life is worth saving.”

  “And he cannot be persuaded to leave Galilee?”

  “No. I’ve tried.”

  “Then it seems an insoluble problem. You know, of course, that there has been a great harvesting of the Baptist’s followers lately. Antipas has been busy.”

  Noah felt something clench his heart.

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “They may already have your cousin—in which case it doesn’t matter what you do. You won’t be able to save him.”

  “Yet I must try.”

  Saul pursed his lips, apparently considering this answer.

  “I think you would be wiser to stay in Damascus. I can arrange to have your sister brought here.”

  “No. I must go. Soon.”

  “Then I can at least arrange for the Romans to detain our hungry friend outside.”

  “I can imagine how they would ‘detain’ him. No. I prefer not to have anyone’s blood on my hands. He might be perfectly innocent.”

  “No one is perfectly innocent. Except, perhaps, you, my friend.”

  * * *

  That night, the men who had accepted Saul’s invitation to dinner might, had they found it expedient, have settled among themselves any question touching on Rome’s province of Syria. The imperial legate himself was there, along with two of his military commanders and leading figures from the Greek and Jewish communities. Saul, who lived by his friendships and the influence they afforded him, was in turn courted by them all, and tonight Saul had steered the conversation around to Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.

  Noah, the least in so distinguished a company, occupied a couch farthest from his host. He did not enter into the discussion, nor was he expected to. The other guests seemed not even to have noticed his presence. He merely ate and listened. This suited his purposes nicely.

  “I would not, of course, dream of criticizing the emperor for supporting him,” said Phineas bar Kidron, nodding to the legate, Lucius Flaccus, his intimate friend, whom he had helped to make rich, “but he is an odious creature. Like his father before him, he is an insult to the people he governs.”

  The legate, who did not seem to have taken offense, busied himself with the breast meat of a sparrow as he considered his answer.

  “The emperor,” he said at last, “must manage his affairs with the tools he has at hand, and Galilee has been quiet for decades.” He shrugged, suggesting that the point was unanswerable. “You, Phineas, my friend, do not like him. Your reasons are religious, but what is that to us? In any case, aside from direct Roman rule, which everyone would find inconvenient—you should hear my man Pilatus on the subject of governing the Jews—what alternative is there?”

  “Still, I notice you keep that nephew of his safely tucked away in Rome, well out of his uncle’s reach. What’s his name again?”

  “Agrippa. Herod Agrippa.”

  “Yes, that’s him. His grandmother, at least, was a Hasmonean, and they, at least, were actually Jews. Saving him for something, are we? A little insurance in case the current Herod disappoints you?”

  This was greeted with general laughter, in which the legate did not scruple to join in.

  “Well, one thing at least,” said Panaetius, a white-haired Greek of vast age and absolutely incalculable wealth, “that fellow Antipas certainly knows how to make the money fly. In debt I hear.”

  “Perhaps that is your solution, my dear Phineas,” the legate suggested. “Perhaps, if his creditors grow too insistent, you can persuade him to sell you Galilee.”

  This was widely appreciated as the best jest of the evening. It was several minutes before the laughter died away.

  “Unfortunately, Herod has an easier source of money.” The speaker was one Amos bar Benjamin, an elegant man and reputed to be a great scholar. “He simply increases the taxes. Galilee is a land of plenty, and yet one hears that in the villages they are starving. He risks a peasant revolt if he is not careful.”

  “And now he has killed one of their heroes.”

  It was not clear who spoke, but the silence that followed this reference to the Baptist was itself painful testimony.

  “Yes,” Amos replied at last. “He has murdered one of God’s prophets. He will be made to pay for that.”

  Noah glanced at the imperial legate, a man who could not be suspected of sympathy with someone like John, and noticed that he, in his turn, was carefully observing the reactions of the other guests. Perhaps he was silently readjusting his appraisal of Antipas. The Romans did not like trouble in their subject lands.

  “About a year ago I had an interesting exchange of letters about John,” the legate said at last. “Pilatus was afraid of him. He argued t
hat the man had many followers and was preaching the overthrow of the existing order. I wrote back, ‘Where is he? What does he do?’ Pilatus replied that he immersed people in the Jordan, in the wilderness of Perea, and I asked, ‘So then, they go to him?’ and he answered, ‘Yes. Large crowds collect to hear him preach and to have their sins washed away.’ I gave instructions that he was to be left in peace, that we have nothing to fear from a holy man in Perea, that it is never wise to tamper with religion, that we would gain nothing by creating a martyr. It would appear that I was right.”

  * * *

  “So, my friend,” Saul asked as he and Noah enjoyed a final cup of wine together, after the last of the guests had departed, “what did you learn?”

  “Nothing I have not heard elsewhere in my travels. That the moneylenders do not have confidence in Antipas. That the execution of John is resented and, what is worse, regarded as a sign of weakness.”

  “And you will put all this in your letter to your priest friend?”

  “He is not my friend, but yes, I will report what I have heard.”

  “And what will you say of the legate?”

  “Only a general statement that the Roman authorities do not seem unwilling to hear criticism of the Tetrarch.”

  “Ah, then of course you would have no interest in reading the reports that Flaccus sends to the emperor.”

  Noah could do no more than put down his cup and stare. It seemed impossible.

  “Oh yes, my friend,” Saul went on, smiling with pleasure at the reaction he had elicited. “The legate dictates his correspondence to a scribe, who prepares a copy for the emperor and a copy for the legate’s archives—and another copy, which by a mysterious process finds its way into my hands. When he writes to the emperor, by the way, he writes in Greek. Tiberias is a great scholar who surrounds himself with philosophers and poets. His Greek, they say, is better than his Latin. Did you know that?”

  “No, I did not. But then, I am not personally acquainted with the emperor.”

  “Neither am I, but I read everything that he reads touching on this little corner of his empire. Would you like a peek?”