“Who has sanctified us with His commandments…”
He counted his alternatives. They did not make an impressive list.
“And commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.”
It was over, at last. A little ceremony he had performed hundreds of times, which lasted less than a minute, yet which, this Sabbath evening, had seemed to stretch on forever.
He was glad when he could be alone. He went to his bedroom, where the servants had already set out wine and bread for him. He was not hungry, but he drank the wine, searching for a means to dull the edge of his fear.
He lay down on the bed, thinking that somehow, sometime, sleep would come. He needed to sleep, but even this was denied him.
In the small hours of the morning, his wife came to him. She carried a candle, which softened her face, and she was wearing her nightdress. Probably she hadn’t been able to sleep either.
“What will you do?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“What can I do?” He even laughed—he was beginning to regard his situation as, in certain lights, amusing. “I will see what the Tetrarch wants of me.”
“You could run.”
“Where? And if I did, what would they do to you? I can’t run.”
She let her hand rest on his arm, and it occurred to him that perhaps that was what she had come to find out, whether he would simply disappear and leave her to the mercy of his enemies.
Apparently he had made the right answer, because she crawled into bed beside him.
Suddenly he was stiff with desire. Was this to be the seal on his pledge? He would make love to her and thus commit himself to face the Tetrarch’s wrath? It seemed likely.
She had no doubt been kept awake, wondering how best to extricate herself from her husband’s downfall, and this was what she had settled on.
Did it matter? He considered the question for an instant and then decided that no, it didn’t.
It was a hope which years of experience could never quite extinguish, that somehow, someday, Michal would realize how much he loved her and feel some small regret at what she had wasted. Perhaps it could only happen after he was dead, but even that was something to hope for. He would stay now, and it was likely the Tetrarch would have him put to death, and then …
But no. Love was folly. Love was a trap from which there was no escape. Fool that he was, he didn’t even want to escape.
He turned on his side and she began to shift herself, to crawl beneath him. When he went into her she let out a long, ragged breath. As he moved to his climax she began to moan and to claw at him. Probably it was all pretense. Probably she felt nothing. It didn’t matter.
When it was over they lay together. She turned to him and let her small, fragile hand rest on his thigh. It was a delicious sensation.
And then he slept through until dawn.
He would never be able to remember how he got through that long Sabbath. After he had dressed and washed, and leaving Michal still asleep, he went down to the room he used as an office. All through the day he did not eat and only drank water.
When would the Tetrarch summon him, and what would he say? The first was difficult to answer and the second impossible. The one certainty was that the Tetrarch would try, was already trying, to break down his courage, and this was the one victory it was crucial to deny him. Antipas despised fear—probably because he was so consumed with it himself. Thus the one necessity was to hold himself together.
He felt fortunate, then, that the summons came about an hour after the Ceremony of the Four Blessings, which ended the Sabbath.
The Tetrarch, he was told, was in his garden, enjoying the night air, and wondered if the Lord Caleb would care to join him.
It turned out to be a short interview, and anticlimactic.
“Well, Caleb, my boy, I know you only meant to protect me, and I love you for your zeal, but this business with the Baptist and his followers has become dangerous. Eleazar says we need an interval of calm, and of course he’s right. He’s usually right. So I want you to stop the raids and let everyone go. I’m going to issue a general amnesty to celebrate the Lady Herodias’s birthday—which won’t be for a few months yet, but I’ll issue the amnesty tomorrow—and all those fellows you have locked up can crawl back to their homes.
“Beyond this, I want you to remember that you take your orders from the First Minister. You are his servant as well as mine. You are to take no major steps without his approval. He’ll have specific instructions for you when you get back to Sepphoris.
“Now, you keep your head down for a while and this wind will blow itself out. You’ve just been a little too full of yourself is all, but you’re a good boy.
“Now go home and kiss your wife for me. You are dismissed.”
As he walked away, as he made his way through the corridors and reception halls, Caleb could hardly keep his legs under him. He kept expecting soldiers to appear out of nowhere and seize him.
He had found Antipas’s manner toward him unnerving. The loving father reproves his son for making too much noise.
Except that Caleb knew how these games were played. He had heard of men who had left the Tetrarch’s presence glowing from his praise and then had found themselves under arrest before they reached the main gate.
So it was with a sense of only conditional relief that he at last stood in front of his own front door, waiting for a servant to open it.
Instead, it was Michal.
“What happened?” she asked, clinging to the door frame as if she might otherwise collapse.
“I am here,” he answered with a shrug. “If by tomorrow morning I haven’t been arrested, then we will go back to Sepphoris. If I am not arrested on the way, I will go back to work. How is it that you answered the door?”
“The servants have fled. As soon as the Sabbath was over, they vanished. I wonder how they could have known.”
“The servants always know.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
Suddenly Caleb felt immensely weary. He no longer cared what happened to him, provided he could have a few hours of sleep.
“What did the Tetrarch say?”
Caleb made a vague, dismissive gesture with his left hand. “I have been chastised for being too zealous. I have been a naughty boy, but he loves me.”
“Then you are safe?”
“No.”
He found his bed and slept soundly for about four hours. Then, suddenly, he was stark awake. Had some noise alerted him? He listened. There was nothing. Gradually he began to relax. Only when his fear had lost its edge did he notice that he was alone.
Yes, of course. She had nothing more to gain from him, and she wouldn’t care to be in the room if the guards came. It was safer to sleep somewhere else.
He sat up in his bed, thinking about Michal’s shortcomings as a wife. It made a pleasant diversion from thinking about how close he had come to the abyss.
Michal was a beautiful woman, and her manner, when it suited her, was playfully seductive. When it did not suit her, she had the disposition of a shrew. Yet even when she plagued him, Caleb always felt a strong desire for her.
He had not known her long before he was prepared to sacrifice everything to possess her, and that was very nearly the way it had worked out.
In a sense, it was well they had had to leave Jerusalem. If one is to grow disillusioned with one’s wife, it is perhaps better that this process take place among strangers. Caleb found it painful enough to imagine his friends’ amusement at his plight—probably most of them had known he was making a catastrophic mistake—but it would have been unbearable to discover Michal’s true nature and to see each step in that gradual revelation mirrored in the knowing smiles of every casual acquaintance. In Sepphoris, a week’s journey from Jerusalem, he could comfort himself with the thought that, if his wife was empty, childish, selfish, and unbearably ill natured, at least he was aware of the fact before it became common knowledge.
Still, she
was not always dreadful. When they were back in Sepphoris, and she had settled down a little, she would begin to feel the need to reaffirm her power over him, and for a week or so their bed would be a very warm and comfortable place.
Then, her confidence returned, she would find it less and less necessary to make herself agreeable and, as he witnessed the change, Caleb would experience first disappointment, then contempt for his own self-delusion, then a peculiar mingling of lust and shame that he could only believe was God’s special curse on him.
Michal disliked Sepphoris, which she considered a hopeless village, and probably she would begin sending pleading little notes to the Lady Herodias, hoping to be allowed to return to Tiberias. Otherwise, she might travel to Jerusalem to visit her family.
Or, at least, that would be the pretext. Her father was dead and her mother was a tiresome woman whose principal interest in life was surviving as many of her acquaintances as possible. She had a sister, who disapproved of her and whom therefore she regarded as a bore, and her brother … Well, her brother was one of those invisible young men whose name no one could ever seem to remember.
It had, of course, occurred to Caleb to wonder if his wife might not have a lover in Tiberias—someone to lavish money on her and satisfy her flesh and give her someone to torment. A lover might be prepared to meet her in Jerusalem. Caleb could arrange to have her watched, even in Jerusalem, and the penalty for adultery was stoning. It was an agreeable thought.
But then, of course, the whole world would know and he would look a fool. A man whose business is creating fear cannot afford to look a fool.
And, worse, he would lose her.
An hour before dawn he fell asleep again.
In the morning, after breakfast, Caleb went to the garrison and arranged for an escort and a wagon for his wife. It was reassuring to see that he still had the power to do such things.
The journey back to Sepphoris was uneventful. Caleb rode with the soldiers, keeping away from his wife, who would only complain to him about the dust.
When they arrived, his servants—who, unlike those in Tiberias, had not run away—prepared them dinner, after which Caleb went up to the roof to sit in the twilight and enjoy the view.
But this evening the view did not work its customary magic. He hardly noticed it. His mind, like the gaze of a circling hawk, was fixed on a single object.
It appeared that he had survived this particular crisis. Antipas did not mean to bring him down—not yet—but this reprieve was only temporary because, whatever the Tetrarch might intend, the Lord Eleazar meant, in the end, to destroy him.
Tomorrow, when he called upon Eleazar, Caleb would play the repentant servant. And Eleazar, who certainly understood his own part in this little drama, would sternly admonish him and then put him to work on a series of trivial assignments. Caleb’s implied task would then be to earn his way back into the First Minister’s confidence.
All of which was, of course, perfectly meaningless. Both men knew there would be neither mercy nor forgiveness. Each would be bent on ruining the other as the only possible means of insuring his own survival.
Bad news traveled faster than any horseman, and by now every petty official in Sepphoris would have heard that the Lord Caleb was out of favor. How many of those who worked under him had already made their way to Eleazar, eager to pledge their loyalty? Thus, when Caleb returned to his desk, he would find himself surrounded by spies.
He had to find a way out.
23
When the sun had at last set, and he came down from the roof, Caleb discovered that a messenger had left a note. It was from the Lord Eleazar, inviting him to breakfast the next morning. The note was kindly phrased. It was the sort of note one might send to an intimate friend who had recently suffered a bereavement and needed cheering.
So, when the sun rose, Caleb went to the Lord Eleazar’s house and was shown into the garden, where he found the First Minister. They made a meal of figs and wine served in little cups of solid gold.
Eleazar was never brutal in his speech, but he was also not a man to waste time on pleasantries. The interesting thing was his subtlety. He made no reference to Caleb’s interview with the Tetrarch but instead talked to him as to a trusted, confidential servant.
“We need an interval of calm,” he said, his attention apparently absorbed in the task of cutting open a fig with an exquisite little silver knife. “The Tetrarch has issued a general pardon, which should help to quiet things. He needs continuing access to loans and, even more, he needs the support of Rome, which is contingent upon the tribute being paid on time and the absence of any trouble that might require them to intervene—we all prefer that their legions remain in Syria. This business with the Baptist and his followers, whatever its original merits, upsets the merchants, which worries the moneylenders, which in turn encourages the Romans to think dark thoughts. It is time for all the dogs to curl up and go back to sleep.”
He looked up and smiled. He was not finding fault, but explaining policy.
“You will release our prisoners—all of them, no matter what their offenses—and you will arrange for them to be returned to their homes. It might even be a good idea to distribute a little silver. The emphasis must be on the Tetrarch’s mercy.”
“It shall be as you direct, Lord.”
“I knew you would understand.”
Eleazar’s gaze and his smile never wavered. The only trace of irony was in the words themselves.
“It is of course in the nature of things that there will be other criminal prosecutions,” the First Minister continued. “Such is the depravity of men. I have, however, prepared a list of names, which I will send to your office later in the day. Without the written consent of the Tetrarch, no one whose name appears on that list is to be touched.”
He made a small, despairing gesture with his left hand, as if to suggest that we must all learn to submit ourselves to the caprice of princes.
* * *
“I have prepared a list.” Even before it reached his desk—and he did not have to wait long—Caleb had arrived at certain conclusions about its contents. First, since the list was Eleazar’s, he was protecting his friends. Second, he now had sufficient authority with the Tetrarch to persuade him to endorse the list.
The question was, how had he suddenly acquired such power? The answer, of course, somehow involved the Romans. “The Romans think dark thoughts.” How did Eleazar know what the Romans were thinking?
The list was brought to him a little before noon. The first name was Joshua bar Joseph, carpenter, formerly of the village of Nazareth, which was, perhaps, expected. But the second was Noah bar Barachel, ironsmith, resident of Sepphoris.
The Lord Eleazar threw a wide net. Caleb would have assumed that the First Minister had never even heard of Noah bar Barachel, and now he was to be regarded as untouchable. Which meant that Eleazar regarded him as an asset. His asset.
Noah had disappeared. He had left Sepphoris after his encounter with Matthias, had briefly surfaced in a village named Capernaum, and then had vanished.
And now Eleazar was protecting him. Why? What made Noah bar Barachel, ironsmith, resident of Sepphoris, so valuable?
“The Romans think dark thoughts.”
Had Noah somehow been the source of Eleazar’s information about the Romans’ dark thoughts? It seemed preposterous.
And yet …
“This business upsets the merchants, which worries the moneylenders.…” Noah moved comfortably in that world. He was a craftsman whose goods were sold far beyond Galilee.
Those damned pliers—that was how Eleazar had found him!
Suddenly Caleb felt very stupid and very afraid.
He decided he would do no work today—in any case, there seemed no work to do. He would go to the baths and see if the steam couldn’t clear his head.
* * *
The public baths were comfortable and luxurious without being spectacular. The Tetrarch had built them in emulati
on of the Great Herod’s in Caesarea, but on a far smaller scale because, although just as despotic as his father, Antipas was not as rich. One could walk around the outside of the building in about the time it took to recite one of the shorter Psalms, and many of the walls were plaster painted to look like marble. The pools, however, were marble, as were the walls of the steam rooms and—most blessed of all—the benches. It was wonderfully soothing to lie there on that cool, smooth Parian, wrapped in linen, sweating like a chariot horse.
The baths were also less crowded than those in Caesarea. The Greeks and Romans, of whom there were very few in Sepphoris, regarded baths as indispensable to civilized life, but they were a custom the Jews had been slow to adopt. Every house of any size in the city had a stone immersion pool, but these were for ritual purification rather than pleasure, and the Jews as a whole resisted foreign ways. Antipas had a taste for all things Greek, and those of and around his court emulated him, but the general population, even those who could easily afford the twenty prutot admission price, tended to stay away.
From his youth, Caleb had had many Greek friends. He had even, sometimes, dined in their homes, which of course was forbidden. Well, he had not died of it. He had always admired the Greeks, who had spread their culture and language over half the known world—and that, the better half. Even Jews, when they came on pilgrimage from outside Palestine, tended to speak Greek. They read Greek philosophy and literature and bought Greek art for their homes. They worshipped the God of the Jews, but they lived in a wider world, and he envied them.
Caleb liked to begin his time at the baths by washing himself in warm water, then taking a sudden plunge into the cold pool, then, and finally, teeth chattering, hunched up in his towels like Methuselah staggering toward death, making his way into one of the steam rooms. Those first few moments, as he breathed in the warm, thick air and felt himself begin to sweat, were a deliverance, a return to Eden. The sense of well-being was so profound that his mind simply emptied.
Not to think, that was the great blessing.
Except today the blessing was withheld. Lying there, the sweat welling in his eyes, he could not escape the memory of this morning’s interview.
The Ironsmith Page 22
