The Ironsmith

by Nicholas Guild

  “How may I serve you, my lord?” she asked.

  Good, Eleazar thought. She is assuming an air of humility, which only means that she has decided to wait and see.

  “I have made up my mind to destroy your husband, Lady. The only question left is whether you will go down with him.”

  Now, for the first time, Eleazar allowed himself to smile. The smile was almost kindly.

  A moment passed, a silence that lasted through five or six beats of the heart, and then Michal moved uncomfortably in her chair.

  “Are you threatening me, my lord?” she asked finally.

  “Yes. With death. Do I have your attention, Lady?”

  From the way she nodded, one could have imagined that the joints in her neck had frozen shut.

  “You have been careless, Lady. I have more than sufficient evidence to bring an accusation of adultery against you, and you will recall that the penalty for adultery is death by stoning.”

  He paused and waited for some reaction. There was none. Good. That could only mean that she was thoroughly frightened.

  “Have you ever seen someone stoned to death?” he went on. “A crowd surrounds the victim. There is no escape. I have seen it. Afterwards, the woman’s head looked like pulp. And here in Jerusalem the crowd would be huge and probably more than a little hysterical. When they have finished, I doubt if you would be even recognizably human.”

  Michal did not move, and she made no sound. But tears were trickling down her face.

  Eleazar was prepared to give her time.

  “My husband…” she began at last. “My husband would never…”

  “Your husband, if confronted with irrefutable evidence—evidence which, in the event of his refusal to act, will be made public—would have no choice but to accuse you. The Tetrarch will not be pleased, but that serves my purpose. It will weaken your husband and bring him another few steps closer to his ruin. So, as they lead you out to the execution ground, you can comfort yourself that your death will not have been in vain.”

  She began to sob. Eleazar was disgusted by the performance. He merely waited for it to subside.

  “Can you save me?” she asked finally. She had the cunning, at least, not to raise her eyes.

  “Of course I can save you. That is not the question. The question is whether you would be more useful to me alive or dead. What do you think?”

  She straightened herself up and tried to assume something like a dignified attitude.

  “What can I expect if I help you?”

  Their eyes met, and they found they understood each other perfectly.

  “When your husband is dead, you will be a widow and I will have no interest in pursuing any accusations against you. And I will see to it that you inherit some part of Caleb’s estate. You can marry Nahshon bar Elhanan, provided he is fool enough, and you can live anywhere you want. Jerusalem, Caesarea, anywhere. Except in Galilee. You would do well, I think, to take yourself off to the gentile lands. You might like Alexandria. I’m told it’s charming.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  Eleazar smiled, not very nicely.

  “First, I think it would be wise if, when your husband arrives in Jerusalem … which you expect, when?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Then tonight I think you should have a touching reunion. He will be staying at the Tetrarch’s palace. You should join him there, and soften his heart to you as best you can.”

  “That will not be difficult,” she said, obviously regaining her confidence.

  “I’m delighted of hear it, because I want to know everything you can discover about where he goes, whom he sees, and what he does. I want to know what he thinks, if you can find that out as well. There is a woman named Talitha who will be part of your household. You may speak to her in Greek and she will understand nothing, but she will remember everything. Anything you tell her, I will know before you are many hours older. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Do you also understand that if I fail to find your information useful, or if you attempt to deceive me in any way, you will die under a shower of stones?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then our business is finished.”

  Eleazar rose and, without even glancing at her, left the room.

  Once he was outside, he was able to consider the interview with some satisfaction. Michal would certainly betray her husband, so the only remaining question was whether Caleb was sufficiently blinded by love or passion or whatever held him to that woman not to guess that she was now his bitterest enemy.

  As he walked along, and as his steps took him into a more fashionable quarter of the city, Eleazar decided he might as well go on and visit his dead wife’s mother, whom he detested but who lived close by. It was a necessary courtesy, best gotten through as quickly as possible.

  Then he would have dinner with his son.

  39

  Even as Eleazar left Michal, her husband was entering Jerusalem’s northern gate. Caleb had arrived as one more anonymous pilgrim in the vast crowds that clogged the roads into the city.

  Eight years before, he had left through the same gate, and in that time he had never been back. The city was at once utterly strange and painfully familiar.

  But it was always thus during the great feasts. Jerusalem became a different place as the mobs took possession of it. Every street was transformed into a remorseless current of strangers that dragged one helplessly along with it. And the noise was inhuman, like the rumblings of a storm.

  But still, it was where Caleb had been born, where he had expected to live until he died, a servant of the Temple and of God.

  After all these years, the sight of the place tormented him, like the recollection of lost love. Even the Greek-speaking tourists from cities too distant to be named, who came to the Holy City for the only time in their lives, were more welcome than he. He was the uninvited guest for whom there was no room at the table.

  Later, when he had attended to business and was settled in the Tetrarch’s palace, he would send a note to his wife, but he would not go to her family’s house, because it was in the Levite district, where his own extensive family had their homes. There was always the chance that he would meet someone he had known from the old days, and that would be awkward. He did not want his father to know of his return.

  Caleb was a wealthy man and a high officer of the Tetrarch’s government, and yet to his father he was dead, cast off, as if he had never been born. He did not even know if the old man was still alive.

  And why? Because Caleb had grown uncomfortable in the straitened life of a Levite and had wanted to breathe the air of a more spacious world. Because he was attracted to the Greeks, who understood that a man might make mistakes but who recognized few sins. Because he had not kept to the Law with sufficient scrupulousness. And because of Michal.

  His father had called her a wicked woman, and Caleb had of course known that he was right. But what did that matter? His father had been perhaps too old to understand passion, or even to remember its existence.

  Jerusalem was his father’s world. Aside from the Temple, what was Jerusalem but an overcrowded village on a hill? The Temple was its excuse for being, the center of everything, the throne of God. It was also a slaughterhouse, stinking of blood.

  Caleb made his way along streets he had known since boyhood. The houses on either side were made of stones as old as the world. Strangers jostled him, and he was surrounded by a babble of foreign voices.

  Prostitutes and gentiles were welcome, but he was not.

  It took him almost an hour to reach the Tetrarch’s palace, where the chamberlain was expecting him. He immersed himself in the ritual bath and then went to the steam room for an hour. When he felt himself restored, he scribbled a note and had it sent round to a certain office in the Temple.

  * * *

  The Temple might be the seat of God, but He occupied only a single room and He had little company. On the Day of
Atonement the high priest, and only he, entered the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifice for Israel’s sins. The rest of the year the King of the Universe was left in solitude.

  But all around that quiet center, the Temple was a busy place. All priests were members of one of twenty-four divisions, each of which served for one week. The members of each week’s division divided the work among themselves in twelve-hour shifts, since the work of placating God’s wrath allowed for no rest. Through the day and through the night, doves, pigeons, goats, heifers, kids, lambs and, on special occasions, even bulls were slaughtered on the altars in the Court of Priests. The spilling of blood was endless. At any given moment more than a hundred priests—and vastly more during the four great festivals—would be on duty, offering sacrifice. Following these were the Levites, who acted as singers, musicians, gatekeepers, guards, guides, inspectors, and messengers. And then, of course, there were the priests, who functioned as the Temple’s government.

  For, indeed, the Temple was like a small city unto itself. Its ever-changing population could range from several hundred to a few thousand, and priests and Levites all had to be fed and housed, their clothes and their bodies washed, and the thousands of visitors had to be kept in order.

  Order was essential. The Temple was constantly filled with people. During the festivals, the crowds were massive and excitable. As had happened many times, the most trivial incident could occasion a riot, which would cause the Roman soldiers to come down from the walls and “restore order” with their swords. Hundreds might be killed. If the disturbances spilled out into the city, thousands.

  With the single exception of the sacrificial offerings themselves, since these were rendered to God, nothing was more important than that order be kept. And the man upon whose shoulders this burden rested was a priest named Meshach.

  Caleb had never met him. Outside of the Temple itself, priests and Levites inhabited different worlds and, besides, Meshach’s appointment had been recent. When he went to the offices of the guards and sent in his note requesting an appointment, Caleb had no idea what to expect.

  The answer came back that the Lord Meshach was currently at liberty and would be happy to receive the Lord Caleb at once, should that prove convenient.

  When Caleb entered the room, he found a man standing over a table, his attention focused on a document, the pages of which were spread out before him. The priest glanced up at Caleb and his face contracted in a slight frown.

  The table was the only article of furniture in the room, so the two men stood facing one another.

  Meshach was probably between thirty and forty. This could be no more than a guess, however, as his hair was already beginning to go gray at the temples, but his face was young. His eyes had an anxious quality, as well they might.

  Caleb made a slight bow. He understood the deference a Levite owed to a priest, so he remained silent.

  “Your reputation has preceded you,” Meshach said at last. “One hears that you were responsible for the Baptist’s arrest. Is that so?”

  “It is so.”

  The priest merely shrugged. “Well, I suppose we shall all survive his loss. I imagine your master was glad to be rid of him.”

  He did not seem to be inviting a reply, so Caleb made none.

  Meshach let his gaze drop back to the surface of the table. With his left hand he drew one of the sheets of papyrus toward him, studied it for a moment, and then seemed to lose interest.

  “And how may I be of service to you now?” he asked, without looking up. “Are you here on the Tetrarch’s business?”

  He smiled, not at all pleasantly.

  But Caleb was not put off. It did not surprise him that a priest might think he had risen higher than was appropriate for a mere Levite. He refused to take offense—or, at least, to let it show.

  Instead he told Meshach about Joshua bar Joseph, former disciple of the Baptist, preacher of sedition and self-styled prophet of the end of Roman rule.

  Meshach listened with attention, betraying no reaction. When the recital was over he looked down once more at the table, moved another sheet of papyrus a few finger widths to the right, and then raised his eyes, carefully looking at nothing.

  “He is known to me,” he said, as if the fact depressed him. “He is a carpenter or something of the sort, is he not?”

  “Yes.”

  “He spoke in the courtyard last year. During the Passover. I remember him. He was possessed of a certain natural eloquence, but his accent was as thick as goat cheese.”

  Caleb smiled, pretending to be amused.

  “Well, yes, my lord. He is a Galilean.”

  “He seemed harmless enough.”

  “He is not harmless, my lord. He has a following. He is capable of creating a disturbance.”

  “But there is no evidence that that is his intention.”

  Meshach stepped back from the table and clasped his hands behind his back. It was only then that he looked Caleb full in the face.

  “If I arrested every village preacher who collected an audience, I would have little enough time for anything else. Providing he does not cause a riot, the Temple is a place where every Jew may speak his mind.”

  “And if he does cause a riot?”

  “As I said, there is no evidence that he plans to. And as you said, he is a Galilean. Your master Herod Antipas, I notice, has not seen fit to arrest him.”

  “Galilee is not Jerusalem, my lord. In Galilee he confines himself to the villages. There are no Roman soldiers in Galilee, my lord.”

  “On the basis of what you have told me, not even Pilatus would arrest him. But trust me, My Lord Caleb. If this Joshua bar Joseph becomes troublesome I will see to it that he receives a sound thrashing and is sent home—to Galilee.”

  * * *

  When Caleb returned to the Tetrarch’s palace, he wrote his wife a note, merely advising her that he was in the city, and told the chamberlain to send a messenger, but he thought it might be days before they saw one another.

  That priest. Caleb’s resentment seemed to burn his throat. He hated them, all of them. He was a Levite, so they thought they had a right to think meanly of him. Their contempt they regarded as a birthright.

  And his hatred burned the brighter because he was afraid. Resentment, he knew, was a luxury he could not afford. He had to find a way to destroy this peasant preacher or he would be destroyed himself.

  He needed to stop thinking about it. He needed to clear his mind. The answer would come if he simply stopped thinking about it.

  He had a light dinner, after which he read dispatches for an hour. Then he decided he might as well go to bed.

  He was almost asleep when the bedroom door opened and he saw a light. It was a few seconds before he realized that it was Michal, holding an oil lamp.

  She put the lamp down on a table and snuffed out the wick. Then she undressed in the dark and crawled into bed beside him.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked, her voice soft and caressing, her lips close enough that he could feel her warm breath on his face.

  “I hardly know, but if you did I’m glad.”

  He reached across his own body to touch her, and his hand came to rest on her rib cage. She drew herself closer to him, close enough that he could feel her breasts against him.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “You’ve been away from me a long time.”

  It didn’t seem the moment to point out that she was the one who went off to Jerusalem to visit her family—that had been the stated reason, and if there was another he did not wish to know about it—so he said nothing. He merely turned his head a little and let her lips find his.

  She straddled him with her legs and guided him into her. Her passion was intense and lasted even after he was spent, so that she went on covering his mouth with hot, panting kisses. After the second time, she grew quiet, huddling next to him.

  “I’m going to win it all back,” he said. The words just seemed to speak themselves, without his i
ntending anything. He might have said, “I love you. I cannot bear to be without you,” and perhaps that was what he meant.

  “Yes…?” she answered, seemingly half asleep.

  “Within a week or two, the Tetrarch will see how much he needs me. He will listen only to me.”

  He didn’t know if he believed it himself, but somehow he needed to say it.

  And perhaps, for this moment, it didn’t matter, because by then her breathing was long and even, which meant she hadn’t heard.

  * * *

  The next morning, as she lay in bed, watching her husband wash himself, Michal wondered if his promise that he would “win it all back” changed anything. It was obvious that, if Caleb really did manage to regain his position with the Tetrarch, he would have to destroy the Lord Eleazar. Only one of them would survive. That was clear.

  But the Tetrarch could not bring down his First Minister during the Passover, while they were all still in Jerusalem. That would have to wait until they all returned to Galilee, where Antipas was the master. Until then, Eleazar was safe.

  But Michal was not. Eleazar could charge her with adultery whenever it suited him and, if he did so in Jerusalem, his destruction in Tiberias would not save her.

  Michal did not believe that Caleb would succeed. Caleb was finished. He was like a man pushed from a cliff, clutching at the air as he falls.

  Thus, the safest side was Eleazar’s. Besides, Caleb was beginning to bore her.

  “I will be in the city all day on business,” he told her as he wiped his armpits with a damp cloth. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “All day?” she asked, drawing aside the sheet to display her naked body. “Then perhaps you could spare me a quarter of an hour?”

  After he was gone, Michal lay in bed for a long time, waiting for the heat of passion to leave her. She told herself that, now, any suspicions he might have had of her would be lulled, and it might even be true. But she knew that was not the real reason she had offered herself. She did not quite understand it, but that she was about to betray him only heightened her appetite. It excited her to think of him inside her, his muscles tightening as he spent his seed, with her knowing all the while that he was doomed.