Harvest - 02 - Harvest of Gold

by Tessa Afshar

  Immediately to the west of Eliashib and his priests, a group from Jericho labored on the wall. They were simple men. Nehemiah doubted if they could read and write. And yet they stood next to the high priest of the land, shoulder to shoulder, strengthening their city. There was something sacred about the way the wall was bringing people of such diverse backgrounds together. They were united by their commitment to serve God with one heart. Differences were set aside for the sake of their goal.

  Beyond them, Zaccur the son of Imri worked with his family and servants. The sound of jovial chatter was interspersed with occasional grunts and strained groaning. Masonry was heavy. The builders had to pick through the stones left over from the old walls and dust and clean them before setting them in place. Some pieces were small enough for one man to lift. Many were so heavy that it required several men to shove one boulder onto a lever and fulcrum so that they could lift the stone to the appropriate height.

  Nehemiah bent down to run a hand across the first round of stones that had been set over the foundation. “Your work progresses well.”

  Zaccur wiped a hand across his sweat-soaked brow, leaving a streak. “Thank you, my lord.”

  Nehemiah clasped him on the shoulder. “You have done a fine job.” Their portion was small compared to the priests’, but they worked with gratifying zeal.

  The governor walked westward to the Fish Gate, where the residents of the city once sold fish from the Sea of Galilee. One day again, God willing, crowds of fishermen will walk through these gates! The sons of Hassenaah—four young men with shoulders as broad as a Persian beam—worked hard on the Gate.

  “How goes it?” Nehemiah called out.

  “Come see for yourself, my lord,” said a brother with curly hair and brown eyes that sparkled. Nehemiah could not remember his name, and if he was honest, could not even tell the brothers apart. They all had curly hair and sparkling brown eyes, as well as thick muscles.

  They were working on the doors. Lebanon’s rich timber had already been cut into planks and laid on a large table hefted from somewhere to accommodate their task. Nehemiah stroked the surface of one plank. As smooth as an ancient stone, the young men had sanded it until the grain of the wood stood out with the beauty of an artist’s pattern.

  “This shall be a gate worthy of the city to which it belongs.”

  Four broad smiles enveloped him with appreciation.

  Meremoth was busy repairing the section of the wall that stood next to the Fish Gate. He came from an important family; both his father and grandfather were known as men of rank in Judah. Yet he exchanged good-natured jests with the four simple brothers as if they had been boyhood friends. As if a world of wealth, education, and lineage did not stand between them.

  Meremoth’s hands were covered in mud, which he was using as mortar between the stones. His face, his hair, his work clothes, even his brows were speckled with it. He looked a mess. But the echo of his loud laughter rang through the valley beyond. He sounded like a man who had discovered what he loved best in the world.

  Judah’s governor shook his head and continued his systematic inspection westward, then southward, encouraging and strengthening the builders as he walked by each section. He exchanged pleasantries with Meshullam followed by Zadok. The people of Tekoa were next.

  The men of Tekoa were dressed in homespun, no shoes on their feet, their clothing—what they had of it—threadbare. Their women had come along to help, cleaning the pale limestone, helping to heft and position some of the smaller pieces. It was backbreaking work, with an occasional surprise when they moved the rocks. Scorpions. Sometimes, to escape the incessant summer heat, little creatures hid under the fallen stones. Nehemiah had seen scorpions scuttle out from under the weight of a shifting boulder, running with blind fear toward the people who had disturbed their rest. How no one had been stung so far had been due more to God’s mercy than human ingenuity.

  The small band of peasants from Tekoa occupied a special place in Nehemiah’s heart. It had taken monumental courage for them to come and help in the building effort. Tekoa was a city in the highlands to the south of Jerusalem. The prophet Amos had once been a shepherd of Tekoa, called by God to preach to Israel.

  Geshem the Qedarite ruled a vast area near there. Which might explain the visit Nehemiah had received from the nobles of Tekoa several days before.

  The delegation of eight men had looked more suited to a royal visit in Persepolis than the backwaters of Judah. They were garbed in Egyptian linen, dyed in fine colors of the sea and the air. A bigger bunch of peacocks would have been hard to find throughout Judah.

  “How may I help you?” Nehemiah had asked in polite inquiry.

  “You may stop building this atrocity you call a wall.” The speaker, the shortest man in the group, took a long step forward as if he owned the ground he walked on. Nehemiah had seen him before when he had called the leaders of Judah for their initial meeting. When everyone had cheered with enthusiasm after he revealed his intentions, this Tekoan lord had sat sour-faced and stared through thick lashes that curled like a girl’s.

  “Why would I do that? Jerusalem will fall into complete ruin if we don’t provide an appropriate defensive structure around her.”

  “You know nothing about it. You come from Persia, wet behind the ears, without a single clue as to how we survive here. You think you know what you are doing. Instead, you are offending every good friend Jerusalem has.”

  “Good friends like Geshem, I assume?”

  “Yes, and Sanballat and Tobiah, too. They are related to half the nobility of Judah. How dare you offend them?”

  “You forget. I am the new governor.” Nehemiah spoke the reminder in a mild tone.

  A fat hand slashed through the air. “What’s a governor worth if no one will follow him? We certainly won’t. Not one of us from Tekoa will take part in building your pathetic wall.”

  Another of the men nodded. “As if we would ever stoop to working with your construction supervisors. Supervisors, you call them! We are nobility and you expect us to report to a bunch of rough peasants?”

  Nehemiah felt himself turning color. “They are masons and carpenters who know how to build a safe wall. You may have cleaner fingernails, but I doubt you know a plane from a chisel.”

  “And you haven’t the faintest idea how to run Judah. You shall not receive aid from the men of Tekoa in fulfilling your disaster of a scheme.”

  Except that the Peacock Delegation had been proven wrong. Against the express commands of their leaders, this group of peasants had walked to the City of David in order to lend a hand in its restoration. Yes, Nehemiah was fond of the men of Tekoa. He greeted each one by name, his voice colored by warmth he seldom showed men with ten times the influence.

  He was about to walk toward the Jeshanah Gate when his brother Hanani found him. “We have trouble,” he said without preamble.

  “We always have trouble.”

  Hanani pumped his long chin up and down. “Too many friends. That’s your problem.”

  Nehemiah smoothed the wide sleeve of his robe. “What now?”

  “Sanballat has been making public pronouncements in front of his highborn friends, not to mention the whole army of Samaria. He makes a mockery of us with his words. Of course, the content of his speech has made its way into Judah as he intended. By tonight everyone will have heard of it. He’s trying to spread hopelessness and discouragement, and brother, he’s good at what he does.”

  “I didn’t expect he would become my faithful supporter.”

  Hanani’s smile was bitter. “That, he is not. He’s incensed by the fact that you have persisted in this project. You’ve certainly managed to rile him.”

  Nehemiah lifted a shoulder. “He’ll have to take that up with the Lord. What has he been saying?”

  Hanani was quiet for a moment. Nehemiah had the impression that he was working up to something unpleasant. “He calls our people feeble and ineffectual, and says that we don’t know wha
t we are doing. He implies that these walls will never be finished, and that we’ll be unable to offer sacrifices in the Temple again. Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?” Hanani made his voice high and tonal, adopting Sanballat’s Samarian accents.

  “Ah. And the people? How are they responding?”

  “From what I can tell, discouragement is already spreading among the ranks. Nehemiah, this is an enormous project. It’s unreasonable to think we can finish it. It took kings and armies with substantial resources to build these walls once. We are just a ragged and poor people, working with burned limestone. We don’t have what it takes to succeed. These men may be our enemies. But their objections are reasonable. I think Tobiah the Ammonite is right.”

  Nehemiah felt his throat grow dry. Even his own brother was falling under the pressure of Sanballat’s intimidation. “The problem with discouragement is that it always sounds like the truth. Tell me what Tobiah said.”

  Hanani hung his head. “He said that even if something as slight as a fox climbed upon our wall, it would crumble under its feet. Because what we have built is so pathetic.”

  Nehemiah lowered himself on one of the pieces of charred stone that his enemies had scoffed. “Don’t you know, Hanani, that your adversary always wants you to believe that even an insignificant obstacle will defeat you? Don’t you know that your enemy will belittle your efforts so that you will give up before you have started? He wants to breed insecurity and self-doubt in your heart.”

  “Well, he’s succeeding. Nehemiah, these men are right. We must have lost our minds to think we could complete a project this huge.”

  “It’s easy to believe these lies. I know. It’s easy to believe in your own weakness. Right now, even the smallest interference feels overwhelming. But if you give in to these lies, you will give up on your destiny. You will overestimate the power of every obstacle that comes against you, and underestimate the power of God to rescue you.

  “Are we weak? I won’t deny it. Are we facing a challenge that is greater than us? Of course! But, brother, you and our people must learn that you are more than equal to any fox when the Lord stands by your side.”

  Dressed in the distinctive outfit of Persian cavalry, the Babylonian brothers rode into Damascus under the cover of night. Darius had made them curl their hair and beards, and they looked like different men. No one would recognize them for the highway robbers who had set upon him on the road to Susa. As he brought them into his chambers, he hoped the disguise would fool Zikir and any spies he might have in the palace.

  Once in his room, he showed the two men the curtained alcove to one side of the chamber where they would have to hide. The nook had been designed for the storage of goods and offered little space. The brothers tried hiding there in order to make sure they would fit when the time came; they were too wide in the shoulders to be comfortable standing and had no room for sitting. The side of Darius’s mouth tipped up as the two men jostled to find a viable position that did not crunch one part of someone’s body.

  He sent Arta with an invitation for Zikir to come to his chambers in the morning. “Tell him it will prove to his advantage.” He knew that appealing to a man’s greed was often a strong motivator. At the same time, leaving the message vague meant that an honest man would still be intrigued.

  “Tomorrow, I want you to come out as soon as you recognize his voice,” he told Nassir. “I doubt he’ll bring his servant with him, so initially, Nassir, you must be our witness. After you confirm that he is our man, I will search for the servant who tattooed Niq’s head and we shall arrest him also.”

  It was almost midnight when Roxanna returned. She had taken the time to get back into her male disguise.

  “Did you find Zenobia?”

  “I did, poor creature. She’s overcome by the death of her only child. Can you imagine losing your twenty-five-year-old son?”

  Darius did not want to think about the woman’s sorrow. Having so recently lost an unborn child, his heart was too quick to pity. He could not afford to go down emotional alleys with this case. “Did you uncover anything of interest?”

  “For one thing, Xerxes’ full name was Xerxes Achaemenes. He was commonly known by his first name; few people knew his middle name. It had been a whim of his mother’s. She could not claim his heritage in public. The names were her secret way of acknowledging her son’s true parentage.”

  Darius sat down, his movements slow. “Finally, we have irrefutable proof. He was our man in Susa.”

  “I fear so.”

  “Who sent him there?”

  “His mother did not know. She remains unaware of his part in the plot, or even that there was a plot against the king. I doubt she would believe it. But here is an important detail: Zikir is the one who told her of his death. He said it was an accident, and that his body could not be recovered. He did give her the accurate date of his death, however.”

  “How could he have known the time of his death unless he knew everything else? We leaked nothing. Zikir must have had his own sources of information. And they had to be in Susa to know.”

  Darius came to his feet. “We have more than enough information to convict him of plotting to kill the king. Tomorrow, we shall wrap up the case against him and send him to Susa for trial.”

  “I pity Zenobia. To lose a son and father in a matter of months for the sake of a dried-up old grudge is a bitter fate.”

  To Darius’s surprise, Zikir took his time coming in the morning. He arrived alone, as Darius had suspected. Garbed in mourning as he was, his face chalk-white and drawn, Darius felt an ambiguous tug of compassion for him. Not enough to loosen his razor-sharp focus on trapping him, however. Killing kings was not something you could sweep under a rug, no matter how good your motive.

  He invited the old man to lounge at a wooden table that sat in the center of the room. Although the cushions were plump, Zikir had a hard time bending his knees to sit on the floor. His joints suffered from the stiffness and pain that afflicted some old people. Darius had to quash another wave of sympathy. He offered wine, which Zikir refused with polite dignity, explaining that his belly could not tolerate the drink.

  “I have asked you here because I want to speak to you about Pyrus. What do you think of him?”

  Zikir’s wrinkled face grew shuttered. “His Majesty chose him. That’s what I think of him.”

  Darius gave a reassuring smile. “Yes. But His Majesty is open to changing his mind. It occurs to me that Pyrus might not be the man the king thought him. It would be helpful to me if you would give me your true opinion of the man. He seems to drink too much, for one thing.”

  Zikir looked down. “That was not always the case.”

  “No?”

  “He has had his troubles like the rest of us.”

  Darius nodded. Only half his mind was on Zikir’s answers. With the other half he was fretting over Nassir’s delay. Surely he had heard enough of Zikir’s voice to be able to recognize him? He could see the man’s face through the thin opening in the curtains. Why did he not come out?

  “As you say, we all have troubles. That is no excuse for doing your job poorly.” Darius cleared his throat, hoping that Nassir would catch the hint and move.

  Zikir gave a tight smile. “Far be it from me to sit in defense of the acting satrap. I don’t mean to imply that I approve of his actions.”

  “Good. Good.”

  To his shock, Zikir began to rise. It took him long moments to arrange his legs and his hips until he could put the weight of his body on them. “Forgive me, my lord. I must leave.”

  Darius sprang to his feet. “But we have not discussed Pyrus’s situation!”

  “Nor shall we. If you want to form an opinion of the acting satrap, it’s best you look elsewhere. I have too many personal grievances against the man to be trusted with an accurate summation. If he must go down, it won’t be by my hand.”

  Darius found h
imself lost for words. It was not often that a man gave up the opportunity to crush an enemy. Zikir’s scrupulous attitude confused him. This was the murderer he wanted to trap?

  He looked around the room with vague desperation. Where was that benighted Babylonian, Nassir? Why did he not come out to identify Zikir as the one who had hired him?

  He forced himself to pick up the thread of conversation, hoping to make Zikir open up. “I understand that Pyrus took the job that rightly belonged to you. You must, of course, bear resentment to him for that injustice.”

  The old man walked stiffly to the door. “You understand nothing, my lord.” Pulling the door open, he walked out before Meres, who was standing guard, had a chance to come to attention.

  Darius stood for a silent moment and gazed at the empty hallway, the sound of Zikir’s fading steps echoing around him. Controlling the urge to kick the door, he closed it with a soft movement. The Babylonian brothers had come out of their hiding and were standing at attention when he turned around.

  “Why did you not come out to confront Zikir?” he asked Nassir, his voice soft. He had learned that trick from his father. The deeper his anger, the harder his control.

  Nassir’s face grew a shade whiter. “Because he was not the man who commissioned me.”

  Darius’s eyes narrowed. For the first time he began to genuinely doubt Nassir’s honesty. “You lie. You lie in order to protect your employer.”

  “I swear to you, my lord, I speak the truth. This is not the man who hired me. His voice is different.”

  “He put on an accent and a false voice when he engaged you!”

  “The tone of his voice is too old. He could not have made himself sound younger, could he? He is too short. I tell you, you have the wrong man, my lord. It cannot be him just because you want it to be so.”

  Darius took a deep breath. “As it so happens, I do not want it to be so. But everything points to him. Everything except your finger!”

  Nassir wiped his sweating brow with a hand that trembled. “Nonetheless, I cannot point my finger at an innocent man.”