The Damascus Way
Page 26
“I seek a man whose name I do not know.”
The elder’s beard, and what was left of the hair on his head, had yellowed like ancient parchment. He turned his head slowly and looked Jacob up and down. “How does this man look?”
“I cannot say.”
“Does he live in Joppa?”
“Of that too I am uncertain.”
“Then it should be impossible for any save Yahweh to help you, young man.” Despite his negative response, the elder did not move. If anything, his ancient features had taken on somewhat of an eager cast.
“Then I apologize for disturbing your day.” As he spoke, Jacob used one sandal to slowly draw something in the dust.
The elder responded by gripping Jacob’s arm and whispering, “I have prayed hourly for your arrival. Come inside. There is not a moment to lose.”
Jacob hurried back to the stables, lifting the cloak so it once again covered his head and most of his face. His heart beat rapidly against his ribs. The elder’s news had filled him with a dread so strong not even the rising sun could dispel its chill.
The trader, Isaac, had turned out to be as good as his word. His eldest son stood just outside the stable doors. The young man tried to look brave, but the stranger’s hidden face and his father’s odd assignment clearly left him unnerved. “M-my father says, all . . .
all is as you demanded.”
“The goods?”
“Tied to your donkey.”
“How many sacks?”
“Four.”
Which meant as much frankincense as Jacob had transported the previous time. He stood in the alley leading from the central square to the harbor and pondered. But no answer came.
The young man mistook Jacob’s silence for displeasure. “My father and I have done exactly as you instructed.”
“Yes, I know. . . .” Jacob sighed. Not for the first time did he wish for Alban’s wise counsel. But Alban might as well have been on the other side of the empire. Jacob cast a silent but frantic plea toward heaven . . . and waited. A pair of gulls screeched overhead. The young man before him nervously shifted on his feet. Otherwise, nothing.
“I have no choice,” Jacob muttered.
“I’m sorry, I did not – ” The young man blanched as Jacob stepped forward and gripped his arm. “I have done only as my father commanded!”
“And I mean you and your family no harm.” Jacob drew the young man behind a scrawny desert pine that cast some shade upon the alley. “What is your name?”
“B-Benjamin.”
Jacob could tell his shrouded face frightened the lad. He did not like what he was about to do, but he felt he had no choice. He drew back his hood. “Do you know Jamal?”
“My father’s partner.”
“The same. You know of the attacks upon Jamal’s caravans?”
He jerked a tight nod. “I heard my father speak of them.”
“I move in secret to try and keep this from happening again. But just now at the synagogue I have been given such frightful news . . .” Jacob halted at a scrape of footsteps. One of the stable hands emerged and turned the other direction from them. Jacob waited until the man vanished beyond the sunlit square. “This news carries the threat of death for many. I must return to Tiberias. I have no time for the slow and secret way of travel that I had planned.”
The boy was perhaps sixteen years of age and very lean, yet his gaze already possessed a trader’s shrewdness. “You mean my family no harm?”
“My only aim has been to protect your father’s and Jamal’s treasure. Now I must add a second goal. To save innocent lives.”
The lad searched Jacob’s face. “Tell me what you need.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
The Samaritan Plains
Jacob left Joppa and halted at a small oasis three miles to the north, not far from the garrison. The ancient town had been difficult to subdue, and the Romans chose to largely leave it to its own devices.
The spring was shallow and less than ten paces wide but produced enough water to irrigate several farms and support a cluster of date palms. Jacob rested by the pond and let his two donkeys drink, merely another desert vagrant taking shelter. The day was warm. A faint wind blew from the south. Jacob could taste a hint of the sea in the air. Gulls wheeled and cried overhead.
He resisted the urge to rise and pace. Instead, he took a simple meal from the lone market stall fronting the oasis, a tattered affair run by a farmer’s wife. The place was too small and too close to both Joppa and Apollonia to garner much trade. The only other customers were local farmworkers. The fare was meager, chickpeas ground with cumin and olive oil, flatbread, olives, dates, and cheese from the goats that bleated beyond the farm. Jacob did not mind. He scarcely tasted anything at all. His mind searched frantically for some alternative, in case the trader’s son did not arrive. But he could come up with nothing that had the slightest chance of succeeding. Jacob forced himself to eat, because if the lad did arrive, it might be his last chance to fill his belly.
The synagogue elder’s news could not have been more calamitous. Word had come via the elder’s own son, who studied in Jerusalem. Saul of Tarsus, the dreaded scourge of the followers, had gone before the Temple Council and requested letters of passage. The man had received word that the number of followers in Damascus was increasing daily. Saul intended to travel there, arrest them, and drag the whole lot back to Jerusalem in chains.
According to the elder, the Sanhedrin had previously assumed that once these followers were driven from Jerusalem, their numbers would diminish. It would then only be a matter of time before the remaining few were wiped out. To their consternation, the Council received reports from allies in various cities revealing that the opposite was happening. The church was growing. In Damascus, several synagogues had become overrun by followers of Jesus. The Sanhedrin was frantically searching for a way to formalize their persecution of the believers.
According to the elder’s son, Saul had come before the Council with an idea. During the reign of Herod the Great, the Roman rulers granted the Temple’s high priest and his Sanhedrin the right to extradite Judean criminals from other parts of the Roman empire. Saul proposed that they use this nearly forgotten law as a lever to arrest followers of Jesus from Damascus. Under Judean law they could be brought back to Jerusalem as common criminals. Once under the Council’s power, the followers would be given a final chance to renounce their faith in Jesus. Those who refused would be killed. Just as Stephen was . . . Jacob thought with a pang, seeing his sister’s face and feeling again her loss.
To Jacob’s relief, he caught sight of the trader’s son approaching on the road from Joppa. The lad rode one horse and led another by the reins. Jacob scooped up the last bite of his meal, left the payment, and hurried over to him. “Did you tell anyone?”
Benjamin was breathless with excitement. “I spoke exactly as you ordered, sir. I told my father that the stranger required our help – nothing more.”
“You may tell him everything once I am gone.”
“The promise that I would do so is the only reason he allowed me to come.”
“Well done.” Jacob leapt upon the back of his own donkey. “Lead on.”
“Do you not wish to ride your new mount?”
“This will attract less attention. Quickly!”
They rode past Apollonia and the Roman fortress, then turned inland toward Capharsaba, Jacob on one of his donkeys and leading the other, the boy riding a horse and pulling the other by the reins. The road skirted the southern and eastern borders of the Plain of Sharon, following the northern rim of the steep Jerusalem hills. This Roman road was rarely used by devout Judeans, for it traversed Samaria.
When they entered the empty reaches, Jacob directed them off the road and into a stand of desert pine. He slipped from the donkey’s back and stripped off his clothes. The trader’s son dropped a bundle at his feet. “I brought all you requested. At least I hope I did.”
Benjamin, to his credit, did not protest. He watched as Jacob dressed in the clothing he had brought and asked, “What shall I do with the donkeys?”
“They are yours.”
“They are Jamal’s,” the boy corrected.
“He will be more than happy to grant you ownership for this assistance,” Jacob replied. Then he added, “If I arrive in Tiberias.”
“When you arrive,” Benjamin corrected with a smile. “I do not know you, and yet I have every confidence in your success.”
Jacob shifted the sacks of frankincense and lashed them tightly to the front of his saddle. “What can you tell me of this mount?”
“He is one of my father’s finest. Strong, steady, and will go for days.”
The stallion certainly seemed as described. He was tall at the shoulder and seemed immensely powerful, the muscles trembling with a sense of Jacob’s urgency. Even so, the eye that observed Jacob transferring the sacks of frankincense and waterskins and food bags was calm, the hooves unmoving. “Thank your father for me, and tell him Jamal will gladly reimburse him for the horse.”
“Of this I have no doubt. My father has partnered with Jamal for years.”
Jacob swung into the saddle, took the reins in one hand, then accepted the stave that Benjamin held out to him. He unfurled the banner, grinned at the sight, and declared, “This is just as I had hoped.”
“I thought as much.”
“How did you obtain it?”
“My father owns the main stables in Apollonia. We service the fortress mounts and supply a number of their horses.”
Jacob offered his hand. “Benjamin, I hope that one day you and I can become friends.”
“As do I.” The trader’s son looked even younger when he grinned. “You must lead a most exciting life,” he said as he mounted the second horse, holding the donkeys’ reins.
“There are times when I would be happy for a bit less excitement. And the worry that accompanies it.” Jacob turned the horse toward the road. “For now, I am in your debt, Benjamin,” he said over his shoulder. He urged his mount to a gallop.
The lad called after him, “For now, that will do.”
Thankfully, the weather remained Jacob’s friend.
His way was both straight and flat. In many places, it was well paved in the Roman manner, two layers of rounded stones laid upon a bed of milled sand. But this was not a vital route for even Judea’s hated masters. The military relied upon the Caesarea harbor and largely ignored the port of Joppa. Patrols focused upon routes that fed Rome’s coastal city. Which meant some portions of Jacob’s more southerly route had not been repaired for many years. Jacob could not risk his mount going lame and settled into a steady loping gait. The horse was both strong and well rested, eager to fly. But now was not the time or place.
Jacob, with Benjamin’s help, now looked the part of a Roman messenger, banner and all. The garrisons often hired a good horseman who was both trusted and willing to work for gold. These men wore cast-off Roman garb, most especially the leather vest that identified a Roman soldier on patrol. Attached to their back was a flexible stave, usually made of either water cane or willow. Lashed to this was the standard identifying them as a messenger. They carried neither money nor valuables, which meant they were usually left alone, at least by bandits.
Jacob’s greatest ally was the road’s utter emptiness. Three times he spied lone donkey herders trekking on one side of the road or the other. Jacob did not encounter his first caravan until late afternoon as he skirted the northern tip of the Judean hills. An endless parade of camels and donkeys and drovers and guards watched Jacob steer his mount off the road and pass to the caravan’s right. He did not speak. Messengers seldom did. When he saluted the caravan master as he passed, the man eyed him with glittering black eyes and spat into the dust by his feet. Jacob’s consolation was having his disguise prove so successful.
He stopped for the night in Sebaste, the ancient capital of Samaria, renamed by the Greeks. The town was little more than a crumbling relic, full of ruins and shadows of former grandeur. Jacob selected a stable Alban had used in the past. The stable master grumbled when he appeared, for Roman messengers often paid in stamped bits of paper known as chits. Merchants along the routes considered these chits next to worthless, for they were required to present them in either Jerusalem or Caesarea for payment. But the man stopped his grousing when Jacob dropped silver into his palm. He even sent his chief stable hand to the nearest tavern for food.
Jacob tended his mount by torchlight. The stable was rimmed by a crumbling waist-high wall. As he curried the horse, Jacob recalled how Alban had walked him to one corner of this very wall and brushed eons of dirt from the stone. Underneath lay the remnants of a mosaic. The colors had defied the years, a beautiful rendition of sheep grazing beneath a flowering tree.
Alban had often carried a small scroll, a part of the Scriptures, one that his friend Eli from his Jerusalem days had procured for him. That previous visit, Alban had read to Jacob from the book of Isaiah. The prophet’s lament had reached across the ages and seared his heart. He still could almost hear the cries of the Israelites as they were led into captivity. Turn from your sinful ways, the prophet cried, and Jacob had shivered with remorse for mankind’s darkness and sin.
When Jacob finished eating he rolled into a road-stained blanket. His entire body ached from the day of hard riding. His heart thumped a lonely beat. He cast his weary mind over all those who cared for him, now so far away. Alban. Leah. Abigail. The clan of believers he sought desperately to protect.
But the final image that flitted across his closed eyes, before sleep stole him away, was of a pair of dark, luminous eyes looking at him with a most astonishing mix of sorrow and joy, yearning and closed doors. He might even have sighed her name. Julia.
When danger struck, Jacob first had thought it was a puff of wind.
He was somewhere between Agrippina and Sennabris. Tiberias lay three hours north. The Jordan River ran through deep gullies somewhere to his right, and westward lay the Megiddo Plains with its great crossroads overlooked by the village of Nain. Jacob held a pace that felt as though it ground his bones. If the horse shared his discomfort, it did not show it. His mount maintained the same loping gait it had carried for the better part of two days.
Jacob drifted in a state that was neither fully awake nor asleep. He had heard Alban speak of this, when even experienced soldiers and guards grew so accustomed to their pace that they could fall asleep while still marching. Jacob did not fall asleep. But he was not alert either. And his drifting state almost cost him his life.
Something whistled past behind him, and Jacob reacted before he was fully aware of the threat.
In an instant he bent over the horse’s neck, took a double-fisted grip on the reins, and yelled, “Fly!”
The horse jerked from an easy lope to a full gallop. The mane momentarily blinded Jacob. As he shook the strands away, a dark line sliced overhead, accompanied by that soft yet deadly whoosh.
“Hyah!”
He was being hunted by bowmen. Good ones, for though his horse dashed ahead, two arrows came within a handsbreadth of ending his life. One sliced across his back, leaving a searing track like flame as it passed. The other shot into the saddle just above his left thigh. The force was great enough to carry it through three layers of leather. The horse whinnied in pain and flew faster still.
Two more arrows struck sparks from rocks to his right, while another threw up dust from the road ahead. They dashed around a hill sheltering Jacob from further attack. At least for the moment.
Jacob heard the pounding of hooves behind him. His horse was strong, but it had been riding hard for two days. There was only so much more he could ask of it. Besides which, a dark stain began to spread from beneath the saddle. Jacob releas
ed one hand from the reins and ripped the arrow free of the saddle. The horse answered with another whinny, no doubt voicing its relief. Jacob swung his leg over the saddle, pulled himself low to the flying mane, and panted in time with his mount.
It was true that bandits seldom attacked a Roman messenger, but Zealots were another matter entirely. Now a well-organized fighting force, their assaults were increasingly bold. Messengers were considered fair game, both because they carried information from one Roman garrison to another and because they often rode horses as fine as Jacob’s. The information was often useful when planning attacks, and the horses made for battle-worthy mounts. Jacob remembered he had once briefly thought he would join these renegades.
He knew he could not outrun the horsemen forever. The sun would set long before he reached the next town. He gripped the horse with both hands and thighs, panting out a prayer in time to the pounding hooves. Miracle. A miracle, Lord.
The response came so suddenly he cried aloud. For he rounded another hillock, and there before him lay not just a small oasis, but safety.
Jacob spurred his horse and leaped the outer shrub barrier, scattering a herd of sheep. He heard guards shout and saw men race for their weapons, and still he did not stop. Not until he was beneath the first line of date palms, and the caravan guards were holding swords and spears toward both him and the attackers behind him. He reined in his mount and swiveled in time to see the Zealots wheel and race off. Jacob sighed a quiet prayer of thanks as he climbed down from the saddle.
Only to discover that his legs no longer would support him.
He reached for the horse’s mane, and the weary animal whickered softly, its lathered flanks trembling in exhaustion. Jacob patted the sweat-covered neck and slipped the bit from its mouth, then pushed the horse toward the trough. He fell to one knee and remained there, breathing hard.