The Stones of My Accusers

by Tracy Groot

  Nathanael was dead. Joab lived.

  He had fancied the box had powers, maybe, because it once held frankincense for the Teacher. He had brought it to Nathanael, hoping it would save him. It did not. The Teacher was dead too; so much for a magical box. There were crazy rumors he came alive again, and that was much to think on, but Joab couldn’t think past the words he was charged to carry. Why couldn’t they be “Mother, I love you,” “See you on the other side,” that kind of thing?

  How could he be doing this? He was the son of a dye works owner. Lived in Hebron all his life. He knew color. He knew what iron salts and alum could do, he knew which plants produced the best color for the cheapest price, he knew he should never have listened to Avi and his Zealot friends. Everything had been fine until Avi came along. Avi was dead too. Joab lived.

  What if Nathanael had been his friend instead of Avi? They wouldn’t have cared about the land and the Romans. They would have paid mind to things at hand—playing tricks on Joab’s older brother, hauling in a good harvest, working hard and laughing hard and getting drunk on occasion and goading each other to talk to a pretty girl and—

  The blood and the knife. There was a great deal of blood.

  Joab looked away from the box. He had found out things about Nathanael after he was wounded. Found out he had quite a sense of humor, and he was fiercely loyal—that, Joab knew already. He’d discovered that the day Nathanael kicked him out of the carpenter’s shop. And even as Joab had fled the home, he put a backward glance on the house and thought maybe he was in the wrong company . . . that he should have been in the shop, laughing as James did, watching the Zealots run away.

  He didn’t know much about Nathanael, he who was loved of Jorah, only that he should not have died. Mostly he knew Nathanael had quality. He learned of the quality in the way Jorah tended Nathanael after he was wounded. The way James, the oldest brother, never left the cart. Learned it by the way Jude, the quiet one, hovered with hawk eyes on the wounds and the way Simon, a fellow he suspected of a normally grim nature, rivaled Avi himself with furious, anxious brooding. What little he learned in words, he learned from Simon, information resentfully given by a man who hated him as much as anyone in that party traveling to Jerusalem for Passover.

  Where is he from?

  Caesarea.

  Which one?

  By the sea.

  Who are his parents?

  He has only a mother, a prostitute.

  What is her name?

  What do you care? Get out of my sight!

  Joab flicked an ant off his toe. Curious that he should think so much about Nathanael. He remembered feeling jealous, watching Nathanael in that cart, even the way he was, slick with sweat and his breath coming hard, face pale against those colorful cushions. Jealous because the way they acted, you would have thought the worst thing in the world was for that apprentice to die. And him trying to act as if his wounds were nothing but an inconvenience.

  Nathanael had quality, a mystical kind, the kind the Teacher had. The kind that had Joab heading to a place he had never been, to give a stolen box to someone he had never met, to tell her words he feared would stay in his throat for the consternation of them. The quality made him do it, and the knife and the blood.

  Why—he scrubbed up his hair—why did it take that long? Why had he been so blinded to Avi’s madness? Avi’s madness, his own madness . . . why did it take blood to bring the truth? Why were the words these words?

  You’re the one, Nathanael had said. You go and tell her, no stones.

  Who? What are you talking about?

  No stones . . .

  I don’t understand!

  Tell her what Jesus said.

  The doctor had taken him aside and told him what Nathanael meant. Told him of Jesus and the adulteress and the ones who would throw the stones. But it was no explanation at all. It drove up new thoughts he wished would stay put. He went to flick another ant, but his fingers left the ant to hesitate over the sand.

  What did Jesus write? Was he buying time because his words would change everything? Maybe he was working up the courage to say them. Did he and the woman look at each other, there on the ground, he on one side and she on the other? Did she look at him just as amazed as the others; did she wonder what he was doing? Writing in the sand in the middle of a conversation. What kind of craziness was that? The doctor told the whole story; it was the most troubling thing Joab had ever heard.

  Joab wrote no stones in Aramaic, then erased it to write the same in Greek. He would soon be in Caesarea. His father said they spoke mostly Greek where the Romans had set up their government in Palestinia. Avi had refused to speak in Greek. Called it the tongue of the oppressor. Soon, from Joab’s own tongue would fall words in defiance of the Torah he had been raised to revere.

  He rose and dusted off his hands. He rewrapped the box and stuffed it in his shoulder sack, slipped the strap over his shoulder, and took up again for Caesarea.

  The sack thudded softly on his hip. He hoped it looked like nothing more than an extra set of clothing; a silver box inlaid with lapis lazuli was a prize indeed.

  Joab gazed at the green appearing in the brown hills. It was late spring in Judea; color came up everywhere in this tawny land. About this time he usually helped his father and brother bring in the first blossom harvest from the cultivated field, where the bees worked with them. He could hear the hum, smell the sun-warmed flowers. He lifted his face to the sun, closed his eyes, remembering.

  Where would he go after Caesarea? It didn’t matter. Catch the next vessel out of the harbor. Go to Rome, go to Gaul. He could never go home. Never again see the field or the bees, because Nathanael was dead and Joab lived. This is what he knew for now.

  They had kicked the stones out of place. They had to go far out of their way to do that, up here on the slope facing the sea. The tree was not an obstruction to their beast building project, not even in the way of foot traffic. Not yet. The stones were a warning.

  Rivkah knew they watched her replace the stones into the ring around the cedar tree. She thought about spitting, “Fah!” and hissing like a cat, but they might not recognize a good Jewish insult. They would only think her mad, and she was, a little bit, but at least they would not see her fear. When every stone was back in its place, she stood back to look at the tree. It was an eighteen-year-old cedar, nineteen next month. It fared well.

  Half the time Rivkah feared she’d come and find the branches stripped. Her worst fear she could not name, because if she allowed the thought it might happen. If God heard the prayers of a prostitute, it wouldn’t.

  She looked past the cedar, let her gaze travel every rueful inch to the top of the slope. She did it to torture herself. Ever since the threat came upon Nathanael’s tree, she wished she had planted it at the top. But who could have foreseen Caesarea would grow so much? Eighteen years ago the southeast part of the city was neglected and barren. She had chosen the site for that reason.

  She was only fifteen then, and alone. If anyone had seen her plant the tree for her baby boy, they would have scorned her to dust for the hope she had for her son. If she had planted it where her old friends had planted theirs, the tree would have been cut down long ago. By Mother. Or maybe Zakkai.

  She ran her hand over the comforting roughness of Nathanael’s tree, then turned and sat against it where she could watch the sea, and more importantly, where she could watch the ugly beast pigs at the work site.

  Two months now Nathanael had been gone. She had much to tell him when he returned. His grandmother died two days after he left. His friend Hepsominah married a rich Egyptian and moved to Alexandria.

  Kyria might fret about Nathanael’s long absence, but Rivkah wasn’t worried. He could take care of himself. Wasn’t he her boy? If she was a little mad, so was he, and madness had a curious quality of preservation. If Kyria said she knew Nathanael could take care of himself, it was other people who worried her, well, Rivkah refused to allow Kyria to scare h
er. Sometimes she screamed in Kyria’s face to force the bad words back and prevent them from creating havoc—something Mother had taught her, and you had to scream yourself hoarse to make it work. She’d stiff-arm Kyria’s evil words and think only on the letter Nathanael had left.

  Do not worry about me, Mother. I am going north for a time. I will explain all when I get back. I should return by the next full moon. Ho, the stories I will tell. Just you wait.

  If Nathanael did not return by the next full moon, or the next, wasn’t he still her boy? She’d taught him to take care of himself. Kyria taught him things too. From her he learned to hit a gecko at fifty paces.

  Rivkah squeaked a yawn and pressed her fist against her mouth. She was used to sleeping at this time of day. At least she had some coin to live on for a while, and enough possessions to sell or trade if things got bad. Or she could live on Kyria; Kyria had lived on her enough times when business was slow, when the Roman garrison was out on field maneuvers. She would sleep here if she had to. Kyria could bring food if she could not leave.

  Day after day, brick by brick, the walls of the granary grew. It seeped toward the tree like an incoming tide. Day after day Rivkah went to the Praetorium to try and stop the tide. Day after day she petitioned for Nathanael’s tree. Pilate’s chief secretary, Orion Galerinius, came to expect her visits.

  He had a different expression on his face this morning. When he looked up from the table and saw her next in line, his face cleared. You again, he had said, folding his arms and sitting back. Me again, she had replied, folding her arms to copy him. His eyes had a tiny twinkle, and she wanted to say something to make him smile, as she had done before.

  He’d have been disappointed had I not shown up, she thought, and the idea made her laugh out loud.

  The sound brought attention from a worker at the wall. He leaned toward another worker and said something to make him sneer as well. She made her own sneer six times as ugly—she could hood her amber eyes, fill them with rage, and make them look hellish as a demon-cat. She wished she could scream curses, but couldn’t risk it. Instead she cupped her hands and whispered a curse, then blew the ugly words to the workers and deepened the demon-cat look.

  Muttering and sullen, they went back to their work.

  The tide seeped daily, brick by brick. So the fear grew, brick by brick. She looked out to the Mediterranean, saw a ship bound for the harbor. Rivkah ground her heels into the earth to push her spine harder on the tree. If God heard the prayers of a prostitute, and Kyria thought maybe he did, then somehow Rivkah would stop the swelling tide. Or she would chain her neck to the trunk and drown with the tree.

  Orion tried another note on the pearwood pipe. That was closer. He added it to the last note, and it sounded promising. He wet his lips and started the tune from the beginning, ending with the new note; it didn’t work.

  He’d have it right one day, but he wondered if memory played tricks on his ear. It was a tune that had made him lift his head when he passed a stall in the marketplace. He had slowed his steps to hear more, but the crowd carried him on. He passed the same stall on other days, listening, but never heard anyone play there again.

  At the rare times he took out his pipe, he closed his workroom door. A closed door to the people of the palace meant serious discussion lay within, and Orion could enjoy a little peace. Duty always made him open the door after no more than a few minutes, but today he was bearing down on half an hour. He played in defiance of the two matters that lay in wait.

  Protecting Jews had been a game up until now. Petty defiances that amounted to no more than a stuck-out tongue behind Pilate’s back. Protecting Jews was an easy way to look like a benevolent man, a quick and cheap way, because protecting Jews had never cost him. He lowered the pipe and looked out the window to his bit of the Mediterranean. Hazy out today.

  If he brought the matters to Pilate, disaster would come of it. But there was no if about it: the two matters had escalated to the degree that if he did not put them before the governor, Pilate would learn that Orion had delayed them. And that would make Pilate wonder what else Orion did around here. It might expose the gleaners’ program he had granted to the soldier Cornelius for hungry Gentiles—and Jews. It would threaten the little son of the Jewish laundress. It would lay bare his arrangement with a cruelly poor old Jew who paid his taxes in dried-up dates.

  So he allowed Jews to eat Pilate’s scraps, so what? The scraps filled the bellies of the Gentiles too. It used to be things were not alarming. Now, anything with a tiny taint of Jew was touchy as a mad scorpion. Things had changed over the last five, six years, he wasn’t sure when or how.

  One woman wanted to keep her tree, and one man did not want to work on his holy day. Orion had looked; it was only a tree. Orion had inquired; the man was a hard worker. Simple requests borne from custom. If they were Roman requests from Roman customs, there would have been no delay. But they were Jewish requests, and that is why Orion played his pipe.

  It was either the pipe or heavy drinking. A tent filled with poppy smoke sounded nice. Wasn’t he second in command? Couldn’t he ask around for the local poppy tent? He pictured fat pillows and people lolling and laughing. He’d like to loll and laugh. He’d never been in a poppy tent before. He’d never defied Pontius Pilate before. Not like this.

  His eyes went to the top of the recessed shelves. He couldn’t see it from where he sat, but upon the top shelf was a small wooden box. In the box was an iron collar, made to fit the neck of an eight-year-old boy. The collar had belonged to his father.

  When courage was as scarce as barley after gleaners, Orion thought of the box. He had taken it out only once in the six years of his Palestinia sojourn, when he had to tell a palace slave his wife was dead. He went to reach for the box—

  No! He would not bring the matters to Pilate. He did not need a collar to tell him what to do. He’d fire the stonemason and tell them to cut down her tree. What did he care? Gods and goddesses and all their mincing offspring, these people vexed him! Two weeks trying to come up with solutions. He’d wasted enough time. Didn’t he have a palace to run? What did he care? He didn’t care, he was too tired to care.

  If he took the matters to Pilate, and only a majestic idiot would, he would have to make them sound fresh from the petitioners—as though the majestic idiot had not taken two weeks to puzzle over them. If the idiot took the matters to Pilate, and only a pox-brained lackwit would, he had to sound casual as he stated the matters . . . as though he didn’t care about the outcome one way or another.

  It was only a tree. It was only a day, just one day away from work in a week. They were not unreasonable requests. They were simply wishes. Pilate could grant them as easily as saying hello.

  They were Jewish wishes.

  Orion rewrapped the pearwood pipe in felt and placed it on the recessed shelf, then pulled his stool to his table. He took a tablet, freshly filled with beeswax. He took a stylus from the vase and picked off old wax. He blew on the stylus and glanced at his bit of the sea. After a hesitation, in which he wondered what poppy smoke was like, he went to work scratching into the wax two new items for the attention of Pontius Pilate.

  1

  Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, the Eastern Imperial Province of Rome, to the honorable Decimus Vitellus Caratacus, Primipilaris, greetings.

  I am heartened by your consideration to an appointment within my administration. This position of Chief Secretary is held by Orion Galerinius Honoratus. Orion is unaware of the precariousness of his employ; he knows only that an old friend is coming to Judea for a visit. I will appreciate your discretion upon arrival.

  You may have heard of the recent event in Jerusalem, the matter of one Jesus of Nazareth, leader of a Jewish sect in my province. It was a distasteful matter, typical to the trials involved in ruling a people as obstinate, rebellious, and seditious as the Jews. I look forward to discussing this event with someone of true Roman sensibility.

  Most important to me is y
our witness to the veracity of my reports of a people as difficult to manage as the Jews. The jeopardy of my secretary’s position testifies to this: he is a Jewish sympathizer, a vexatious man bewitched by whatever spell these people hold over the weak-minded and frail.

  How fares Sejanus? I hear disturbing reports that he falls from favor with Tiberius. A pity . . . he was my sponsor, you know. Bring what news you can.

  I anticipate your arrival, and will begin to look for you. May your journey be accompanied by fair winds and good fortune. Long live Tiberius.

  Pontius Pilate, by my own hand.

  Herod may have been Jewish—Jewish enough—but at least he had taste. He had chosen the best place in Caesarea for his palace, right on a dramatic promontory, right in the spray of the Mediterranean. The first story withstood any threats from the sea, and the second story afforded a magnificent view. It was arguable that the mighty harbor to the north was built only to grace the view of the palace.

  Pilate leaned on the window and caught the salty tang of the sea in a billowed mist on his face. The glorious harbor; the sumptuous Praetorium Palace; the Temple of Rome and Augustus; the theater and the statuary and the gardens; the Great Stadium with clashing tournaments, its sands dark and foamy with blood . . . because of these things, these alone, Pilate could feel at home in a gods-blasted outpost like Judea.

  Because of these alone Pilate could ask his old friend Decimus to come from Rome. On the way, he had surely put in at the decrepit harbor at Phalasarna in Crete, then at Paphos on Cyprus. Either harbor would provide perfect contrast to what Decimus would soon find upon arrival at Caesarea.