The Ironsmith (42 page)

But was it demons or simply grief that he drove away? Was it from God or merely in Joshua? And was it any less a wonder either way?

Judah came to think that it was the power of Joshua's goodness, an aura that seemed to surround him, and of his belief. Joshua had faith, and said himself that faith could do all things.

If others had faith in him, anything was possible.

And Judah could not help but conclude that it was some flaw in himself, a weakness of character, a moral cowardliness, that held him back from faith.

I will believe when the heavens open and one like the son of man appears in power, but not before,
he thought.
Then it will be too late.

*   *   *

On the evening when they at last reached Capernaum, Joshua decided that he wished to withdraw for a few days of prayer and fasting. He struck out for an area north of the village, where there were thick stands of trees too far away to be worth the trouble of felling and where therefore he was sure of being alone.

Thus the disciples were left to themselves and resumed their old patterns of life. Simon went fishing, and took Judah with him.

For the next three days they rose before dawn and were on the water long before the sun showed itself over the eastern mountains. Fishing, it turned out, was hard work, and once there was a storm that nearly swamped their boat. They would come back in the late afternoon and gut their catch. Then Simon would haggle with the fish merchants and they would go back to Simon's house for a hot meal and bed.

These were perhaps the happiest three days of Judah's life. He was busy all day long, and when the work was over he was too tired to think.

Then, on the evening of the third day, Joshua returned. He gathered the disciples and they ate a meal together, and there was wine.

And he explained to them everything that would happen.

“God has made all things plain to me,” he said. “None of us will taste new wine before we have seen the coming of the Kingdom. Oh, how I long to be free of this wicked world!”

John, ever the practical one, was counting on his fingers.

“The grape harvest is in four months,” he said. He seemed disappointed.

“I cannot believe God will wait so long,” Joshua replied, raising his hands with the palm outward, as if praying for deliverance. “Where would God reveal His will except in Jerusalem? When, if not during the Passover?”

“Then He has revealed to you the time?” Simon asked.

But Joshua shook his head.

“The time is known only to the Father. But He will make His will known, and He will send His messenger. The dead will rise from their tombs and all mankind will be judged. The righteous will be gathered to God and the world will be returned to what it was before the first man learned sin.”

No one seemed satisfied with this, but it was obvious that further questioning would be in vain. Joshua was in one of his ecstatic moods, when the only voice he heard was God's.

He disappeared again the next day, and his disciples, after waiting a few hours, once again went fishing. But the water was calm and the catch poor, so there was plenty of time, and nothing to think about except Joshua.

“He has said as much before,” John said. “He expects this Passover to bring on the Kingdom. But he doesn't know.”

“Yet he believes,” Simon answered. “And that is enough for me.”

“But is it enough for him?”

John wiped the sweat from his face and stared up at the sun as if it had insulted him.

“It is what makes him what he is, this belief in the mercy of God,” he went on. “That is why we follow and love him, because to be with him is to believe it, too. But he
must
believe it. He has no choice.”

 

35

“In accord with your orders, I had men watching the roads in and out of Nazareth. He left early the morning after the Sabbath, and a few hours later his wife and sister returned to the city. He was followed into Tiberias, where our agent turned him over to another and came back to Sepphoris to report.”

Caleb's confidential clerk, a thin, unhappy-looking man of about forty, stood before his master's desk in the palace at Sepphoris.

“And he is in Tiberias now?”

“No. He and another man visited several merchants, and then the next day he came home. As soon as he was inside his door, our man came to me to report.”

“And what did he discuss with these merchants?”

“We don't know that yet, but it is under investigation.” The clerk, whose name was Bildad, cocked his head a little to one side in a dismissive gesture. “It probably is innocent. He is frequently in Tiberias on business.”

“How is his marriage faring?”

Bildad, who had probably never had a sexual thought in his life, managed a condescending smile.

“The reports indicate they seem to be very much in love.”

“And less than a week after his wedding he travels to Tiberias, alone. It must have been very pressing business.” Caleb, whose instincts told him something dangerous had just occurred, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “How soon do you expect the report on his activities?”

“In the regular weekly dispatch, if the results seem unimportant. Anything worthy of attention will be sent by runner.”

“Notify me as soon as there is anything.”

Caleb made a dismissing gesture with his left hand and the clerk bowed his way out.

Ever since the Tetrarch's amnesty, Caleb had maintained a loose watch on Noah. He could not arrest him, yet neither could he afford to ignore him. Noah was a clever man—a dangerous man. A man like Noah, a man with a network of business contacts, with whom he carried on an energetic correspondence, was a natural spy. Caleb even suspected that he might have been the source of the information which Eleazar had used to frighten Antipas into submission.

Fortunately he was also just a tradesman, with a tradesman's view of the world. Probably it would never occur to him that his movements were being followed.

It was the early afternoon and Caleb decided to leave his office and go visit the baths. With the new policy of peace, tranquility, and fatherly affection for the Tetrarch's subjects, there was very little for him to do, and he was, consequently, bored. If he went home, his wife, who was also bored, would subject him to one of her temper tantrums, which at the moment he did not feel up to facing. It was far pleasanter to go to the baths.

He had by then half persuaded himself that Bildad was right and that his suspicions about Noah were groundless. The man's journey to Tiberias probably was just business—or perhaps, like so many others, he had discovered that marriage as a steady diet was intolerable. Boredom again. Caleb suspected he was inventing things with which to distract himself.

He was just on the point of rising from his chair when his clerk returned.

“The report from Tiberias came in,” Bildad said, flourishing a scroll. “I suspect it means nothing, but it is always best to err on the side of caution. He was making inquiries about a certain Judah bar Isaac.”

Bildad handed him the scroll and, with admirable self-possession, Caleb managed to accept it without betraying his sense of shock. His hands did not even shake as he opened it.

“Probably he was looking into the man's credit,” Bildad said

“Yes. Probably.”

Caleb set the scroll down on his desk, as if dismissing it from existence, and forced himself to smile as he waved away his clerk.

He might have continued in his chair for as long as a quarter of an hour without once moving. He hardly knew what he felt. He seemed to feel nothing. It was as if his mind had frozen shut.

Finally he became aware of something like a tear on the side of his nose. He reached up to wipe it away and discovered that he was sweating profusely. It was at that moment that he gave way to a rising panic.

How had Noah ever guessed? Well, there was still nothing to connect Judah to himself.

He was deceiving himself.
Of course
Noah had made the connection. He had made inquiries about one of Joshua bar Joseph's disciples, and suspected … what? That the man was a spy. And who in Galilee would wish to spy on Joshua bar Joseph except the man who had originally recruited Noah to do just that?

And if Noah knew, then by now, or very soon, Eleazar would know.

There were individuals who were exempt from torture and arbitrary arrest, and certainly members of the Temple aristocracy were among them. Now Eleazar would know that he, Caleb bar Jacob, had kidnapped and held in prison a son of one of the three or four most important Levite families and then turned him loose to spy on a peasant agitator.

At the time, when he had felt sure he could get away with it—when he had thought he could get away with anything—it had seemed like a bold stroke, but now Caleb could see it for what it was and always had been. Stupidly, insanely rash.

He had provided Eleazar with the means to destroy him. He could almost feel the knife at his throat.

He would run. He would find a horse and ride for Caesarea. He would take ship for … anywhere. He would make his way to Gaul or Spain. The world was a big place, and he would lose himself in it.

How much money could he have in his hands within half an hour?

His plans for escape were almost complete before he realized that they were pointless—and probably unnecessary. He was watched, even now. He had spies on Eleazar, so it followed that he, too, was being followed and observed. Eleazar could have him arrested at any time.

Running was futile.

And why? Why throw away everything he had so labored to build? All Noah had was the name of a young wastrel who might have left Tiberias for any number of reasons. It was like a moment of inspiration when Caleb remembered the whore Matthias had killed to insure her silence. Perhaps—probably—everyone assumed that Judah had murdered her and then fled.

At this moment, all Eleazar would know or care about was that Judah had attached himself to Joshua bar Joseph and was probably an agent of his loyal servant Caleb bar Jacob.

The plan could still work.

So, instead of escaping, Caleb resumed his intention of visiting the baths. He had to regain his composure, and he had to think. All he really needed was a little steam to clear his head.

An hour later, lying on a marble slab, sweating profusely into the linen sheet he had wrapped around him, Caleb was able to feel some satisfaction with himself for not having yielded to panic. The situation was not so hopeless after all.

A servant girl brought him a tray bearing a jug of ice water and a cup. She was pretty, and the steam made her tunic cling to her body so as to hint strongly at the delights it covered. In a Greek bath she would have been naked. For a few moments Caleb amused himself with the idea of moving somewhere east of the Jordan when he retired, to one of the Greek cities, where people knew how to enjoy themselves.

But first he had to deal with this current problem.

Of course, he could always arrange for Judah to meet with an accident. Judah could never be allowed to tell his story to Eleazar.

But Eleazar was too subtle a man to want to hear it. As far as he knew, Judah was merely another of Caleb's spies, and a spy one knows about is most usefully left undisturbed. Eleazar would wait until the opportunity presented itself to turn Caleb's asset into one of his own.

The Passover was only four weeks distant. In another two weeks everyone who mattered would be in Jerusalem. There, when the trap was closed around Joshua bar Joseph, Judah would be irrelevant.

But something had to be done about Noah, and soon.

Noah's first thought would be for his cousin. Luckily, his new wife had drawn him back to Sepphoris—otherwise he might have gone straight to wherever Joshua was hiding himself, to tell him about the traitor in his midst. In any case, he would not wait long.

Suddenly Caleb felt no temptation to linger in the baths. He took a cold plunge to stop the sweating and then dressed hurriedly. He was back in his office faster than he would have thought possible.

“Send for the officer of the watch. Immediately.”

Fortunately, today it was Lamech.

“Where is Matthias?” Caleb asked, rather more harshly than he intended. Lamech, who knew his place, stood at attention, seeming to look at nothing.

“Not on duty, my lord.”

“Find him, and bring him to my house.”

Lamech seemed fixed in place. One could see the question forming in his mind, but Caleb had no patience to wait.

“I don't care what condition he is in. Find him, throw a little cold water in his face, and bring him. You are responsible for getting him to my front door. After that, I will manage the situation.”

“Yes, my lord.”

*   *   *

It was just over an hour later that Lamech and his charge presented themselves. Having dismissed his servants to the kitchen, Caleb personally opened the door to them.

Matthias had trouble negotiating the stairs up to the roof, but it was the only place in the house where Caleb could be assured of not being spied on.

“You look terrible.”

Had the man even heard? Wine made Matthias sullen and impenetrable. He sat down without being asked, and looked out over the Galilean countryside as if he hated it.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?”

This somehow registered, and Matthias turned his gaze and seemed to try hard to focus it on the Lord Caleb. The effort made him frown morosely.

He appeared to be trying to say something, but finally abandoned the effort.

“This is hopeless,” Caleb said out loud. There was little chance Matthias would take offense, since he seemed about to collapse out of his chair.

If he falls, Caleb realized, he might break something. Then he would be useless.

He stood up and took Matthias by the arms, pulling him up and then letting him sink quietly to the floor. Then he went down to his own room and brought up a blanket for him.