The Making of the Lamb (34 page)

“Cannot God lead you right to it?”

“I am sure he could, but I don’t think he is going to solve all my problems for me. He wants me to solve things on my own. I am old enough to struggle as any man must.”

Leaving the miners, they ascended the Mendip Hills and started to double back toward Pilton. About two miles along the ridgeline, they came to a group of Celtic huts. Not even a village, it was just a small band of farmers. The place was called Priddy.

The cousins looked out across the terraces below.

“Look,” said Daniel, pointing toward the distinct shape of the Tor.

“I don’t understand why,” said Jesus, “but something about that hill gives me energy.”

With that, the two decided to make themselves a home at Priddy, where they had the view of the Tor. As soon as the villagers learned that Jesus and Daniel had Roman money, they invited the cousins to build a hut nearby. Taught by the villagers, Jesus and Daniel took up the craft of wattle, daub and thatch over the next few days.

The wattle part was not bad. It was like building a fence at first. They planted posts in the ground in a circle, then soaked small branches and wove them among the uprights as if they were creating a giant basket.

The daubing came next. The villagers delivered the supplies—water, mud, straw and manure—and left the mixing and working of it into the wattle structure to Jesus and Daniel. With shovels, they mixed the first batch.

“This smells appalling,” Daniel muttered. He kept his breathing shallow, but it didn’t prevent the stench of cow dung from stinging his nostrils.

“My dignity is too strong for such things to threaten it.” Jesus stripped off his tunic and dug right in.

The shovels were useless for applying the daub. “You’ve got to work the daub all the way through the wattle with your hands,” explained the elderly fellow from whom they had borrowed the shovels.

The foul mixture had a way of sticking to them and everything they touched. Before long, they were covered with it. Jesus laughed.

Daniel looked up, his nose filled with the foul stench of their work. His misery was clear. That made Jesus laugh even more. Daniel swung at him and missed, and Jesus knocked him down. Soon they were engaged in an all-out wrestling match in the pit.

Soaked through, they wound up laughing too hard for Daniel to worry about the foulness. It was the first time he had seen Jesus really laugh since they had lost Fedwig. They exchanged looks, and it seemed to Daniel that Jesus knew what he was thinking.

When the work for the day was done, they made their way to the stream at the foot of the hill. The water cascading over their bodies soon washed away all the foulness of the daub, and they were refreshed. Then Jesus noticed a glint of something in the streambed. He picked up a handful of sand and gravel and playfully poured it from hand to hand. The shiny sparkle had to be a tiny grain of silver.

They spent the night with one of the Celt families and finished the daubing the next morning. Then they made their way up the streambed, searching for more silver grains to lead them to the lode. The grains of the precious metal were few, and the going was slow.

One day turned into the next. They worked through the streams. Time after time they took a wrong turn up one little streamlet and then another. Finally, they reached the source of a streamlet where the silver grains seemed to originate. It was in the middle of a small field.

“You know where the lode is, don’t you?” asked Daniel.

“Yes, I can sense it now,” Jesus replied.

“Let’s start digging! Which way?”

“There are three lodes under this field, Daniel. And they are all deep beneath the surface.”

“I don’t suppose you know which of them have silver and which just have lead?”

Jesus shook his head.

Driving the shafts was backbreaking work. Day after day, from sunrise to sunset, they chipped away at the rock and hauled the chips to the surface. Using the stash of Roman money, they paid villagers to finish the thatching of their hut. Every night they came home to collapse into their beds. They started on the lode closest to the surface, but they found only lead. The second lode was equally disappointing.

They began working the shaft to the third lode at midsummer. It was the deepest. They had to keep stopping to brace the shaft with timbers. Finally, after weeks of digging, they reached the lode. Daniel swung the axe and broke away a piece of the light-colored rock. And there, in candlelight, they finally spotted the thin grey veins—the telltale sign of silver.

“We did it!” Daniel shouted.

“No, Daniel,” said Jesus. “It was God. He is the source of all we have and all we are.”

“But look how hard we worked. It shows in your muscles—and mine, too.” Indeed, after the hard summer of toil, there was not a spot of fat left on either of them, and their hard muscles gleamed with sweat.

“I am sure it is part of my Father’s plan for me, cousin. He challenges me more. I feel myself growing in spirit, not just physically.”

“Do you know more of what he plans for you?”

“After all my talking to him, I know nothing more than I knew as a child. He will tell me when the time is right. But he teaches me strength. And that is what I will need if I am to be the Messiah for our people and lead them to freedom.”

Daniel sighed. He wanted so much to tell Jesus what his own father had told him of the prophecy. But he remembered the promise he had made.
It is for God to reveal it to Jesus—not for me or even for Papa
.

They covered the entrance to the shafts and bade good-bye to the farmers in Priddy. The wheat was coming to its full height, and the start of the harvest would be upon them soon. The cousins promised to return with more men, and added that they would be spending more for their supplies. Making their way around the marshes, they saw signs of the approaching harvest on every patch of cultivated ground. It would soon be time for Lugnasad.

It was Daniel’s task to negotiate with Grengan, and Jesus made it a point to stay away, for the venture in Britain was still the family business of Daniel and his father. They needed an exclusive right to mine the field, before they could hire men and reveal the location to anyone. Daniel explained to the king how he and Jesus had toiled all summer to find the lode. Surprisingly, it took little convincing.

“Our men could use the work once the harvest is in,” Grengan said, “and it will help secure the prosperity of the Lake Villagers.” The royalty portion he requested as king was modest. “There is yet more silver to be found,” he said, “and I know from the Dumnonii how your cousin Jesus’s discoveries benefitted the people.

The next day Jesus and Daniel paddled to Wearyall with the Lake Villagers. All about the field at the foot of the Tor the men held their games and contests. There was free-flowing mead and feasting. They took part in the games, and Daniel won the archery contest.

The women laid out an assortment of treats on a long trestle table.

“What is this?” Daniel asked a willowy brunette.

She smiled and cast her eyes downward. “Bilberries with biscuits and clotted cream, sir. It’s important to share the bilberries now, because they are the first fruits of the harvest season.”

“The offering of first fruits is important among my people, also.” He helped himself to the sweet confection and answered the girl’s questions about his people.

The young Celtic women were particularly eager to get Daniel and Jesus to sample a dish called “boxty.” Just a griddle cake made with savory meal and milk, it seemed strange for it to take such priority, until they heard the older women chanting a folk ditty:

Boxty on the griddle,

Boxty in the pan,

If you can’t make boxty,

You’ll never get a man.

Jesus and Daniel couldn’t contain their laughter.

A hush fell over the crowd as several young couples approached the center of the field. One by one, the couples turned their backs to each other and walked away. Here and there tears were shed by the man or the woman or a member of the crowd.

Esmeralda approached, greeting people. Daniel pointed to the diminishing group of couples still waiting their turn. “What is this ceremony about?”

“Those couples were hand-fasted in marriage at last year’s festival, but it did not work out,” she explained. “They can walk away from each other and try again with someone else at this year’s hand-fasting.”

“How does this hand-fasting work?” asked Daniel.

“You will see in a moment,” said the priestess.

One group of young men and another group of young women then gathered on either side of a hedge. In the middle was a gate with two large holes slightly above head height. Although it appeared that the men and women were not supposed to see each other, most seemed to find ways to sneak a peek through the hedge or some opening in the woodwork of the gate, much to the amusement of the benevolent crowd. Then one of the men stuck his hands through the holes in the gate and one of the women on the other side quickly grasped them in hers. The gate was then opened and the couple embraced, showing their delight in the matchup that occurred by feigned chance.

One by one, the couples were united to the cheers of the crowd. Everyone seemed pleased with the pairings, except when several women grabbed for the hands of one particularly handsome young man at the same time. As the crowd gasped, his evident intended ran off in tears while the usurper smothered the bemused bridegroom with kisses.

“No good will come of that marriage, I fear,” said Esmeralda. “But one never knows.”

“So…they try their hand at marriage for a year,” said Daniel.

“It doesn’t seem like much of a commitment,” Jesus muttered.

“It’s not so different from our ways, when you think about it,” Daniel replied.

Jesus frowned. “How so?”

“A man can divorce a wife at any time by handing her a
get.”

“But that is by the law of God, not some pagan ritual,” Jesus interjected sharply in Aramaic.

Esmeralda looked taken aback for a moment. She couldn’t know what Jesus had said, but the sharpness of his tongue was unmistakable. Her mood quickly lightened, though, as a gentle rain began to fall. Along with the people, she raised her arms and spread them in a welcoming gesture. “Lugh is with us this year,” she said. “He will protect our crops from the storms until the harvest is all brought in.”

“Is that why the festival is named for Lugh?” Daniel asked of the priestess.

“Yes, partly, but Lugh is also the one who dedicated this festival. He did so in honor of his foster-mother, Talantiu. She was the last queen of the
Fir Bolg
, the last race who inhabited this land before the coming of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
. She cleared the great forest so the people could sow the land with crops, but she worked herself to death doing that. She told the men at her deathbed to hold funeral games in her honor so the country would not be without songs. That is why Lugh dedicated this festival to her.

“There are some who say Talanltiu was a goddess herself,” the priestess continued. “Her name means ‘Great One of the Earth,’ and this festival also goes by a name for the labors of childbirth. ‘Brón Trogain,’ we call it. It is this time of year when the goddess earth begins to bring forth the fruits of the harvest so her mortal children might live.”

Jesus seemed to have focused his mind elsewhere. Esmeralda asked him if something was amiss. He answered, “I was thinking about her taking on the motherhood of a being with two natures, for that is what I have learned of Lugh—that he was of the substance of both gods and giants. It would be a little like being a mortal woman called to be the handmaiden of the Lord God.”

“That’s too far-fetched for me, I’m afraid.” Esmeralda took her leave of them and continued making her rounds in the crowd.

As the day wore into evening, Daniel left Jesus to his philosophical brooding and joined in the fun. He was fascinated by the artists and entertainers, and especially the girls who came from far and wide. The crowd was rude and profane in its roaring, but it was all in good fun. Some women shunned Daniel, presumably for his accent or his beard, but far more were eager to enjoy a laugh and a dance with the archery champion.