The Ironsmith (29 page)

Then, her confidence returned, she would find it less and less necessary to make herself agreeable and, as he witnessed the change, Caleb would experience first disappointment, then contempt for his own self-delusion, then a peculiar mingling of lust and shame that he could only believe was God's special curse on him.

Michal disliked Sepphoris, which she considered a hopeless village, and probably she would begin sending pleading little notes to the Lady Herodias, hoping to be allowed to return to Tiberias. Otherwise, she might travel to Jerusalem to visit her family.

Or, at least, that would be the pretext. Her father was dead and her mother was a tiresome woman whose principal interest in life was surviving as many of her acquaintances as possible. She had a sister, who disapproved of her and whom therefore she regarded as a bore, and her brother … Well, her brother was one of those invisible young men whose name no one could ever seem to remember.

It had, of course, occurred to Caleb to wonder if his wife might not have a lover in Tiberias—someone to lavish money on her and satisfy her flesh and give her someone to torment. A lover might be prepared to meet her in Jerusalem. Caleb could arrange to have her watched, even in Jerusalem, and the penalty for adultery was stoning. It was an agreeable thought.

But then, of course, the whole world would know and he would look a fool. A man whose business is creating fear cannot afford to look a fool.

And, worse, he would lose her.

An hour before dawn he fell asleep again.

In the morning, after breakfast, Caleb went to the garrison and arranged for an escort and a wagon for his wife. It was reassuring to see that he still had the power to do such things.

The journey back to Sepphoris was uneventful. Caleb rode with the soldiers, keeping away from his wife, who would only complain to him about the dust.

When they arrived, his servants—who, unlike those in Tiberias, had not run away—prepared them dinner, after which Caleb went up to the roof to sit in the twilight and enjoy the view.

But this evening the view did not work its customary magic. He hardly noticed it. His mind, like the gaze of a circling hawk, was fixed on a single object.

It appeared that he had survived this particular crisis. Antipas did not mean to bring him down—not yet—but this reprieve was only temporary because, whatever the Tetrarch might intend, the Lord Eleazar meant, in the end, to destroy him.

Tomorrow, when he called upon Eleazar, Caleb would play the repentant servant. And Eleazar, who certainly understood his own part in this little drama, would sternly admonish him and then put him to work on a series of trivial assignments. Caleb's implied task would then be to earn his way back into the First Minister's confidence.

All of which was, of course, perfectly meaningless. Both men knew there would be neither mercy nor forgiveness. Each would be bent on ruining the other as the only possible means of insuring his own survival.

Bad news traveled faster than any horseman, and by now every petty official in Sepphoris would have heard that the Lord Caleb was out of favor. How many of those who worked under him had already made their way to Eleazar, eager to pledge their loyalty? Thus, when Caleb returned to his desk, he would find himself surrounded by spies.

He had to find a way out.

 

23

When the sun had at last set, and he came down from the roof, Caleb discovered that a messenger had left a note. It was from the Lord Eleazar, inviting him to breakfast the next morning. The note was kindly phrased. It was the sort of note one might send to an intimate friend who had recently suffered a bereavement and needed cheering.

So, when the sun rose, Caleb went to the Lord Eleazar's house and was shown into the garden, where he found the First Minister. They made a meal of figs and wine served in little cups of solid gold.

Eleazar was never brutal in his speech, but he was also not a man to waste time on pleasantries. The interesting thing was his subtlety. He made no reference to Caleb's interview with the Tetrarch but instead talked to him as to a trusted, confidential servant.

“We need an interval of calm,” he said, his attention apparently absorbed in the task of cutting open a fig with an exquisite little silver knife. “The Tetrarch has issued a general pardon, which should help to quiet things. He needs continuing access to loans and, even more, he needs the support of Rome, which is contingent upon the tribute being paid on time and the absence of any trouble that might require them to intervene—we all prefer that their legions remain in Syria. This business with the Baptist and his followers, whatever its original merits, upsets the merchants, which worries the moneylenders, which in turn encourages the Romans to think dark thoughts. It is time for all the dogs to curl up and go back to sleep.”

He looked up and smiled. He was not finding fault, but explaining policy.

“You will release our prisoners—all of them, no matter what their offenses—and you will arrange for them to be returned to their homes. It might even be a good idea to distribute a little silver. The emphasis must be on the Tetrarch's mercy.”

“It shall be as you direct, Lord.”

“I knew you would understand.”

Eleazar's gaze and his smile never wavered. The only trace of irony was in the words themselves.

“It is of course in the nature of things that there will be other criminal prosecutions,” the First Minister continued. “Such is the depravity of men. I have, however, prepared a list of names, which I will send to your office later in the day. Without the written consent of the Tetrarch, no one whose name appears on that list is to be touched.”

He made a small, despairing gesture with his left hand, as if to suggest that we must all learn to submit ourselves to the caprice of princes.

*   *   *

“
I have prepared a list.
” Even before it reached his desk—and he did not have to wait long—Caleb had arrived at certain conclusions about its contents. First, since the list was Eleazar's, he was protecting his friends. Second, he now had sufficient authority with the Tetrarch to persuade him to endorse the list.

The question was, how had he suddenly acquired such power? The answer, of course, somehow involved the Romans. “
The Romans think dark thoughts.
” How did Eleazar know what the Romans were thinking?

The list was brought to him a little before noon. The first name was Joshua bar Joseph, carpenter, formerly of the village of Nazareth, which was, perhaps, expected. But the second was Noah bar Barachel, ironsmith, resident of Sepphoris.

The Lord Eleazar threw a wide net. Caleb would have assumed that the First Minister had never even heard of Noah bar Barachel, and now he was to be regarded as untouchable. Which meant that Eleazar regarded him as an asset.
His
asset.

Noah had disappeared. He had left Sepphoris after his encounter with Matthias, had briefly surfaced in a village named Capernaum, and then had vanished.

And now Eleazar was protecting him. Why? What made Noah bar Barachel, ironsmith, resident of Sepphoris, so valuable?

“
The Romans think dark thoughts.
”

Had Noah somehow been the source of Eleazar's information about the Romans' dark thoughts? It seemed preposterous.

And yet …

“
This business upsets the merchants, which worries the moneylenders.…
” Noah moved comfortably in that world. He was a craftsman whose goods were sold far beyond Galilee.

Those damned pliers—
that
was how Eleazar had found him!

Suddenly Caleb felt very stupid and very afraid.

He decided he would do no work today—in any case, there seemed no work to do. He would go to the baths and see if the steam couldn't clear his head.

*   *   *

The public baths were comfortable and luxurious without being spectacular. The Tetrarch had built them in emulation of the Great Herod's in Caesarea, but on a far smaller scale because, although just as despotic as his father, Antipas was not as rich. One could walk around the outside of the building in about the time it took to recite one of the shorter Psalms, and many of the walls were plaster painted to look like marble. The pools, however, were marble, as were the walls of the steam rooms and—most blessed of all—the benches. It was wonderfully soothing to lie there on that cool, smooth Parian, wrapped in linen, sweating like a chariot horse.

The baths were also less crowded than those in Caesarea. The Greeks and Romans, of whom there were very few in Sepphoris, regarded baths as indispensable to civilized life, but they were a custom the Jews had been slow to adopt. Every house of any size in the city had a stone immersion pool, but these were for ritual purification rather than pleasure, and the Jews as a whole resisted foreign ways. Antipas had a taste for all things Greek, and those of and around his court emulated him, but the general population, even those who could easily afford the twenty
prutot
admission price, tended to stay away.

From his youth, Caleb had had many Greek friends. He had even, sometimes, dined in their homes, which of course was forbidden. Well, he had not died of it. He had always admired the Greeks, who had spread their culture and language over half the known world—and that, the better half. Even Jews, when they came on pilgrimage from outside Palestine, tended to speak Greek. They read Greek philosophy and literature and bought Greek art for their homes. They worshipped the God of the Jews, but they lived in a wider world, and he envied them.

Caleb liked to begin his time at the baths by washing himself in warm water, then taking a sudden plunge into the cold pool, then, and finally, teeth chattering, hunched up in his towels like Methuselah staggering toward death, making his way into one of the steam rooms. Those first few moments, as he breathed in the warm, thick air and felt himself begin to sweat, were a deliverance, a return to Eden. The sense of well-being was so profound that his mind simply emptied.

Not to think, that was the great blessing.

Except today the blessing was withheld. Lying there, the sweat welling in his eyes, he could not escape the memory of this morning's interview.

“
We need an interval of calm.
”

Noah, the artisan, the petty tradesman with his saw blades displayed upon the walls and his pots of nails, had had the last word. His cousin, Joshua bar Joseph, disciple of an executed criminal, was now to be regarded as a dreamer and a harmless crank, preaching love and forgiveness to peasant women.

So the preacher of sedition becomes the messenger of God's forgiveness. Noah becomes a spy for the First Minister, and all is peace and light. The last word.

“Caleb—why do I always find you here?” he heard someone say, in Greek.

Caleb wiped his eyes and saw, sitting on the bench opposite him, a corpulent, middle-aged man with his thinning hair wet from the plunge pool and plastered to his forehead like fangs, as if his face were peering out from the jaws of some huge serpent. He was actually smiling, seemingly glad to have discovered an acquaintance.

But, then, why shouldn't he be? He was the sort who need fear no one.

“Kephalos. I thought you were in Alexandria.”

A slave brought in a tray with a stone bottle of ice water and two cups. Kephalos filled them both and handed one to Caleb, who sat up to accept it.

“I was, but the Tetrarch is short of money again. I am on my way to Tiberias to see his chief steward.”

He raised his cup in salute and smiled once more, as if sharing a jest with a friend.
Yes, of course,
he seemed to be implying,
when is the Tetrarch not short of money?

This, naturally, was the reason he was not afraid. Not of Caleb, not of the Lord Eleazar, not even of the Tetrarch. Kephalos was indispensable. Nor was he subject to arrest or confiscation, being protected by a network of highly placed friends, all of whom owed him money. And, in any case, no one would gain by his removal. Although immensely rich himself, he never loaned out from his own treasury but preferred to broker loans for certain interests in Egypt, who were themselves protected, it was rumored, by members of the imperial family.

“Have you come from Caesarea?” Caleb inquired, to deflect the conversation from the Tetrarch's finances, which was never a safe subject.

“Yes. One must put in an appearance from time to time.” He made a rueful face, for, as everyone knew, his wife was a harridan whom, because her family was influential, it would have been inconvenient to divorce. She lived in Caesarea. “Whenever I am there it occurs to me that the city has grown more brutish. In my youth, when Archelaus still ruled, I thought it charming, but with the prefect there it is full of Romans—a coarse lot.”

“You Greeks are such snobs,” Caleb said, laughing in spite of himself.

“Mark my words, you don't know how well you have it. Antipas may not be a perfect ruler, but at least he is one of your own. The Judeans were fools to petition Caesar to remove Archelaus.”

“I was a child then, but I have always heard that Archelaus was worse than his father.”

Kephalos threw up his hands in a despairing gesture. “No one could be worse than Great Herod. There were disturbances in the Temple—when are there not disturbances in the Temple?—and perhaps Archelaus went a little far in putting them down. But is it better now? This new prefect, this Pilatus, just look at the trouble he has caused already. Wait until there is some new crisis in Jerusalem and he will crucify so many that they will run out of wood.”

He sighed, perhaps a trifle theatrically, and poured himself another cup of ice water, which seemed to restore him to a more philosophical temper.

“Believe me,” he said finally, “it is a curse to live under the Romans.”

An idea was beginning to form in Caleb's mind, so, characteristically, he tried to deflect the conversation in some other direction.