The Ironsmith (7 page)

“I am not afraid of Caleb, sire. I think, however, he needs to be curbed.”

“No. I will not permit it.”

Eleazar took a breath, intending to offer some protest, but then thought better of it. The Tetrarch, he knew, would not be moved. It had become a point of honor.

So, best to defer the question to another day, when heads might be cooler.

“Then would it be possible merely to hold the Baptist for the time being? An honorable detention, while we make inquiries.”

“Caleb is already in Machaerus.” Antipas made a gesture with his right hand, as if presenting a gift. His smile, however, betrayed him. “He has orders to question the Baptist and to act accordingly. If this ‘harmless madman' of yours has dared to call my marriage into question, he dies. The audience is over.”

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. There was nothing to do except to rise once more and bow. Eleazar was already pushing against the door when he heard the Tetrarch's voice again.

“You really do fear Caleb, don't you, minister. Perhaps you are right. It will be interesting to see which of you is my true servant.”

*   *   *

When he returned to the changing closet, Eleazar closed the door and was for the moment completely alone. It was then that his usual icy calm deserted him. He leaned his forehead against the cool marble wall and fear flooded his heart.

So this is what it all means,
he thought.
He sees Caleb's ambition, so he will set us against each other like dogs fighting over a scrap of meat.

And Eleazar knew what would happen if he lost. Antipas was extravagant, always building new palaces and always in debt. Even with the vast wealth of Galilee at his disposal, he was constantly borrowing money. The First Minister's property, his farms and houses, his money invested with merchants, all he had inherited from his father and had acquired since by his own labor, could not help but tempt a ruler who never felt himself rich enough.

Caleb had been clever. He had played on the Tetrarch's fears, for a despot was always afraid of rebellion. He had insinuated his wife into Herodias's inner circle. He had arrested the Baptist and now, doubtless, would begin a great purge of his followers. There would be accusations and forced confessions, leading to a series of carefully staged executions, all of it serving to impress upon the Tetrarch the narrowness of his escape. Thus Caleb would rise in power and influence. He would become First Minister, and his word would become law. Good men would go to their deaths that Caleb might buy up their property at a tenth of its value. He would become a great man, wealthy and feared.

And Galilee would become a realm of nightmare.

And Zadok, what would become of him? He would lose his inheritance. The future to which his talents entitled him would be obliterated in a stroke. The best he could hope for was that his mother's family might be able to keep him safe in Jerusalem.

Unless the Romans, as a goodwill gesture, decided to make a gift of him to the new First Minister of Galilee. Caleb was of a vengeful temperament. Even with the father dead, it might gratify him to take out what remained of his resentment on the son.

“Unless I can stop him,” he whispered to himself, and then added, bitterly, “my disciple.”

These terrors were unworthy of him, Eleazar decided. He pushed himself away from the cold, comforting stone.

He dressed quickly, putting on his priestly robes, making sure that everything was in order. He would leave now, in silence but not in haste—he did not wish to appear to be running away, not least to himself.

 

4

On his return journey from Machaerus to Sepphoris, Caleb stopped off in Tiberias. He had to explain to the Tetrarch that it had proved necessary to execute John. The Tetrarch received him in the palace gardens, where he was taking his after-dinner stroll. The news was not well received.

“So now, instead of a living prophet, we have a corpse. You may have trouble with the Lord Eleazar about this.”

Which meant, of course, that Antipas was disappointed. And, as his servant understood only too well, disappointment was a dangerous emotion in rulers.

“John could not be broken,” Caleb replied, his voice low and confiding. “The man was not human. He cared nothing about pain, and he saw death as deliverance. Thus he had no weakness to exploit.”

“You sound as if you admire him.”

The Tetrarch smiled contemptuously, and Caleb could almost see the dark wings of death fluttering over his head.

They had stopped for a moment. The lord of Galilee and Perea needed to catch his breath. The two men stood facing one other.

“Admired?” Caleb could only shrug. “No, sire. John was mad. He had buried himself in his madness, too deep to be reached by the usual means—probably by any means.”

He paused, knowing that on the next throw of the dice he was wagering his life. He glanced about him, and his gaze fell on a little tree, no taller than a man, and he noticed how black its leaves appeared. It occurred to him how beautiful the world was, and how much he would regret leaving it.

“However, his disciples were sane enough to run away,” Caleb continued. “I had given orders to arrest them along with the Baptist, but of course the fools allowed them to escape. I will hunt them all down, and we will soon know how widely this conspiracy has spread.”

For perhaps a quarter of a minute the Tetrarch's face was expressionless, even vacant. He might not even have been listening.

Caleb had the uncomfortable feeling that Antipas was already measuring him for his coffin.

Then the Tetrarch smiled, raised his hand, and placed it on Caleb's shoulder.

“I always know I can count on you in such matters,” he said.

Half an hour later, Caleb was sitting in his study in the house that was kept for him against his visits to Tiberias. He was drinking wine to settle his nerves and, as his fear subsided, entertaining himself with regrets about the lie he had told. He had never ordered the disciples' arrest. It had not occurred to him.

However, such lies were necessary. Now it would be someone else's head on the block. The officer at Machaerus, probably—what was his name?
In any case,
Caleb thought,
better him than me.

Or probably, by morning, the Tetrarch would have forgotten about it.

Michal sent word that she was detained by the Lady Herodias. Caleb spent an uncomfortable night alone.

*   *   *

As soon as he was back in Sepphoris, Caleb directed his attention to the Baptist's followers. He had long lists of them.

One name immediately suggested itself—partly because the man might prove useful not as a victim but as a spy, and partly because his arrest would be such an exquisite jest.

Judah bar Isaac was a Judean living in Tiberias. Caleb had made inquiries and discovered that his instinct had been correct. Judah received his income through a Greek merchant, the money coming from Jerusalem. Judah apparently was in disgrace with his family, but he seemed to be living an agreeable enough life. He was indolent and pleasure loving and enjoyed considerable popularity with an aristocratic set that included both Greeks and Jews.

It was a familiar pattern, one Caleb himself had followed in his youth. It seemed to run in the family, because Judah was a cousin, the grandson of his mother's elder sister.

However, it appeared that not all scapegraces were dismissed on quite the same terms. Caleb's father had given him a small purse of silver coins and title to a farm in Galilee, where presumably he would scratch a living out of the earth and acquire the virtues of a good peasant. His cousin had means enough to enjoy a leisured existence in Tiberias. Had his sins been so much less?

Caleb tried to recall if they had ever met. Probably, although he had no memory of this favored youth. Judah, who was five years younger, certainly would have none of him.

This business would require some care. Judah was a member of one of the leading Levite families, close to the high priesthood in Jerusalem. A common laborer can be arrested, tortured, and killed without risk, but not a Levite. The Temple was sacred, and the Levites were its servants.

So one had to take care. The arrest had to be managed quietly, so that Judah's friends in Tiberias would think he had simply fallen off the face of the earth.

Caleb had just the man for this kind of work.

Matthias was a palace guard, young, very strong, reasonably intelligent, and utterly without pity. He also drank, so much that he would long since have been dismissed if Caleb had not learned to value his interesting set of skills. When he was given a task, however, he stayed out of the wineshops until it was finished.

Caleb explained the difficulties to Matthias and gave him his orders: “Bring Judah bar Isaac to Sepphoris and put him in the lower prison. I want him to have no idea where he has come to, or why.”

To Uriah, his faithful servant and master of the lower prison, he also gave instructions.

“You will receive a new charge. You are not to molest him or injure him in any way. Yet it is necessary that he learns to fear you. Can you accomplish that?”

Uriah's answer was a grin of pleasure.

In less than a week Matthias could report that Judah bar Isaac was safely installed in his cell.

“How did you do it?” Caleb inquired—not because he cared but because he knew the value of giving subordinates a chance to describe their accomplishments.

But if Matthias took any pride in his work it did not show. His face was as impassive as if it were made of iron. Only his eyes betrayed him, for in them there was a hint of something like anguish.

“He had a favorite whore. I bribed her to drug his wine. He slept all the way here.”

“And you are sure the whore won't speak of this?”

“The whore is dead.”

“I compliment you on your thoroughness, Matthias.” Caleb opened a box on his desk and took out a small pouch containing a small number of silver coins. “Here. Tavern money.”

He tossed the pouch to Matthias, who snatched it out of the air—nothing moved except his hand, which might have been plucking a grape from an arbor.

“Thank you, Lord,” Matthias said, without emphasis. His gaze was directed at nothing in particular and his face was an unreadable mask.

*   *   *

Caleb had heard everything that Uriah had to tell him about the new prisoner, who had been in his care for two weeks now. Judah was probably ready for their first conversation.

What had it been like for him? What had he thought that first day, waking up, naked and in chains on the stone floor of a foul-smelling cell, the only light a faint gray patch coming in under the bottom of the door? Probably that this was a jest arranged by his friends.

Then gradually he would have realized the truth: that he had no idea who held him, or where, or why. But, whatever the reason, it was not a jest.

Of course he had begun shouting—then screaming. Uriah had come in and, one way or another, made him understand that he was to remain silent. Probably only then had he begun to know real fear.

After the first day, there had been no more shouting. During the first four days, there were fits of sobbing, but even these had subsided. Once a day Uriah came into the cell to bring food and take away the slop bucket. He never spoke. Sometimes the prisoner asked him questions, which Uriah ignored. Lately the prisoner had begun making remarks. He clearly did not expect any answer. He seemed merely to be amusing himself.

Good,
Caleb thought. Fear was beginning to subside. The mind possessed a wonderful capacity to adjust itself to anything.

And the mind was what mattered. Any man could be broken by torture—well, perhaps not
any
man; the Baptist stood in Caleb's experience as the one exception—but no matter how complete the surrender, its effects were not lasting. The point was to attack not the body but the mind. There was no shortage of prisoners in the dungeons of Sepphoris. For years Caleb had been trying out on them the effects of prolonged anxiety, arbitrary punishments and rewards, and the fear of abandonment that lurks in the dark corners of every human soul, and he had come to believe that these provided the keys to true mastery.

If he could have had five months with John, perhaps the story might have had a different ending.

“I will instruct the guards in the upper prison to bring one of their charges down to you,” he told Uriah. “Take him into the prisoner's cell and kill him. I want the execution to make an impression, so a quick death won't serve. Then leave the body there, until I tell you to remove it.”

The next day Caleb went down to the lower prison. Uriah opened the cell door for him and handed him a torch. Then, once they were inside, Uriah took the corpse by the heel and dragged it out, closing the door behind him.

The dead prisoner left behind him on the floor a smear of blood, which in the torchlight seemed black.

For perhaps a minute, Caleb did not speak. Partly this was strategy and partly it was fascination with what even a few days in this worst of places could do.

The young man of fashion, the frequenter of Greek plays and pretty whores, was gone. In his place was just another prisoner, filthy and helpless. He kept turning his head away, no doubt because the light from the torch blinded him. He tried to shade his eyes with his hand, but the chain was not quite long enough to permit it. He looked too dazed even to be afraid.

His family, when they sent him away, could never have imagined that he would come to this.

“Who are you?” Judah asked. “Why am I here?”

Caleb realized that he had made a mistake. He had kept silent too long and thereby surrendered the initiative. He would have to take it back.

“You are not here to ask questions. You are here to give information.”

The ceiling was low and Caleb kept thinking he was about to bump his head. He did not wish to appear to crouch. He looked around for a stool, but there was none. In any case, better to remain standing.