The Bronze Bow (12 page)

Daniel straightened his shoulders, trying to shake off the spell that seemed to bind him close to the silent crowd. At the same time he remembered the errand that had brought him to this place.

Simon listened, showing little interest in Rosh's demands. Daniel was sure that Simon was going to refuse his request, but instead the man looked at him keenly.

"This Rosh," he said thoughtfully, "you have a lot of faith in him, haven't you?"

"Of course I have."

"All right. I don't have these things to spare in my own shop. But there is a shop here in the city, on the Street of the Ironworkers. You will know it by the bronze horseshoe over the doorway. I work for the owner sometimes. Samuel is his name, and he owes me wages. Tell him to give you what you need."

"But your wages?"

"I have little need for money just now. Take what you need."

Daniel could not leave his friend without some answer. "Are you staying with Jesus, Simon?"

"If he will have me."

"Is—is he one of us?"

Simon smiled. "A Zealot, you mean?"

"Isn't that why you came? Have you asked him to join us?"

"I had some such idea when I came," Simon admitted. "But it has not worked out just as I expected. No, I have not asked Jesus to join us. All I hope and long for now is that he will ask me to join him."

Daniel saw that he would get no more certain answer from Simon tonight. The two boys went back along the road in silence. Presently Joel spoke, his young voice troubled.

"How can he call those people children of God?" he questioned. "They have never heard of the Law. They are unclean from the moment they are born."

Daniel could not attach too much importance to this. He was too far outside the Law himself. "Perhaps it does no harm for them to hope," he suggested.

"But they have no right to hope!"

Joel was silent again, struggling, in some way Daniel could not share, to reconcile what he had heard with his lifelong training. "I think Father is right," he said at last, unwillingly. "This man is not a true rabbi. He practically said it was all right to eat without washing our hands. Perhaps it's dangerous even to listen to him. And vet—"

Some unfinished question, only half formed, filled the darkness around them as they made their way back to the city.

F
IVE MORNINGS LATER
, Daniel sat at the foot of the mountain trail waiting. Though the sun weighed down on his head like a vast hammer, the palms of his hands were cold and damp. Any moment now the man he waited for would come into view. This was the first job he had ever had to do alone. He must not bungle it.

Of course, there was little likelihood he could fail, or Rosh would not have sent him. He understood that in a way this was a peace offering on Rosh's part, to repay him for mending the dagger. It was also, he knew, a test, the easy sort of test that Rosh often devised to try out a man's usefulness.

"He'll be alone," Rosh told him. "Always travels alone, the old skinflint, by the back roads. Pretends to be a beggar, whining at everyone he meets for a mite of bread for his next meal. He could buy the tetrarch's palace if he wanted to. He lives like a pauper, and every month he carries a bag of gold across the mountains to the coast and smuggles it to a friend who's buying property for him in Antioch. One day he'll disappear and spend the rest of his life living like a king. But he reckons with me first. This bagful comes to me."

This was Rosh's idea of justice, and the kind of sport that most delighted him. He made it sound like a privilege that Daniel should have the chance. Daniel agreed with him on principle. Why should one greedy old miser live like a king in Antioch while his fellow jews toiled and starved? Moreover, the thing would be done quickly. A lonely stretch of road, a moment's bluffing, and the man would go on his way unharmed—but not until he had made a contribution to his country's freedom. Fair enough, Daniel reasoned. Still, his stomach was uneasy.

After nearly an hour's wait, he spotted the man on a bend of the road just below. He slid behind a rock and waited. The man climbed slowly, with a wheezing sigh at each step. He would have fooled anyone, with his rags and his tottering gait. The deceit of the man made the job he had to do seem easier. When the miser was fairly opposite the rock, Daniel pounced.

The man did not resist him. He cringed and sank to his knees. A poor man, lie moaned, with not a thing that anyone could want. Daniel jerked him back to his feet and reached for the girdle. Then, like a snake, the man struck. Daniel caught the gleam of the knife barely in time to grip the man's wrist. He saw the cold glitter of the man's eyes. For a moment they struggled in deadly silence. Who could have guessed that that bony frame would have so much strength? Then Daniel saw the second dagger, this time in the man's left hand. With one mighty unthinking thrust, his own fist came up, and the man crumpled back across the path. Daniel stood breathing hard. Then he stooped and felt for the man's girdle. The moneybag was there all right, a fat one. He stuffed it into his own girdle and turned away. The thing was done.

At the turn of the road he looked back. The man lay sprawled on the road, and suddenly a long-forgotten memory hit Daniel's stomach with the thud of a blow. For a moment he stood, feeling wretchedly sick, and then he remembered. How many times in his childhood had he waked in the early morning and seen his grandfather lying just like that on the mat beside him, cap slipped sideways off the pinkish scalp, scrawny neck muscles stretched like a half-grown chicken's?

Curse Rosh! Daniel knew what the orders were. He should get away from this place as fast as possible. He looked behind him up the pathway at the rocky hillside. If anyone were watching, he would be laughed out of camp. But he could not leave an old man who looked like his grandfather lying helpless on the road. He went back and knelt down, his throat suddenly like ice, and fumbled in the rags over the man's chest. With relief he recognized an uncertain beat of life under the bony ribs. He picked the man up, carried him to the side of the road and laid him down in the shadow of a rock. Then he sat down and waited.

It was some time before the man regained consciousness. Finally he blinked and turned his head, and Daniel was suddenly angered by the terror that leaped into the old eyes.

"Lie still," he said roughly. "I'm not going to touch you. Wait till you're able to walk."

But the old man would not wait. He jerked to his feet and backed away.

"Wait," said Daniel. "Take this. You may need it." He held out one of the daggers that less than an hour ago had threatened his own life. Then he stood watching till the man, in a tottering course, dragged around the turn of the road by which he had come.

Back in camp he flung the moneybag at Rosh's feet. Rosh snatched it up, weighed it rapidly from one horny palm to the other, jerked open the strings and poured out a glittering heap of coins onto the stone. He slapped them down as they bounced and rolled.

"Yah!" he gloated. "A good morning's pay. He's got something to whine about now, the old camel."

Daniel said nothing, waiting.

"Did you get his dagger too?"

Daniel threw the dagger down. He knew now what was coming. Someone had already brought back a report.

"The other one?"

"I gave it back to him," said Daniel. "He wasn't fit to travel without it."

Rosh shot a derisive glance from under the black brows. "So he took you in with his whining! I gave you credit for more sense."

Daniel held his tongue.

Rosh rubbed a coin between dirty thumb and finger. "You think he'll thank you for your pains? You'll find out if he ever sets eye on you in the city. You should have finished him off."

"You didn't order me to kill him," Daniel said sullenly.

"I expected you to use your head. What ails you? Afraid of a drop of blood?"

"It is Roman blood I want!" Daniel burst out. "Do we fight against Jews?"

Rosh tossed the coins back into the bag, pulled the string tight, and got to his feet. His eyes looked dangerous, but his voice was level.

"You fool! You'll have your fill of Roman blood! Have you wasted your time with me? Are you still a stupid villager who wants to rush at the Romans with your bare hands? It will take men and arms and food. And they have to be paid for with money. And get this through your head once and for all—we take the money where we find it!"

Daniel's lips were tight, his eyes on the hard-packed earth.

"Would the old miser have given his money to free Israel?" Rosh went on. "He'd have parted with his life first! A decent death for his country was better than he deserved. And what loss would it have been—one old man more or less?"

Suddenly, with one of his lightning reverses of temper, Rosh stepped forward and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I know what's in your mind," he said gruffly. "It's better to do without killing when we can. But there's a flaw in you, boy, a soft streak. I've seen it over and over, these years. Like a bad streak in a piece of metal. Either you hammer it out, the way you'd hammer out a bubble, or you'll be no good to us. When the day comes there'll be no place for weakness."

Daniel's head went back.

"Wait a minute!" Rosh warned, bearing his hand down as if to hold down the boy's leaping anger. "I didn't say cowardice. You think I don't know you inside out? But softness can be just as dangerous. And by all the prophets, I'm going to hammer it out of you, if it's the last thing I do. Someday you'll thank me for it!"

Rosh took his hand from the boy's shoulder and held it out, waiting. Daniel stared at the bearded, weather-pitted face, the fierce black eyes of the man who had been his hero for five years, and his defenses gave way. Was it Rosh's logic, or the rough friendship in the man's hand and voice that had won him back? In relief he reached out, and he could sense the man's pleasure when his own hand, trained to the anvil, returned without flinching his leader's iron clasp.

Rosh was right, he thought later, taking up his work. More right than Rosh himself suspected. Would the man be so patient if he could read Daniel's mind? Rosh knew about his passion for the day to come. Rosh did not know about the other things that bound him like cobwebs when he woke in the night. Leah. His grandmother. Thacia! A flush came up over his face. There was no room for such weakness. He raised the anvil and struck the softened metal, blow after powerful blow, beating out his weakness. He put the metal back into the fire and watched it heat to a glowing red, drew it out with tongs, and hammered on it again, till his arms ached. He would get rid of this flaw in himself!

Yet, like a treacherous bubble that fled under the hammer and formed again, a doubt returned. Was there a flaw too in Rosh's argument? He could not put a finger on it, but he felt it just the same. He wished he could talk to Joel about it. Could Joel find the answer in those scriptures of his? Somewhere, Daniel had been taught in his childhood, there would be an answer in the scriptures, for Moses had handed down in the Law an answer for every situation a man could encounter in this life. Thou shalt not kill? But that did not apply to war. And what difference would it make if he had an answer, chapter and verse, on his tongue? Rosh was his own law.

Suddenly words were echoing in his mind. "For each one of you is precious in His sight." Not scripture, but the words of the carpenter. That was what had confused him. Rosh looked at a man and saw a thing to be used, like a tool or a weapon. Jesus looked and saw a child of God. Even the old miser with his moneybag?

He hammered more violently, till the sparks flew wild and the iron squashed down on the stone like clay, and he had to heat it again and begin all over. Samson, kneading the bellows, watched him broodingly.

E
BOL, THE SENTRY
, brought the message to Daniel one sultry August morning, a single sentence scratched on a fragment of broken pottery, "Your grandmother is dying," and signed "Simon." The message had been in Ebol's pocket for three days; no knowing how many times it had changed hands before reaching him. Better if it had never reached him at all, Daniel thought fiercely, thrusting it deep into his girdle pocket. For half the day he carried it about with him, saying nothing, the bit of clay weighing heavier and heavier till it dragged at him like a stone. Finally he showed the message to Rosh and set off down the mountain to the village.

The door of his grandmother's house was bolted, and only silence answered his knock. As he stood uncertain in the road before the house, two women, and then a feeble old man came hurrying from the nearest house.

"About time you came," one of the women scolded. "They've been locked in there for ten days. We don't know whether the old woman is alive or dead."

"Why didn't you break in?" Daniel asked.

"The girl is possessed of devils," the old man answered. "She will let nobody come near her."

"We tossed bread through the window," a woman added. "But I'll have no more to do with it. Suppose the devils were let loose?"

"My sister is harmless," Daniel told them impatiently. "She could hurt no one."

But probably none of them had even glimpsed his sister in all these years. He could see that he could expect no help from them. He looked up at the small high window. Then he wrenched a portion of the ladder from the wall, braced it, and tried to peer into the house. He could see nothing but a patch of floor. There was no sound, but just as he turned away he thought he caught the flicker of a shadow.

"Leah," he called, softly at first, then insistently. "It's Daniel, your brother. Let me in." The shadow did not move again.

Panic crept over him. What horror did that room contain? With all his heart he longed to run from this silent house. Yet the fearful, demanding eyes of the three neighbors goaded him on. He had no choice. He would have to break down the door and go in.

At the second thrust of his powerful shoulders the hinges burst from the rotting frame and he fell forward into foul-smelling darkness. Sunlight poured in behind him, lighting up a crouching figure with a mass of tangled yellow hair. For an instant Leah's eyes stared wildly from an ashen face. Then she darted away and coiled into a tight ball of fear against the wall. Where the girl had crouched, on a pallet of straw, lay a shrunken gray shape. Dread froze Daniel on the threshold. Then, to his shattering relief, his grandmother slowly turned her head.