The Bronze Bow (15 page)

"He's worn out trying. Last year it was the locusts, and this year some cockle seed got into the grain and the crop isn't worth harvesting. He could never meet the taxes."

Daniel said nothing.

"He could have sold my sister. There would have been no shame in that. But he's too softhearted."

"That's a hard choice," Daniel agreed.

"They force it on us, the cursed Romans. The land would feed us well enough if we were rid of them."

Daniel leaned closer to the stone and carefully ground out a slight roughness.

"But it's not true what they said," the boy went on. "My father would never put one penny of the taxes in his own pocket."

Daniel did not answer. A tax collector might start out honest enough, he reflected. But a man weak enough to take the job at all would find it hard to resist the easy pickings. He felt embarrassed. It was a bad thing for a boy to have to be ashamed of his own father.

"I guess this will do," he said, rubbing his thumb along the blade. He knew the boy did not want his sympathy. The boy paid him and moved toward the door, hesitating. Daniel guessed the shrinking with which he looked out into the twilight street.

"Any chance they'll be waiting again?" he asked.

The boy shrugged, but his eyes looked sick.

"Hold on a minute," Daniel suggested. "When I close the shop I've got to deliver an axhead. We can go along together."

"I can take care of myself!" the boy flashed.

"I don't doubt that. What's your name, by the way?"

"Nathan."

"Then come along with me, Nathan. There's something I'd like to tell you about."

There was not much use talking, however, to one whose ears were straining for every sound on the dark roadway. Daniel could almost feel the tensed muscles of the boy beside him, but he observed with approval that the nervous stride did not falter. He gave up any attempt to talk, and walked on in silence, savoring with keen pleasure the thought of the coming attack. He had not realized how much he had missed this rising prickle of anticipation.

The rush came quickly out of the darkness. Six or seven, Daniel noted, even while his fist sent the first comer sprawling. With a shout of sheer enjoyment, he caught two others, one with each hand. In the dark there was a shriek. "The blacksmith!" A frantic wrench and the sound of tearing cloth, and one of his captives darted off in his tunic, leaving his cloak in Daniel's hand. The other, teeth rattling from a shake and a kick that would be remembered, stumbled after him. Then Daniel stood watching while his new friend dealt efficiently with two young attackers.

"Not bad," he commented, when the whole pack had slunk into the shadows. "You need to tighten your guard. Now, that's over, and you can pay attention to what I have to say. How would you like to use those fists of yours for a good purpose?"

So Daniel won his first recruit in the village, Nathan, son of the new tax collector.

As though Daniel's very eagerness had somehow acted as a signal between them, a few days later Joel walked into the smithy, bringing with him a recruit of his own.

"How did you know where to find me?" Daniel demanded, eying with curiosity the slender scholarly boy who accompanied his friend.

"I ran into your friend Simon," Joel told him, after just the slightest hesitation. "He told me you were looking out for his shop. He suggested I come to see you."

"A good thing," Daniel said. "I was wondering how I could get to Capernaum. There's business enough for two men here." He tried to sound matter-of-fact, but he could not keep the pride out of his voice.

Joel showed a flattering interest in the shop. He wandered about, picking up the tools, weighing bars of metal from one hand to another. He was impressed with the shining gleam of a newly finished blade.

"I've brought someone who wants to join with us," he said. "Kemuel feels as we do."

Daniel looked uncomfortably at the newcomer. The boy was plainly wealthy, and used to having his own way. There was an edge of disdain in his voice, and in his proud, handsome face. Yet there was something else too. The new boy whirled suddenly round at him.

"Do you mean to fight them?" he demanded. "Or are you playing a game? I came today to see if you are serious."

"We are serious," said Daniel levelly. "What right have you to ask?"

"Because I am tired of words!" the boy answered. "Everywhere men talk and argue, while Israel lies helpless at the feet of Rome. Where is our courage? Why does no one dare to step forth? If you mean to fight them, then I am with you. But I have no use for children's games."

A feverish light burned in his dark eyes. He reminded Daniel of a panther, lean and dark and fiery, and his own fire leaped up to meet this boy's. He forgot his suspicion.

"You're welcome here, Kemuel," he said. "You'll find we're not playing a game." Yes, Joel had chosen well. Strong arms and muscles were easy to find. A fiery spirit was not so common.

Presently Nathan stopped by on his way home from the field, as he had formed a habit of doing. Already Nathan had lost his resentful air. At first awkward in the presence of the city boys, he soon surrendered to Joel's friendliness. Daniel disconnected the bellows, banked the fire for the night, bolted the door, and the band of four held its first meeting. Certain of Simon's approval, Daniel offered the smithy as a gathering place. They agreed to meet on the third day of each week.

"If you want members," Nathan offered, "I could name you ten here in our village who would give their right arms to join you."

Daniel hesitated. "I've thought about that," he told them. "I know there are plenty. If word went out tomorrowhalf the village would probably be with us before night. Some because they love Galilee, or hate the Romans, and some just because they love a good fight. But would they lose heart? The trouble is, we can't fight tomorrow. We've got to work slowly, and it may take a long time."

"How long?" Kemuel demanded.

"We must be strong enough so that we cannot fail." Daniel tried to remember how Rosh had talked to them in the cave, whetting their impatience, but always holding it back, leashed for the day to come. He saw how much he had still to learn from Rosh.

"Right now we need members who will be willing to work without any reward," he went on, not looking at Kemuel, but speaking chiefly to him. "We've got to be absolutely sure we can trust them, no matter what happens."

"Then we shouldn't take too many right away," Joel said thoughtfully.

"We should not make it too easy," Kemuel spoke. "We only value the things we pay for."

"Who has money to pay?" Nathan bristled. "That would keep out all the villagers."

"I was not speaking of money," Kemuel answered, with a touch of scorn. "I meant we must be committed altogether, without any reservation. Only that way can we be sure."

"We will each take the oath," Joel reminded him.

His friend was not satisfied. "An oath can mean one thing to one and something altogether different to another," he argued. Daniel suspected that he argued habitually and enjoyed it, like the Scribes who debated the fine points of the Law.

"I know!" Nathan sprang to his feet. He seized a rod of iron from the wall near him. "We can brand ourselves! That way we would know—"

"Are you forgetting the Law?" the scholar cut in icily "You shall not print any marks upon you!" It was exactly as though he had pulled his cloak tighter to avoid contamination. Peasant! his tone said unmistakably. Daniel's heart sank. Already his little army was behaving like the men in the cave.

"We don't need a brand," Joel spoke quickly, in the reasonable friendly way that made everything he said so convincing. "If we choose carefully we can trust each other. We will carry the sign of the bow in our minds. You know—from the Song of David: 'He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.' That is our password."

Within three weeks the four members had increased to seven, then to nine—twelve—sixteen. Young men would meet each other on the village streets, in the school at Capernaum. "Did you ever see a bow made of bronze?" they might ask, in passing. Or they would drop in at the smithy and pick up a lump of metal. "It would make a good bow," they would say. The password gave them pride and pleasure. They were bound together by the sign. On the first day of Ab, twenty-one boys crowded the smithy. Daniel looked around at them with a surge of elation.

"When can we tell Rosh?" Joel demanded, eager for another glimpse of his hero.

"Not yet—" Daniel answered. He could not tell even Joel how he dreamed of the moment when he would tell Rosh. Now, while Joel read aloud to the listening boys the thrilling accounts he had shared with Daniel in the passageway, of David and of Judas Maccabeus, Daniel thought how he would lead Rosh down the mountain and confront him with an army, ready for his command. Then Rosh would no longer be an outcast. Then everyone would recognize the leader they had longed for, and the day would be very near.

On the morning after the third meeting, the fair-haired Roman soldier appeared again at the smithy. This time he had a broken stirrup to be mended. He paid no attention to the sullen scowl that showed that his business was unwelcome. He stood, his feet planted well apart in that Roman pose they seemed to learn young, looking deliberately about the shop, at the shelves of metal bars, the tools hanging along the wall, the door that Daniel had instantly shut between them and the inner room. Daniel kept his eyes on his work, fighting down a compulsion to find out what the man might be looking at. Could there possibly be a sign of last night's meeting? He did not draw an easy breath till the Roman, taking his time about it, finally clanked through the door mounted his horse and rode off. Then, searching the room frantically, he could find nothing that could possibly have drawn the man's suspicion. Had it been his imagination that the man was looking for something?

The Roman returned. Sometimes on the very day of a meeting, often on odd days between. He came now with work for his fellow legionaries, or with ridiculous excuses to have some perfectly sound bit of harness checked for a flaw. Once or twice Daniel, hearing the hoofbeats in the street, looked up to see the man ride slowly by his door, and then, almost immediately, so soon the man could scarcely have turned his horse, ride slowly back again. He discovered the prints of a horse's hoofs in the soft earth of the alleyway that ran along the garden wall where there was no possible reason to ride a horse. No question now, the house was being watched. The meeting place would have to be changed.

A new recruit, son of a farmer in the village, offered a solution. He led Daniel to an abandoned watchtower in his father's cucumber field, a small round stone house in which the whole family had once lived during the time of harvest to watch lest thieves despoil the ripening crop. Below the tower a shaft had been cut, designed, Daniel suspected, for hiding part of the crop from the count of the tax collector. It made a fine place to store the weapons they planned soon to have. The tower could be approached from many sides, across the field of vines. It was an ideal meeting place.

Abruptly, almost as soon as they shifted the meeting place, the Roman stopped coming. Warily, they stationed a guard near the new headquarters, taking turns at the duty. Not a sign of the soldier was ever reported. Luck was with them, Daniel decided. Still, there was something about it that made him uneasy.

D
ANIEL'S CHIEF DOUBT
about the new meeting place, that it would take him from home for long hours at a time, resolved itself more simply than he expected. Leah listened to his explanation and seemed to grow accustomed to his absences as she had once accepted the fact that her grandmother must work in the fields. Leah was gaining confidence. She did not tire as readily at the loom. She had even completed a length of cloth which had been paid for by the servant of the widow of Chorazin. When Daniel had laid the shining silver talent in his sister's hand, she had been bewildered. He realized that she had never before known any recompense for her hours at the loom. He showed her how to sew the coin into her head scarf, where every village girl, even the poorest, boasted the jingling coins that would be her dowry. Leah was as enchanted as a child. Now she always wore the headdress as she worked, and from time to time her hand stole up to touch the coin. Underneath the scarf the long yellow hair was always combed and carefully arranged. Was it the work in the little garden that had brought a faint flush to her pale cheeks?

One afternoon, looking through the door of his shop, Daniel saw two figures coming slowly along the road in the shimmering waves of heat. One, he soon saw, was Joel. The other he was not sure of. A new recruit? The two figures were almost at his door before he recognized, with a shock of pleasure, that the one who had come with Joel was his sister Malthace. She wore a yellow mantle with a green embroidered girdle, and a green and white striped headdress that showed just the edge of the dark sweep of her hair.

"I've never been in a blacksmith's shop before," she exclaimed, sweeping back the headdress in the impulsive gesture Daniel always remembered first when he thought of her. "I've been begging Joel to let me come to see it."

Embarrassed, Daniel wiped his sooty hands and brought a jar of water from the house, wishing he had more to offer.

"I'd like to ask you to come into my—into Simon's house—"he began.

"It doesn't matter. It's lovely here in the shop," said Malthace quickly. The two visitors sat on the bench and watched him complete the lock that he had promised to deliver before sunset.

"I'm glad you came today," Darnel told Joel, when the work was done. "There's an apprentice I want you to meet over in the Street of the Weavers. I think he wants to join us, but he has some foolish ideas in his head that the rabbi has taught him. I can't talk him out of them, but you could."

"Go along and see him," Malthace suggested. "I don't mind staying here alone. I'd rather start back when it's cooler."

"Are you sure? It would take only a short time."