The Bronze Bow (26 page)

Daniel felt a chill along his spine. "Has he said so?"

"Not to me. Perhaps to those three. I think Simon knows."

"Then why would he not be king?"

"I have told you, I don't know."

"If he is the Messiah, how soon will he lead us against the enemy?"

Simon walked on for a time without answering. Finally he spoke. "He will never lead us against Rome, Daniel. I have given up all hope of that."

The quiet words had the force of a blow. Daniel had his answer at last. Joel had tried to tell him, and Thacia. Even Jesus himself. Now Simon had confirmed the doubt that all these months had blocked the way between him and the man from Nazareth.

"Then why do you stay with him?" All the boy's bitterness broke through the reproach.

"Where else could I go?" Simon answered.

"What has he offered you that is worth more than Israel's freedom?"

"He has offered me the kingdom."

Daniel's anger was rising. "When do you think you'll have this kingdom?"

"You will not understand this," said Simon. "In a way, I have it already."

"That's fine!" the boy's scorn was close to tears. "You have the kingdom! You can shut your eyes while all around you—"

"I have not shut my eyes," said Simon. "I know well enough that nothing in Israel is changed. But I know that it will be, even if I never live to sec it with my own eyes."

"Listen to me, Daniel," he went on. "You've seen him caring for those people—the ones so low that no one, not I or anyone else, cared what happened to them. When I see that, I know that the God of Israel has not forgotten us. Or why would He have sent Jesus to them, instead of to the rich and the learned? Like a shepherd, he says, who will not let any of his sheep be lost. I'm a poor man, and ignorant, but I know now that with a God like that I am safe."

Daniel stood staring at his friend. Simon had lost his senses altogether. "Safe? Jesus has put you all in danger!"

Simon's voice was steady. "Jesus has taught us that we must not be afraid of the things that men can do to us."

"Suppose they put chains on all of you and drag you off to prison?"

"He says that the only chains that matter are fear and hate, because they chain our souls. If we do not hate anyone and do not fear anyone, then we are free."

"Free? In chains? Simon—you know what they could do to you! How could you possibly not be afraid?"

"I don't say I am not afraid," said Simon. "But Jesus is not. And he is the hope of Israel."

"What has he done to prove it? How do you know you're not risking your life for nothing?"

"We can never know," Simon answered slowly. "God hides the future from man's eyes. We are forced to choose, not knowing. I have chosen Jesus."

"This was his chance tonight. Do you think he will ever do anything now?"

"I don't know what he will do. It is enough for me that he has promised."

"It is not enough for me!" Daniel cried. "Promises are easy. They are nothing but words. I want a leader who will make his promises good!"

He flung himself away from Simon and stumbled ahead into the darkness. He could not see his way, but he knew that from now on he was alone. There was no friend to fight beside him. There was no leader to follow. There was nothing left to him but his hatred and his vow.

S
PRING BURST
over Galilee. The curtain of rain drew back from a clear, brilliant blue sky. The rich green slopes dropped down to a gentle sea. Flowers flowed along the roadways, trickling through every crevice in the rocky banks, splashing the gray mud walls, spraying from thatched roofs, washing in a wave of color up to the door of the house.

But the door was shut against them. Inside the shop Daniel worked steadily with a grim averted face. In the gloom of the house Leah sat, her hands idle in her lap. Dust gathered on the threads of the loom. They were both alike, Daniel thought, turning his back on the blossoming roadway. They could not learn to hope again.

Yet he was still stronger than Leah. While she had lost everything, purpose remained to him. His hatred was as strong as ever, so strong that unless he found some outlet for it soon it would destroy him. He was like a man imprisoned in a pit, raging and helpless.

If he were free, he could find a band of Zealots. They existed, everywhere in Galilee. Men spoke of them furtively. In some village, in some cave in the wilderness, men gathered and made ready, and they would welcome him. But he was chained to his forge in an endless round of work to keep alive a girl who was indifferent that she lived. And even if he found a band, how could he recognize a man whom he could trust? How could he be sure that he would not be duped again?

He trains my hands for war,
   so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze...

What use were his strong hands? God did not mean the bow of bronze for him.

In the first month of spring, Leah was betrayed by the one remaining thing to which she still reached out. The little goat failed her. The kid which was born in Adar was puny, and brought only the lowest price, and when it was taken from her the goat drooped. The milk she gave scarcely provided Leah with a cupful once a day. There came a morning when the little creature could not stand on its feet. Daniel looked at it with dismay, remembering that goats were subject to a peculiar fever. He brought it into the house and tried to coax it to eat. The little goat huddled beside Leah, as unresponsive as its mistress. Two mornings later it was dead.

He thought at first that Leah refused to eat from grief, but he soon recognized that she too was feverish. She lay on the rush mat, her eyes glazed and unaware, her cheeks flushed, her lips parched. From time to time she cried out in terror. She seemed to be wandering in a distant country, peopled with dreadful shapes he could not even imagine.

By the next morning he saw that she was very ill. The physician, loath at first to come, looked down at her and shook his head. There was too little blood in that thin body already, he said, laying aside the bottle of leeches. He left a concoction of rue and departed, with a resigned shrug of his shoulders and a gentle pity in the wise eyes behind their wrinkled lids.

"I cannot work today. My sister has the fever," Daniel told a customer, and bolted the shop door as the man backed away. Word must have gone quickly through the village, because no other customer came to trouble him.

He sat beside Leah's mat, bewildered. One by one they had all left him, everyone who had touched his life. Rosh. Samson. Joel. Thacia. Simon. Jesus. Now Leah was slipping away. With Leah's death he would be altogether free. But freedom seemed suddenly a terror of emptiness, and he had nothing to fill it but hatred. Leah too, he thought dully, must be avenged.

In the stillness the words came back to him.
Can you repay love with vengeance?
Leah had loved him, with a simple trustful heart, as Samson had loved him. But vengeance was all he had to give. It was better than nothing.

Leah, like Samson, had perishedbythe sword he had meant for Rome. And like Samson she would not leave a single person on earth save himself who would know or care. Then he remembered that this was not true. Thacia would care. Sometime during the day he became convinced that Thacia should know. There was nothing that she could do for Leah now, but he knew that she would care.

How could he let her know? He remembered the message that Simon had sent him almost a year ago. Rummaging in his shop, he found a bit of broken pottery and scratched with a nail the same message Simon had sent: Leah is dying.

Joktan sat outside the shop, halfheartedly filing down a set of nails. He had no more than glimpsed the girl who lay dying, but the heaviness inside the house seeped through the door and made him uneasy. He was glad enough for an errand to do. Daniel gave him the directions to the house of Hezron in Capernaum and told him to leave the message with the porter at the door.

Joktan did not return. Three times a day Daniel went to the village well to get water, using it recklessly to bathe Leah's hands and face. He came and went with his head bent, looking at no one, speaking to no one. On the second day, as he came slowly back along the street, he saw the Roman soldier Marcus standing before his house. He stood still, his legs suddenly weak. A red mist blurred his vision. His arms trembled till he could scarcely hold the water jug. Here, in this one hated figure, was concentrated all the misery of his life. With all the strength of his being he wanted to hurl himself at the Roman boy, to feel the throat between his hands, to hear the life gasping out. But something held him back. He could not kill the Roman while Leah lay dying inside the house. It would have to wait.

Marcus stepped forward, to stand between him and the door, and Daniel was forced to stop. He could not prevent the soldier from speaking to him, but he turned his face away. When, against his will, he had to see why no words came, he saw the boy's face was contorted in an effort to speak.

"I have heard that your sister is ill," he stammered. "How does she today?"

Daniel spat on the ground. He charged forward so fiercely that Marcus involuntarily stepped out of the way and let him enter his house. On the doorstep Daniel turned. "What is it to you if another Jew is dying?" he snarled.

On the third day of Joktan's absence, Daniel came back from the well slowly, his limbs dragging with weariness, heavy with dread that Leah's anguished breathing might have stopped while he was gone. He took no notice of the soldier who stood across the road as he had stood for the past two days. Every hour that the boy had off duty he spent simply standing there in the blazing sunshine, with his eyes on the house. This time, however, Daniel saw that the Roman was crossing the road and waiting for him, as he had before, between the road and the door.

"I must speak to you," Marcus said, as Daniel halted.

Daniel did not lookup.

"You hate me," the boy said. "I understand your hate. I am German. My people were conquered by Rome."

"You serve them," said Daniel with scorn.

The soldier shrugged. "All of my tribe are fighters. At the end of my term I will be a Roman citizen."

"You should have died first!"

The boy flushed under his smooth tanned skin. "I tell you I understand your hate," he snapped. "But I command you to listen to me."

Daniel said nothing, waiting.

"My cohort is transferred. Tomorrow I leave for Corinth. I pray the gods I never set eyes on your country again."

Daniel's quick burst of fury died back in helplessness. Even vengeance was snatched from him! Now he would never feel this man's life between his hand:;.

"Your sister was the only good thing in this rotting land. I will never see her again. Even if she were not a Jew, a legionary is forbidden to marry. I want to see her before I go. One moment. That is all."

Thunderstruck, Daniel looked directly at the boy before him. That a Roman should bend his pride to speak so to a Jew! Then the very humbleness of the request maddened him the more. His contempt overflowed.

"If you could save my sister's life, I would not profane our house," he said. "I would rather let her die. Understand this. If you try to walk through that door, I will kill you."

Marcus was still a soldier. His face went white, his eyes glinted with steel, and his hand moved of its own accord to his side. The two young men stood eye to eye, neither one giving way. Then the Roman heeled about and strode away, his shoulders rigid.

If she is dead, Daniel thought. I will go after him now. I will have that at least.

Leah still lived, but barely. She did not know that he had returned. She lay silent, with no strength to cry out against the demons. She had surrendered to them utterly.

In the afternoon heat Daniel must have slept a little. Sleeping and waking were all one endless sameness. But a sound brought his head up, and he saw the door of his house opening. Framed in it, against the sunlight, stood Jesus in his white robe. Dazed, Daniel struggled to his feet. Jesus moved through the door, touching with his fingers the mezuzah as he passed. Behind him came Thacia. Jesus did not speak. He moved quietly to Leah's mat and stood looking down at her.

Thacia came swiftly to Daniel's side. "We were away," she whispered, "with Joel in Jerusalem. Joktan just found me this morning."

Daniel scarcely heard her. He saw only that luminous figure. Jesus had come! He struggled to believe. Jesus had come to his house! He wanted to cry out to him, to go down on his knees, but he was afraid. Something about the quietness of Jesus held him silent. Jesus sat down beside Leah, and motioned for Daniel and Thacia to sit also, at the other side of the room. Then he bent his head and covered his face with his hand and seemed to rest.

If I could speak to him! Daniel thought with longing. If I could tell him it is my fault, that I have done this to Leah!

Although he held his breath and made no sound, Jesus raised his head, and his eyes met Daniel's. There was no need to speak. Jesus knew. He understood about Leah. He knew that Daniel had rejected him. His eyes, searching and full of pity, looked deep into the boy's and saw the bitterness and the hatred and the betrayed hopes and the loneliness. And then he smiled.

Unable to endure that smile, Daniel bent his head. Suddenly, with a longing that was more than he could bear, he wanted to stop fighting against this man. He knew that he would give everything he possessed in life to follow Jesus.

Even his vow?

He tried to cling again to the words of David that had always strengthened him.
He trains my hands for war—

But Jesus said that the Victory was God's promise. He called men to make ready their hearts and minds instead.

Was it possible that only love could bend the bow of bronze?

He sat trembling, glimpsing a new way that he would never see clearly or understand. We can never know, Simon had said. We have to choose, not knowing.

To know Jesus would be enough.

Almost with the thought the terrible weight was gone. In its place a strength and sureness, and a peace he had never imagined, flowed around him and into his mind and heart.