The Bronze Bow (5 page)

"I will leave you," he said. "You will do better to go in by yourself."

Daniel looked at the house uneasily. "How do I know they—"

"They are expecting you. I told them you were coming."

Daniel glared at him. What right had Simon to be so sure he would come? Simon smiled a brief encouragement and strode away. Daniel stood, resentful, overcome with panic, and as he hesitated the door opened and a very old woman stood on the threshold.

How bent she was, and thin!

"Daniel?" Could that quavering voice belong to his grandmother? "Is that you, Daniel?"

"Yes, Grandmother," he stammered. "Peace be with you." As he spoke he heard the second call of the horn across the village.

"My boy! It is time you came home!" Her eyes, pale and clouded, peered up into his face. Her hands clutched at him.

At the door he hesitated, and the strong habit of his childhood reaching out to him, scarcely aware of what he did, he touched his finger to the mezuzah, the little niche in the door frame that contained the sacred verses of the Shema. Then he stepped over the threshold.

The room seemed to be empty. One smoking oil lamp hung from the rafters. On the mat beneath it the supper dishes were set and the Sabbath lamp stood ready. He peered about him with dread.

"Come Leah," his grandmother said. "You should not be working after the second call. Come and greet your brother."

Then he saw the girl, seated behind the loom in the corner, the long golden hair flowing over her shoulders. He stood tongue-tied. He had remembered a little girl. She was almost a woman, and he realized that she was beautiful.

"Leah," his grandmother fussed again. "It is Daniel, come home after all these years."

He ran his tongue over his lips. "Peace, Leah," he said.

The girl raised her head from her work, so that he caught a glimpse of the clear blue of her eyes. The fear in them struck like a sickness behind his ribs.

"Don't mind her," the old woman said. "She will know you before long. Shame, Leah. Get some water for your brother. Where are your manners?"

The girl did not move. Daniel waited, sick at heart. "Leah," he stammered. "Don't you know me?" He pleaded with her. "Don't you remember how you always brought me water when I came home to visit?"

She raised her head again. Slowly into the blue eyes he watched recognition come. "You really are Daniel?" Her voice was faint and tremulous. "You have been away so long."

"Please bring me the water, Leah."

Obediently she moved from the loom to the earthen jar by the door and poured out water into a hollow bowl, every motion gentle and graceful. But the bowl she held out to him was shaking so that the water spilled over. He took it awkwardly and bent to wash his feet. What had he expected or hoped? It was just as it had been when he left five years ago. No, it was worse. His sister Leah was fifteen years old, and fear still looked out of her eyes.

The last call of the horn came clearly, announcing the start of the Sabbath. His grandmother lighted a wick from the lamp and held it to the Sabbath lamp. "Speak the blessing, Daniel," she said. "It is fitting the man should say it."

He hesitated, then the words came falteringly to his lips. "Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments and commanded us to kindle the Sabbath light."

They sat on the hard dirt floor around the frayed mat, and once again his grandmother looked to him. Long ago, for the first months in the cave, he had repeated a blessing silently over his food. This he remembered well. "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Who bringeth forth bread from the earth—"

There was certainly little to bless God for, a watery stew made of lentils, some coarse barley bread. In a moment he noticed that the others were not eating at all, only watching him, their eyes following each morsel from the bowl to his mouth.

"Do you not eat with me?" he asked.

"We have eaten already," said his grandmother.

But Leah was more honest. "Grandmother said we must save it for you," she explained, in her sweet childish voice. "She said you would be very hungry."

His appetite left him. "You must eat with me," he insisted, pushing the bowl toward his sister.

With a frightened look toward the grandmother, the girl broke off a crust of bread and dipped it into the bowl. He saw the blue veins through the delicate flesh of her hand; the wrist was fragile as a bird's claw.

Where did they get their food, anyway? He tried to think how to ask. "It is good bread," he said. "Do you grow the grain?"

"It is pauper's share," his grandmother answered shortly.

He wished he had not asked. He hated the picture of his grandmother following after the reapers in the field, scrabbling for the sheaves they dropped, which had by law to be left for paupers to gather.

After the meal was cleared away they sat in silence. His grandmother did not ask any questions. Did she really care that he had come? She seemed too weary to care about anything; her chin had settled into the folds of her mantle and she drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep. He supposed she must still work in the fields of ketzah, the plant from which the village took its name. Stooping over all day, she sowed and weeded, and when the blue flowers had dropped, she beat off the seed covering with a staff and gathered the tiny seeds, so hot to the tongue, which were marketed as a seasoning for food.

He looked about him. The clay platform which had once divided the room into two levels had crumbled so that it was no more than a shelf, scarcely wide enough for sleeping. A hollow scooped out of the earthen floor held the cold ashes of an old fire. The only furniture was a battered wooden chest and the loom at which Leah had sat.

As darkness fell there was a soft thudding sound against the door. His grandmother roused herself and let in a small black goat. The little creature went straight to Leah, who reached out both arms toward it. The goat nuzzled against her, and settled down to sleep with its square chin in the girl's lap. She sat fondling it, twining the black hairs of its beard around her fingers, talking to it in a soft murmur like the sound of doves on the roof. Daniel watched them, his uneasiness lulled for a moment. She looks like our mother, he thought. Then he caught the words the soft voice was saying.

"You mustn't be afraid of him. He is our brother Daniel come home. When he milks you, you must be good and stand still. See how big and strong he is. He will take care of us and keep us safe."

Suddenly he was afraid again. He looked away, trying to shut out the sight of her with her golden hair shining in the lamplight, trying to shut out the sound of that murmuring voice. Everything he cared about and worked for was threatened by that small helpless figure.

His arms and legs were cramped. The airless little house seemed to hold all the heat of the day. The sputtering oil in the lamp filled the room with a rancid odor. His head was heavy, and he thought with longing of the evening breeze that would be moving among the branches above the cave. With relief he watched his grandmother lift down mats from a niche in the wall.

"I have made ready your old place on the roof," she said.

He took the worn roll of matting, bade her goodnight, let himself out the door, and climbed a tottering ladder up the outside wall to the flat rooftop. It was little cooler up here. Heat lay over the town like a smothering blanket. He sat for a time hugging his knees and looking about him.

Why did I come here? he thought. Already he yearned to be away from this place. Hunger gnawed at him. Up on the mountain the men would be still sitting about the fire, their stomachs satisfied with stolen mutton and grape wine, joking and telling boastful stories. Later they would wrap their cloaks about them and sleep with their lungs full of clean mountain air, and the stars would come down, brilliant, close enough to touch. He wondered if Joktan had made sure that Samson had enough to eat. He wondered how long the man had waited at the top of the trail. Suddenly he flung himself on his face and buried his head in his arms and could have wept for homesickness.

T
HE
S
ABBATH MORNING
was very still. Not a grindstone rumbled, not a voice was upraised. No puff of smoke rose from the clay ovens. No women passed on their way to the well. Descending the ladder to the house, Daniel found a handful of olives and a cold crust of bread waiting for his breakfast. The little goat wandered in the small garden patch behind the house.

Very early in the day, when Daniel was already wondering how he could endure another hour, Simon came to the door. His knock sent Leah cowering into a corner. Daniel hastily went out into the road, shutting the door behind him.

"I'm on my way to the synagogue," Simon said. "I'd like you to go with me."

Daniel scowled. "I haven't been to a synagogue for five years," he countered. "One more Sabbath won't matter."

"On the contrary," Simon answered with a smile. "Today is none too soon."

Daniel's lips tightened. He bent and picked up a pebble and shied it at a little green lizard that had crawled from under the house. Simon's eyebrows lifted. Probably it was against the law to throw a stone on the Sabbath.

"There's a man I'd like you to see," Simon told him. "They say he will visit our synagogue this morning."

Daniel glanced up. Beneath the words there was a hint he could not miss. "What sort of man?"

"I'm not sure," said Simon. "He comes from Nazareth."

"Good reason to stay away," grumbled Daniel. Then, feeling the pressure of Simon's silence, "A Zealot?"

"It may well be. Come and see what you make of him."

"In these clothes?"

"I have brought you a cloak and shoes."

Daniel stared at his friend. If Simon, stickler for the law, had carried a bundle on the Sabbath just so that Daniel could see this man, he must consider the matter important. Daniel took the cloak and went inside the house. His grandmother was nodding again in the corner. She looked up and muttered his father's name, her eyes confused with sleep. Leah crept forward shyly and bent to fasten the leather sandal.

"Will you go with me?" he asked on impulse, and could have bitten his tongue at the terror that leaped into her blue eyes.

"Never mind, I didn't mean it," he said miserably, jerking away from her.

Simon looked him over with approval as he stepped out into the roadway. "How does it seem to be home?" he inquired.

"You call this home?" Daniel burst out. "My grandmother does nothing but sleep, and my sister is possessed by demons."

"She is no better?"

"Before I was apprenticed—when she was five years old, she hid herself in that house. In all this time she has never stepped outside the door."

"So I've heard. The demons must have a strong hold.
Yet she does good weaving, I understand. Your grandmother sells it in Chorazin."

Daniel had not paid much attention to the loom in the corner, but now Simon's words somewhat lightened his shame.

"Who is this man we go to see?" he asked, not wanting to think about Leah.

"Jesus, son of Joseph, a carpenter by trade. He has left his work and goes about preaching from town to town."

"Preaching? I thought you said he was a Zealot."

"He preaches the coming of the kingdom."

"You have heard him?"

"No, but I have seen him. I journeyed to Nazareth with a friend who went to arrange for a wife. While we were there this carpenter came back to preach in his own synagogue."

"A town like Nazareth must have boasted—"

"They did not boast. They tried to kill him."

Daniel glanced quickly at his friend, his curiosity roused not so much by the words as by the tone of Simon's voice. But Simon had no time to say more. They were approaching the small stone and plaster building in the center of the village, and men and women brushed close to them on either side of the road.

Daniel had to stoop to go through the low doorway. He sidled close to the wall, tensing his muscles, conscious of his shaggy height and his wide shoulders, trying to draw in and make himself smaller. But he soon realized that today there was no curiosity to spare for him.

He was sure that the synagogue had never been so full in his childhood. Close together on the low benches huddled the men of the town, their knees drawn up almost to their chins. They sat in order of their trades, the skilled artisans nearest the pulpit, the silversmiths, the tailors, and sandalmakers. Farther back sat the bakers, the cheesemakers and dyers, and along the walls where Daniel and Simon had taken their places, stood the lower tradesmen and the farmers. Still others crowded the doorway, and many, he saw, would have to stand outside in the road. By the rustle and murmur behind the grilled screen that separated the women's section, many of the men had brought their wives with them.

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might—"

The great words of the Shema rolled through the synagogue. For a moment Daniel was caught up by them as he had been in his childhood. But as the long passage of the Law was read aloud in Hebrew and then carefully translated into Aramaic, the language which the people spoke and understood, his attention began to wander. Though the throng of men sat respectfully, he could feel their restlessness also, and the anticipation that mounted, moment by moment. They knew that by custom a visiting rabbi would be invited to come forward and read from the Torah. When the long-awaited moment came, every man turned to watch the stranger who made his way to the platform.

The man's figure was not in any way arresting. He was slight, with the knotted arms and shoulders of one who has done hard labor from childhood. He was not regal or commanding. He was dressed simply in a plain white tallith that reached to his feet. His white head covering, drawn closely over his forehead and hanging to his shoulders, hid his profile. Yet when he turned and stood before the congregation, Daniel was startled. All at once nothing in the room was distinct to him but this man's face. A thin face, strongly cut. A vital, radiant face, lighted from withinbya burning intensity of spirit.