The Ironsmith by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online

enough matter to track the clerk to his mistress—a prostitute, although the clerk appears not to know it. A few questions revealed that she was indeed expensive, and a few more revealed the name of the merchant with whom she deposited her earnings. I apologize, my lord, but I was obliged to use your name to bring the merchant to reason. He agreed to hold back the prostitute’s money until he hears from me.
    â€œI then went to that lady, explained the situation to her, and made her understand that she would never see a single coin of her money unless I had all the particulars. Fortunately she is of a businesslike disposition and keeps excellent records. Here is an accounting of everything she has received from your clerk.”
    That afternoon Eleazar confronted his clerk, who tearfully admitted his indiscretions and begged for mercy. Eleazar contented himself with merely dismissing the man.
    The next morning Caleb assumed his new position. His first advice was that the merchant be instructed to release all of the prostitute’s money to her, including everything she had received from Eleazar’s former clerk.
    â€œIt is in the nature of things, my lord, that many secrets worth knowing come in the way of such a lady. I suspect she will prove well worth every shekel.”
    And thus Caleb began to assemble his network of agents and spies, through which he seemed, after a time, to know everything worth knowing about the undercurrents of affairs in Galilee. He quickly ceased to be merely a clerk and took over those aspects of rule which are distasteful but necessary, but that was how it had begun.
    â€œWhat do you think, Father?”
    Eleazar had just presence of mind enough to recall what his son had been saying. He smiled, and sensations of pleasure and sadness mingled in his heart. The boy was just at the threshold of manhood and already his ideas were marked with maturity and clarity of mind. He was the single blessing that had emerged from the marriage of two people destined in every other way to bring misery to each other.
    â€œThere is a general problem with allegory,” he began. “It is too flexible. That way the Scriptures can be made to mean whatever you like. Interpretation becomes a kind of game, requiring little beyond intellectual agility.”
    Zadok seemed disappointed. His father reached across the table and touched him on the shoulder.
    â€œGod does not speak in riddles, my son. Yet if He did, I think you would be the one to solve them.”
    *   *   *
    Father and son would return home to Sepphoris together. They would travel by cart and Zadok would manage the horses, which would please him and make him feel that his father accepted him as a man.
    But first Eleazar had to complete his business with Antipas, made now more urgent and more complicated by this affair of the Baptist.
    Thus, after breakfast, the First Minister walked the hundred or so paces from his house to the Tetrarch’s palace.
    The palace was huge and had cost vast sums of money. Building seemed to be a passion with the Herodians, both father and son, but the Great Herod had built, in addition to bathhouses, theaters, and palaces, the Temple in Jerusalem, which might stand for all eternity as a tribute to God’s glory. What had Antipas built besides cities in which no one wanted to live and palaces that were like gigantic toy boxes?
    Yet a ruler must occupy himself somehow. A ruler’s function was less to do anything than simply to be, to possess power, which was, thankfully, rarely used. A ruler collected taxes and quelled any opposition, for which purposes he had a few servants like Eleazar and, more importantly, an army. A ruler existed to be feared.
    And, for the rest, Galilee could be trusted to look after itself. The villages were governed by ancient custom, and in Sepphoris Eleazar’s father had organized committees of the leading citizens, who attended to necessary