In the end what had happened was plainly the result of a thought-out plan, a carefully laid trap.
Rachel’s sepulchre lay to the north-west of Bethlehem. It was regarded by pious Jews not exactly as a holy place, there was only one holy place and that was in the heart of the Temple, but as a place of reverence, a landmark in their history. There the patriarch Jacob’s favourite wife had died in giving birth to Benjamin, his favourite son, and he had buried her and reared a pillar over her grave as a memorial.
A small contingent of Roman soldiers, out on patrol from the subsidiary barracks just outside Bethlehem, had chosen to camp by Rachel’s tomb—there was water and firewood handy. They had leaned their standard against the weather-worn pillar and two of them had succumbed to that perpetual disease of soldiers-the necessity to leave their mark, to carve their meaningless names. The Rabbi of the nearest village, accompanied by three elders, had gone out and asked civilly that the standard should be shifted and that the pillar should not be further defaced. Some of the men had not understood a word, but one had, and he had said, “Old men, go shave yourselves I’ How had the ill word spread? Tekoa was even farther from the sepulchre than Bethlehem was; who carried the news? On what swift and fatal feet it had travelled, how instant and unthinking had been the response.
Nathan, Dan and a third boy had taken axes and hacked the standard to pieces. The Romans had pounced; two had been killed and one injured. The boys, outnumbered four to one, had been hauled off.
For Josodad the time immediately after had been a blur of misery, self-reproach and conflicting advice. Had he been able to feel surprise he would have been surprised to find how many people in the immediate vicinity had known what was going on under the pretence of music-making, and believed that he did, also. To the remarks of such people, knowledgeable after the event, he paid no heed at all; but he did listen to the wildly varying bits of advice.
There were those who said, “Do nothing. To take any action now will be
to inculpate yourself.” Those he ignored.There were those who said, “The Romans are great on law; even boys like this will be properly tried. Go to Jerusalem at once and hire a good lawyer, one who will plead that the boys were taking a short cut home and that the Romans, alarmed, attacked them first.”
“Does such a lawyer exist?”
Dozens, they told him, men who would stand up and plead any cause, with eloquence and passion, for a price.
There were others who said that in such a crisis the only possible hope lay in the High Priest, He was very powerful; even the Romans, even Herod the King, never wittingly went against him. And the only way to his ear was through a venal priest named Ephraim.
There were those who said, “Keep religion out of it. Once mention religion and you’re done. Hire a lawyer who will plead that Nathan is younger than Dan, completely subservient to him and simply did what he was told.”
In any other circumstances Josodad would have questioned the ethics of such pleading. But he knew that he would sacrifice a dozen Dans to save Nathan. A dozen? A hundred. A thousand.
Plainly the one thing that all the advice had in common was the need for money; money to buy, money to bribe. So he’d gone to Ezra and sold all that he had to sell, his flock.
Often now, in the slow-dragging nights, he could see that in love, in panic, he had rushed into folly. On the day after Dan’s first visit he had to Nathan decried desperate action and praised patience and trust in God. But when the moment came when he must choose between the two, he’d gone into action that was just as futile, as anything those boys had ever done. And so he had injured his cause with God, He had offered bribes, thereby breaking the law against not causing another man to stumble. They’d stumbled very eagerly, taken his money, promised impossible things. He’d lied too, borne false witness, sworn that Nathan was a near simpleton, completely under Dan’s thumb.
It was unavailing. Afterwards, when he came to his senses, he realised that men who had taken his money and given him promises and hope had known how it would end. Had Nathan not been concerned he would have known himself. The boys were guilty, the Romans could have killed them, there by Rachel’s -sepulchre, and committed no outrage; the meticulous mockery of a trial, with its inevitable end, was designed as a warning. Nothing was left but to go to the Wailing Wall and ask one favour of God—that the boy should die quickly. And even that had been denied.
These had been his memories for almost five years as he walked about by day, or woke, with that abrupt jolt, in the night.
What followed the memories, grew out of them and seemed inseparable from them, and were even more torturing, were the doubts which the whole business had bred. He’d always been a devout Jew, with the religion of his fathers woven, firmly he would have said, into the fabric of his life. But he’d prayed that agonised prayer for one last small mercy for his son, and the prayer had not been answered. Had God no mercy? Was there no God? And if no God, then no life hereafter; which meant that Nathan was not gathered to his fathers, safe in Abraham’s bosom, but a dead thing, rotting in the ground. To think thus meant despair.
Night by night he fought that thought. He would remember that psalm of David’s known as the Shepherd’s Psalm…. There was a passage in it that ran, “Lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” That seemed to imply that death was only a phase. Then not far away was a place called Endor, where in the distant past a witch had summoned up Samuel’s spirit and Saul, who had known Samuel well, had recognised him. If that wasn’t proof of a life hereafter, what was?
Hopes and questions and speculations span round and round in his mind until finally he reached the most dreadful thought of all. That over the years the poems and the stories and the whole business of belief had been invented by men, bereaved as he had been bereaved, who could find no comfort on earth. In the quiet dark the stars so far away, so
uncaring, the nightwind blowing, it was dangerously easy to harbour such a thought: to see men as sheep, of no real importance, born only to die.
Sometimes from exhaustion, he would reach this point and sleep again; sometimes the torture lasted until the stars faded and the darkness paled and the dawn lay rosy in the sky. And never once, no matter what dark paths he had trodden through the night—and might tread again, two or three times during the day, had he ever failed to make the good Jew’s first prayer of the morning—“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe who hast sanctified us by thy commandments.”
In part this was habit, but it was a great deal else beside. Truth for one thing; by the commandments of God the Jews observed them were sanctified. Nathan’s friend might say that Jews were being corrupted and absorbed and that might be true of a few, in cities; but the great majority of them resisted the temptation to run after strange gods, attended the simple, clean service in the synagogues, believed that God was a spirit, kept the Law and were the Chosen people. Josodad, even in his despair, had no wish to cut himself off from them. There was a certain amount of caution, too, in his attitude; no man could fully understand God’s ways, and despite everything—and by that he meant his doubts, his unanswered prayers—it was possible, more than possible that Nathan was with his fathers, and there, when he himself died, Josodad hoped to join him. So all day and every day, he still lived exactly in accordance with the Law, just in case his thinking had gone a little awry through grief.
So, day followed day, and now it was winter again, his fifth of tending Ezra’s sheep and the flocks were in their winter quarters, near enough to Bethlehem so’ that should snow fall and cover the ground for any length of time, they could be fed from Ezra’s well-stocked barns. Josodad did not appreciate, as Arad and Ibri did, this proximity to the little town; it meant that he could make frequent visits to his home. The boys—as he called Arad and Ibri in his mind—were rigorous about claiming their free hours, and if he abjured his, always thought he was doing so from the intention of presently cheating them; and everyone knew where the flock lay, so if he didn’t go home there would be talk.