Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (8 page)

As they exchanged farewells on the wharf, Alphaeus gave his son a final lecture. “Remember what I’ve taught you about tax collecting. The main thing you have to keep in mind is very simple. If they think you might let them get away with paying less, or paying late, they’ll give you all kinds of trouble. You might even have to hire some lads with clubs to rough them up. But if they know you won’t stand for any nonsense, then most of the time they’ll just pay up.”

When Matthew arrived at the tollgate on his first morning, he didn’t find anyone on duty. He’d brought two servants with him in case he needed help, but he’d expected that someone—maybe the outgoing toll collector—would show him the ropes for the first day or so.

The tollgate was a stone arch straddling the highway, with a booth for the toll collector built into the inside. The barrier stood at a logical place to collect tolls, shortly before the wealth from the Mediterranean city of Ptolemais was about to pour into the lakeside city of Bethsaida-Julias. The tollgate should have acted as a sieve, filtering out large
clumps of money for the Romans and smaller clumps for the toll collector.

But the former toll collector must have allowed the traffic to beat down paths through the brush on either side of the tollgate. Even now, before the sun was fully up, the first travelers of the day were leading their donkeys and camels on those paths. Carts and wagons, which needed a level surface for their wheels, stayed on the stone-paved road, but they were rattling through the gate as fast as their drivers could urge the oxen or horses.

A few of Herod’s soldiers were lounging on a rise overlooking the gate, and their blue-caped captain came down to meet Matthew. “You can see why they decided to replace the last toll collector, hmm?” He waved a hand at the travelers hurrying around the gate. “That fellow wanted everyone to like him.”

But he laughed when Matthew suggested that the captain could help keep order around the tollgate. “Me, work for the stinking Romans? I’d rather eat donkey dung.” As Matthew stared at him, he added in a friendly tone, “No offense meant. Everyone has to make a living.” He explained that his patrol regularly checked this section of the highway for rebels. “So I’ll be seeing you again—if you last at this job.”

As the captain strolled off, Matthew cursed under his
breath. But there was no time to waste. He ordered his men to stop the traffic on either side of the gate while he stood in the gate itself and began collecting tolls.

An hour later, Matthew and his two men were soaked with sweat, dirty with road dust, and hoarse with shouting, but they hadn’t managed to force more than a few unlucky travelers to pay tolls. The rest of them dodged the toll collector as skillfully as if they’d practiced together beforehand. First, one of the horses pulling a carriage dropped to its knees in the gate, blocking the entrance. When Matthew called his servants to help clear that roadblock, a whole camel caravan slipped around one side of the gate. When Matthew ran after the camels, a stream of heavily laden donkeys escaped the toll on the other side of the gate. Meanwhile, a flock of beggars ducked in and out of the traffic, adding to the confusion.

Matthew was getting really angry … and really worried. At this rate, he wasn’t doing any better than the last toll collector. How was he going to pay for the rent on his villa, and his furnishings, and the extra servants?

Curse those lawless travelers! How dare they use this well-built highway without paying? Curse the Romans! If they expected him to collect their tolls, why weren’t they here to back him up? Matthew thought of his father, and he knew how Alphaeus would solve the problem. He’d call up his
thugs with their heavy sticks. Matthew pushed the thought away.

As Matthew stopped to mop the sweat from his forehead, an older man rode up on a donkey. “Good morning, toll collector.” He gazed at the scrambling tangle of toll evaders, making
tsk-tsk
sounds with his tongue. His deep-set black eyes, above his trimmed gray beard, had a shrewd gleam. “What a disgrace! This generation has no respect for law and order.”

“Good morning, sir,” said Matthew. “You’re so right. But if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to work.” He started to turn toward the gate.

“There’s a simple way to stop the illegal traffic,” said the man on the donkey.

Matthew turned back. He couldn’t be rude to an older man, but he was losing patience. “And what way is that, sir?”

The man smiled in a kindly way. “Why, throw up a wall on either side of the gate to block the paths. The brush beyond the paths is so dense, they’ll have no choice but to stay on the highway.”

Matthew considered, squinting past the paths. The brush did seem thicker away from the road. If walls would do the trick, then there’d be no need for thugs with heavy sticks. “How much would that cost?”

The older man made a gesture to indicate how trivial the cost would be. “Just a rough wall is all you’d need. Five or six workmen could do the job in a day or so.” He proposed a price.

Matthew exclaimed, “That’s six times the going rate for laborers!”

“It includes labor
and
materials,” said the other man calmly. “Nothing but the finest basalt rocks. And of course, I guarantee the work. I’ll require only half the price now, and half when it’s finished to your satisfaction.”

Matthew bargained for a few moments, but he was eager to come to an agreement. As soon as the money changed hands, the older man beckoned to his crew, who had appeared out of nowhere.

For the rest of the day, the workmen rolled and piled rocks into two dark walls on either side of the tollgate. Matthew collected tolls as best he could, soothed by the sight of the stone wings rising quickly. By the end of the day, however, he’d rethought the price. “I don’t owe you anything for materials,” he told the contractor. He gave a short laugh. “You just used the rocks lying around on the ground.”

“A bargain is a bargain,” said the contractor. “My men can take walls down as well as build them.”

Matthew cursed silently, but he paid the remainder.

For a few days, the walls worked fairly well to block the
paths and funnel traffic into the tollgate. Then new paths appeared, swinging around the walls in wider arcs. At first, only a few hardy travelers on foot could force their way through the brush. But gradually the paths widened.

Watching this happen, Matthew cursed himself for being such a gullible fool. Where was the contractor now who had “guaranteed” his work? Why had Matthew believed him about the brush being so impassable just beyond the old paths? Look, there: a fully loaded camel was squeezing through! Furthermore, now the detours were much farther from the tollgate, and therefore more trouble to guard. Matthew envisioned his father’s face, one cynical eyebrow raised as if to say, What did you expect?

The next day, Matthew woke up before dawn and went down to the Capernaum docks. The first rays of sunlight flashed over the cliffs on the eastern shore of the lake, touching the sails of fishing boats returning from a night’s work. “How was your catch?” he called out to the fishermen as they neared the dock.

“Lousy, to tell the truth,” a man in the nearest boat called back. He was stripped for work, wearing only a loincloth. The sinews stood out on his arms and back.

“Then come and work for me,” said Matthew. “I’ll pay twice as much as you make on a
good
day. I need you and five others like you.”

The men in the other boats heard him, and they hurried to tie up at the docks. “Count me in!” “Hire me, too, sir!” they shouted. Matthew was relieved to see that strongmen were just as easy to come by in Capernaum as in Magdala.

Pulling on his tunic, the first fisherman jumped onto the dock. “What kind of work would this be, sir?” he asked Matthew.

Matthew had gotten this far by pretending he was his hardened father, but suddenly he seemed to be himself again. “Some strongmen are needed up there,” he muttered, nodding in the direction of the highway.

The fisherman’s eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled frown. “Some kind of building going on?”

More fishermen joined the first one on the dock, their eager expressions turning suspicious. Matthew forced himself to say, “No. There’s a problem with toll evaders. No one has to actually hurt anyone,” he went on, talking faster and faster. “All you’d have to do is stand near the gate, carrying a stick-just
look
at them like you’d use it if they—”

“It’s the cursed toll collector,” said a man in the back of the group. “He moved into the villa up the hill.”

Matthew backed away from the dock, suddenly uneasy. He’d come alone.

But the fishermen didn’t threaten him. Some of them spit in his direction, and some said, “Roman lover” or “filthy
vermin.” Then they went about their business, lugging baskets of fish to the shore and spreading nets out to dry as if he weren’t there.

Humiliated, Matthew was about to leave when he caught sight of a straggling fishing boat nearing the shore. “James!” he exclaimed. Could the man in the back of the boat really be his brother? He hadn’t seen James for two years. “James!” He waved his arms.

The fishermen in the boat didn’t seem to hear him. Now Matthew doubted that it was James after all; the morning light glittered blindingly on the water around the boat. And why would Matthew want to see James, even if it was him? He left our family, Matthew reminded himself. Why should I care about him?

Turning, Matthew walked quickly away from the shore. But he knew he was afraid that the man
was
James. What if James, too, shunned his brother the toll collector? That would be too painful to bear.

That very day, Matthew visited Bethsaida-Julias, where his father’s contact lived, and brought back a team of tollgate guards. As soon as the travelers caught sight of these cold-eyed men with heavy sticks in their belts, they changed their minds about ducking the toll. Matthew imagined Alphaeus saying, Didn’t I tell you?

On the second day, a caravan of merchants tried to go around the gate, perhaps thinking there were enough of them to brave the guards. But the moment the first camel was led off the highway, the guards jumped on the caravan with cudgels swinging. In a few swift, brutal moments, the camel stumbled, its left front leg broken, and the driver writhed on the ground beside it with a bleeding head.

Matthew turned away, sickened, and noticed the beggars at the gate. They were watching. The beggars were maimed, crippled, deformed, and clothed in filthy rags—but they stared at the toll collector with pure contempt.

Matthew started to call the guards off. Then he thought, Isn’t this what I hired them for? He went back to taking tolls.

Clearly, the guards were accomplishing what he’d hoped, because there were no more toll-evasion incidents that day. Word of the new toll collector and his new policy must have traveled up and down the highway. Matthew avoided meeting the stares of the travelers, but he felt their hatred, like gravel flicking his skin.

Matthew had to give the guards room and board in addition to their wages, but he decided it was just as well to have them on his grounds. He needed bodyguards to protect himself and his strongbox, as well as the valuable furnishings of his villa, from thieves.

So Matthew’s new life fell into a routine. Every morning
at dawn, he and the guards arrived at the tollgate with his brassbound collection chest. No one traveled at night, but caravans always got up at first light for a day of travel. Therefore, Matthew needed to be in place early to inspect baggage and take the tolls.

With guards controlling the traffic, Matthew could do his job. That, like Alphaeus’s job at the Magdala harbor, was to check each merchant’s cargo and assess its value. He was staggered by the wealth in some caravans: eastern silks and spices from Damascus, or the precious purple dye of Tyre from the west. After collecting the standard percentage for the Roman Empire, he could demand whatever he wanted for himself.

Matthew didn’t have any qualms about taking money from these prosperous merchants. He had a good sense of how large a surcharge they’d bear. As Alphaeus had always taught his sons, set it high enough so that they hate you, but not so outrageous that they actually try to make trouble.

Matthew’s problems came with smaller traders, such as a lone potter with his donkey almost hidden under a burden of bowls and jars. “Sir,” he pleaded with Matthew, “if I pay what you ask, I can’t make a profit from selling my pottery. Sir, I have five young children and an old, sick father at home. How will I feed them if you don’t have pity on me?”

As Matthew hesitated, the traveler next in line spoke up. “That’s a good story,” he jeered. “Or is it five old, sick children and a young father at home?”

Matthew remembered Alphaeus’s words: If they think you might let them get away with paying less, or paying late, they’ll give you all kinds of trouble. Everyone within earshot was listening for his answer—the potter, the travelers behind him, the hired guards. This was no time to be weak.

“Pay up,” Matthew barked. He kept his eyes on the coins dropping into his hand, but he saw the man’s shoulders sag as he led his donkey through the gate.