The Eighth Veil (17 page)

A woman entered and glanced nervously around and then approached him. “Rabban,” she said with a voice so soft he almost did not hear her.

“I am the Rabban. What is it you want, woman?”

“Forgive me for coming. I have heard you believe Menahem is the man who has killed the girl they call Cappo.”

“That is true, as far as it goes. He is the most likely at the moment. There is the matter of his knife, you see. You have something to tell me about Menahem?”

“He is not your killer, sir. I know him and I know he could not have done this awful thing.”

“I see. You know this how? Who has spoken to you of this matter? It is not a thing to be noised about in the women’s quarters.”

“I am not from the women’s quarters, Excellency. I should explain. It is my husband who has told me these things.”

“Your husband? Who may that be?”

“I am Joanna, the wife of Chuzas.”

“Ah! And you know we do not have the right man how?”

“I know Menahem because he it was who led me to the rabbi.”

“The rabbi? What rabbi would that be? Woman, the streets of this city teem with rabbis, would be rabbis, discredited rabbis, and pagans who pass themselves off as rabbis.”

“I speak of the man Yeshua ben Yosef.”

“Ah, I see, that rabbi. Yes your husband mentioned him. And Menahem is a follower, too?”

“Yes.”

“And he led you to him?”

“We…I had a great need and Menahem, he found the rabbi and the rabbi healed me, so yes, I suppose you could say he led me to him.”

“And what is it about this carpenter-rabbi that makes him so appealing to you? Beyond the healing, of course. It was a serious illness?”

“Yes…you could say so. I was…well it is done now, thank the Lord.”

“And you admire him for what he has done for you. That is only natural. But this man has no followers of note that I am aware of, no people of substance deem him any more than a rabble rouser like his cousin, and he teaches without authority. What is it that attracts the wife of the king’s steward to join his odd flock of men and women?”

“When he speaks about the Lord, it is different. It is as though he knows him personally. He speaks of mercy—”

“And do you believe it is the place of women to think much on those topics.”

“I know it is written,
It would be better to see the Torah burned, than to hear its words upon the lips of a woman,
but I don’t understand why that must be so.”

“Where is that written, woman?”

“I do not know, sir. I am but a woman and not permitted to learn scripture. But it is often repeated to me by my husband when we, or rather when I, venture to speak about my love of the Lord.”

“But you wish to know more of our Creator, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And this rabbi of yours encourages you to learn?”

“He does.”

“Does he teach the Law, Torah, Moses?”

A vertical line appeared on Joanna’s forehead. “Sometimes, yes, but mostly he quotes from the Isaiah scroll.”

“Ah, so it is like that. Yes, I see.” Gamaliel did not agree with some of the teachings of his own mentor Hillel particularly those concerning women, and he had his doubts about this untutored rabbi from the north with his emphasis on Isaiah and the Coming Age. He’d neither heard nor seen the man and cared nothing about him. But as he gazed at the earnest face before him, he understood that a willing heart is honored by the Lord irrespective of the breast in which it beat.

“I do not begrudge you the opportunity, child, but as you know, women are assumed to have
binah
, intuition of the spirit. Therefore you are exempt from some of the Commandments. That is why you may not be counted in a
minyan
and why, among other things, when you read Torah, it does not count as a reading in the community.”

“Yes I understand. It is a thing some women find burdensome, but not I.”

“No? Good. Then, do you know why it is the ordinary people and not the scholars, the leaders in the city, who seek your rabbi out? Why are so many from the countryside where regard for the Law is otherwise so lax?”

“You mean the Galilee. I can only guess, sir. He speaks to them in ways they understand. He talks of sowing and reaping, of lost sheep, unfruitful vines, and of catching fish. He knows about landowners and what it must be like for a man to stand fearful yet forced to wait in the market square, hoping for the chance to earn the day’s wages he needs to buy bread to feed his family that evening. The people of the city—David’s city—are many generations from tending flocks or pruning branches from vines. In the city we buy and sell the fruits of other men’s labor.”

“Just so, but we meet at the Temple, we read the same Torah.”

“We do, but with respect, Rabban, it is not the same in practice. When we go to offer a grain sacrifice, we buy a measure of wheat in the market along the way and take it to the Priest to place on the Altar. But a farmer takes his measure of wheat from stores he has grown himself and brings it to sacrifice. If he has had a bad harvest, his sacrifice is greater than ours, you see? In the same way that we buy and sell the fruits of another’s labor, so also do we sacrifice their fruits, not ours. The farmer, the shepherd, the vintner, all sacrifice from their substance. Our sacrifice is perfunctory, theirs is real.”

Gamaliel’s eyebrows which had begun to climb his forehead, now dropped down to near normal.

“I see. As I said,
binah.
And now you have a problem, woman. Your husband does not approve of your love of this rabbi. You walk on the thin edge of disobedience when he wishes you to cease and you do not obey him.”

“I know that. It is a great worry for me but that is not why I came to you. It is something more…I know my husband blames Menahem for the problem. You see, that is why he did what he did. He is angry at the king’s companion.”

“What did he do?”

“It is only a suspicion. You found a knife in the bath, it is said.”

“I did.”

“It was Menahem’s?”

“It was.”

“Oh dear. I am not certain. It was something he said and…” She sighed and looked away, her eyes troubled. There was something she did not wish to tell him and he suspected it was important. But for her to do so she would have to betray her husband. He could not ask her to do that. Could she know that Chuzas’ had drafted the damning letter to Pilate? That must be it.

“So you believe because he held Menahem responsible for your straying from him in this business of the rabbi he hoped to see Menahem discredited?”

“I fear it, yes. But I don’t know for sure and I don’t want to…I just wanted to say…”

“Enough. I will keep what you have said in mind. In the meantime you have a problem to solve with respect to your rabbi. Your course is to do one of two things. You must yield to your husband,” Joanna’s face fell, “or, you must persuade him to join you in following this man.”

“Which?”

“I cannot say, but am of the opinion he will reap a greater benefit if you bring him to your rabbi than if you yield to his position. But I cannot tell you how to proceed or predict which will be the end of it. Now you must be off before your husband finds you here and thinks wrongly of the reason why.”

Chuzas would arrive soon and he did not want him to know his wife had provided him with information. It led no closer to the killer but it might help explain away one inconsistency that continued to gnaw at him.

Chapter XXIII

As it happened, it wasn’t the steward who entered next, but a grim captain of the palace guard who marched into the room with two equally stone-faced men. Surprised, Gamaliel started to rise from his chair. He had planned to have a word with the captain, but hadn’t asked to see him just then. He assumed the arrival signaled something else, some new turn in events.

“Captain, have you come to tell me you have found Graecus?”

“No sir, sorry. I am sent to collect you and hand you over to a small unit of Roman soldiers who are waiting at the palace gate. The Prefect, it seems requires your immediate presence. And to be sure you comply, he has sent legionnaires. They will escort you to the Antonia Fortress.”

“Will they now? My, my, that was quick. The queen’s message must have touched a nerve or the Prefect is in her debt. Or…what else must be on his mind that he would yield to a queen for whom he has little or no respect?” The captain shrugged and looked embarrassed. What did he think of Gamaliel’s frequent disregard for the exalted position of the royal family? What did any of them think? “Very well, Captain, lead on.”

The captain of the guard led Gamaliel to the palace’s outer gate where several bored legionnaires, resplendent in dress leather armor, slouched against the palace wall, their short swords drawn. Gamaliel greeted them and gestured toward the Antonia Fortress.

“Lead on, my good men,” he said and fell into step between them. The group made its way through the crowd of sweaty pedestrians, pilgrims, not to mention the cut-purses who make a point of attending the High Holy days and risk certain death or dismemberment in search of easy money. It took some shoving on the part of the soldiers to clear their way through the crowd. Gamaliel heard low voices muttering, “It’s the Rabban, he has been taken prisoner. What has happened?” He guessed by nightfall the rumor would have spread throughout the city that he’d been arrested, tried, and was even then on his way to Golgotha to hang on a cross outside the city’s walls. He waved to the crowd hoping they would understand that he was not in trouble, only responding to a summons. In truth he didn’t know if that were true or even if he would return from the interview. Pontius Pilate, though he’d been on station just a little over a year, had already acquired a reputation for harshness and insensitivity in his treatment of the people over whom he ruled. Gamaliel could only guess at what the Prefect might have in store for him. But it did not take a scholar to assume it was nothing good.

As he walked along with his grim faced escorts, a sinking feeling grew deep down somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He wished he’d never been caught up in this business. Why hadn’t the Prefect asked the High Priest to do his dirty work? He, the High Priest, would have jumped at the chance to curry favor with the Prefect and would have been an infinitely more pliable agent.

The Antonia Fortress rose up from the great plateau formed by the Temple Mount to the south and the Temple itself. Built by Herod the First and named for his late friend, Marc Antony, it was the station for the small contingent of legionnaires in the city and Pilate’s headquarters when he visited the city. There had been rumors he had eyes on the king’s palace and would soon require Antipas to resume his residence in Jerusalem in his own, smaller palace near the Hulda Gates.

Pilate waited for him at the entrance in full dress armor but with neither helmet or armament. The Rabban took the latter as a good sign. Pilate tapped his foot as Gamaliel and the soldiers mounted the steps. Without waiting for a greeting, Pilate lashed out.

“Please explain to me, Rabbi, why I must be put in the position of seeming to bow to the whims of the Queen of the Galilee and Perea? Is it true you have found the man who murdered the servant girl and yet you refuse to turn him over to me?”

“Your pardon, Excellency, I can only answer yes and no, I have identified a suspect, yes. What little evidence we have gathered so far points to him as the killer. And yes, I have not as yet decided to turn him over to be punished. I wish it were as simple as our beloved queen would have it, but it is not. So no, as the Rabban of the Sanhedrin, I cannot condone the arrest and confinement of an innocent man. More than yourself, Prefect, I wish to end this business, but at this juncture I cannot.”

“You have scruples then, Rabbi?”

“More than scruples—serious doubts. There are discontinuities, and questions that tantalize but do not have answers, not to mention an as yet unsubstantiated bit of evidence suggesting the man in question may well be the victim of a prevarication on the part of a
pseudo martyreo
close to the matter which, if true, will require other actions. It is one of our Ten Laws Moses brought to us.”

“A false witness or simply a liar?”

“There is a difference?”

“You people have far too many dogmas for my taste, Rabban.” Gamaliel nearly retorted that the Romans had far too few, but thought better of it and bit his tongue. Pilate looked quizzically at him and continued. “Tell me of the…what did you call them? Discontinuities? I require examples. And before you do that, can you give me a good reason why I should not clap you in a cell and drag the suspect in myself.”

“A reason? Several, I believe. First the facts of the case as we presently know them. The girl was raped and killed in the bath and her throat slashed. Her body appears to have been discovered within moments of her death. Later, at the scene, that is to say in the emptied bath, I found, a knife, some coins, a cut leather thong, a pendant, presumably fastened at one time by the thong and around the girl’s neck, a scrap of clothing, her headdress, and the fact, determined later, that she may have drowned before or as a result of having had her throat cut.”