The Eighth Veil (18 page)

“And the questions?”

“If she was dead already from drowning, why cut her throat? What is the significance of the coins, if any? What kind of murderer leaves his knife behind at the scene, particularly one so easily identified? Who was the girl? What about the headdress? And, finally, what is the significance of the pendant.”

“That’s all?”

“You are being ironic. Well, it’s all I have just now, but it’s a start. There are other questions attendant on these, but these will do for now. No doubt the queen has written you that the man we have identified as the possible killer is Menahem, the king’s long time companion and foster brother.”

“She has. And I take it you do not believe he is.”

“I didn’t say that. I only said I have serious doubts. You ask for examples. Take this one confusing bit, this
discontinuity
, if you will: the knife that turned up in the bath, the alleged murder weapon, was found at the opposite end of the pool. How, if the knife accidently slipped from the killer’s hand, did it end up ten cubits away?”

“The body drifted?”

“Possibly. Not likely, though. Her lungs were filled with water. She sank, the physician said, and there is no current in a bath as there would be in a stream. But I concede she might have moved. Then, and staying with the knife once more, it is Menahem’s. It is a ceremonial blade he often wears. It is of foreign design, Egyptian if I am any judge, and unique in its appearance and design. Everyone in the palace had seen it and knows it. What sort of killer would use such a knife, one that everyone could readily identify as his should it be connected in some way with the murder? You see?”

“Perhaps it was a crime of passion and impulse. You did say the girl had been forced. Are you sure it was by force? She was nothing more than a servant girl. Do you really consider it as a rape? Perhaps in your law it is, certainly not in the Roman way of such things.”

“Her headdress at the scene suggests she was not there for any immoral purpose.”

“How’s that?”

“A modest woman, servant or royal, must cover her head. To undo one’s locks in public signals the woman is loose and available. She was wearing her covering
—
”

“That is not a particularly compelling bit of evidence, Rabban. She could have removed it on arrival. There are myriad possibilities to explain the thing. In any case, if her master desired her, he has the right to take her. No consent is required or sought.”

“No? Well, under our Law, which is still
the
law in Judea, it would be. Under normal circumstances, that is. I do not know if life in the palace can ever be thought of as normal, but that is a matter to consider some other time. And, as it is beginning to look as if the girl was not a servant, there may be a need to apply a different standard.”

“Not a servant? What or who then?”

“I cannot say yet. I am pursuing that line now, or was before you pulled me away. She could read and write, Prefect. She had in her possession an elaborate seal and letters. She was seen by another servant, the man Barak you assigned me, to be reading them in one of the palace courts and crying over its contents. I have since attempted to read those epistles. They are confusing in content but seem to contain answers to questions which she must have posed to her correspondent.
Ergo
, she also writes. Then I must account for the pendant she always wore. It turns out not to be what it seemed at first and further may have some important significance—”

“Important? In what way, Rabbi? Please do not try my patience anymore.”

“I do not wish to but at the same time, am not prepared to say. If I am wrong, it may only create more trouble and I am sure you do not want that. So, before I bring anyone before you for the crime, I must know who the girl was and how she fits into the larger picture. If I can uncover the answers to those questions, I will have the motive and the motive, I guarantee, will lead to her killer.”

“All this is very fine, Rabban, but I want this matter closed and now. You have enough evidence to convict the man Menahem. Please understand this, whether he is, or is not the killer is of no importance to me whatsoever. Let us have him and be done with this business. You said you wished to be shed of this duty. Be so and send me Menahem.”

“Excellency, you are right, I wish to be finished and return to my life. But I cannot send this man to trial just now. You gave me eight days to unravel this snarl, let me have them.”

“And if I don’t?”

Gamaliel sighed. Why did he always find himself at odds with important people? The queen, the High Priest, and now Pilate?

“If you do, Prefect, I will stand as his advocate in court, and I will see him acquitted.”

“How? What is it you think will exonerate him?”

“Three things, Excellency—he is old, he is impotent, and he is right handed.”

Chapter XXIV

Gamaliel did not return to the palace at once as he’d intended. Instead he wandered unthinking toward the western wall and out through one of its gates near the old quarry, long since abandoned by the stone cutters. At one end, people of substance had had tombs cut into the rock face. A mound, a low hill in fact, of unquarried stone, said to be fractured in too many places to be of use for construction formed the other end. Between the two a garden of sorts had been planted, Gamaliel did not know by whom. The Romans had established their place of execution on the hill. Golgotha they called it—the place of the skull. Gamaliel shuddered at the sight. There were no naked bodies hanging on crosses today. He realized that there might have been had Pilate not yielded to his stubborn refusal to hand over Menahem. It was a near thing, if one took into account the acknowledged temper and reputation of the Prefect.

He turned away at the thought.

Without realizing how he’d managed to circle the northern edge of the city, he found himself at Loukas’ doorstep once again. He looked up when it swung open to reveal the grotesque features of the servant, Draco.

“Is your master in?”

The servant mouthed something akin to a positive acknowledgement and, without asking, closed the door and proceeded to the back gate to admit Gamaliel into the rear court. The physician met him and offered a bench. Gamaliel sat heavily and exhaled.

“You look like you have just escaped death at the hands of the Scythian hoards, Rabban. Where have you been?”

“Close enough. I have narrowly missed a very bad outing with the Prefect. He lost his temper at the end of our interview. I think if he’d worn his sword, my head would even now be rolling across the Temple Mount.”

“Well, that is an exciting picture to conjure. Not one I would enjoy, of course, but ah…very graphic, very Roman. What did you do or say to the Great Man to incur such a reaction, or do I really want to know?”

“Exciting for you, not for me. You remember our last conversation about the difficulty I am experiencing with sorting through the business of the dead girl?”

“Your wonderful seven veils? Vividly. By the way, I saw the princess in the entourage of the king when he made his symbolic visit to the Temple this morning. I must tell you, all I could think of was your image. She is very beautiful. One can only wonder—”

“Thank you for that. I was not trying to stimulate your licentious Greek imagination, only attempting to answer your question. You can be very trying sometimes.”

“First, I am Hellenized, that is to say Greek only by inclination, Rabban. Secondly, trying is a perception only.”

“Both are distinctions without a difference as far as I am concerned. I meant the business of the murder and the problems I have in connecting the evidence to the probable killer, not to the princess in whatever state of undress you imagine her. Anyway, the Prefect wishes to close the case. We had, he said, enough evidence to arrest Menahem. I should add that it did not matter to him if the man was innocent or guilty. He just wanted it over and was angry I refused to go along.”

“And so the Righteous Man, that would be you of course, said that he would not convict an innocent man and would bring his own considerable power to bear to prevent that from happening.”

“You know me too well, Loukas.”

“Everyone does, Gamaliel. It is the thing they love most about you. It mollifies all the other things they find disagreeable. You are a lucky man that way.”

“Things they find disagreeable? About me? How is that?”

“Rabban, you interpret the Law of Moses for them. People, if you haven’t noticed, do not want the Law to be interpreted for them. They prefer to interpret it as they will. There is far more freedom for them in that approach. Allowances can more easily be made for their bad behavior. A god of one’s own imagining is far more comfortable than one imposed from outside and over which one cannot exercise any control. You bring that sort of divinity into sharp and unyielding focus. People would rather you didn’t, would rather you left them to their own devices. And the fact that many of your students are also abroad intruding into their lives in much the same way with opinions, reminders, and chastisements does not help your reputation very much either.”

“But the Law is the Law. If we abandon it, we turn our backs on the Lord, deny our history, forfeit our future
,
and invite retribution.”

“Come now. Think for a moment on what you just said. Is it possible to punish the people of Israel any more than they have been already? Think of the suffering the ordinary folk in this occupied country must daily endure. What could be worse than this Roman oppression?”

“It is terrible, I know, but—”

“Do you…do you know truly? Your problem, the problem more appropriately, of the rich and well off, if I may say so, is that their wealth and position insulate them from the consequences of their actions. You do not worry where your next meal will come from or if you can feed your family. Will enough be left of your harvest to pay your taxes? Those are not your concerns. Your difficulties with Roman rule are almost wholly cerebral. The poor and dwellers on the margins of society have a very different sense of outrage, I assure you. ”

“I know, I know, you are correct. They are suffering, we are not and it is certainly an easy enough ditch to fall into. Alas, I think it has always been so and will remain so. Human nature is distressingly predictable.”

“Again, spoken like a philosopher, not the Rabban of the Sanhedrin.”

“Yes, yes, and that said, I do understand and I am sympathetic.” Was he really? At his level so much was taken for granted. What was it the steward’s wife had said…
He speaks to them in ways they can understand.
What had she meant by that exactly?

“So you say and I am sure you believe it. Consider this, haven’t the Pharisees, in their zeal to define the Lord so closely, become nothing more than spiritual scolds, only telling people what he doesn’t want rather than what he does? To many of us it seems that the men you train in the Law have managed to divide the faithful into two quite distinct and, I may say unequal, camps.”

“Come, come, Loukas. Nothing is that simple.”

“But it is. You have reduced the Lord’s people into the Righteous and the Sinners. There seems to be no middle ground. Suppose one wished to speak the Lord’s name, he is a blasphemer. He unties a knot on Shabbat, he is a sinner. This city, with its Temple and Pharisaic hierarchy, has become the citadel of the Righteous. The rest of the country, Galileans, the country folk all the way to the Gaza, indeed those camped without the walls at this moment, are Sinners, scorned by your minions even as they collect their sacrifices and taxes. You see? Your minute rendering of the Law binds the people tighter than they say the dead are in Egypt.”

“Without the time and study required, that is an easy thing for you to say, Loukas, but at this juncture it is beside the point. Where we stand at any moment in history has nothing to do with the Lord’s expectations of us in eternity. The Law is timeless. Rejecting it in whole or part can only lead to sorrow. That path, as I said, can only carry us to disaster as a Nation and a race.”

“Then you had better hope the Lord has a more generous opinion of his creation than you do, my friend. But this is not why you are here, is it? I’m sorry to have distracted you with this ranting. You see I visited the Temple today and witnessed your people at work.”

Gamaliel shook his head, suppressing his anger. Criticism of his life’s work from a non-believer did not sit well at the moment.

“Not all my people, I fear. Do not apologize, Loukas. Even if what you say makes me angry, you still have a genius for diversion and that is what I need most when I am pressed about as I am this day. We must debate the Law some other time, however.”

“Of course. You know I am always ready. So, you defied the Prefect and he turned red in the face and threatened you. How did you manage to make him homicidal and more importantly, how did you manage to avoid a trip to Golgotha or wherever Roman justice is currently being meted out?”

“Still Golgotha. I visited that place on my way over here. Very frightening. Well, as you suggested earlier, I told him if he tried Menahem for the girl’s murder, I would defend the poor man in court and I would win the day.”