Red locked arms with mine. We held one another steady. He explained the working of the Sparrows’ charity as we descended into the vast shelter. Solomon’s quarry was reserved for the orphan sons of Jerusalem.
By decree of the ruling seventy of the Sanhedrin, Solomon’s former stone quarry was a shelter for torch-bearing Sparrows from the ages of about five to twelve. In recent years, after bullying and abuse had increased among the population, married couples who were servants of righteous families took turns living in the cavern as custodians. These were called shepherds. The shepherds’ tent was erected inside at the center of the quarry. Outside the tent flap a fire blazed in a rock-lined pit like the hub of a wheel. From the center, smaller camp fires spread like spokes. The number of Sparrows varied. This month Red told me there were just under two hundred boys. These were organized and grouped by age. The youngest and most vulnerable children slept nearest the main fire and the overseers’ tent. They were like the lambs in my father’s lambing caves, I thought, as we neared the entrance of the shelter.
We approached a row of latrines outside and stopped to use them.
Timothy explained, “It’s not so bad. We all contribute our wages. Work crews of boys haul water and wash clothing. The older boys cook and help distribute bread. Torches are donated by the Temple charity. That fellow you met, Joseph of Arimathea, is a big contributor.”
I involuntarily touched Joseph’s cup tied at my waist. I pondered the fact that, just like Joseph of old and his coat of many colors, I had met a man named Joseph who now wore my mother’s finest prayer shawl. Did it mean something? I wondered.
“Our fares are set by law,” Red continued. “Nobody dares cheat us these days. We get paid when we carry our torches. Whoever don’t pay gets hauled up before the judges and whipped.”
Timothy coughed into his hand. “It’s better now than when I first came. In the spring, when the days get longer, we don’t have so much business. The farmers come, and lots of boys get hired to work outside the city. Lucky ones get apprenticed in trades.”
Red pantomimed a hammer blow. “I’d like to be a blacksmith. Work by a forge. Never be cold again. That’s what I’d like. But . . . it’s not so bad.”
Timothy plucked my sleeve. “Except we have no one . . . not like a family. Not like somebody like you. A shepherd’s son. What a coat. And such boots.”
Red agreed. “If you was on your own, going to Joppa, there’s some in the pass who would kill you for such a coat and boots. But not here. They can’t hurt you here.”
Again my thoughts went to the danger of travel and the offer of Joseph of Arimathea to help me. Perhaps I should speak with him again.
The Sparrows’ cavern was dimly lit by the fires. Smoke curled lazily upward and drifted like mist against the blackened stone ceiling. Groups of Sparrows made their nests in fresh straw.
I followed my new friends to the shepherds’ tent, where we placed our bread into heaping baskets for distribution.
Timothy said over his shoulder, “You know what I heard about Jesus? The one you’re so keen to meet? He fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.”
Red shook his head in disbelief. “We sure could use someone like him here in Jerusalem.”
“Aye,” Timothy agreed. “But no wonder the priests hate him so. If even half the rumors are true about Jesus, he makes them and all their fine charity look small, don’t he?”
Red argued, “Don’t know why he doesn’t just call down fire from heaven, if he’s the Messiah like they say. He healed a blind beggar named Peniel, who begged his whole life at Nicanor Gate. If he can give Peniel eyes, why can’t he make bread grow from trees?”
I asked, “Why don’t you follow him and see for yourself?”
The boys exchanged an uneasy look. Timothy explained, “You know what would happen if we left our place to follow Jesus?”
Red blurted, “They’d throw us out, just like they did to poor Peniel after he could see. The elders chased him out of Jerusalem. Told him to never come back to synagogue! Threatened his parents. He was disowned. If us Sparrows went out the gates even one time to meet Jesus? When we came back, our places would be gone. There’d be some other boy carrying my torch.”
“It ain’t worth it.”
“No. Ain’t worth it,” Red echoed. Dozens of fellow link boys hailed my friends as we passed. This was a sort of family. They were brothers, united by suffering and loneliness. They were bonded, just as the shepherds’ families who watched my father’s flocks were bonded to one another. I realized this was the one haven of safety for orphans in the vast and dangerous city. For a Sparrow to lose his place beside the fires of Solomon’s quarry was to lose everything.
We washed in a common trough and then made our way to the circle of twenty-five boys, where Timothy and Red introduced me all around. Then we heaped up clean straw to make our beds.
My stomach growled. “How much longer?”
Red raised a finger. “The last of the brothers will be returning soon. We count them all. Timothy is captain of our circle. He will count and report. We don’t eat until we’re all in the roost, so to speak. Not one is left out.”
Minutes ticked past, and stragglers arrived at the cave one by one. They snuffed out their torches and picked their way through their companions settling into their home group.
It was late, and baskets of bread had yet to be divided and distributed. I was exhausted from grief and disappointment. Hunger gnawed at my belly and kept me awake. I fixed my gaze on the shepherds’ tent, waiting for an adult to emerge and take charge.
“When?” I asked again.
Timothy shrugged, counted the boys in our circle, then stood. “Wait here,” he instructed. He made his way toward the bread baskets outside the overseers’ tent. Waiting in a line of other captains, he seemed confident and undisturbed by hunger pains. At last an elderly couple emerged. The white-haired man raised his hands and blessed the meal, then took charge of distributing a half loaf for each Sparrow to our captains.
Red said, “If all your family is dead, maybe you can come here. Come live with us all. Become a Sparrow.”
I gave a half smile and thanked him for the invitation.
From here and there in the cave I heard the sound of coughing. It was hard to imagine being sick without my mother to tend me. I tried to imagine living the lonely life of a boy in Solomon’s quarry. A hush of anticipation fell over the cavern.
My eyes stung with tears as I took my bread from Timothy. What if all my family was dead? Or what if I couldn’t find them? I remembered my mother’s cooking in the sheep camp. Meat roasting over the fire. Sometimes trout. Fresh bread slathered with butter. Vegetables. Nuts and dried fruit. Rich cheese.
I held the crust of bread in my hands and tried to be thankful. How I longed for Mama’s gentle voice and sweet prayers for me as she lit the Shabbat candles.
Timothy sat down cross-legged beside me. “What are you staring at? This isn’t bread Jesus conjured up. Looking at it won’t make it grow bigger.” He tore at his morsel. “Eat!”
I nodded and raised the scrap of supper to my mouth. It was tasteless and stale. The generosity of the Temple charity was somehow tarnished by the lack of quality of the bread. But when a boy was starving, he would not complain.
I studied Red as he picked off small mouthfuls and seemed to savor each bite. Behind, in the ring of younger boys, someone began to cough with the force of a barking dog.
Timothy paused but did not raise his eyes. After a while he replied, “It’s the season when so many boys get sick. The sickness carries many away.” Then he leaned close to me. “Nehi, get away from here. Quickly. Tomorrow. Go see the man who wears your mother’s prayer shawl. Beg a favor of him. An escort to Joppa. Find your family if you can. Leave this place.”
Chapter 22
The day was cold, the air clear and biting. Blackened snow, fouled with soot and grit and churned into slush underfoot, was heaped in corner
s and alleyways. Only the parapets surrounding the roofs and the tops of walls enclosing terraces and gardens still boasted coats of pure white.
Red, Timothy, and I stood outside the gates of the manor belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, the Younger. It was set just inside the wall of the Holy City, on a hill atop Jerusalem’s far southwestern border. The home was modest in comparison to the palace of High Priest Caiaphas, or that of another Pharisee named Nicodemus, both of whose dwellings we had passed in coming from the caverns. Yet those grand homes were near enough to be called neighbors. The finely fitted amber sandstone of this wall and the ornate scrollwork of this gate proclaimed the wealth of the family within.
I was at my destination, but now I hesitated. My fingers touched the knob of a bell pull that hung beside the gate. I flinched away from the chilly brass and stopped.
“Go on,” Timothy urged. Guessing at the cause of my reluctance, he added, “He said you could call on him for help.”
I offered a crooked grin. “That was kind of him.” Sweeping one hand across my shepherd’s garb, I continued, “But this is daylight. Do I look like I belong inside these walls?”
“So he gives us each another penny and tells us to go away,” Red said pragmatically. “Go on, ring it. If you don’t, I will.”
Plucking up my courage, I gave the rope a tug. We heard no corresponding signal from within.
“Harder!” Timothy ordered.
This time a melodious jangling sounded inside the enclosed courtyard, followed immediately by the rhythm of swiftly tapping feet. We heard the sliding swish of a bolt being withdrawn. The portal was opened by a pleasant-faced woman older than my mother, but of the same size and build, and about the age I guessed my grandmother to be.
“Bless me,” she said, running her eyes over the three of us, then fixing her gaze on me. “However did you get here so soon? And where have you left Abel?”
“Ma’am?” I said. “Is this the home of Joseph the Younger?”
“Of Arimathea the Younger,” Timothy corrected.
“Aren’t you the link boys I sent Abel to summon?”
I was baffled and then grateful when Timothy responded as our leader. With a bow he indicated Red and himself. “We have the honor to be Jerusalem Sparrows. At your service. But we don’t know of any summons, nor were we sent here by anyone named Abel.”
“Then why have you come?” she asked, bending forward. Her brow furrowed, but it displayed the same good-natured lines as her smiling mouth. Suddenly her expression cleared, and she put her knuckles on her hips. “Wait! What did you say your names were?”
“I’m Timothy, this is Red, and the one we guided here . . . the one who is seeking admittance . . . is Nehemiah of Amadiya.”
She laughed then, a peal of laughter that rivaled the chimes of the bell pull.
The youthful form of Joseph of Arimathea, again wearing my mother’s unique handiwork, emerged from the home’s entry across the courtyard. “Hadassah? Have they come? I want to send for—” As his eyes lighted on me, he stopped.
Grasping my shoulders, Hadassah pulled me in front of her, facing the young master. “I believe you wanted to locate Nehemiah, grandson of Boaz the Weaver?” she said.
The housekeeper ushered us into the receiving room of the home, where I encountered still more surprises: Raheb and his son Tobit, from the caravan, were also there!
“So now our party is complete, I think,” Joseph said. “But perhaps explanations are called for.”
The mystery was soon unraveled. Joseph said, “I did not realize you had traveled with my friends. Otherwise I would have insisted that you come home with me. You see, my father is partners in business with Raheb here, and the two of them with Lazarus of Bethany.”
I was listening to the explanation, but I could not stop staring at Tobit’s face. There were no bandages, and his eyes were not watering or red or puffy.
“They were in the group from Bethany I met on the Temple Mount,” Joseph continued. “And they have been staying in the Bethany home where Jesus of Nazareth has also been residing. I think Tobit may want to add something.”
Both Tobit and his father wore wide grins.
“Healed me!” Tobit responded. “I knelt beside Jesus. He dabbed my eyes with mud, then told me to go and wash. Now I can see perfectly!”
“And Dinah, my boy Yacov’s wife,” Raheb added cheerfully, “says she believes she will be barren no longer. Says when she touched the fringe of the rabbi’s tallith she felt something change, knows it.”
I had missed my own encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. “That is truly amazing, wonderful news,” I said. Then I asked Joseph, “But you sent for me, sir?”
He smiled. “I thought about it all the way home from the service. It is not an easy or a safe road for a boy to travel to Joppa alone. I have a load of exports I’m taking to a ship waiting there. You can go with me. Two more days, and then on your way.”
Two days, and Jesus no farther away than a home in Bethany? “You are very kind. Thank you.” I could see Jesus, complete my mission, and then locate my family in Joppa. I said as much to the group.
Raheb shook his head. “They’ve gone. The teacher and his band of students.”
“Gone where? Gone far?”
“Far enough, I suppose,” Raheb explained. “The other end of the country. Up to Perea, they said. Complete wrong direction from Joppa altogether.”
Once more I found myself part of a caravan, but it was a far cry from tramping through the brush, herding goats. Joseph of Arimathea rode a fine, prancing sorrel horse at the head of a file of ten camels loaded with trade goods. This was a wealthy commercial venture, carrying the wines of Bethany for shipment abroad. Wicker baskets strapped to the flanks of the camels each contained amphorae of the latest vintage.
There were no straggling drovers coaxing lame animals, nor any lost children to be accounted for. The journey from Jerusalem to the sea coast would be completed in two days, rather than the weeks I had spent on the trail from Zakho. Instead of walking, I was mounted on a cooperative red-haired donkey named Esau. The bindings securing the fleece pad on which I rode were silk. Though still dressed in my thick coat and shepherd’s boots, I felt like a prince.
We were accompanied by Terah, Joseph’s steward. All the camel drovers were armed with short swords. Counting myself, we made a party of thirteen. As one of the main highways in Judea, the road from Jerusalem to Joppa was patrolled by Roman legionaries, a party of whom overtook us in quick march. The Roman officer, a centurion on a black horse, saluted Joseph as he rode by.
After we passed a village identified for me by Joseph as Emmaus, we entered a narrow, rock-walled canyon. The track descended rapidly from the heights of Jerusalem.
“This is the same route Joshua followed when he routed the Amorites,” Joseph observed. “And the same course Judah Maccabee came up when he launched the great battle near Emmaus and freed our land from the Greeks.”
I was surprised when, a mile later, the road climbed back out of the gorge, crossing the summit of a row of hills to its south.
Once atop the ridge, we paused to let the animals rest. Joseph handed me a bottle of water flavored with lemon juice and a sesame seed cake dripping with honey and scented with cinnamon.
We rested beside a shining bronze plaque affixed to a stone pylon. Even though I had never been on this road before, I did not need to see the newly placed mile marker to know we were on a recently completed Roman road. The perfectly smooth, level, cobblestone surface, bordered on both sides by curbing, attested to the efforts of the Empire.
“Say what you like about the Romans,” Joseph confided in me, “but they are superior engineers. The two greatest needs of this land are aqueducts for water and better roads. The Romans surveyed this.” He swept his hand over the ravine from which we had emerged. “For a thousand years and more, the road to Jerusalem has gone up that canyon, following every bend of the stream bed. This new route saves three miles of the jou
rney and is much more pleasant.”
The wind out of the west had a surprising saltiness about it. A distant line of dark blue, bisecting the world from north to south, confirmed that I really did scent the ocean.
We camped for the night eighteen miles from Jerusalem. The hill on which we stopped was the last elevation above the coastal lowlands. The Plain of Sharon spread out before us—a tattered blanket sporting patches of brown earth, yellow stubbled fields, and gray rock outcroppings.
The sun was still high in the west. Joseph saw my questioning look and answered my unspoken query. “There is good water here—and some grazing. Better than we would find on the lower slopes. Tomorrow will be an easy half day’s journey.”
Within moments a pavilion was set up for Joseph, which he invited me to share. A fire was kindled, and a haunch of mutton soon roasted on a spit. South of our chosen camping place was a solitary knoll crowned with the tumbled stones of a ruined fortress.
“Gezer,” Joseph said. “Built by the Canaanites long ages ago, then captured by the Philistines and the Egyptians in turn. Later it was fortified by King Solomon.”
“But no one lives there now?” I asked.
“Owls and badgers and foxes. Why?”
“I thought I saw someone moving among the boulders at its summit.”
Shading his eyes against the sunset, Joseph studied the remains of Gezer. “A wild goat, perhaps?” He shrugged. “Tell me again the story your rabbi told you, the one about seeking the infant Jesus.”
Even Rabbi Kagba seldom drilled me as did Joseph of Arimathea on that occasion. He wanted to know every detail, making me rack my brain for barely remembered bits of the tale. Between bites of roast meat and chunks of fresh bread, I tried to keep pace with Joseph’s insatiable appetite for more about Jesus of Nazareth.
“All within the Sign of the Two Fish: Jupiter, the Righteous King, and Saturn, the Lord of the Sabbath . . . coming together and moving apart and coming together again, three times in a year and a half.” I waved my dinner knife toward the horizon. Jupiter, together with Mars and the moon, danced between the signs of the Bull and the Twin Brothers.