Free The Ironsmith by Nicholas Guild

his master’s ear, biding his time until he could strike.
    That moment was never far from his mind, that moment in the Tetrarch’s garden when he had felt himself in the shadow of death’s dark wings.
    *   *   *
    There was a room, just beyond the door to the upper prison, which Caleb used when interrogations had reached a certain stage. It was a quite ordinary room, with a desk and chair and a stool for the prisoner. There was even a small window, high up on the wall, which allowed, at certain times of the day, a shaft of light that seemed to rest on the floor like a physical object—one felt almost as if one could lean against it.
    The ordinariness of the room was the point. It reminded the condemned that there still really was a world outside. Through the one window they could glimpse the sky.
    For their next interview Caleb ordered that the prisoner be washed and given clean clothes. He was brought in and directed by gestures to the stool. No one had spoken to him in four days.
    Caleb, who was sitting behind the desk, studied Judah’s appearance. He looked exhausted, but there were no abrasions on his feet, so apparently he had been able to make it up the stairway without being dragged.
    His expression was almost defiant, but Caleb knew from experience that this was a pretense that would shatter the instant it met any resistance.
    â€œTell me about the Baptist.”
    â€œI know nothing.” The prisoner—it was somehow difficult to remember that he had a name—shook his head. “I saw him once. Hundreds of people went to see him.”
    â€œYet there were not hundreds who were baptized.” Allowing himself a tight smile, Caleb held up a scrap of papyrus. He could not, at the moment, remember what was written on it, and it did not matter. “You were baptized. That is our information.”
    The prisoner, Judah bar Isaac, the scion of a family that had served the Temple since David’s time, covered his eyes with his right hand.
    â€œIt was an impulse. I yielded to it. I don’t know why.”
    Caleb wanted to laugh. It had been an inspired guess, nothing more. The papyrus, now that he looked at it, contained this week’s guard roster.
    â€œSo you admit that you were one of his followers. You admit that you lied in your first statement.”
    â€œI admit that I was baptized.” Judah looked up over the edge of his hand, seeming to hide behind it. “John was very persuasive.”
    â€œAnd why would you, a young man of wealth, popular and pleasure loving, why would you find John persuasive? That he should appeal to peasants and beggars, this I can understand. But why you?”
    â€œI was growing tired of the life I led. John said that the sinful would find only misery, and I knew he was right.”
    â€œThen you were a follower.”
    Judah stared at him for a moment. He looked exhausted, as if the effort of explaining the obvious had worn him out.
    â€œThe pull of habit was too strong,” he said finally. Then he laughed. It was a short, despairing sound. “I found I could only be virtuous a little at a time. And, in the end, not even that.”
    For a moment neither man spoke, the one because he perhaps realized that he had already said too much and the other because he was struggling to conceal his sense of triumph.
    Caleb could sense it. Judah bar Isaac was on the verge of becoming his willing accomplice.
    Judah was perfectly suited to the role he had been chosen to play—an aristocrat, cast off by his family, in search of redemption. He was all of these things in real life, so it was not a part he would need to learn. John’s disciples might even remember him, the rich man from the city who was moved to accept baptism and reclaim God’s favor. In any case, it would never occur to them that he was a spy.
    Because it would serve no purpose simply to arrest and execute these people. Antipas had to be