Free The Ironsmith by Nicholas Guild Page A

convinced that they formed a conspiracy against him, and for this Caleb needed witnesses and confessions. He needed people from within the group who were willing to denounce it.
    But that end would never be gained by coercion. Judah had to be converted.
    Fear, of course, had its role, since the final question was always the same: How did one deal with fear? The interrogator stripped away a man’s defenses until he himself was the last defense. The prisoner came to live through his jailer. That process was an art.
    And the key was always to find the weakness, the grain of self-doubt that lives in every man. Attack him from within and eventually he must surrender.
    Judah bar Isaac had just revealed his weakness.
    â€œAm I still in Galilee?”
    The question was a surprise, and Caleb had to consider what answer to make. Or if he should answer at all. He decided it was the moment to give back a little.
    â€œYou are in Galilee.”
    â€œI wondered. Yours is the only voice I have heard since … this started. You speak like a Judean.” He smiled, shyly, like a child. “Are you a Judean?”
    â€œYou will be returned to your cell now. Guard!”
    Caleb saw the expression of terror in his cousin’s eyes and felt a sense of relief. How close had Judah come to discovering his identity?

 
    5
    As he stood in the doorway of his house, looking down the street, which gradually descended into the lower city, Caleb was thinking about his breakfast. He fancied his stomach was troubling him.
    In matters of food he was abstemious, but he wished to take pleasure in what little he did eat, and this morning the melon slice had been too ripe. His kitchen woman was, of course, Galilean and simply could not be made to understand that melon should be slightly crisp and not sweet to excess. It was the eternal problem of dealing with provincials.
    The street was empty, but he knew he had only to walk a few minutes to be in the market district, where he would be surrounded by crowds, and he hated crowds. They made him uneasy.
    It was possible, although unlikely, that he might be recognized, and a mob was capable of anything. Usually, when he went into the lower city, he took a few soldiers as an escort, but his business today was best achieved without calling attention to itself, so he was obliged to go alone.
    And the Baptist had been dead two months. Probably few even remembered him.
    Still, he felt vaguely giddy. He knew he was subject to fits of apprehension—it was, after all, endemic to his work—but he preferred to credit this morning’s disturbance to his digestion.
    Or to the fact that his wife had remained behind in Tiberias. It was the wise choice, since Michal’s closeness to the Lady Herodias was useful, but a man cannot always be wise in matters touching on his wife. He missed her. He had been away from her too much of late. Even when she was in a filthy mood, when she screamed at the servants and threw things, he was glad to have her near him. It was torture to have her a day’s journey away.
    Or to homesickness. He did not hate Galilee, but it was not Judea. He missed Jerusalem.
    Eight years ago he had not imagined he could ever miss the city of his birth. When his marriage had brought him into disgrace with his family, with little more in his purse than the title to a small farm in Galilee, his strongest emotion had been relief.
    As it happened, Caleb never reached the farm. Tiberias was on his way, and Tiberias turned out to be an entertaining city. He sold the farm, without ever having set foot on it, for enough money, he estimated, to keep him in comfort for at least three years. In that time something would turn up. He had been born under a lucky star, so something always turned up.
    But after a year, largely due to the extravagance of his new wife, he was near destitution.
    Michal liked to watch the chariot races. She always insisted on the most expensive seats, the ones