In a Jewish community, that was not possible. Not even desirable. Benjamin ha-Nasi approved of what his wise men would decide, though he knew it would be a mistake. A mistake in the short term. In the long term the fortress of the Jews, the place where they had kept their identity in the long centuries of flight and persecution, was the Torah and the Law. As long as they held to that, history had taught them, they would survive—as a people if not as individuals. If they abandoned it, they might thrive for a while. Then they would merge with the sea around them, become indistinguishable from the lawless, unprincipled, superstitious believers in Christ, their false Messiah.
Tranquilly the prince listened to the arguments, conducted as much to allow all members of the council to show their learning as to affect the final decision. Those who were putting the case for continued detention, in the way that Solomon might have done, were doing so passionately but insincerely, according to a convention understood by all. Against them was the deep reluctance of any Jewish community to order imprisonment as a punishment. Freedom to go as one pleased was one of the inheritances from the desert which they shared with the Arabs their cousins. It was the other side of the horror of exile from the community which was the council's ultimate threat against their own.
The learned Moishe was summing up, and preparing his final peroration. He was the Amoraim, the interpreter of the Mishnah. “And so,” he said, looking round fiercely, “I will now speak of the Halakhah, which is the ultimate conclusion of this matter debated. First it was spoken and passed on from generation to generation, now it is written and fixed for ever. ‘Treat the stranger within your gates as you would your brother, for this you will be thrice blessed.’ ”
He ended, looking round. If his audience had not been constrained by the dignity of their place and cause, they would have applauded.
“Well spoken,” said the prince finally. “Truly is it said that the learning of the wise is a wall to the city. And that it is the folly of the unlearned that brings woe upon it.”
He paused. “And yet, alas, this young man is unlearned, is he not?”
Moishe spoke up. “By his own account, prince, he is the wonder of the world for learning. In his own way and his own country. And who should condemn the customs of another country, or its wisdom?”
Just what you were doing this morning, thought Benjamin to himself. When you gave us your opinions on the follies of the ship-barbarians, with their king who tears a book to find out what it is, and asks the price of the paper not of the contents. Nevertheless…
“I shall do as the feeling of the council directs,” said Benjamin formally. He crooked a finger to his guard- captain. “Release the young man. Give him a mount and the food he needs to reach the Caliph, and escort him to our boundaries. Charge the cost against our next payment of the land-tax to his master.”
The young Arab, who had squatted at the side of the room listening without understanding to the Hebrew exchanges that would determine his fate, recognized at last the tone and the gesture. He sprang to his feet, eyes blazing. Seemed for a moment as if he meant to burst out in complaint and accusation—as he had done fifty times already in his short captivity—but then thrusting it back in a transparent rush of policy. It was obvious what he meant to do: rush off to make every bitter denunciation to which he could lay his tongue. Revenge himself with words for every slight that had been put upon him, real or fancied, by the barbarians of whom he was so jealous. Jealous of their flying of kites.
The prince turned his attention to the next case. It was true about the learned, he reflected. They were a strength. And the unlearned were a plague. But worse than both, alas, were the class to whom both the Arab Mu'atiyah and Moishe the learned belonged. The class of clever fools.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside the cool stone basement of the best house in the tiny village, the
“He does not speak our language. How can we put him to the test?”
“He has some Arabic, as do we. That will have to do.”
“It is irregular. The test must be given in the words of the test.”
“It is we who make the rules and we who can change them.”
A third voice broke in to the exchange. “After all, he has already passed the one test. And he passed it without knowing he took it.”
“You mean the water?”
“I mean the water. You saw the way his men came over the hill. They were blind with weariness and mad with thirst. They are Northerners from cold lands, and seamen who never walk. The big one was near to death. And the king himself was so dry—we saw it—that he could not speak. Yet he threw the water on the ground.”
Another voice corroborated the third. “And before that, he took it in his mouth. Then he spat it out. That is one of the tests. To refuse the man water till he can think of nothing else, then to give him it. To see if he can take it into his mouth and yet reject it, as a sign of victory over the body. The temple of the Evil One, prince of this world. That is what the one-eye did.”
The first voice continued to complain. “He had not had long enough! In our test the man is kept without water for a night and a day.”
“Sitting motionless in the shade,” replied one of his antagonists. “Our rule says the candidate must be kept till he thinks of nothing else but water. I have seen candidates in better shape than that one when he came over the hill.”
“In any case,” said a voice that till now had not spoken, but now spoke with the tones of one who gave a decision, “we will proceed with the test. For as we speak, the Emperor's men are tearing stone from stone. Over our holy things and the bodies of our fellows.”
The gray cowls nodded slowly, in the end without dissent.
Outside, his feet dangling over the edge of the near-precipice that shut off the little village to the north, Shef sat with his far-seer in his hand. Once he and his men had drunk their fill, it had been possible to look around, to understand the lie of the land. The village perched high on a slope, in what was a mere terrace in a sweep of baking stone and scrub. From high up, more terraces could be seen here and there, each with its little plot of trees and crops. Shef could see how people could live almost at ease up here. His far-seer had caught dozens of scrawny sheep browsing the grass on far hillsides. Sheep meant mutton, and milk and cheese. And one thing the villagers might count on, and that was that they would not be bothered by tax-collectors. Only very tough and determined ones, and such would find far easier pickings elsewhere.
Yes. It was clear that almost any kind of authority could be resisted up here. King or Emperor. Or Church and Emperor.
In the coldly objective way his mind worked when he was left alone, Shef set himself to considering the information he had been given. One thing he had come to understand about himself during the years of his rule was this. Good or bad, he did not believe all that was told him, even all that he himself saw. But his disbelief meant that he did not need to lie to himself, as so many people, he knew, did all or some of the time. They believed what they needed to. He did not need to believe anything, and could see things the way they were.
So he did not need to believe Svandis. She had greeted him, and his men, with tears of relief. Then, as he had seen, she had grown ashamed of herself and talked harshly and fiercely to cover what had been her fear. He did not blame her. He had known veteran warriors do the same. And when she told him what had happened, Shef, piecing together what he knew of her history, had understood both her fear and her shame.
A woman, taken from both sides with her dress whirled over her head. No woman wore anything beneath her dress, whatever she wore over it. A woman with her arms trapped, naked from breast down, could think of nothing but rape. That was why it was an offense in all the Northern codes of law to raise a woman's clothing above her knee. But Svandis had not needed legal prompting to think of rape. She knew all about that. Shef was proud, but not amazed, that she had slashed herself free and killed a man: he had seen her grandfather do the same, starting unarmed and half-drowned against two men who held his arms. She had the blood of Ragnar indeed.
But the fear had struck deep into her. What she said about her captors was tinged by it. And she said that
