Arcarius

Yehudah stood still, watching, while people flowed past him like a river around a rock, yet few seemed to notice him. He was simply an obstacle in a busy crowd, something to step around. He had always been good at fading into the background when he needed to. He had always been good at allowing other people to decide he was unimportant, although it required more discipline than most of them would have supposed. He made a few observations on his tablet, slipped the stylus into its place, folded the tablet shut like a book and lowered it into the pouch at his side.

He had arrived early, leaving while the morning was still forgiving and taking the quieter roads towards the city before the heat settled. The streets followed old, irregular routes between buildings whose owners had done what they could with the space available. Pale walls returned the light from either side. Recessed doorways offered brief pockets of darkness, and beyond the open fronts of shops people were preparing for customers who had not yet arrived. Where the buildings stood close enough together, coverings stretched overhead and held a little shade between them. Towards the centre the streets widened, those sheltered stretches became less frequent, and the exposed stone waited for the sun. By midday it would have accumulated enough heat to make even a short crossing unpleasant.

Only a few traders had been travelling in his direction that morning. At the larger junctions, armed soldiers watched the traffic and occasionally stopped someone whose appearance or possessions interested them. Yehudah gave them no more attention than was necessary to establish where they stood and what they were doing. Men carrying weapons often mistook interest for a challenge. He had encountered the tendency in enough places to consider it independent of training, allegiance or the quality of the weapon.

Their presence was familiar. Their behaviour had become less predictable. The fighting of recent months had left soldiers and citizens watching one another for intentions that might once have passed unnoticed. An insult previously answered with another insult could now produce a beating. A refusal to move quickly enough might be interpreted as defiance. The worst of the unrest had subsided, and the streets were quieter, but quiet was not the same as peace. People had learned to keep certain feelings out of their voices. The feelings themselves remained.

At the Temple’s western construction works, that hostility accompanied an enterprise whose organisation Yehudah privately admired. Better tools, cranes, concrete and meticulous records had imposed order upon an undertaking that might otherwise have consumed labour and materials without any reliable account of where either had gone. Deliveries could be checked against requirements. Work could be divided into stages, expenditure assigned to each stage, and delays traced beyond the usual explanation that somebody else had caused them. The site functioned with a precision that depended less upon any single man’s strength than upon the relationships between hundreds of separate tasks.

The workers found the arrangement insulting. Yehudah suspected its efficiency contributed to the offence. There was little comfort in discovering that men one despised could organise one’s labour competently, and less in being expected to appreciate the result. More insulting still was the freedom they had been allowed to retain. Their places of worship remained open. Their priests continued to preach. Their conquerors to the west had not considered the people’s beliefs important enough to destroy, which made the restraint difficult to regard as generosity.

The interests of conquest were practical. Access to what the land produced, control of the roads along which it travelled, and a compliant government standing between the conquerors and their enemies were worth considerably more than an argument about whose prayers reached heaven. A financial system tied to their own supplied another form of control. Taxes, payments and obligations could bind a population through the ordinary necessities of living, extending authority into places where a permanent military presence would have been expensive or impossible. Soldiers could make a man surrender what he possessed. A properly administered debt could make him surrender what he had not yet earned.

Yehudah had arrived six weeks earlier with a letter bearing the name of a man few people wished to inconvenience. It secured him immediate employment as an arcarius. His methods distinguished him quickly, and responsibility for the project’s finances followed. He had accepted the appointment without the performance of reluctance sometimes expected of a man receiving greater authority. There was work to be done, and he was better equipped to do it than the men already doing it. The arrangement had not made him popular.

Men came to him when labour required payment or materials needed purchasing. Suppliers submitted quantities that bore an optimistic relationship to what had actually arrived. Workers who could remember an insult from several months earlier developed uncertainty about how many days they had worked the previous week. Yehudah checked his records and paid what was owed. He had performed similar duties elsewhere, beneath rulers who had all considered themselves permanent, and had found little variation in the difficulties. Men changed their loyalties, their clothing and their explanations. Their methods of counting improved more readily than their honesty.

Money, however, had not brought him here. A rumour had accomplished what no offer of employment could have done, although when he first heard it he had scarcely listened. Someone had cured an ailment. He no longer remembered which ailment, or what had supposedly been done to the sufferer, and the omission troubled him less than it might have troubled another man. These parts produced healers, mystics and self-declared baptists with a frequency that made any individual account unremarkable. Desperation encouraged belief, and belief offered a living to people who possessed very little else.

Ordinarily he would have dismissed the story with the others. Instead, a small detail had remained after the rest was forgotten. Something about removing shadows. He could not remember whether the speaker had used those exact words, and at first he had been irritated by the uncertainty. Then he began asking questions.

The rumour proved difficult to follow. Few people spoke willingly to Yehudah, and those who did chose their words with a care that increased as his interest became apparent. Whoever the man was, he commanded a quiet respect among people who knew of him. They acknowledged that he existed more readily than they disclosed where he might be found. A name heard in one place became a denial in another. People who ordinarily supplied an opinion before they had been asked suddenly discovered the virtues of knowing nothing.

Yehudah understood the instinct. People protected valuable things, especially when they suspected that a man like him might wish to acquire them. He also knew that respect had a price. Finding it required patience, discretion and access to money. He possessed all three.

By noon the streets surrounding the western works had become almost impassable. Traders crowded the thoroughfares, their stalls and vehicles competing for space with labourers, tools and deliveries of building materials. Silks, spices, food and livestock occupied every gap that construction traffic needed. At the junctions, soldiers shouted instructions and waved people through whenever enough space appeared to justify the attempt. Their earlier vigilance had become a more immediate concern with keeping anything moving.

The sun stood almost overhead. Helmets were carried instead of worn, and men who had spent the morning displaying themselves prominently at the junctions had withdrawn towards walls, awnings and narrow strips of shade. Yehudah could not fault the decision. Authority offered little protection against heat, although some men seemed determined to establish otherwise before admitting it.

He stood at the edge of the thoroughfare, listening to the markets and the construction works overlap. Voices rose against the impacts of tools. An animal objected somewhere behind him. Close by, two men argued over the space required for a delivery neither appeared capable of moving. Yehudah gave them no attention. His gaze remained on two labourers working from a scaffold high against the Temple’s western wall.

Below them, a crane was raising another block into position. One man stood where he could be seen from below and directed its movement with practised hand signals. His companion waited beside the prepared course, watching the stone’s approach. They had repeated the operation often enough to divide their attention without discussing it. One watched the crane. The other watched the load. Each relied upon the other to see what he could not.

The block rose slowly into view, its weight suspended above the scaffold. The second man caught the guide line with both hands and drew it towards him, correcting the stone’s position until it hovered over the waiting course. He glanced along the edge, judging the remaining adjustment. In another moment he would have told his companion to signal the descent.

Then he noticed the purse.

It lay on the wall beneath the suspended block, a small leather shape against the pale surface. He stared at it. Nothing had occupied that space when they set the previous stone. His eyes moved towards his companion and then down over the edge of the scaffold, searching the men below for anyone who might be watching. Yehudah remained still. Apparently satisfied, the worker leaned forward and reached beneath the load.

His fingers closed around the purse as his companion gave the signal.

The block descended.

Yehudah heard the bones break before the scream reached him. The signalman’s arm jerked upwards, abandoning the measured movements of a moment earlier, and the crane reversed. As soon as there was room, the injured worker dragged his hand free and stumbled backwards against the scaffold. He stared at it as though somebody had put an unfamiliar object at the end of his arm. His fingers had been crushed together around the purse. Blood ran between them, followed the wrist and gathered at his elbow before falling in thick drops.

Work stopped around the scaffold. Men shouted for help while others climbed towards him, their tools left where they had been using them. The signalman reached him first. Whatever composure he had possessed was gone. He apologised repeatedly and tried to take hold of the injured arm, but the worker pushed him away and drew the ruined hand against his chest. Another man attempted to remove the purse from the flattened fingers. The worker twisted free of him too.

He made for the ladder before anyone could persuade him to sit. With one usable hand, the descent became a succession of awkward movements in which he lowered himself, lost his footing and caught himself again. He half jumped, half fell the last few rungs. Men moved towards him when he landed, but he was already getting up.

Someone told him to stay where he was. He ignored the instruction. The damaged hand remained pressed against his chest, guarded from anybody who approached too closely. He looked around with an urgency that seemed different from the bewilderment of pain, then pushed between the men gathered beneath the scaffold.

Yehudah watched him go. He waited until the worker had put a little distance between himself and the others, then followed.

The man moved quickly despite the injury. Yehudah kept far enough behind to avoid attracting his attention, passing the stores and entering the space between two rows of temporary scaffolding. A vehicle crossed in front of him and briefly blocked his view. He increased his pace once it had passed. At the road he thought he had lost the worker, then caught sight of him disappearing behind a row of temporary workshops set back from the main construction area.

The workshops provided shelter for work requiring more precision than could readily be achieved among the dust and movement of the site. Pale coverings stretched over simple frames, screening the masons from direct sunlight. The sides stopped short of the ground, and openings beneath the roofline allowed warm air to escape. Whatever breeze reached them could pass through rather than leaving the men to work inside an enclosure made hotter by their own bodies. Narrow entrances faced away from the main works, each screened by overlapping material that offered a measure of privacy from people passing outside.

The first workshop was busy. Hammers struck chisels in overlapping rhythms, and men called measurements and instructions above the noise. Masons leaned over benches, checking lines, dressing edges and smoothing unfinished surfaces. Pale dust coated their arms, aprons and hair. A man brushing it from a piece of stone merely redistributed some of it onto the man beside him, who complained without interrupting his work. Nobody looked up as Yehudah passed.

The second workshop appeared much the same. He walked several steps beyond it before stopping. There were as many men inside, the same arrangement of benches, the same blocks and tools, yet something about it had arrested his attention. He listened for a moment before recognising the difference.

It was quieter. Hammers still struck chisels, but the sounds lacked the overlapping confidence of the neighbouring workshop. Nobody called across the room. Nobody complained about the heat or found fault with another man’s work. Men who ordinarily filled silence simply because it was available had become unusually absorbed in what lay before them. Yehudah had seen this kind of industry before. It generally meant that everybody knew something and hoped somebody else would be asked about it.

He stepped inside. One of the masons looked up and, for the smallest fraction of a moment, glanced towards the rear. The man beside him kicked his ankle. Their eyes met, a warning passed between them, and both returned to their stone with an abruptness that made further enquiry unnecessary.

A partition hung across the back of the workshop, separating a smaller space from the working area. Yehudah walked towards it. Nobody attempted to stop him, although several men abandoned the pretence that they had not noticed his arrival. Before he reached the partition he heard voices beyond it, too quiet for him to distinguish the words.

He drew the covering aside.

Shelves occupied one wall of the smaller space, holding spare tools, lengths of line, patterns and containers. Unfinished pieces stood carefully stacked against the frame. It was evidently used for storage, although neither of the two men inside had any immediate interest in its contents.

The injured worker stood in the centre, looking down at his hand. He opened his fingers slowly, closed them and opened them again. There was no swelling. No distortion. No broken skin. The purse lay across his palm, its leather wet with blood that no longer had a visible source.

Yehudah studied the fingers, then the wrist, then the blood. He had heard the bones break. He had seen the hand withdrawn from beneath the stone, its separate parts forced into a shape no functioning hand could assume. There was no uncertainty about what he had witnessed, and no reasonable adjustment of that memory would account for what stood before him now.

A stonemason waited beside the worker. Nothing in his appearance justified six weeks of searching. His apron had been worn smooth by use, and limestone dust whitened his forearms. Cuts and scars marked his knuckles, the ordinary record of a craftsman who worked with stone every day. Yehudah looked at those hands for a moment longer than he intended.

“Close your mouth,” the mason said. The worker began to object, managing only a bewildered “But…” before the mason repeated, “Close it.” He obeyed, although his attention immediately returned to his fingers.

“Go back to work,” the mason told him.

“They saw what happened.” The worker looked towards the partition, as though the problem waited just beyond it. The mason regarded him without apparent concern.

“You were working.”

“What do I tell them?”

“Nothing.” The worker opened his hand again, examining the movement of each finger, and the mason sighed. “And stop checking.”

“Checking what?” He seemed honestly uncertain. The mason looked down at the hand, then back at his face.

“Your hand. It is healed. It will still be healed when you get outside.”

Only then did the worker notice Yehudah standing in the entrance. His expression changed before he spoke. Confusion came first, the brief effort to account for someone who seemed to have appeared without arriving. Worry followed. Yehudah was accustomed to that progression. The men knew who controlled the money, and few believed he had acquired that authority through arithmetic alone. To this worker he belonged with the men who raised taxes, issued orders and had other people carry weapons on their behalf.

Yehudah stepped aside. The worker moved towards the entrance, then stopped and looked at the bloodstained purse in his restored hand. For a moment he stood with it half concealed against his body. At last he turned back and offered it to the mason. The gesture possessed the reluctance of an obligation performed in the hope that it might be declined.

The mason looked at the purse, then at the man holding it, and shook his head. Relief appeared so quickly on the worker’s face that he could not conceal it. A smile escaped before he arranged his features into something more suitable. His fingers closed around the leather, and he left without making a second offer.

Yehudah watched him pass through the workshop. His attention lingered on the purse swinging from the healed hand, then returned to the mason. The man had moved towards two stools beside the partition. He sat on one and indicated the other with a small movement of his hand.

“You act as though you expected me,” Yehudah said, taking the offered place. The stool was low enough to make the act of sitting feel less dignified than he would have preferred. The mason seemed to consider the observation.

“You came with a question.”

“I have many questions.”

“One brought you here.” The mason settled his hands on his knees and waited, apparently content to let Yehudah decide how much time they would spend reaching it.

Yehudah smiled slightly. He was not accustomed to being addressed in this manner, least of all by a man whose working space contained shelves of spare tools. People chose their words carefully around him. Those who had not learned to do so generally acquired the habit soon after. He had not reached his position by allowing every man who disliked him to make that dislike consequential. For the present, however, an exception seemed worthwhile. What the mason knew mattered more than the satisfaction of correcting his manner.

“I see the shadows move,” Yehudah said. He spoke quietly, conscious of the men working on the other side of the partition. “Most men do not see them. A few others can. They all eventually go mad, or worse. I have spent much of my life trying to understand why I can see them, what they are and what they want.” He paused, giving the mason time to display the reaction he had learned to expect. None came. “This is not something an educated man discusses openly. Particularly one trusted with responsibility.”

“But you discuss it with me.” The mason watched him for several seconds. His attention seemed complete, yet Yehudah had the uncomfortable impression that he was listening to something beyond the words just spoken, another conversation to which Yehudah had no access. Then he said, “You broke his hand.”

Yehudah’s smile disappeared. He kept his eyes on the mason. “I did not touch him.”

“No.” The agreement was immediate and offered him nothing.

“Then you accuse me wrongly.”

“What did it cost?” the mason asked.

Yehudah frowned. “What?”

“The man’s hand. How much did you pay?” He asked without raising his voice, as though clarifying an entry in an account.

Yehudah glanced towards the entrance. The covering hung where he had left it. Beyond it, the restrained sounds of work continued. Nobody had followed him inside. He could identify no reason for the mason to know that payment had been made, although the accusation itself might have been a deduction. The accident, the purse, his arrival: an intelligent man could draw conclusions. Yehudah preferred that explanation to the alternatives.

Money persuaded men to do many things. They stole, deceived, betrayed confidences and overlooked wrongdoing in return for sums adjusted to their circumstances. Such arrangements were common. Finding someone willing to accept payment rarely required much ingenuity, provided one understood what the man needed and what he believed he deserved.

This task had presented a different difficulty. It required deliberate injury to a man whose living depended upon the strength and use of his hands. The damage would extend beyond the moment of impact. A worker unable to work still required food and shelter, and the people depending upon him would suffer the consequences of an injury they had neither caused nor witnessed. One ruined hand could impoverish an entire household. Men willing to steal or lie often stopped short of knowingly imposing that kind of suffering upon another man. Their limits were inconvenient, but real. Finding someone prepared to cross them had taken Yehudah longer than expected.

“Enough argyrion to fill that leather purse,” he said. The mason’s expression did not change.

“Tell me, when did you learn to measure the worth of a man’s flesh?”

“His hand is healed.” Yehudah let the fact stand between them before adding, “And the man I paid appears to have disowned his fee.”

He had not instructed the signalman to use the purse as bait. That choice made more sense now that he had seen the accident and its aftermath. The man had feared the consequences of failing Yehudah more than he had feared the act itself, but had still wanted some distance from what he was doing. Leaving the payment beneath the stone transferred a portion of the decision to the victim. The worker reached. The signalman lowered the block. Afterwards he could tell himself something about greed, carelessness or a movement made too soon.

Yehudah had become numb to guilt in recent years, but he retained a practical understanding of its influence on others. The signalman’s repeated apologies had been sincere. So, presumably, had his acceptance of the task. Men found ways to accommodate both.

“That does not answer my question,” the mason said.

“The answer to my question answers yours.” Yehudah spoke with the patience he used when another man insisted on pursuing the wrong part of a transaction.

“And yet you still have not asked it.” The mason waited. Yehudah could hear a chisel strike beyond the partition, followed by another impact after a slightly longer interval.

“Can you see them?” he asked.

The mason considered him, then nodded once. Yehudah had spent years seeking an answer he could trust, and its arrival in so small a gesture left him briefly uncertain what to do with it. He examined the man’s face for mockery, evasion or the eager calculation of someone who had discovered a profitable weakness. He found none.

“A rumour brought me here,” he said. “They say you do not fear the shadows. That you have power over them.” He paused again, watching for a response. “If this is true, then you will teach me.”

The mason laughed. It was neither loud nor prolonged, but Yehudah felt the offence of it before he could decide whether offence had been intended. “A teacher? Is that what people say I am?”

“The people call you many things,” Yehudah replied. He kept his voice even. “Most call you Yochanan the prophet.”

The mason appeared to give the name some consideration, as though Yehudah had presented him with an assessment of his work. Then he looked up. “And who do you say I am?”

“I don’t,” Yehudah said. Names supplied by other people had already cost him six weeks. He had no intention of spending longer discussing this one. “I will return this evening, shortly after sunset. We will discuss a schedule. You will teach me what I need to know about the shadows. Afterwards, you will teach me how to remove them, as you do.”

He stated the arrangement plainly. There was no need to complicate it with a request. The mason could see what Yehudah saw and could do something Yehudah had never managed to do. That established the purpose of their meeting. Whatever payment or accommodation the man required could be settled once he understood that the matter would proceed.

The mason studied him without answering immediately. His expression remained neutral, and Yehudah found himself waiting in a way he generally required of other men. Beyond the partition, somebody resumed the fuller rhythm of work, then stopped after a few blows.

“No. I will show you,” the mason said at last. He rested his scarred hands on his knees, as comfortably as though they were discussing the dressing of a stone. “Only if a man understands has he had a teacher. If he simply complies, then he has had a preacher. I have no doubt that you can see, but let us find out whether you can hear.”