The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare [16]
"There's a man I'd like you to see," Simon told him. "They say he will visit our synagogue this morning."
Daniel glanced up. Beneath the words there was a hint he could not miss. "What sort of man?"
"I'm not sure," said Simon. "He comes from Nazareth."
"Good reason to stay away," grumbled Daniel. Then, feeling the pressure of Simon's silence, "A Zealot?"
"It may well be. Come and see what you make of him."
"In these clothes?"
"I have brought you a cloak and shoes."
Daniel stared at his friend. If Simon, stickler for the law, had carried a bundle on the Sabbath just so that Daniel could see this man, he must consider the matter important. Daniel took the cloak and went inside the house. His grandmother was nodding again in the corner. She looked up and muttered his father's name, her eyes confused with sleep. Leah crept forward shyly and bent to fasten the leather sandal.
"Will you go with me?" he asked on impulse, and could have bitten his tongue at the terror that leaped into her blue eyes.
"Never mind, I didn't mean it," he said miserably, jerking away from her.
Simon looked him over with approval as he stepped out into the roadway. "How does it seem to be home?" he inquired.
"You call this home?" Daniel burst out. "My grandmother does nothing but sleep, and my sister is possessed by demons."
"She is no better?"
"Before I was apprenticed—when she was five years old, she hid herself in that house. In all this time she has never stepped outside the door."
"So I've heard. The demons must have a strong hold. Yet she does good weaving, I understand. Your grandmother sells it in Chorazin."
Daniel had not paid much attention to the loom in the corner, but now Simon's words somewhat lightened his shame.
"Who is this man we go to see?" he asked, not wanting to think about Leah.
"Jesus, son of Joseph, a carpenter by trade. He has left his work and goes about preaching from town to town."
"Preaching? I thought you said he was a Zealot."
"He preaches the coming of the kingdom."
"You have heard him?"
"No, but I have seen him. I journeyed to Nazareth with a friend who went to arrange for a wife. While we were there this carpenter came back to preach in his own synagogue."
"A town like Nazareth must have boasted—"
"They did not boast. They tried to kill him."
Daniel glanced quickly at his friend, his curiosity roused not so much by the words as by the tone of Simon's voice. But Simon had no time to say more. They were approaching the small stone and plaster building in the center of the village, and men and women brushed close to them on either side of the road.
Daniel had to stoop to go through the low doorway. He sidled close to the wall, tensing his muscles, conscious of his shaggy height and his wide shoulders, trying to draw in and make himself smaller. But he soon realized that today there was no curiosity to spare for him.
He was sure that the synagogue had never been so full in his childhood. Close together on the low benches huddled the men of the town, their knees drawn up almost to their chins. They sat in order of their trades, the skilled artisans nearest the pulpit, the silversmiths, the tailors, and sandalmakers. Farther back sat the bakers, the cheesemakers and dyers, and along the walls where Daniel and Simon had taken their places, stood the lower tradesmen and the farmers. Still others crowded the doorway, and many, he saw, would have to stand outside in the road. By the rustle and murmur behind the grilled screen that separated the women's section, many of the men had brought their wives with them.
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might—"
The great words of the Shema rolled through the synagogue. For a moment Daniel was caught up by them as he had been in his childhood. But as the long passage of the Law was read