The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare [3]
"What more do you want?" she demanded, forgetting Daniel in her insistence. "A big house to live in, shops, and people, and a school with the best teachers in Galilee!"
Joel went on snipping the blossoms savagely. "Father doesn't want to go," he said. "He's only going to please Mother."
"Well," she answered, "Mother left it all to please him once. It hasn't been easy for her, living in Ketzah. Why shouldn't she go back, now that Grandfather's left his house to her? It doesn't really matter to Father where he is, so long as he has his books."
Daniel listened, shut out again from the clean, safe world that they shared. But all at once his attention was diverted. Far down the mountain, on the narrow ribbon of road, he spotted a moving line that threw off reddish flashes of metal in the sunlight. Legionaries. At the sight, black hatred churned up in him. Out of habit he spat violently. The shocked attention of the two jerked back to him, and they followed his savage gaze, leaning to peer at the moving line.
"Romans!" snorted Joel. Daniel liked the way he said the word. He spat again for good measure.
"You hate them too," said Joel, his voice low.
Daniel closed his teeth on a familiar oath. "I curse the air they breathe," he muttered.
"I envy you," said Joel. "Up here you're free."
"No one is free," said Daniel. "So long as the land is cursed by the Romans."
"No. But at least you don't have to look at them. There's a fortress at Capernaum. I'll have to watch them all the time, strutting around the streets."
"Oh, Joel!" the girl protested. "Do they have to bother us?"
"Bother us? Bother—!" The boy's voice broke. "I should think even a girl could see—"
"Of course I see!" She was stung almost to tears by her brother's contempt. "But what use is it to be always making yourself miserable? The Romans won't be here forever. We know that deliverance will come."
"You're talking like Father!"
"But he's right! The Jews have been worse off before. There have always been conquerors—and there was always deliverance, Joel."
Joel was not listening. He had caught Daniel's eye, and the two boys were studying each other, each asking a silent question.
Malthace sprang to her feet, recognizing well enough that this time it was she who was shut out. "I'm not going to have my holiday spoiled by those soldiers," she said, with the trace of a childish pout. "We've climbed all the way up here and you've scarcely looked at the things we came to see."
Joel turned back to her good-naturedly. "We've seen something we didn't expect," he said. "Daniel."
She tossed her head. "What about the places we used to talk about? The plain where Joshua marched out against the heathen kings?"
Joel shaded his eyes, taking his bearings. Just below them the village clung to the rocky slope, the dark block of the synagogue showing clearly among the clustering flat-roofed houses. Around it circled the gray-green olive orchards and the fresh, clear green fields of grain, banded by purple iris and shining yellow daffodils. To the south lay the lake, intensely blue. To the north, beyond the line of hills, through the shimmering, misty green of the valley, the silver thread of the Jordan wound up to the shining little jewel that was the Lake of Merom. Suddenly bold, Daniel got to his feet.
"There," he pointed out. "On that plain. Horses and chariots drawn up against him, and a great host of men like the sands of the shore. And Joshua fell on them and drove them as far as the Great Sea."
He saw surprise on their faces. They thought he was an ignorant savage. The girl did, anyway. This was something he knew. Five years ago, that first morning, when he was warm and fed and slept out, Rosh had brought him up here, and stood with an arm across his shoulders, and pointed to the plain in the distance, and told him how a few brave men had dared to go out against a great army, and how they had won a great victory for Israel. Up here, in the clean sunlight, Daniel bar Jamin, orphan, runaway slave, had found something