This was when Uri came to understand that not everyone here was stupid. Not that Master Jehuda was stupid at all, but Simon the Magus and Joseph ben Nahum saw a lot more than he did.
“Not all masters speak that way,” he said.
Joseph shook his head.
“What am I master of? It so happened that in my village I was good at my craft, grinding millstones and constructing water-lifting contraptions, and others noticed that I was a better miller than what they were accustomed to and started consulting me about business. As if I were smarter than them! Well, I wasn’t, but that’s how it was. Out of sheer terror I started reading, in case books had the answers. I didn’t notice but before long I was being addressed as master, then I was expected to explain the law, and before long I was a judge… My wife was more cautious. She had married a young miller’s son with flour in his eyes and flour in his hair. She had borne children for him, not for a master. But am I supposed to turn out of my house anyone who comes seeking my advice? A wretch who is just hopefully standing there? I took speedy leave with my family to settle down in another village that did not have a miller, and there I became a glassblower. But then it all began again.”
The man really was a master.
“I wasn’t careful enough,” said Joseph. “Word about me spread… Men sent by King Antipas tracked me down and brought me before him. He wanted me as a counselor, as he did not have many trained people around him. The old elite had no liking for him, and he had done nothing to raise a new elite for himself. I wasn’t willing to accept the position and went back to my village; all I wanted was to work. But people did not let me; they thought I’d rejected the offer because I was holding out for more money. They asked, pleaded, and finally threatened. I wasn’t given any peace; they started working on my family… I wasn’t firm enough, and in the end I was unable to say no.”
Joseph looked at Uri.
“Don’t ever let slip what you know — and still less what you don’t know — because that knowledge is priceless, and people know that full well.”
Uri shivered. A similar sentence had been said to him by another Joseph — his father.
“Don’t get noticed. Don’t stand out. Don’t trust anyone,” Joseph said, and averted his eyes. “You’ll be used and then thrown away; whether you live or die, it’s all the same to them. Be suspicious. If people love you, take an interest in you, caress you, be very afraid. Be especially wary of anyone who takes you into their confidence or to whom you are attached, because that person is also a human being, a selfish, cowardly, opportunist, abject scoundrel. Your enemies are the only ones in whom you will never be disappointed.”
Uri sighed. He suspected that he would share no more suppers with Joseph.
There was, however, one more shared supper the next day.
“They approved it,” Joseph said, and he seemed to be sincerely pleased.
He told Uri that he would be able to get a job on a nearby building site in the City of David. The walls of the palace were standing and the roofing was ready, but they needed a cabinetmaker, and there was a mosaic floor to be laid. It had been started six months before, a palace for Queen Helena.
“Where is she from, if I may ask?” Uri inquired.
“She’s the consort of the king of Adiabene.”
Uri did not venture to ask where exactly Adiabene lay. It was most likely a tiny kingdom somewhere in the East, though west of Babylon. He seemed to recall hearing the name before, only he had not taken much notice.
“From Rome’s point of view,” Joseph said, “it’s probably barely noticeable…”
Uri broke out laughing, and even Joseph had to smile.
All at once Uri saw before his eyes lines from a scrolclass="underline" “The marriageable girls are sold by auction to the bridegrooms, always selling first those who are the more highborn…”
“For just as ablution is customary after touching a corpse,” Uri quoted aloud from memory, “so also is it customary after intercourse. And in accordance with a certain oracle the custom of Babylonian women is the have intercourse with a foreigner…”
“I have no idea if it is still the same today,” said Joseph, “but around fifty years ago Strabo took the descriptions of others, and they are unlikely to have been all that fresh at the time, but anyway for him the description applied to all the Assyrians, and it was more a fable than a fact.”
Uri nodded respectfully. Joseph spoke Greek and was a well-read man.
“Right now King Monobaz is their ruler,” Joseph carried on. “A sort of tribal king, but Rome recognized him, and so did the Parthians. His wife, Helena, and their eldest son Izates let it be known not so long ago that they wished to convert to Judaism, but Monobaz did not. As a result the palace where you’ll be working is being built for Helena, the Jewish queen, and Izates, the Jewish heir to the throne.”
Uri was amazed.
“They converted — to Judaism?”
“What’s strange about that?” Joseph commented. “There are plenty of Greeks, too, who convert in Syria, in Hellas, in Macedonia, in Armenia, you name it…”
“But a queen? And the heir to the throne?”
Joseph nodded.
“The story is that a clever merchant by the name of Ananias paid a visit, and he converted them. Only I know of no merchant by that name. I do, however, know a former high priest, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the present high priest…”
Uri was shocked.
“It’s a royal family,” said Joseph. “We couldn’t refuse. There was one difficulty, however, one that was hard to overcome, which is that Queen Helena was not only King Monobaz’s consort but also his older sister.”
Uri was even more amazed. Jewish law forbids incestuous marriage between a brother and sister.
“What was the solution?” he asked.
“Helena could not divorce, because then she would no longer be queen,” Joseph responded. “But if she were living separately from her husband, then from the moment she converted it was possible to handle her like a divorced woman.”
“But what if she did not get a divorce bill?”
“Since Monobaz was not Judaized, he could not be compelled to produce a divorce bill. Helena married her younger brother under the laws of Adiabene before she was converted to Judaism, and by converting she was absolved of all previous sins.”
Uri shook his head.
“But it still can’t be lawful,” he said. “Herod the Great slept with his sister Salomé, but even he didn’t dare marry her.”
“The interesting case is not Helena. Izates would be willing to get circumcised, and he’s the heir to the throne of Adiabene! Just think about it, Gaius: Adiabene will have a Jewish king. The only legitimate Jewish king in the whole world! Antipas is only tetrarch, and so was Philip before him, but Izates will be king — and as a Jew! Rome has assented, although incestuous marriage is also forbidden there.”
Uri sipped the wine. Joseph was speaking quietly. From the surrounding rooftops, loudly and all at the same time, neighbors were talking, children shrieking, women laughing; they had little interest in the queen of a small far-off country becoming Jewish.
Large forces are at work, Uri reflected.
If Rome had assented, then that meant the emperor Tiberius had given his assent, and if the reports were true, Agrippa, who wanted to become a Jewish king, had access to him. What Joseph had said suggested that the heir to the throne of Adiabene, a child still, wanted to be circumcised, which would make him Agrippa’s rival, and he in turn was supported by Jerusalem against Alexandria, the supporter of Agrippa.