He was called Judas, and he had three younger brothers among the workers. They too seemed intelligent.
Uri introduced himself, saying that he had come from Rome. Judas asked him how well workers got paid over there. Uri had only the daily wages of dockers to go on; skilled workers no doubt earned a lot more. There were no docks in Jerusalem, so that was of no interest to them. They asked him how much he could earn as a cabinetmaker. Uri had to confess that he had picked up cabinetmaking since he had been in Judaea, so he didn’t know about it in Rome.
“Whereabouts in Judaea?”
Uri told them about Beth Zechariah and Master Jehuda. Judas and his brothers had never been in that part of the world, though they too were villagers by background and had a thing or two they could relate.
They were peasants, six boys and three girls. Judas was the firstborn, but only in the sense that priests use since their mother had been pregnant when their father was wed to her. He was the sort of firstborn for whom the priests would be paid five Tyrian shekels, but he was not permitted to inherit property on that account, in other words, he wasn’t entitled to a double share. A boy like that was considered illegitimate even if the man who had sired him married his mother; a man is a different person as a bachelor than after he has taken a woman as his wife. None of that had mattered as long as their father was alive; they lived and got by working on the land. But their father died after he spiked his foot on a nail. His leg and abdomen had swollen up, and he choked to death, hard as they had prayed for him. Then it had been necessary to split the wealth into seven and a half equal portions (daughters were only due half shares). Those seven and a half equal portions — fifteen portions out of which each of the daughters had gotten one and each son, two — were not enough for anyone’s livelihood. In any case, it was prohibited to split land into such tiny portions. They had bickered for a long time until they, four of the brothers, had grown tired and left the village, leasing the land for free to the other two brothers and the three sisters, having made a declaration to that effect to the village’s master and two witnesses. When two of the girls had gotten married it had been possible for them to take a dowry. The two boys who stayed behind were now grubbing the land, with their mother and remaining sister cooking for them. They would stay, because that sister was a bit weak in the head and no one would wed her. Things may be tight, but they managed to make a living.
The four elder brothers had learned the carpentry trade and been squeaking by in Jerusalem for ten years now. They had no house, nothing at all, but they thought themselves lucky not to have starved to death. They had worked on putting up the Temple, private houses, and warehouses beyond the city walls, but there were not so many jobs now. It was a good thing that this palace was being put up, and there were rumors that Izates, the princeling from Adiabene, would eventually have his own separate palace; maybe they could get jobs on that.
Uri then asked if, by any chance, they had worked with a Roman by the name of Plotius, because he too was a joiner.
“A big, black-bearded bloke?”
“That’s the one!”
Judas nodded. He was a clever man, able to plan houses, and not at all badly, but he had been banished from Jerusalem because he stole.
“Are you sure?” Uri asked.
“No, I’m not sure he stole,” said Judas, “but he was driven out anyway. Of course if there had been any proof he would have been in much bigger trouble. True, they wouldn’t be able to sell him off as a slave, what with his being a Roman citizen, but people like that are carted off to the prefect in Caesarea. He investigates the matter, and if he finds the charge to be well-founded, then the accused is sent back to Rome and sentenced there.”
Uri said that Plotius had not run into any trouble, indeed he had been able to return to Jerusalem as a delegate, which indicated that he hadn’t stolen anything after all.
“He might have done some stealing anyway,” chipped in one of Judas’s brothers. “It all depends who he stole for.”
Judas gave a dirty laugh and confirmed that if you were going to steal, it made a big difference whom you paid off.
“The richer they are, the more they steal,” he declared. “Jerusalem is well-known for that.”
“Just who are the wealthiest ones?” Uri asked.
“Well, the wealthiest ones…” said one of Judas’s brothers, winding up for a long discussion.
Nothing happened until late that afternoon, when the foreman appeared, blew a whistle, and raised his stick in the air. The men scrambled to their feet, gathered around him, and walked out of the City of David through one of the city gates. They said that this was the Fountain Gate, that had long been its name, though there was no fountain anywhere near. The foreman tuned southward at the gate, and a few of the men followed. They were going to go through the Essene Gate into the Lower City, but most of them went through the meadow along the Valley of Kidron toward the river. The River Kidron itself was little more than a shallow trickle, with a plank leading over it to the other side.
“There’s a lot more water in it in the autumn and spring,” said Judas, “just in time for the festivals. But the drought is so bad this year that the river might dry up completely.”
Lying about on parched stretches of the riverbed were broken wheels, rusted metal implements, rags, rubbish, leather bags, and animal skeletons — all the things that the celebrating masses had dropped or thrown into the water. It passed through Uri’s head that this was the river in which tens of thousands of people yearning to cleanse themselves took a dip.
On the other side of the river they trudged up to the top of the Mount of Olives, proceeding past well-kept gardens, with small houses built of timber and stone dotted about at wide intervals.
They reached one cottage, where one of the workers rapped on the door. An elderly lady looked out before throwing up her hands in astonishment.
“You people already? So early! You should be ashamed, such loafers!”
This was the canteen Joseph had mentioned. Three tables of roughly-hewn timber stood in an unfenced garden. The cistern was empty, so the workers washed their hands in a bowl. They waited for something to happen. Uri grew restless.
“I was told that the week’s wages were paid in advance,” he said.
They confirmed that indeed they were.
“All the same, I didn’t get any pay today,” he countered.
“We get paid on Sunday,” they said.
Uri tried to work out what day it was. The Sabbath he had spent in the village, so it must be Tuesday or even Wednesday. It was in fact Wednesday. His companions insisted he would get no pay until Sunday, so he shouldn’t hold out any other hope. Sunday was the day the cashier came; he wasn’t in the habit of coming any other day.
“But I’ve got no money,” said Uri.
They were astonished. How could that be? Uri was in no mood to go into any details and instead asked them what they thought the chances were that the elderly woman would give him supper on credit until Sunday evening. They hemmed and hawed again but gave him no answer.
When the woman brought out plates of bread and cooked meat and placed them on the table, the workers reached for them without saying any prayers or even washing their hands. Uri stepped up to her, politely introduced himself and laid out his difficulty.
“One more hungry mouth to feed! That’s all I needed!” she exclaimed in an unfriendly tone. “Pity they didn’t warn me in time. It can’t be done, it just can’t… We make no profit as it is, and now we’re expected to pay for being big-hearted!”