Read Online Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene by Beatrice Gormley - Free Book Online Page A

best he could, soothed by the sight of the stone wings rising quickly. By the end of the day, however, he’d rethought the price. “I don’t owe you anything for materials,” he told the contractor. He gave a short laugh. “You just used the rocks lying around on the ground.”
    “A bargain is a bargain,” said the contractor. “My men can take walls down as well as build them.”
    Matthew cursed silently, but he paid the remainder.
    For a few days, the walls worked fairly well to block thepaths and funnel traffic into the tollgate. Then new paths appeared, swinging around the walls in wider arcs. At first, only a few hardy travelers on foot could force their way through the brush. But gradually the paths widened.
    Watching this happen, Matthew cursed himself for being such a gullible fool. Where was the contractor now who had “guaranteed” his work? Why had Matthew believed him about the brush being so impassable just beyond the old paths? Look, there: a fully loaded camel was squeezing through! Furthermore, now the detours were much farther from the tollgate, and therefore more trouble to guard. Matthew envisioned his father’s face, one cynical eyebrow raised as if to say, What did you expect?
    The next day, Matthew woke up before dawn and went down to the Capernaum docks. The first rays of sunlight flashed over the cliffs on the eastern shore of the lake, touching the sails of fishing boats returning from a night’s work. “How was your catch?” he called out to the fishermen as they neared the dock.
    “Lousy, to tell the truth,” a man in the nearest boat called back. He was stripped for work, wearing only a loincloth. The sinews stood out on his arms and back.
    “Then come and work for me,” said Matthew. “I’ll pay twice as much as you make on a
good
day. I need you and five others like you.”
    The men in the other boats heard him, and they hurried to tie up at the docks. “Count me in!” “Hire me, too, sir!” they shouted. Matthew was relieved to see that strongmen were just as easy to come by in Capernaum as in Magdala.
    Pulling on his tunic, the first fisherman jumped onto the dock. “What kind of work would this be, sir?” he asked Matthew.
    Matthew had gotten this far by pretending he was his hardened father, but suddenly he seemed to be himself again. “Some strongmen are needed up there,” he muttered, nodding in the direction of the highway.
    The fisherman’s eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled frown. “Some kind of building going on?”
    More fishermen joined the first one on the dock, their eager expressions turning suspicious. Matthew forced himself to say, “No. There’s a problem with toll evaders. No one has to actually hurt anyone,” he went on, talking faster and faster. “All you’d have to do is stand near the gate, carrying a stick-just
look
at them like you’d use it if they—”
    “It’s the cursed toll collector,” said a man in the back of the group. “He moved into the villa up the hill.”
    Matthew backed away from the dock, suddenly uneasy. He’d come alone.
    But the fishermen didn’t threaten him. Some of them spit in his direction, and some said, “Roman lover” or “filthyvermin.” Then they went about their business, lugging baskets of fish to the shore and spreading nets out to dry as if he weren’t there.
    Humiliated, Matthew was about to leave when he caught sight of a straggling fishing boat nearing the shore. “James!” he exclaimed. Could the man in the back of the boat really be his brother? He hadn’t seen James for two years. “James!” He waved his arms.
    The fishermen in the boat didn’t seem to hear him. Now Matthew doubted that it was James after all; the morning light glittered blindingly on the water around the boat. And why would Matthew want to see James, even if it was him? He left our family, Matthew reminded himself. Why should I care about him?
    Turning, Matthew walked quickly away from the shore. But he knew