The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare

Author:Elizabeth George Speare
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction.Historical, Childrens, Young Adult, Adventure, classics
ISBN: 9780395137192
Publisher: Sandpiper
Published: 1961-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

LATE ONE AFTERNOON a village boy came into the shop with a scythe to be mended. He had a bonv, weathertoughened face under a shock of straight black hair, a defiant, touchy alertness, and a blackened eye that roused Daniel's curiosity. As Daniel examined the blade, the boy paced the length of the smithy floor.

"Sit down," Daniel suggested, jerking an elbow toward the bench near the door. The boy, unable to sit for more than a moment, resumed his nervous pacing. Daniel set to work, blowing the waning fire with the bellows, heating and pounding straight the blade, then applying the sandstone to the nicks that the pebbly land had left. From time to time he glanced at the boy. Daniel seldom had words to spare for his customers. He did the work they required of him and took their money, not caring that he had a reputation for being surly. Today, for the first time, he was prompted to speak. For one thing, the boy was about his own age, and for another, he looked like a fighter. When he could make himself heard, Daniel attempted a joke.

"Must have been quite a scrap you were in."

There was no answering grin, but Daniel tried again. "What did you give him in return?"

There was a pause. Then, "What could I?" the boy burst out. "There were five of them."

Daniel's eyebrows lifted. He bent over his work.

"My own friends!" Bitterness rasped through the boy's voice. "Waited and jumped on me coming home from the field last night."

"Why?"

"Because my father has gone to work for Shomer the tax collector."

No wonder the boy looked defiant. It was a contemptible business for a Jew to hire himself out to collect the taxes the Romans did not stoop to collect for themselves. "There are better ways of earning a living,"

Daniel observed.

"He's worn out trying. Last year it was the locusts, and this year some cockle seed got into the grain and the crop isn't worth harvesting. He could never meet the taxes."

Daniel said nothing.

"He could have sold my sister. There would have been no shame in that. But he's too softhearted."

"That's a hard choice," Daniel agreed.

"They force it on us, the cursed Romans. The land would feed us well enough if we were rid of them."

Daniel leaned closer to the stone and carefully ground out a slight roughness.

"But it's not true what they said," the boy went on. "My father would never put one penny of the taxes in his own pocket."

Daniel did not answer. A tax collector might start out honest enough, he reflected. But a man weak enough to take the job at all would find it hard to resist the easy pickings. He felt embarrassed. It was a bad thing for a boy to have to be ashamed of his own father.

"I guess this will do," he said, rubbing his thumb along the blade. He knew the boy did not want his sympathy. The boy paid him and moved toward the door, hesitating. Daniel guessed the shrinking with which he looked out into the twilight street.

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