Weapons Grade Matcha Latte

The Carpenter's Son

The sun was setting behind the hills to the west of the town of Nazareth. It was not yet low enough to cast shadows over the low, flat-roofed buildings of the town, but it was low enough to send a golden light into the workshop of Yusuf the carpenter.

Yeshua bin Yusuf blinked in the soft light. He had been bent over a sawhorse all day, hewing rough wood into planks for his father. The work was hard - Yeshua's back muscles ached horribly - but was satisfying He was proud of the skills he had learnt. He knew how to weld an adze; he knew how to saw billets into planks; he knew how to plane a surface smooth.

His contemplations were interrupted as Mariam - Yeshua's mother - hurried into the workshop. "You are needed," she announced. "There are some Romans here to collect your father's work." There was no disguising the contempt in her voice when she spoke of the invaders.

"So? Why doesn't father deal with them?"

Mariam scowled at the young man. "Stupid." She raised her hand as if she was about to strike her son, then stopped and took a calming breath. "Your father has gone to buy more wood. So you will have to deal with them."

"Very well."

Yeshua unbent himself, stood up straight and stretched. It felt good to stand upright, to flex his arms, to relieve the pressure on his thighs and calves. Then he adjusted his robe, pulling it up to cover his naked torso.

As his mother had said, there were Romans waiting in the yard behind the workshop: three legionaries, accompanied by an officer of some kind. Their immaculate armour was in sharp contrast to the ragged tunics worn by the slaves they had brought with them. The officer stared at Yeshua. "You are not Yusuf the carpenter."

"No," Yeshua said. "He is away. I am his son. What do you want?"

"The son. Of course." The officer drew himself upright and assumed an air of command. "We have come to collect the cruces. Your father has already been paid for them."

Yeshua bowed his head. "Over here." He led the Romans to a corner of the yard where a quartet of wooden crosses - each one a dozen feet high and eight feet wide at the crossbeam - were leaning against the stone wall. The officer handed him a bronze tally, then set about instructing the slaves.

"Who are they for?" Yeshua asked the officer.

"You've heard about the bandits who were terrorising travellers on the road to Capernaum?" Yeshua nodded. "Well," the officer continued, "they have been caught. Tomorrow we will make an example of them, as a warning to any others who might be harbouring notions of copying them."

Yeshua and the officer watched in silence as the slaves lifted the cruces onto their shoulders and started to shuffle out of the carpenter's yard. The legionaries followed them, murmuring to each other in their own tongue.

"Tell your father he does good work," the officer said, before saluting Yeshua and marching after the others.

"I will," Yeshua called after them, then went back to his work.