Abigail's Story Read online

  Amri jumped over the side slat of his stall and huddled over as many jars, skins, and packets as he could to protect his investment. “Adonai yireh.”

  Our Lord might protect the spice merchant’s soul, but from the way the shamar were crashing through the market, all of our wares were definitely at risk.

  “Cetura,” I said as I watched one guardsman knock over the fruit merchant’s cart, creating a slippery flood of ripened dates, “move your barrow over there before it is tipped.” I nodded toward the space behind a booth two places from mine.

  My neighbor followed my advice, and so I stood alone when the old fugitive tried to run around me. When confronted by the sight of the green and white hills beyond the town, the thief came to a dead stop and staggered back as if aghast. Her right side collided with my strings and made two pots fall. I caught one in time, but the other hit the sun-baked ground and smashed into pieces.

  The sound seemed to make everyone around us freeze, for it was very bad luck to smash a new pot. Some believed that if you inscribed the name of an enemy on an unused pot and then deliberately broke it, it was as a curse upon the one named.

  I did not believe in such things, but I did not rejoice in the loss of my wares. We were not rich, my family and I, and selling pottery kept bread on our table and the roof over our heads. This old one obviously could not pay for her carelessness.

  “Be still,” I scolded her. My warning was not an idle one, for she was as barefoot as I, and sharp potsherds glittered on the ground for a yard around us. “Your feet shall be torn to ribbons if you try to flee now.”

  “They mean to kill me.” Her voice held no terror, only the rasp of exhaustion.

  “We do not put criminals to death here.” But the shamar were within their rights to cut off her right hand, and the shock and indignity of that often did away with the older ones. I peered into her face, but her unkempt, filthy white hair masked it. I had no love of thieves, but something about her made me ask, “What have you done?”

  “Offered truth where only lies were welcome.” Burning eyes, like those of a mad dog, glittered from beneath the veil of hair. A gnarled hand seized my wrist, bruising it as she jerked me close. The smell of her was as fevered and unpleasant as her gaze. “You work the clay.”

  “No, I but sell the pots.” I took a step back, but she kept hold of my arm. “Please release me.” Why was I being so polite to a thief? My father, were he well enough to come to market these days, would have beaten her away with his crutch.

  “The hand that works the clay shapes the world,” she whispered, and flipped my wrist so that my palm faced up. She stared at it, jerked once, and peered into my eyes with something like outrage. “Wife you shall soon be. But whose?”

  How could the thief have guessed I was unmarried? My khiton, which was one of my mother’s and plainly colored, marked me as a married woman. Since I had begun selling at market, I never wore a striped samla, the robe of a betulah, a young Hebrew maiden. The other merchants understood my home situation, and had never rebuked me for my small pretense.

  Besides my garb, I was almost too old to be considered betulah anymore. In my heart I had accepted that no one would ever offer for me, for I would bring nothing to a marriage, no portion of animals or nahalah land. Bahur, the young Hebrew men eligible for marriage, expected something in return for the mohar, the normal price they paid to the family of their bride.

  “You do not believe me.”

  I stared at the old thief. Perhaps she was as crazed as she was odorous. “I am not to marry.”

  “Yet.” The broken edges of her crusted fingernails stabbed into my flesh. “For my debt to you, this is what I see: One king fool, one fool king.” She appeared ready to collapse, but she would not release me. “Whose shall you be, and whose truth shall you speak?”

  “I don’t understand.” My wrist hurt, though, and there would be bruises to explain if she did not turn me loose.

  “You shall, Father’s Delight. When you doubt, go back to the wheel. Turn the wheel.” All the strength seemed to go out of her, and she sagged against me and groaned. “Turn the—”

  “Hold!”

  One of the shamar pulled me away while the other two seized the old woman. She fought them like one possessed of demons, scratching and writhing between them. “Misbegotten sons of Amel’s countless whores! I conjured truth for him! I curse your souls to be devoured! May the snapping jaws of—”

  A heavy leather gauntlet came down on her head, stunning her into silence and making blood spill over her lip.

  “Please!” I reached out a hand to ward off a second blow. “She is too old; you shall kill her.”

  “Do not your eyes work, woman?” The guardsman who had struck the thief grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back, revealing her face for the first time. Foreign-looking dark blue tattoos of spirals circled her cheeks and brow, but her skin had the unlined, early bloom of youth.

  Whoever she was, from wherever she had come, she was not Hebrew. Uneasy now, I drew back a step. “Who is she?”

  “A m’khashepah,” the guard said, and released the thief’s hair. Her head drooped against her chest. “She stole a jeweled chalice from Shofet Choab and fled his house.”

  Choab was a powerful man, a town leader and a judge who had the ear of King Saul himself. A descendent of the tribe of Aaron, he held sway over many of the shofetim in our region for twenty years, making him a judge of judges. He also served the king as a military commander in times of war. Some said the shofet broke Hebrew law as often as he adjudicated it, but he was not a man with whom one trifled, or of whom one made an enemy.

  Stealing from the shofet was a terribly grievous offense; for that—and practicing witchcraft within the walls of the town—the thief would likely be sold into slavery.

  Yet something was wrong with this charge. I looked her over. Her ragged garments possessed no hidden pockets or folds where something so large and expensive could be concealed. “She carries no chalice.”

  “Likely she hid it somewhere ere she fled, intending to retrieve it later. It matters not. Her lies will earn her chains.” The largest shamar hefted the thief under his arm like a limp sack of grain.

  “Wait.” I felt oddly indebted to the thief/m’kha-shepah, but what could I do? To gain an audience with Choab took weeks, and then only a man could petition the minister. My father was not well enough to do so, and Rivai wouldn’t care about an issah nokriyah, a foreign female, especially not one accused of thievery and witchcraft.

  Feeling helpless and foolish, I crouched down and laid my hand on the lolling, white head. What had been done to her, to steal the color from her hair and the sanity from her mind? “I am sorry, but I cannot help you in this. I shall pray to the Adonai to have mercy on you.”

  Her head lifted sluggishly. “You are a generous and merciful one.” Those burning eyes dimmed a little as they met mine, but she focused, and then she bared strong white teeth in a ferocious, slightly mad smile. “Yes, mercy, that is it. Seek mercy where none is deserved. Cry mercy when none is earned. Stand and you shall fall. Kneel and you shall rise. Search for it, bargain for it, crawl for it. . . .” The last word ended in a furious shriek as she began fighting the guardsman again.

  My hands trembled as I watched the shamar drag her from the marketplace. My palm felt wet, and I looked down to see bright red blood on my palm. I stared at it, horrified even more when I realized it must have come from the other woman’s head.

  We do not put criminals to death here, I had assured her. Would Shofet Choab make a liar of me?

  “Here.” Amri’s shaking hand thrust a bit of rag cloth into mine. He was making protective signs over himself with the other hand and staring in the direction the guardsmen had dragged the m’khashepah.

  “Go and wash, Abigail,” Cetura urged me in a tight, horrified voice. “Scrub every trace of that evil one from your hands.”

  The blood washed away easily enough, but the memory of
it would not. Nor would the m’khashepah’s words leave my thoughts, though I could make no sense of them.

  Stand and you shall fall. Kneel and you shall rise.

  The early uproar at the market created a demand for pots, for many more than my own had been smashed. I took some trade in return, but from those merchants whose wares had been ruined, I accepted a promise of payment.

  “But I do not know when I can pay,” Geddel the clothes mender said after he asked for my largest scrub basin to replace the one the shamar had smashed. The mended garments at his stall had been trampled in the dirt, and all of them needed washing before they were returned to their owners.

  I knew Geddel had an extended family to feed, and his kin lived far to the north. He worked very long hours, both at home and at the market, and I suspected that he and his lived, as my family did, from hand to mouth.

  “I meant to visit your wife and see the new baby,” I told him impulsively. “Let this be my birth-gift for him.”

  Geddel lifted his eyebrows. “Our new baby walks on his own now, Abigail.”

  I gave his shoulder a friendly pat. “Then you must tell your wife that I am sorry the gift is late.”

  When all the pots I had brought but one were gone, I left the market, stopping at the communal well to use my last pot to draw water before continuing home.

  “No strings of leftovers today, Abigail?” Ketina, the youngest daughter of Huram the coppersmith, asked as she took her turn at the well to fill her water jars.

  Like other young girls, Ketina came to draw water several times daily. She had a lively disposition that suited her merry little face. The latter had been sun-spattered with freckles from going outside without a head cloth, much to the despair of her mother.

  “I sold everything, praise the Adonai.” The words sounded lifeless even to my own ears, and I forced a smile. “How does your family fare?”

  “All is shouting and wailing this day.” The girl’s big brown eyes rolled before she leaned close and lowered her voice. “My brother Tzalmon wishes to pledge his troth to Devash, the shepherd Noisan’s girl, but her father doesn’t approve of the match.”

  Tzalmon was a handsome young man and a good friend of my brother’s. He could be somewhat brash while in Rivai’s company, but Huram’s influence showed in Tzalmon’s genial manners, and his mother’s influence in the respect he always showed older women.

  I thought Devash could do much worse than Ketina’s brother. “Why does Devash’s father disapprove?”

  “We’re not sure—no one will say outright—but I think it is the mohar her father asks,” Ketina said, her voice lowering to a murmur. “Tzal is still apprenticed to Gowen the stonecutter, you know, and although he no longer has to pay his master’s fees he must earn his room and board, so little is left over. There are fifteen of us at home, so Father can help only so much. Noisan lives modestly, and Devash is his only daughter. It is said that she shall bring land and many sheep to her husband.”

  I had not known Devash so endowered. That meant the bride price she commanded would probably be more than the usual fifty silver sheqels. “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Tzal should know better, but these days his heart rules his head.” The girl lifted her shoulders. “Mother is beside herself, but when is she not? Father says it is the Lord’s will and then goes into the smith to hammer on something.”

  My father also went to the wheel whenever Rivai railed over our lack of wealth. “Perhaps he may save until he can afford her.” As an apprentice Tzalmon could improve his situation in time, but for my brother, who refused to learn an acceptable trade, choices would always be limited.

  “By then she shall be too old and worn . . .” She trailed off, suddenly embarrassed.

  To give him sons, was what she meant to say. Too old and worn out, as I would soon be.

  I had never been courted, not even once, for my father had no zebed of nahalah land or herd animals to offer. Such a dowry was vital, for eligible young bahur expect a wife to add her portion to the family holdings.

  If the Adonai had fashioned me with bold colors or a fetching shape, then I might have caught the eye of a young man. Sometimes I dreamed of myself in a different body, one of great beauty and grace, surrounded by countless handsome young bahur, treasured and admired by all.

  When I woke, I was still plain, sturdy Abigail of Carmel, as useful and ordinary as a table jug.

  “No matter,” I said, keeping my tone even. “One as handsome as your brother shall find another easily.”

  “As you say.” Gladly she changed the subject. “You should take a rest when you get home, Abi, you look very tired.”

  And old. And worn out.

  “I am well.” Well or not, I would take no rest for some hours yet. Waiting for me at home was grain to grind and the garden to tend and the goats to graze and water and the evening meal to make. And if I felt as if a hundred pickling jars hung from my shoulders, what of it? There was no one else to carry my unseen burdens. Unlike Tzalmon, I had no betrothed over whom to agonize, and I was beginning to think that I never would.

  Wife you shall soon be . . . but whose?

  The prediction made me feel sick, sick of myself and my secret yearnings. I was fortunate that I had a little house with a patch of garden, and two goats, and a loving family. It may not have been much, but it was more than the m’khashepah would have, once Choab sold her to slavers to recover his losses. Imagining her life from there made me shudder.

  “Here.” Ketina brought up the heavy bucket and before I could protest, filled my water jar for me. “That’s one less task for you to do.”

  I touched her arm with gratitude, but her kindness made me feel sad. If only I had a sibling like her. “My thanks, little friend.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  After I bid Ketina good-bye, I adjusted my strings and braced the heavy water jug on my hip, then made my way from the well to my home. Carmel was a clean and pleasant town, but it was not a very exciting place. It was neither the richest nor poorest town in Judah, with merely dirt roads and modest mud-brick dwellings, the inhabitants more industrious than friendly. They had to be; most homes contained three or four generations under one roof, along with the family’s goats, sheep, and workrooms.

  My brother thought our town not very grand at all.

  “We should move to a city in the north, where the avenues are paved with stone and beasts do the hauling,” Rivai had told my father more than once. “They say there are fountains and two-story houses with floors of river pebble and courtyards with gardens of flowers where artists can dream. Musicians play day and night but for the joy of it!”

  My father usually nodded absently, hearing but not hearing Rivai, but during one such tirade he had given him a weary look. “We cannot dine on dreams or joy, my son. We must earn our keep.”

  “The soul needs more than barley gruel and water!” my brother snapped back before storming up the ladder to the roof.

  Rivai spent much time on the roof. Sometimes I wondered if he went up there to brood, or to place himself above us. Perhaps our roof was the closest thing to the balcony of the grand house in which my brother felt he deserved to dwell, where his soul could feast on the joy of creating something for nothing.

  He would be good at that, I thought, allowing myself a moment of rare bitterness. If only idle pleasures were a trade.

  Today I was home early and found my father dozing outside in his hammock. Our home was square and only a single level, with four small rooms and an open-sided niche shaded by a canopy of boughs and brushwood. Through the niche I walked to the center of the house, which needed a new roof and was really too small to be called a proper courtyard. There I checked the round clay oven to make sure the coals from breakfast were still hot, and added some twigs from a large pile of brushwood I collected on my walks and kept neatly stacked in one corner.

  I carried the water jug into our front room, the largest space in the house, where w
e ate and worked and where I slept. As firstborn and son, Rivai was entitled to his own room, and my parents shared the other. The fourth room opened out to the niche, so we used it to store the heavy pallets of red and gray potting clay, and to bed down the goats at night.

  Automatically I washed my bare feet before stepping onto the beaten-clay floor.

  “Mother?” I removed my outer mantle and head cloth and walked back to my parents’ chamber, but found it empty. I heard soft singing and followed it to the storage room. There my mother sat on the straw-covered floor, between our two goats, an arm around the spotted hide of the smaller, rocking a little as she murmured an old cradle tune. The second goat lay asleep at her side, and I saw that she had draped her head cloth over it as one might over a slumbering infant.

  This bizarre sight was not at all a surprise to me. I had seen many like it over the last few years.

  Chemda, my mother, was said to have once been a very handsome woman, but hard work and several miscarriages had left her frail and thin. She was not feebleminded, exactly, but she had not been right, not since the last time she had lost a baby. Her thoughts often wandered in odd directions, and things she said and did sometimes made little sense. She also suffered from frightening spells of forgetfulness; on some bad days she did not know me, my brother, my father, or even her own name.

  I prayed today was not one of those days. “Mother,” I called to her again. I kept my voice gentle and remained where I was, in the doorway. When she had her spells, often loud voices or sudden movements terrified her.

  Chemda looked up, her clouded eyes nearly crossing until she focused on my face. “Abigail.” She glanced at a shaft of sun streaming in through the room’s small window. “You are home early.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Relief made me smile as I came forward to help her up from the floor. “All our pots sold quickly today.” I reached for her head cloth.

  “How nice. Oren shall be pleased. Don’t do that.” She gave my hand a slap. “You might wake the babe.”