Abigail's Story (14 page)

I closed my eyes. “He shall be so angry.”

“Yes, so he shall, but by the time he realizes what has been done in his name, you will be in the hill country, where he cannot easily get to you. We merchants will keep him so busy with the matter of the debt that he will have no time to attend to you. When you return, you will come here, to my house. My sons will protect you until we can win a divorce from the shofet.” Cetura turned to her sons. “You will take Abigail back to Paran. Watch carefully on your way; Nabal may have a bright moment and send his men after you.”

“Let him,” Harek said, and cracked his knuckles with a lazy movement. He was one of the largest men in Carmel, and no one who desired his body sound and whole challenged him to a brawl. “We will send them back.”

“After we change their parts around to suit us,” Tul tacked on.

Cetura smiled at me. “It will be well, Abigail. I promise.” She regarded her sons. “Now, you oversize, adorable mules, let us get the wagon loaded with this wheat. Push it to the back, for I want to make sure there is room for plenty of fruit and cheese.”

CHAPTER
13

C
etura's sons made the journey back to Paran a happy one for me. They laughed and joked, and told amusing stories of their wives and children. Both enjoyed their farming life and had many questions about the land near the edge of the wilderness and what grew well there.

“Land like that is good only for terrace farming,” Harek pronounced. “Too much climbing about for me.”

“But there are pretty shepherd girls who jingle when they walk,” Tul said, stroking his beard. “I wager they gild their fingernails and smell of jasmine.”

“They trim their nails to keep them from catching on the yarn from their distaffs,” I said wryly, “and they mostly smell of the leban they love to drink.”

“Leban?”

“Curdled milk.”

Tul made a face. “I think I shall be happier to stay farming in the valley with my Shahera.”

Harek clapped a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Your wife would gouge your eyeballs from your head ere she found you trifling with a shepherdess.”

“My eyeballs might go,” Tul returned, “but your wife would part you from a certain rod.”

“I do not think so,” Harek said. “She is very fond of that particular rod.”

“Oh, but a rod is a rod,” I said, keeping a straight face. “Besides, they are cheap and plentiful at market. She might get another for herself.”

Tul shouted a laugh. “There you are, Harek—perhaps you should buy another and keep it as a spare!”

Despite our general merriment, I noticed how watchful Harek and his younger brother were. Nothing moved that did not draw their attention, and they did not stop in the valley of the crossroads.

“We will water our mules and have some food at the stream on the other side of the valley,” Tul told me. “There should be no surprises there.”

We arrived at Yehud's camp while the sun was still up. As when first I came, Leha walked out to greet us. She looked tired and wan but was pleasant to Cetura's sons and happy to see me.

“I have missed you,” she said, taking my hands in hers and pressing her cheek to mine. “We worried you would not return.”

“I could not stay in town, for there are too many
people, and too much noise. I did bring back something for the children.” I went around to the back of the wagon.

“Abigail, you should not have—oh!” Leha's mouth rounded as Harek and I pulled the wagon cover off the sacks of fruit and wheat, and the stacks of cheeses. “Is this—” She reached out and then snatched her hand back. “This cannot be for us.”

My throat hurt, and I had to swallow before I could speak clearly. “It is for you. Wheat and barley, fruit fresh and dried, and thirty wheels of cheese.” I gave her a sorrowful look. “But no curdled milk. There was none to be had in Carmel.”

“Dearest friend.” Leha embraced me. “How can we repay you for this?” she whispered, still worried.

My husband had done this. His cruelty had wiped the hope of kindness from these people. In that moment, I was very glad I had agreed to Cetura's scheme. “You may make me all the honey nut cakes I can eat.”

By now children had come to the wagon, their dull eyes growing large as they saw the food. While Harek and his brother unloaded the heavy sacks, I gave raisin clusters to the young ones.

“You will have to help me test this cheese,” I told them as I tried to lift the first wheel from the wagon. “I think it is too green, and we may have to feed it to the goats.” I chuckled at the many, eager cries they gave. “Well, perhaps not.”

The cheeses were the largest to be had from Carmel's cheese maker, and far too heavy for me to carry
even one. Two of the oldest boys came on each side of me, and together we carried it into their mothers' tent.

Bethel rose from her place by the cooking pit and frowned at me. “What bring you here, wife of Nabal?”

The boys and I placed the heavy cheese before her, and I bowed my head. “I have brought food from the house of my husband.” Since he was paying for it, it was considered a gift of his house. “It is to express our gratitude for the hard work you and your people have done in caring for our flocks.”

“Your husband would not send a single, withered fig to us that we had not earned,” the old woman said in her harshest voice. “I know this from years past, when we were hungry and he let us starve.”

I looked into her fierce eyes. There was no denial I could make, nothing that would redeem my husband. There was not even the desire in my heart to do so. “Then I would ask you to consider this a gift of my heart, wife of Yehud.”

“You were our honored guest,” Bethel said, still unswayed, “but you are not kin. You are the wife of our master. We serve you. We do not take offerings or gifts from you. We are not interested in your heart.”

It was like a slap. Was that how she saw me? As the patronizing wife of her rich master? Did I mean nothing more to Yehud's family?

I felt terribly embarrassed. Now I saw my time with the hill people from their eyes. They had only
tolerated me because they feared Nabal. There was no place for me in the house of my husband, and no sanctuary to be had here.

“Where is Keseke?” I asked, holding on to the ragged edge of my composure. “I shall collect her and leave you in peace.”

“Your friend stayed with us until her ankle was healed, and ate our food, and complained all the day and night. Then she slipped away in the dark while we were sleeping.” Bethel made a sound of disgust. “She knew we did not have enough, and still she took all the food she could carry. Good riddance to her.”

“I am sorry she stole from you.” I removed my samla and held it out. “Please accept this.” Giving it would not replace what Keseke had taken, but it was a symbol of my shame and contrition.

Bethel ignored it. “You should go now before I truly become angry.”

One of the older girls came up and tugged on the seam of Bethel's khiton. “Grandmother, please, it is Abigail. She brought cheese for us, and gave us raisins. Please do not be angry at her. She will take the food away, and our tummies ache.”

“Send me out of the camp,” I said to the old woman, “but I beg you, keep the food. The children need it.” I turned and moved toward the tent flap.

“Abigail.”

I looked over my shoulder.

“You cannot go.” Bethel put an arm around her granddaughter. “This food must be wrapped and
stored away, and the cheese cut up for the children, and I am too tired to do it.”

My shoulders sagged. “Your daughters can do so."

“Is this so? I shall not have the wife of Nabal here, but Abigail of Carmel may stay, if she is willing to live here as our kin, and do her part of the work.” She hobbled forward and inspected the cheese. “Where are we to put this monstrosity? It is as big as a ram's head. Two rams' heads. Could you not bring something a little smaller?”

Leha gasped. “Aunt!”

I laughed through the tears stinging in my eyes. “I do not know, but I should say that there are twenty-nine more exactly like it still on the wagon.”

 

From that day forward, Yehud's family treated me just as any other woman in camp. As Bethel had pronounced, I was kin now, and so I was praised and scolded and put to work the same as any of her daughters.

No word came from Maon, nor any of my husband's men to drag me back. I expected them every hour of the first week, and kept close watch, but as the days passed I gradually relaxed and thought less and less about Nabal and how he might try to punish me for disobeying him. My fear I could control. Yehud and his sons would protect me until I could arrange for my divorce.

My dreams, however, did as they pleased, and brought another man into my thoughts.

Every night I dreamed of black eyes watching me, of strong, gentle hands sifting through my hair. In my dreams I heard his voice and watched him dance. Sometimes I heard him sing again, and his songs were like a golden shower over my ears. At the end of the dream, when he came to me—and he always did—I reached for him with eager, open arms. Always, always, I awoke just before I touched him. Often I opened my eyes to find my face already wet from weeping.

The shepherd of the blue mantle danced and sang in my dreams, while I cried in my sleep.

“You are very quiet lately, Abigail,” Leha said one afternoon as she helped me remove cooled pots from the oven we were using as a kiln. “Are you missing your family in Carmel?”

“Often. I wish my parents were in better health, so that I could bring them here.” I brushed a bit of ash from the lid to a soup pot and handed it to her. “You are not married yet, are you?”

Leha shook her head. “Bethel needs tending, and I am in no hurry to fall in love or begin having babies.”

Each married woman in camp seemed to treat her husband differently. Yehud's eldest son came directly to the women's tent to fetch his new wife, and sometimes was so eager for her that he carried her off like a raider. Such displays of passion made the other women laugh out loud, but his wife never seemed to take offense. Indeed, she would giggle herself, all the way out of the tent.

Bethel and Yehud spent their time privately, away from curious eyes, but I sensed a deep and abiding affection as well as respect whenever Bethel spoke of him. Because Yehud had more than one wife, he divided his nights among them. Bethel did not seem to resent her husband's devotion to his other wives, and more than once I heard her urge the younger women to anoint their hair or change their khiton so that they would please the rosh's eye.

Malme, heavy with child, did none of these things. She would sulk throughout the day, pining and sighing for her husband as if her heart was breaking. Yet when her husband came for her at night, her mood changed completely. She would frown and ignore him, complaining endlessly about carrying the burden of their unborn child. Even more astonishing, Malme's husband did not grow angry, but acted as if at fault. He would always coax and plead with her, flattering her and plying her with treats and little gifts until she grudgingly went back to his tent with him.

Malme's belly continued to swell, and as the days passed and her child settled low in her womb, her face, hands, and feet became bloated, as well.

“I fear she will not have an easy time of it,” Leha told me. “She has not been eating much and cannot walk more than a few paces without losing her breath.”

I had been too young to help my mother with her last pregnancies. “Does the yeled still move?”

“Yes, but not as strongly as before.” Leha
grimaced. “It may be nothing. Some babies do not kick as much just before it is time for them to be born.”

Little as I knew about childbirth, this still did not sound promising. “Do you have a midwife?”

“No, but Bethel has seen to the birth of nearly everyone here. She will know what to do for Malme.” Leha moved the flat stone over the oven opening and dusted off her hands. “Would you like to go and pick some caper berries with me before you go to my aunt? I saw a ripe patch behind the terebinth grove.”

Angry shouts drowned out my answer, and we both turned to see a group of the dal dragging two strange men into the center of camp. There they drove two thick wooden stakes into the ground and tied the strangers to them.

Leha's mouth became a flat, white line. “We must bring the little ones into the tents.”

I helped Leha and the other women herd the youngest children away from the scene. Malme began to fuss about the noise, but Bethel spoke sharply to her. When one of the strangers shouted something in a strange language, the women's faces grew fearful.

“Thieving Philistines,” Bethel said in disgust, and took my arm. “Leha, stay here and keep the children from the flaps. Abigail will come with me.”

I did not know what to expect when Bethel and I walked outside. The shouting of the captives vied with the jeers of the dal, and many knives were drawn.

Afraid blood would be spilled, I put my arm
around the older woman's waist. “Perhaps we should go back into the tent and wait for this to be over.”

“No,” Bethel said. “Were my husband here, he would take charge. In his place, I must.”

“Hebrew trash,” one of the captives sneered in our language as he struggled against his bonds. “You only caught us because we are two. Were my kin here—”

“They would be tied up beside you, braying like good Philistine jackasses,” one of the dal said. The other men laughed until they caught sight of me and Bethel, and fell silent.

The angry Philistine glared at us. “Why do you bring out your women? Are they who you have fight your battles?”

Bethel released my arm and hobbled forward. “I do not know who brought this erwat dabar into camp,” she said to one of the dal, “but you can take them directly where you found them.”

Being called as unclean as human waste only goaded the Philistine to become more insulting. “It dresses and sounds like a woman, but it speaks like a man. I know, this must be your melekh.”