Abigail's Story (4 page)

Before I could go to my parents' room, Rivai reached out and seized my wrist. “Do not wake him, Abi. I was not robbed.” He grimaced. “Not exactly.”

“What happened to you, then, exactly?”

He shrugged. “I went to Maon with Nefat, and we stopped at a gaming hall.”

Maon was a settlement built on a high hill a mile to the south of our town. It was a rough place frequented by sheepherders and shearers from Ziph and
Juttah. Maon was where they spent their wages on drink, gaming, and the Adonai knew what else.

To my knowledge, my brother had never been there before. “Father does not permit you to go there.”

“I am a man now, Abi. Father does not own me.” He felt his nose again. “It
is
almost broken, those dogs. A debt is no reason to beat a man. I told them I would pay it.”

“You have a debt?” My brother had never gambled outside our town or wagered more than he carried. We were too poor to merit credit from anyone. At least, I had thought we were.

“I was cheated.” Rivai sat up and gave me an indignant glare. “The dice were switched, and the last were weighted, I swear it.”

I still could not get past the fact that my brother had gambled beyond his means to pay and had been beaten for it. “How much do you owe?”

“A debt is a matter for men,” he said, all haughty male now. “You would not understand.”

Would I not? Who did he think managed the household income? Our mother? “Then I shall wake Father,” I said, “and you two
men
can discuss it.”

Again my brother moved to stop me. “No, please, Abi.” His manly arrogance vanished, leaving behind only a frightened boy. “You cannot speak of this to him.”

“I promise, I shall not.”
Why is he so afraid?
I braced myself even as I reached out to take his hand in mine. “How much did you lose, Rivai?”

He looked at the table. “Eight.”

“Eight pots or eight measures of emmer?” The pots we could begin making tonight and, if we worked late, have finished in two days. It would be harder to put together so much grain. I had earned two sacks of millet from today's trading; perhaps Cetura would exchange—

“Eight maneh of gold,” Rivai said.

CHAPTER
4

E
ight maneh of gold.

Rivai's words rang in my ears, and I felt as if my blood turned to clay. I barely felt his hand slip from my numb fingers.

“Gold.” I could barely shape the word with my lips. “You gambled with
gold
?”

His head drooped before he nodded.

No, it could not be. We had no gold. We had never had any gold. There was a little silver, saved from the very best years, but no one was permitted to touch it. My father had put the silver aside to serve as mohar for my brother's future wife.

Gold was wholly beyond us.

“From where did you get this gold?” A more horrifying thought occurred to me. “You did not
steal
it?”

“I am no thief.” Rivai gave me a highly offended look. “Nefat took me over to Maon to a gaming house. The man playing, Nabal, was drunk and making
reckless plays. Nefat lent me enough to bet against him. I won the dice, and then the throw, and then I kept winning.” He leaned over, lowering his voice to an excited whisper. “By moonrise he had lost twelve maneh of gold to me, enough to buy a house in the west quarter and you a husband. None of us would have had to work for the rest of our lives.”

I stopped listening so that I could calculate. Twelve maneh were equal to six hundred gold sheqels, or a whole bar of gold, more wealth than I or anyone in our quarter could expect to see in a lifetime. It was a veritable fortune: a family of twenty could live in luxury on but half such an amount for as many years.

“You should have seen me play,” my brother continued to boast. “Every throw was mine. Why, if I had—”

“You said you owe eight,” I reminded him.

His shoulders slumped, and his face fell into a familiar, belligerent expression. “My luck turned, and that drunken fool began to win. I had to keep playing to recover what I had lost, didn't I?”

“So you lost your winnings plus eight you did not have to this Nabal.” Who had likely not been drunk or a fool. “How could you do such a thing?”

“I was tricked,” he insisted. “Nabal pressed me to drink. When my gold was gone, Nefat whined about the stake I owed him. I could not stop.”

It was sounding more and more as if my brother had been swindled. “Is Nefat your friend, or Nabal's?”

“Nefat was taken in, the same as I.” He scowled.
“I know why the Maon switched the dice. Nabal's losses made him fear my great luck.”

“I am certain that it terrified him.” I rested my throbbing forehead against my palm. “We have not eight silver sheqels to our name, Brother. How do you mean to repay this man?”

Rivai yawned. “I can borrow from friends.”

“Friends like Tzalmon, who cannot afford to wed,” I suggested, “or Klurdi, who has nearly beggared his parents with his own drinking and gaming?”

“Nefat will lend it to me.” There was a new uncertainty in his eyes and voice. Perhaps my brother was only now realizing how few sensible friends he had. “Or someone else.”

“Let us imagine no one can,” I said. “What then? Will this Nabal have you arrested?” He shook his head and looked away from me. New dread poured atop the cold knot in my chest. “Rivai, what will he do to you if you cannot pay?
Tell
me.”

“Maon law gives Nabal leave to take the debt owed from my family from our go'el,” he muttered. “We have no kin to pay our debts, so it must come from Father.”

We were not subject to Maon law unless we lived or worked in that town. However, Maon's distractions kept many undesirables away from Carmel, and I suspected that our shofetim would not bar the town's authorities from pursuing and prosecuting my brother, even from a suspected swindler.

“Our parents cannot pay this anymore than you can.” No one in our quarter could.

My brother's mouth tightened. “Father could borrow from one of his friends.”

“No one has the means to loan him that much, and we have nothing of value to serve as collateral. The house is practically worthless. The wheel, perhaps, might bring some money, and the goats; only then we would have no pots to sell or milk to . . .” The memory of mad, burning eyes silenced me. Under Hebrew law, those who could not pay their debts were considered equal to thieves. “Would Nabal force Father to sell one of us into slavery?”

My brother made a sound of contempt. “Don't talk foolishness, Abigail. For eight maneh, he would have to sell himself as well as you and me
and
Mother.”

I knew the law. A man's debts had to be paid, however he obtained the payment. As long as we were healthy, we would go to the slave caravans.

“If you do not pay this debt, he shall be held responsible. He shall do what he must.” Such a thing would break my father's failing spirit.

No,
my heart informed me.
It shall kill him.
Long before the deprivations of life as a slave would.

“It is a
stupid
law,” Rivai flared, slamming his fist into the table. He winced and shook it. “It matters not what the law says. I am a grown man. I shall give them what I can borrow, and Nabal will have to be satisfied with that until I can find the rest.”

“And if he is not?”

My brother nursed his hand, his expression sulky. “I shall go to the shamar, then, and explain that it is not my fault, that the game was rigged—”

“When the shamar are finished laughing, they shall put us all in chains and lead us to the slave caravans.” Too upset to remain still, I rose from the table. “Who is this Nabal?”

“He has the biggest herds of sheep and goats in Judah, and much property in Maon. They say no one has a tighter fist than Nabal, and that is why he has no wife or family or friends. Even his hired herdsmen are said to live like beggars.” Rivai gave me a cautious look. “Are you going to tell Father?”

“I said I would not.” I needed to think, and I could not do that by weeping and wailing over my brother's idiocy. “Come, wash and change out of your khiton. You must turn the wheel for me tonight.”

My brother gaped. “You still mean to work?”

“There is no market for our tears,” I said simply.

 

Eight maneh of gold.

As I walked to the storage room, the reality of the enormous debt seemed to loom over me like a towering ziggurat.

Which it was, compared to our extremely modest income. A very good week of selling at market earned us barter equal to perhaps two silver sheqels. Most of that I traded again to other merchants for what my family needed to live: food and medicines, dyes for cloth and clay, hardwood for the kiln, oil for the lamps, flax and wool for weaving, fodder for the goats . . .

Eight maneh.
More gold than might be earned in
ten
good
years
.

The red clay used to make our pots was very smooth and pure, thanks to the clean water of the spring near the bank from which we took it. Once a month my brother and I borrowed one of our Shomer's carts to haul our pallets to the spring and refill them, a long and exhausting task that, like so many, had become too much for our father to perform.

What will we tell Father when the Maon's men come for payment?

Earlier in the week I had washed and tempered a large mound of red clay, treading it with my bare feet, which rendered it malleable enough for the wheel. From this I gathered as much as I could carry, and asked my brother to bring the jar of soft rainwater I used for slips and turnings.

My father's wheel occupied one corner of the courtyard, separated by screens woven of olive wood and goat hair rope. It was not a very large wheel, only six hands across, but it sat balanced perfectly on its stone axis and spun freely with the lightest of touches. Time and countless mounds of clay had worn the surface of the gray speckled stone disk to a satisfying smoothness.

Slaves, like women, were generally not permitted to make pots. In three days I might lose more than my personal freedom. I was no artisan like my brother, but working the clay pleased me. It made me feel that I was more than the one who cooked and cleaned and sold things.

Are these the last I shall ever make?

While I portioned out the clay, Rivai brought my
father's short stool and set it in place. He nudged the edge of the wheel, smearing some grease beneath to keep grit out of the axis seam, and took position behind it. Because turning the wheel meant he would be continually splattered by the clay and water it flung, he wore only an old ezor modestly wrapped around his hips.

“How long will this take?” he asked me. “I am weary.”

He
was weary. I had been awake and working since before dawn, and had done more than he would in a week. I felt so tired my bones ached, and now the thought of eight maneh of gold ground like olive press stones atop my fatigue.

For a moment I was tempted to throw the clay at my brother's head.

“As long as it takes.” I put on one of my father's woolen work aprons to protect my khiton, dropped a portion of clay on the reed bat covering the top of the wheel, and dipped my hands in the rainwater.

Rivai sighed and bent to the wheel. Its edges were heavier than its center, so when it began to spin under his hands it continued revolving on its own for some time. In order for me to properly work the clay, all my brother had to do was give the moving wheel a push now and then to sustain an even rate of spinning.

Pain knotted beneath my breast.
If only a heart could be so effortlessly sustained.

Fashioning pots was not as easy as it appeared. I had watched my father work at the wheel all my life,
and time and again he had allowed me to work my own little pots. Those were the happiest times I could remember, when he sat me on his stool, my short legs dangling, and spun the wheel for me. He had always treated me as if I were a master potter.

“You have clever hands, my daughter,” he would say to me. “Ah, if only you were a boy.”

For all my play on the wheel as a child, my first serious attempts had been laughably lopsided. It took many months of practice in secret before I was able to make something worth selling, and yet another season before I was skilled enough to create reasonable duplicates of my father's work.

From three mounds I worked utilitarian jars and lamps of sizes that I knew would sell well at market. These I made so often I could shape them with my eyes closed, leaving myself free to consider what to do about Rivai's impossible debt.

Rivai was right. We could not pay such a debt, not unless Father sold us and all we had. Even if our parents were spared lives as slaves, they would have to beg in the street for food until the shamar finally ran them out of the town. Unprotected in the wilderness, they would starve or be killed by wild animals, marauders, or the elements.

I would die before I allowed that to happen.

“We could flee to Hebron,” my brother said, as if knowing my thoughts. “It is a city of refuge.”

Rivai knew so little of the law. I, on the other hand, had learned much about it from other merchants as well as from those who passed through the
marketplace. Knowledge I wished that I did not have, not on this night.

“Cities like Hebron are only for those who kill by accident, if they can persuade the gatekeepers that they are truly innocent,” I told him. “Sanctuary is offered to protect a life, not a purse—or lack of one.”

He gave the wheel a halfhearted push. “You despise me, don't you?”

I had often resented Rivai because my parents had indulged him so much, and because he had so much more freedom than I. I also secretly envied his carvings, which were much finer and more delicate than anything I could ever make. Even so, he was my brother.

“I do not always understand you, or the things you want,” I admitted, “but I could never hate you.”

“I wanted a good life, and the chance to make my art. Now I have probably ruined mine, and yours, and our parents'.” He regarded me with suddenly sad eyes. “You should hate me. You deserve better than this endless work, with the three of us hanging on you, like ugly pots which you shall never sell.”

My fingers clenched, inadvertently ruining the rim of the bowl I was shaping. “You and Mother and Father
are
my life,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “You have never been my burdens. What I do is done out of love for you.”

“Love that you would rather give another. I've heard you in the courtyard at night, you know. You are too practical to believe the Adonai will actually
send you a husband, and you do nothing to find one yourself. Still, you yearn and pray.” He shook his head. “I don't understand why you waste yourself on us, Abigail.”

“Prayer, like hope, costs nothing.” I had never considered looking for a husband; it was not something a woman did. Besides, without a zebed, who would have me? “You cannot say that about your gambling and drinking.”