Delilah: A Novel (32 page)

She smiled. “I no longer wear it braided into my hair, for I am no longer a priestess of Atargatis, and wish those I now live among to forget I ever was.” Aylah reached to her neck, pulled a thin cord from beneath the tunic that covered her from throat to knees. The amulet I had given her the day we became avowed heart-sisters hung upon the cord. “You see? I wear it still.” She regarded me steadily. “But even if I did not, I need no token to keep you in my heart, Delilah.”

She let the little coral fish drop back beneath her gown. For a moment I thought she wished to speak, but she only looked upon me with an odd expression of loving sorrow.

“Aylah? What is wrong?”

She hesitated, then shook her head and smiled. “Nothing.”

Nothing you wish me to know
. Never had I been able to either coax or force Aylah to say anything she did not wish to reveal, but I knew I must try. I held out my hands, and Aylah laid hers in mine. “Something troubles you,” I said. “Tell me. Please, Aylah, you must tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

“No, Delilah, you cannot. Please let it be.”

I stood as tall and straight as the Grove Goddess, made my voice heavy with self-importance. “Remember I am a priestess; you may confide in me safely.”

That brought a smile to her lips, as I had hoped. “I have no more to worry me than any woman who carries her first child.”

This news drew an answering smile from me—as doubtless she had hoped. “You are with child? Oh, Aylah! Is . . . your husband . . . pleased?”

“How not? What man does not dream of his sons?” Aylah smoothed
her hands down her blue linen garment, revealing the lush rounding of her body.

“So you pray the child you carry is a boy?” I asked, and Aylah let her dress fall loose again and laughed softly.

“It would be better if the first is a boy. Then my husband’s father and mother will praise my name and call me blessed, for his people prize sons above all. And perhaps they will then be able to recall my name when Samson takes me to Zorah to visit them.”

“And so if your child is a girl, they will berate you?”

“Oh, they will berate me whatever I do; they do not think me fit to be Samson’s wife. But they will greet a first daughter as proof I am fertile enough that they may hope for boys next. So all will be well.”

Placid and soft with contentment, Aylah’s voice stroked the air. I looked upon my heart-sister, and wondered when and how the Temple dancer had been tamed; the priestess of Atargatis banished. Suddenly fearful—of what, I did not know—I reached out and grasped Aylah’s hands.

“Come with me,” I said again, although she had already refused my plea that she do so. But an odd urgency forced the words from me. “Come back to the Temple.”

“No, Delilah. I cannot return there. And besides—” She stopped, and her eyes slid away, did not meet mine. “I am not like you, heart-sister. For all the days I dwelt in Our Lady’s House, I was looked upon only as something rare and strange, something they could raise up and display as—as if I were another idol of ivory and amber. And not for who I am, or for what I can do, but for my face, and the color of my hair. They valued me most because you loved me. I have not the skill nor the calling to be a priestess of any god or goddess.”

“You do. You
do
.” Fiercely spoken words, as if I could claim Aylah for my own once more, bring her back to the safety that lay behind the Temple gates.

Aylah merely shook her head. “No, I do not, and the High Priestess and all the senior priestesses of the Great House knew it. I am not like
you—you are passion and faith; you are a true vessel of Atargatis Herself. But I am none of these things. For myself, I have always wished for a quiet life. For a husband, for a home. For children who will not be taken from me. That is what I want, Delilah. Even if the Temple would take me back now, I would not go.”

“Of course it would take you back. Why not?”

Aylah hesitated, as if weighing what she should say and what she should not. At last she said, “Forget those words; I should not have spoken them. Remember only that I am content as I am.”

“How can you be? You could have been High Priestess in Ascalon!”

“No, I could not. But then, I never wanted to be High Priestess. That was your dream, Delilah. Not mine.”

There was no bitterness in her words, only clear strong truth. For half a dozen heartbeats, there was only silence between us. Then I forced myself to make an effort to speak calmly, to speak kind words. “So you are happy. I am glad.”

She smiled then, the close, secret curve of her lips that so resembled the smile on the image of Atargatis that stood in Ascalon’s Temple. “So am I. And when you, too, are happy, Delilah, I will be happier still.”

“I am happy.” At least, I thought I was. Was I not a priestess ordained, and the Temple’s pride as Dancer Before Our Lady Atargatis? Yet at Aylah’s words, something stirred, uneasy, beneath my heart. I closed my eyes for a breath and banished the strange emotion. My future stretched before me as set and immutable as the ancient spirals in the dancing-floor. I knew who and what I was, and how each day, each month, each year would pass. I would not listen to a small still voice that asked,
Is that enough, Delilah? Is that truly all you desire of life?

Aylah regarded me steadily with her moon-pale eyes. “If that is true, I am glad of it.”

A priestess learns to wear a mask; I smiled back at Aylah as placidly as if I felt nothing more than pleasure at seeing her once more. “Then be glad, heart-sister. And come to us at Our Lady’s House when your child is born, that the goddess may bless you both. And perhaps—”

“No, Delilah. My child will not serve in Atargatis’s Temple. And I do not wish to wait. You are a priestess; give me the goddess’s blessing now.”

There was an urgency in her voice that I set down to the fears many women suffer as they await their children’s birth. But I said only “Of course.” It was my duty, after all. I would have done it even for a stranger, or an enemy, who asked for such a blessing.

So we embraced as friends, and then, as priestess, I called down Our Lady’s blessing upon her and her unborn child. When the blessing had been spoken, Aylah smiled, and kissed me.

“Here.” Aylah drew the cord over her neck; she reached out to me and took my hand, pressing the token against my palm. “Take this, to remember that I will always hold you in my heart, beloved sister.” And then, as I stared down at the little coral fish cupped in my hand, Aylah said, “Be happy, Delilah. Remember that now is all the time there is.” Then she went away again; the rites of the Full Moon are not for women already carrying the goddess’s greatest blessing.

I shall always be grateful that we parted sweetly that day, with no hard words to lie forever between us in the Land Beyond the Sunset. For that was the last time I saw my sister Aylah.

High Priestess Derceto summoned me months later to tell me news of Aylah. She did not put her arms around me and weep with me, as Nikkal would have done in her place. Derceto merely told me in plain words that my heart-sister had died, and how. She said nothing of Samson, only that men he had wronged had burned his fields, and his gardens, and his house, with his wife and child inside it. They piled brush and dead wood before the door and across the windows, so there should be no escape.

Aylah and her newborn daughter died in fire.

It is not an easy thing to give up glory for sweet dull days. Aylah had been a famous temple dancer, had swayed her body before princes who had thrown gems before her gilded feet. Now she lived as a farmer’s wife, unadorned and unlauded. She swore herself content—even happy. Perhaps she truly thought herself so; Orev didn’t know. He only feared that one day Aylah would wake and look at what she had become, and think upon what she had been, and regret her choice.

And if she did?

Orev could think of half a dozen tales spun from a woman’s change of heart—and none of them ended happily. But warning Samson would be useless, and speaking upon such a matter to Samson’s wife worse than useless.

For the wrong words might transmute Aylah’s sisterly fondness for Orev to dislike. And whether she complained of him to Samson or whether she did not, such ill-feeling would poison the peace of Samson’s home.

I would have no choice but to leave, to set my feet upon the road again. And perhaps I should; I grow lazy and slow-witted here
.

But he was loath to leave; he could tell himself that Samson needed a steady, sensible friend to aid him, but Orev knew that for a lie. He simply
did not wish to leave the warm comfort of the home Aylah had created, into which she had welcomed him as she would an older brother.

And with both Aylah and Samson insisting he remain, Orev found it easy to push away the knowledge that this halcyon life could not endure. Samson had too many enemies—and too many so-called friends who were even more dangerous to him. The Foxes still roved the hills and the roads, killing and plundering, with Samson’s name their battle-cry. Samson now refused even to speak with those who claimed to be his Foxes.

“For if you will not obey me when I tell you to let men travel the roads in peace, there is no other word I wish to say to you. I wish only to tend my fields as my wife tends her garden.” That had been his final avowal to Enoch and his fierce band when they had run eagerly to Samson’s farm, ready to claim him once again as their true leader.

“It is that Philistine woman who weakens your heart, when it should be strong against our enemies.” Beriah, vixen among the Foxes, slid her hand over the hilt of the dagger strapped against her hip. She stared at Aylah, who gazed back unflinching.

Samson put his arm around Aylah’s shoulders. “Speak soft words to my wife, or do not speak at all. Now leave my land and my house, and do not return until you will obey my orders as you always swear you long to do. And if I see any of you hunting on this road that runs past my dooryard, I shall slay you myself.”

The Foxes had slunk away in anger and in doubt. Many cast slantwise glances back at Samson. Beriah hissed to Enoch, “The Philistine bewitches him. Free of her . . .” That was all Orev heard before the Foxes slipped past him, into the small orchard behind the farmhouse.

He repeated the words to Samson and to Aylah, who looked at each other; Samson smiled and shook his head, and Aylah shrugged. “What they say is of no importance,” she said. “My husband’s father and his mother do not like me either, but I cannot change the hearts and minds of others.”

Samson put his arm around Aylah’s waist and spread his hand over her rounding belly. “They don’t like you because they don’t know you.
When our child is born, my mother will come running soon enough, and she will learn to value you as I do.”

“Yes,” Aylah said, and reached up to lay her hand against Samson’s cheek. “All will be as it should be. Now I must go to my own work, or you will have no dinner.”

Orev followed Aylah through the house, out to the oven and the fire pit behind the kitchen. “You are troubled,” he said. “Do you know anything that would be better shared?”

She did not protest, or claim herself at peace with all the world. Instead, she gathered up the meat wrapped in palm leaves and laid it on the bed of smoldering coals at the bottom of the fire pit. For a moment she stared down at the waiting fire. “Yes, I am troubled, Orev. Samson thinks everyone as good as he is—and as sensible. But men are not good or sensible. And I know how bitterly his people resent me, as if I had stolen him from them.” She turned and looked at Orev. “How much longer do you think either his people or mine will permit us to live in peace?”

Orev wished he could lie, could sing up a comforting tale of patience and long happy years. “I don’t know.”

“Not long, I think,” Aylah said. She touched her fingers to her thickened waist; her eyes seemed to stare into a future only she could understand.

“Aylah—” Orev began, only to be interrupted as she swung around, pulling off her veil and flapping it at the yellow dog that had followed Samson home one day and now—with her brood of half-grown pups—guarded the farmyard.

“Get out of there! Leave that alone, you silly dog! Stop her, Orev, before she burns her paws.”

“If she does, she’ll stop,” Orev pointed out. By the time he’d helped Aylah chivy the dogs out of the kitchen-yard, stamped out burning leaves, and salvaged what remained of the meat, the sense of foreboding had lifted. Surely, when enough time had passed, both the Hebrews and the Five Cities would see that Samson was neither hero nor danger.

In time, Samson and his wife would dwell in peace with their children and, in the fullness of years, with their children’s children.

And no man shall remember the names of Samson, the farmer, and Aylah, his wife
.

And that was as it should be.

And that was how it was, for a time. Samson settled easily into a farmer’s life, traded the highborn mules for a flock of sheep and another of goats. As if trying to repay with sweetness now the pain that would come, the seasons turned, and a year after her marriage to Samson, Aylah brought forth a daughter—her labor so easy that the midwife Samson had brought muttered of witchcraft. Aylah laughed. “No witchcraft, old mother, but Our Lady’s blessing. Give me my daughter.”

Like any new mother, Aylah forgot what she had paid in long months of waiting and hours of pain when she cradled her infant in her arms. And like any new father, Samson marveled at the strength of his newborn daughter’s grasp.

When the child was seven days old, Samson told Aylah and Orev that he would travel to Zorah, to tell his parents the news.

“And to bring them back with me, that they may name the child. So have all ready to greet them—and do not do the work yourself, my wife. Rest, and hire girls from the village to cook and clean.”

“As if those girls would do anything right, except giggle,” Aylah said as she and Orev watched Samson walk away down the road. Once Samson was out of sight, she kissed the top of her daughter’s head and set her in a sheepskin-lined basket. “Watch her for me, Orev. I have work to do. And don’t tell Samson I did the cooking. Someone must do it, after all. I don’t want his parents thinking he has married a useless wife.”