This Scarlet Cord (5 page)

Rahab stared down at her feet as she thought. Her sandals were covered with dust, as were her narrow toes and instep, but she scarcely noticed. Her mind was busy trying to grasp what Sala was saying.

They walked in silence for a while before she looked up and said in the most reasonable voice she could muster, “But Canaan is the home of the Canaanite people, Sala. You and your father and the people of Ramac are the only Israelites I have ever met, ever heard of. You are small and we are big. This can never be your land.”

She watched as Sala lifted his face and squinted up into the intensely blue sky, as if the answer he sought were written there. “You don’t understand, Rahab. Once Canaan was ours, the home of the Israelites. Elohim told our forefather Abraham that He was giving this land to Abraham and all his descendants. He made a covenant with us, that He would be our God and we would be His people. And as a sign of that, He would give us the land of Caanan.”

Sala turned his head to look at her. There was a line like a sword between his eyebrows. His voice was no longer passionate; he sounded calm and positve. “Canaan should be
our
land, Rahab, the land of the Israelites. You will not hold it forever. Our time will come.”

He was making Rahab nervous. She put a tentative hand on his arm and said anxiously, “Surely it can be both our lands? Why can we not live in peace together?”

His brow smoothed out and he patted the hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. You’re just a girl; it’s impossible for you to understand these things.”

His condescension infuriated Rahab more than all his talk. “I understand perfectly well,” she snapped. “You think your god is better than our gods and that Israelites are better than Canaanites. Do you think I am as stupid as that donkey? You couldn’t have made yourself clearer. I just think you are wrong.”

Sala let out a long slow breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. Let us talk of something else.”

“Perhaps it would be better not to talk at all for a while,” Rahab replied. “I think I will go and see how Hura is doing.”

She turned her back on him and made her way down the line of donkeys.

Ramac was much smaller than Gaza. The walls of the city were made of mud brick, not stone, but they were very high, and the cobbled road from the gates to the waterfront was straight, with a clear view down to the sea. The houses along the main street were square and substantial looking, and Sala’s house was among the grandest of them all. Clearly Lord Nahshon was a rich man.

What Rahab liked best about Ramac, though, was that you could see the water from almost any point in the city. It shimmered in the sunlight, vast and beautiful, the Great Sea. She thought it was the most wonderful thing she had seen in her life.

Rahab stayed with Sala’s family for ten days, and much of that time she spent with Sala. His mother and sisters did not speak Canaanite and, since Rahab spoke no Hebrew, the women of the house were unable to communicate with her. Rahab sat and sewed with them for a few hours each morning, but the rest of the time she was in Sala’s charge.

She told him she wanted to see the town and the waterfront, and he borrowed one of his sister’s cloaks and veils and took her around the various houses and gardens. He even sneaked her down to the waterfront, where women were not allowed. She stood for a few short minutes on a wharf, where she could see the great merchant ships riding at anchor. But she could not get him to take her for a ride on a boat. Women did not go on boats, he told her, and that was that.

Rahab thought this was a stupid rule, but she held her tongue. She did not want to say anything to alienate Sala. He was the most interesting person she had ever met and she loved being with him. He had traveled to Egypt and Ugarit and Damascus, places Rahab had scarcely heard of. She hung on his every word as he described these exotic locales. He also told her about some of the things that had happened to him when he was there. Some of his stories were funny and she would laugh delightedly, loving the way his smiling brown eyes met hers.

Sala was the only son, and his father was grooming him to take over the shipping business when he was older. Rahab was impressed to learn that Sala had learned how to add up numbers and keep books. He had even learned to read. Lord Nahshon was a learned man and he had taught Sala all the great stories of their religion.

Rahab had heard some of the stories of Baal and Asherah and the other gods and goddesses of Canaan, but Sala said Lord Nahshon had his stories written down on papyrus scrolls and he read them out loud once a week to all the men of the town. From what Rahab could gather, this was what the Israelites did for worship. They did not have temples; they got together and listened to the stories of their faith and discussed them. Sala had learned to read so he could take his father’s place in this duty as well. It was a position that had long been in their family.

Rahab loved to watch Sala’s face as he talked about his Israelite ancestors and how they had learned about their god. He looked so concentrated and intense, as if his very insides were glowing with the power of his words. She could tell that his god, Elohim, meant a great deal to him, that he believed in Elohim with all his heart.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said to her one day as they sat together in the garden enjoying the early afternoon sun. “You have given me an excuse to take a holiday from work.”

“I like being here too.” Rahab had just finished two seemingly endless hours of sewing with his sisters and his mother. “I don’t think your mother likes me, though. She took away the shirt I was supposed to be hemming today and ripped all the stitches out. Truly, my work was not that bad. But she gave me an unpleasant look and handed me a dish towel to work on.”

His mouth twitched but he didn’t respond.

Rahab went on, “I don’t think your sisters like me either. They look at me as if I were some kind of strange creature from another world.”

“That’s not true. My sister Leah thinks you’re wonderful. She was so impressed when I told her about your escape from the slavers. She’s sure she could never be as brave as that. She said you must come from a family of great warriors.”

Great warriors
. Rahab snorted. “I hope you told her my family are farmers—not warriors—and certainly not rich merchants like your family. We don’t have servants like your mother does. My father and my brothers work in the vineyards and the fields, and my mother and my sisters-in-law work to feed and clothe all of us. We’re busy all the time.”

Amusement gleamed in Sala’s eyes. “What do
you
do, Rahab? Clearly you do not spend your time sewing.”

“Oh, I do a little of this and a little of that,” Rahab replied, waving her hand. “I help whoever needs help at the moment. I am the youngest, you see, and my father doesn’t want me to work too hard. My brothers say I am spoiled.” She grinned. “They’re probably right, but my papa says one day I will secure all their futures and I shouldn’t be worn out in my youth.”

The amusement faded from Sala’s face. “I see.”

“I don’t see how that can possibly happen, but I’m certainly not going to gainsay him. I think he just loves me so much he doesn’t want me to work too hard. But, of course, if my mother asks me to help her, I always do. I love my mother very much.”

Sala was quiet.

She put a hand on his sleeve and said coaxingly, “Tell me the story of Rachel again, and how Jacob served seven years because he wanted to marry her so much.”

The sober look left his face. “Why do you always want to hear that story?”

She didn’t have to think for even a second before she answered, “Because it shows Rachel was an important person.”

“That’s a curious answer.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I suppose I expected you to say something about Jacob’s love for her.”

“Sala, he only loved her because she was pretty. But he made her important in the eyes of everyone else because of what he did to marry her.” She smiled up into his face. “Not too many women are important, so it’s nice to hear a story about a woman who was.”

He looked at her hand on his sleeve. “Perhaps he loved her for more than her looks. Perhaps he loved her because she was different from other girls.”

“Different? How?”

He flicked her cheek with his finger. “Perhaps she wasn’t afraid to look straight into people’s eyes when they spoke to her. Perhaps she had all sorts of opinions and wasn’t afraid to tell him about them. Perhaps she thought she was just as good as he was and—”

Rahab’s eyes widened. “Are you talking about
me
?”

“I never said that.” His eyes were dancing with laughter.

She began to laugh back.

“Sala!”

Rahab turned and saw Sala’s mother, Miriam, standing in the garden door. She sighed as Miriam’s angry eyes rested upon her. No, Sala’s mother definitely didn’t like her.

Miriam said something to Sala in a sharp voice and Sala answered. Then he said to Rahab, “My mother wants you to go with her. She is going to teach you how to hem a shirt properly.”

Rahab rolled her eyes at him and began to get to her feet. She saw his lips twitch again before she crossed the garden to join his mother.

Rahab’s brother Shemu awaited his sister in the large imposing room of the Israelite merchant who had contacted his father about Rahab’s whereabouts. No one in his family knew anything about Israelites, and Shemu had been deeply surprised by the evident wealth in the town of Ramac. So far he had only met the women of the family, who stood in the room with him waiting for Rahab to arrive.

The two girls were pretty enough and had given Shemu shy smiles of welcome. The woman of the house had a face like a stone statue. They spoke no Canaanite, but when Shemu told the servant at the door he had come for Rahab, they had appeared and, from what he could gather from their words, they had sent for his sister.

The three of them stood in silence. Shemu was struggling with mixed feelings. He was glad his sister had been found and was coming home, but he was afraid of what might have happened to her, and not just at the hands of the slavers. Who knew what a wealthy family like this might have felt free to do to a beautiful child like Rahab?

There was a rush of wind in the doorway and then Rahab was throwing herself into his arms. “Shemu! Shemu! I am so glad to see you!”

He closed his arms tightly around his little sister. “I’ve come to bring you home, little one. We are all so glad you’re all right.”

Her arms were tight about his waist. A shiver of fear ran through him. “Look at me, Rahab. Let me see that pretty face of yours.”

She released her hold and stepped back, looking up at him with the steady clear eyes of the innocent child he remembered.

Relief surged through Shemu and he turned to the three women who were in the room with them and smiled. “Thank you for taking such good care of my sister.”

Thank you
sounded much the same in both languages, and the girls smiled back, bobbing their heads. The woman’s face never changed.

“What is going on here?”

A young man came striding into the room from the same direction Rahab had come. He said in Canaanite, “Who is this man, Rahab?”

“This is my brother, Shemu. He has come to take me home.”

The young man approached. Shemu could see that he was sixteen or seventeen years of age and he was handsome. When he stopped in front of them, Shemu also saw that he was tall. Shemu had to look up at him.

Rahab took the boy’s hand and said, “
This
is Sala, my brother. He saved me from the slavers. I was running through the streets of Gaza, not knowing where to go or what to do, when he stopped me and brought me to his father. They have been so good to me! So kind.”

Sala’s eyes were fixed upon Shemu. “You are not traveling alone?” The words sound like an accusation.

Shemu bristled. “Of course not. My wife and another of my brothers are waiting for me outside the city gates. We have made arrangements to travel with a contingent of Syrians as far as Jericho.”

“Good,” Sala said. He lifted an eyebrow. “We don’t want to have Rahab kidnapped again.”