Just a Girl

by Jackie French

  Rabba stared at the dusty distance again. ‘The Roman army eats, just like rebels eat. Swords don’t grow food, but they can help you steal it.’

  ‘But the Roman army is far away!’ And only a donkey track led to our tiny village perched above the furrowed wadis, far from the trade roads.

  ‘An army eats a lot. The Romans will have munched their way through the harvests near Jerusalem by now. We need to go to the caves in the wadi and take all of value with us. But who listens to an old woman?’

  ‘I do, Sawtha Rabba.’ Though I still didn’t think it likely that the Roman army would bother with our village. Our harvest was barely enough for ourselves, once we’d paid the taxes. I sat cross-legged beside her. ‘Do you think I will ever see Jerusalem?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Do you want to, girl?’

  ‘Of course!’

  Jerusalem was the holy city of King David, built of dressed stone and gold, the holy Temple high up on the hill. Sometimes, when Rabba talked of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, I thought I could see it.

  ‘No,’ she said grimly, ‘I do not think you will see Jerusalem. Now go and get your supper, girl. And mine. And try to talk some sense into your ma.’

  ‘Rabba, there were only two chariots.’ And they were beautiful, I thought.

  She turned away from me, a small bundle of shrunken skin, all knees and elbows and skinny neck, and pretended sleep.

  I went and washed my feet.

  Chapter 3

  Everyone was sitting around the dinner pot simmering on the fire when I entered the courtyard again. No one would have thought there had been arguing, or Roman chariots just outside the gates. Rakeal was mixing flour, water and oil for Ma to make flatbreads on the tall bread mound above the fire. A small portion of the dough sat on one side as an offering.

  I washed my hands and face again quickly, saying the proper prayer: ‘Blessed are you, oh Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has commanded us to wash our hands.’ Then I sat on the mat while Ma said the blessing for the food.

  The rebbe who had visited our village said women were too ignorant to say blessings, except for food and daily life. But tonight’s blessing was the one mothers across the land would say before the evening meal: ‘Blessed are you, oh Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has made us holy by His commands, who brings forth bread from the earth.’

  Ma picked up a flatbread and ripped it in pieces, then handed each of us a portion. Her and Rakeal’s bread was as light and flaky as falling autumn leaves. When I made bread, it looked like plaster and was just as heavy. Perhaps Sarah was right: I should learn more about keeping a household, to be a proper wife to Jakob. But who would tend the sheep if I did not?

  We tore our piece of bread into smaller pieces and used them to dip into the stew, scooping it out of the pot and popping it into our mouths, then tearing off more bread to scoop out more.

  ‘Maaagh,’ said the goat, warning she expected some leftover bread, or she would be seriously displeased.

  The sheep had settled down in their corner, munching hay. The lambs’ tails wiggled as they suckled from their mothers. They would need to be weaned soon.

  Ma smiled at me. ‘So many lambs this year. We haven’t lost a single one. You’ve done well, Judith.’ She leaned over and hugged me. ‘You are a good girl,’ she added, with a glance to make sure Rakeal and Sarah listened. ‘Never be ashamed you’ve had to gird your robe up like a boy these past years. When the war is finally over and Judea is free, everyone will forget what had to be done in the hard years, and no one will condemn you.’ She kissed my forehead.

  ‘Will we eat roast meat again when the war is over?’ asked Baratha, scooping up another hunk of meat from the stew.

  ‘Of course,’ said Ma. ‘When the war is over and the men come home, we’ll roast lambs on the spits and young kids stuffed with wheat and almonds.’

  The soldiers could have killed my sheep today, I thought, with one slash of their swords. A girl like me couldn’t have stopped them. They could be eating roast mutton tonight. But they hadn’t even bothered to come closer. Why not?

  ‘Ma . . . should we warn the villagers that there might be more Romans nearby?’

  She laughed. ‘Then why send only two men? They didn’t even bother to stop once we’d shut the village gates.’

  ‘Maybe they’re deserters from the Roman army,’ suggested Sarah.

  ‘Or most of the Romans have been killed and our men are coming home!’ said Rakeal.

  I followed Ma’s gaze to the animals: the sheep thinking of nothing, the way sheep did; the kid nuzzling the nanny goat; the goat gazing at the pile of bread with her narrow slanted eyes, plotting how to get some.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ma said thoughtfully. She looked back at me. ‘Keep the sheep inside for a few days, just to be safe. The olives will wait a week or so too. There’s no need to panic like Rabba, but it would be prudent to keep the gates shut and to stay within the walls in case there are more stragglers around.’

  ‘I think those two chariots mean we have won,’ insisted Sarah. ‘The land is ours, just as YHWH promised.’

  Sarah’s betrothed, James, had been studying to be a rebbe before the Temple called him for a soldier. He had told her how YHWH led our people to this land and said it was ours. But even James hadn’t told Sarah the name of God, for no one must say it, though it was whispered from priest to priest. Sarah dreams of marriage and her own courtyard kitchen, I thought, and children and a husband who knows the laws. She doesn’t want to think the war might last much longer.

  I tried to imagine what life with Jakob would be like. But instead I saw my sheep, bleating their song up on the hill, the wind laughing at me as it gusted around my skirt. Sometimes I felt I was singing with the world, up there alone on the hill.

  I filled a bowl from the pot and took two pieces of bread, then carried them up to Rabba on the roof. She looked neither alarmed nor mournful now, just hungry. She reached for her bowl, tore some bread and swallowed the first mouthful. Some old women needed their families to chew their food for them, but Rabba said her gums were tough enough to cut a jackal’s hide.

  ‘Not enough mint,’ she muttered. ‘Your ma never adds enough mint. When I lived in Jerusalem, I made sure every dish was properly seasoned. We had tiled floors,’ she added, looking disdainfully at the uneven rooftop, ‘and couches to eat on, not sitting on the floor like peasants. We had proper meals, at least four courses every night.’

  I thought the stew tasted good, especially with the pigeon meat. But I wasn’t going to argue with Sawtha Rabba. ‘Sarah says the soldiers today might be deserters from the Roman army. And Rakeal says maybe the Romans have been defeated and our men will come home.’

  ‘Deserters don’t take their chariots with them. Defeated men don’t keep their armour.’ Rabba slurped the rest of her stew, leaving the tough lumps of meat to gum slowly. She picked the first one up in her skinny fingers and began to chew it. ‘Come to bed early,’ she told me indistinctly.

  ‘Why?’

  She stared at me with brooding eyes. ‘Because I say so, girl.’

  ‘My name is Judith,’ I said, and took the bowl downstairs.

  Usually Rabba was snoring by the time I came to bed. But tonight she was awake, though she just muttered something when I said good night. She seemed to be watching. Listening. Surely she couldn’t think the two chariots would come back in the darkness? And anyway, the village gates were bolted.

  The stars glittered like tiny cooking fires as I lay on my pallet next to hers. The roof had drunk in the sun’s warmth. Now it gave it back to us.

  A jackal yipped far away. Another answered, ripping the silence. I was glad the sheep were safe below. Before the men all left, a night shepherd had sat with them out on the hills, but it would shame my family forever if their daughter sat out alone at night.

  I could hear Baratha complaining downstairs as she combed olive twigs from her hair, and Rakeal’s laughter as she helped her.
Sarah would be oiling her skin to keep it soft.

  At last all was silence, except for the bleat of a lamb seeking its mother and the far-off complaint of the goat belonging to Rivkah, wife of Shimeon the carpenter. Our goat answered.

  The moon rose like a giant bright eye, watching all of YHWH’s creation. The wind smelled of olives and a faint whiff of goat and cheese. I whispered a prayer of blessing, one of the long ones, glad that no one would hear me for I was sure I had it wrong. At last I slept.

  Something prodded me. I opened my eyes. Rabba’s date eyes stared at me in the darkness. The moon sat high now, as fat as a new cheese, not eyelike at all.

  ‘No questions,’ Rabba whispered.

  ‘But —’

  ‘I said no questions.’ Suddenly she didn’t sound like an old woman. ‘Do not speak.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Carry me down into the wadi. Quietly. No one must hear.’

  Had she dreamed that she had to escape the Romans in the darkness? Old people’s thoughts sometimes wandered. Or was she dying? Did she want to die in the wadi so she didn’t pollute our house?

  ‘Dress and gird up your skirts. You must move fast. Get your knife.’ She waited till I’d pulled my skirts up into my belt, then hissed, ‘Carry me!’

  I bent and felt her clawed hands clutch my back. I trod carefully down the staircase. No one stirred except a sheep. ‘Bleert,’ it said.

  I hesitated, half-hoping to hear Ma demanding what I was doing.

  The house returned to silence.

  I left the courtyard door ajar. It was colder in the street. Step, step, step . . . Rabba held on to my shoulders. I opened the needle gate just enough to slip through, then trod through the pomegranates, the figs, past the small patch of wheat and then the barley.

  The wadi nearest the village loomed below us, full of moon shadows. ‘May I put you down now?’ I whispered.

  ‘No. Keep going to the next wadi. Not that way, girl! Over there.’

  I trudged past the melon patch. The next wadi was even deeper than the first.

  ‘Now take me down there,’ commanded Rabba.

  I didn’t want to walk down into shadows. Old Ruth, the widow of Zachariah, said that demons lived in the wadis. I didn’t believe in demons, but I did believe in jackals. I had seen them slinking between rocks in the wadis as I watched the sheep. But somehow it seemed that only Rabba and I existed in this world of night. I followed her whispered directions — past a ridge of rock, then down a narrow wild goat path. The pebbles scattered under my bare feet. It was hard to balance carrying her on my back.

  The village and fields vanished above us. The path grew steeper, with a sheer cliff on the other side. If I slipped, the fall would kill us.

  I staggered on. At last we reached a flat space, wide enough for me to sit down and catch my breath.

  ‘Now, Rabba?’ I asked.

  ‘A little longer.’

  Around another corner, then one more.

  ‘Here,’ she ordered.

  It seemed no different from the spot two corners earlier. I slid her gently onto the ground and stretched. My muscles ached from holding her. I began to sit down next to her, wondering what she wanted to do next.

  ‘No time to sit,’ she whispered sharply. ‘Go fetch Baratha.’

  I stared. She must really be trying to rescue us from the Roman army. Had demons infested her brain? But her face was intelligent and very sure. And she was my father’s father’s mother. The law said I must obey her, even if Ma sometimes carefully forgot.

  ‘Tie a veil about Baratha’s mouth so she doesn’t cry out,’ Rabba ordered. ‘Run!’

  There was no arguing with that tone. And suddenly, despite the strangeness of the situation, I trusted her. Rabba knew the world in ways that were impossible for people like us who had never gone much further than our village. And if this was all the craziness of an old woman — well, she had earned the right to craziness. Ma would sort it all out in the morning.

  I ran as she ordered, back up the steep path, sweating. The village lay a darker shadow among the fields. I slipped through the gate and down the silent street. Someone had been roasting onions for dinner. Their scent lingered.

  The goat stared at me as I climbed the stairs. I tiptoed into the room. Baratha’s pallet was the one closest to the door. I grabbed a veil from the pegs on the wall, then picked up Baratha, but I didn’t need it. She didn’t really wake, nuzzling my shoulder like a lamb.

  She was still asleep when I reached the wadi and clambered down. She woke with a start as I laid her beside Rabba.

  ‘Rabba?’ she said, staring around at the cliffs, the rocks and the shadows.

  Rabba put her skinny arms about her and lifted her onto her lap. ‘Shhh,’ she said, in the gentlest tone I’d ever heard her use. ‘We are going to have a secret feast in the moonlight. Judith is going to fetch it.’

  ‘A feast? Truly? Will there be dried figs?’ Baratha loved dried figs.

  ‘Lots of dried figs. And raisins too. Now I will tell you a story.’

  ‘A Jerusalem story?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘Of course! Jerusalem is the centre of the world, clothed in splendour and in glory, and the Temple is the centre of all Judea! The plains down there are full of grape vines thick as a man’s leg, and orchards of almond, fig and olive trees, with green papyrus in the river. I will tell you about Jerusalem while your sister fetches the other things we need.’

  Rabba glanced up at the moon, as if calculating how much night was left.

  ‘You want me to fetch dried figs?’ I asked resignedly.

  ‘Fetch our pallets first,’ she said. ‘And the nanny goat. Do not bring the kid, but let it follow if it bleats. Hurry!’

  I gazed around at the moon shadows in the wadi. ‘What if jackals attack you?’

  ‘I will deal with jackals,’ said Rabba grimly. ‘Go!’

  I ran again. There was no feast, of course. Just an old woman’s delusion that she must hide us from the Romans in the middle of the night.

  Faintly I heard her voice behind me, telling Baratha about Jerusalem. I clambered around another bend and the sound was gone.

  Chapter 4

  No one stirred in the village yet.

  The pallets were hard to carry, even rolled up. The nanny goat refused to come till I tugged her tether hard. The kid ignored me as I hauled her mother away, but when we were halfway through the olive grove, I heard her bleat. She’d realised her mother was gone.

  The nanny goat stopped. ‘Maaagh,’ she called. She dug in her toes, waiting for her kid, staring at me with yellow eyes.

  The kid caught up with us at last. She nuzzled the goat’s udders till I tugged her tether to start walking again.

  The horizon showed a faint pink. The village would be up soon, Ma calling for me and Baratha, yelling about her stolen goat. She was going to be furious. She’d demand to know why I hadn’t woken her when Rabba started with her orders.

  I should have woken her. I should wake her now and tell her that Rabba and Baratha were down in the wadi.

  I didn’t.

  The pallets were awkward. My arms ached. And it was going to rain, even though the wet season was months away. I could hear the far-off thunder. The pallets would get wet, and so would Rabba and Baratha.

  Suddenly the goat stopped walking again. Her kid had wandered off, probably back home. She gazed at me with slanted yellow eyes. For some reason she reminded me of Rabba.

  ‘I’ll give you a piece of bread if you come quietly,’ I promised. ‘And a handful of barley too.’

  The goat blinked at me, as if bargaining for a higher price.

  ‘Two handfuls of barley.’

  The thunder grew louder. The ground shuddered under my bare feet. I had never felt thunder through the ground before.

  I glanced at the horizon. It wasn’t sunrise pink any more, nor stormcloud grey, but a dirty yellow. Dust yellow. Dust from chariots or many feet. Nor was that noise thunder . . .

/>   I dropped the goat’s tether and sprinted towards the wadi. My heart beat so hard it seemed to jump from my skin. There was no time to clamber down the path. The movement might be seen.

  I dropped the pallets behind the rocks and hid there too, peering around the saltbush as the Romans swept along the plain. The two chariots first, then at least fifty men on horseback, then the marchers — so many it was impossible to count, left, right, left, right, their sandalled feet slapping at the track.

  Donkeys, thin-ribbed with matted coats, limped behind the marchers, pulling carts piled high, or empty ones, their wheels clattering on the hard earth above the sound of feet. So many feet. Men’s feet, and horses’ and donkeys’ hooves. But not an army.

  Even a village girl knew it would take a vast army to capture Jerusalem, to subdue our land for Rome again. This was a tiny part of an army; a slice-of-cheese army, a crumb-of-bread army.

  Enough to conquer a village.

  The chariots reached the gate. The drivers fastened the reins and leaped out. I realised in sudden horror that I’d left the small needle gate unlatched. Had I doomed my village?

  The two soldiers didn’t even bother to push the small gate. They lifted a log from the back of one of the chariots. They swung it at the hinges of the main gate. Once, twice . . . The gate crashed in, splintering wood.

  The way to the village was open.

  The soldiers on horseback galloped through, reins in one hand, swords in the other. One or two smiled, as if this was entertainment, not war.

  Then I heard the screams.

  Only a few at first, each a different voice. Suddenly the screams became a chorus; a hymn of screams, as if the whole village had joined in.

  The chorus stopped. I did not know what to call the sounds I heard then. Shrieks or groans, wails for help, sobs that would not stop. I knew that every sound I heard meant despair.