Just a Girl

by Jackie French

  It was the highest spot in the cave and nearly flat. I let their pallets fall, not even bothering to dust off the dirt and twigs.

  Rabba passed me Baratha. She was still asleep. She hardly moved as I laid her on her pallet. Rabba shifted herself onto the pallet next to her, half-dragging her legs.

  I looked around for another place where there were no sacks or urns. I found one next to the cave wall where the goat wouldn’t tread. I shoved my pallet there, then sat on it wearily.

  ‘Sleep,’ ordered Rabba.

  ‘I can’t sleep. I will never sleep.’

  She shrugged. ‘The girl who never slept. We shall see.’

  The water dripped from the seep. The goat gave a grunt, then settled down to doze. She seemed to have forgotten her kid. Was he spitted on the fire? Did my mother fuel the flames that cooked him?

  And what of Sarah, Rakeal and Martha? What was this night for them?

  I will never know, I thought. And then: It is good I do not know.

  I lay down and gazed at the gap in the rock wall. The cave was getting dark. The moon had flown higher. All I could see now were stars, blinking just as they had last night and every night.

  ‘Rabba, why did you choose me? I’m not the strongest.’

  I looked at her expectantly, hoping she’d say she loved me best.

  Ma had never said, but I knew she loved Sarah more than me; pretty Sarah, who did just what a good betrothed maiden should. Or Baratha, all laughter and curls. I asked too many questions. Ma told me once that it was lucky Jakob hadn’t known me when he offered for me. ‘Men do not like a woman who asks questions,’ she’d said. Rabba had answered my questions. Sometimes.

  ‘I chose you because you do what you’re told,’ she said.

  ‘So do donkeys,’ I said resentfully.

  ‘Ah, but you follow orders intelligently. And now I think you will sleep.’

  I shut my eyes. I did sleep, but only when I heard her begin to cry. Soft sobs, an almost soundless wail in the night.

  While Rabba cried, it was possible for me to sleep.

  I woke early the next morning to grey dawn light sifting into the cave. Rabba snored. Baratha slept quietly in her arms.

  I should weep, I thought. But I couldn’t. The place where tears came from seemed to have dried up, like the shallow well past the fig trees in midsummer. Maybe I would never cry again.

  Then I thought of Ma lying in the dirt. Of Sarah and Rakeal and all the others in the cart, and what might have happened to them last night as I slept here in the cave. Tears did come then, leaking from me like the water seep in the corner. It wasn’t fair that I should be safe on my pallet, and they . . . But there was nothing I could have done.

  Except there was. I could have used my slingshot. I might have brought down two soldiers, or even three.

  I might have charged them with my knife, as Ma must have done.

  I could have tried to follow the cart, to help my sisters escape once night fell.

  But I hadn’t. Doing that would have made no difference, except I’d have been killed, leaving Rabba and Baratha to die as well.

  What could one girl do?

  Nothing. And that was what I had done.

  Chapter 8

  ‘I need the chamberpot,’ said Rabba’s querulous voice. ‘And your sister does too. No, not the pot you used for milk, you stupid girl. The chipped one, in the corner.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to use the milk pot.’

  ‘Well, see that you don’t. Hurry. I’m busting.’

  I brought the pot, waited while she used it, then Baratha too.

  Baratha said nothing till she’d finished, then she looked up at me. ‘Rabba says Ma has gone, and Sarah and Rakeal. Everyone’s been taken by the Romans. Everyone but us.’

  It was a question.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sawtha Rabba is right.’

  Baratha nodded, wide-eyed, and crouched back in Rabba’s arms. ‘Rabba says we must be quiet till the soldiers have gone,’ she whispered.

  I nodded. ‘I’ll take this outside.’

  ‘Stick to the shadows,’ said Rabba. ‘They may be looking for stray sheep up on the hills.’

  ‘They may be gone already.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet. They’ll want to make sure there are no more animals to take. They’ll need to pick the pomegranate crop too.’

  Our village was known for its pomegranates and the dark syrup, thick like molasses, the juice was boiled down into. Well, known as far as the next two villages anyway.

  ‘It will take a day to pick the fruit. They won’t waste it. They may look for hidden storerooms,’ added Rabba quietly. ‘If they have found them in other villages.’

  ‘So . . . Ma . . . knew about this cave when you said we needed to hide?’ I asked. It hurt to say her name.

  ‘She knew we had a place to go to. But she didn’t know the Romans. It is my fault for not explaining well enough, and hers for thinking tomorrow will be like yesterday. Now take that pot away. It stinks.’

  I slid through the entranceway, stopped and listened. No voices nearby, no scrabbling of sandals on rocks, though up above the wadi men yelled. I heard horses neigh, the sound of metal striking metal. But none of the sounds seemed nearby.

  I stepped quickly down the slope and emptied the pot into the deep canyon at the bottom of the wadi so that when it rained the muck would flow away from our cave.

  And then I saw him.

  He was barefoot, which was why I hadn’t heard his footsteps. He wore a shabby tunic, not armour, and stood above the cliff at the top of the wadi, his arms full of firewood, staring down. He saw me too. A Roman, a few years older than me, too young to even grow a beard.

  I dropped the pot to grab my sling from my belt and a stone. I whirled it around my head three times, then let it fly.

  The first stone hit the Roman in the chest. He dropped the wood.

  The second hit his forehead. He fell onto the ground, then over the cliff, limp as a roll of hides. He lay below me, his eyes closed, one leg bent at a strange angle. He didn’t move.

  I put the sling back in my belt, kneeled to pick up three stones to replace the ones I’d used, and tucked them in too. My hands trembled. My skin felt hot and cold.

  I had killed a man.

  I stumbled back up the wadi and into the cave.

  ‘Where’s the pot?’ demanded Rabba, looking at my empty hands.

  ‘I dropped it,’ I said numbly. ‘It broke.’

  ‘Did you hear anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  I couldn’t think. How could I tell her? I had to tell her. The law of Moses told us: Do not kill. The Roman had only been collecting firewood. But he’d seen me . . . if his friends came looking for him . . .

  ‘Romans?’ Rabba demanded impatiently.

  ‘Yes. Yes, they’re still here.’

  She nodded. ‘Vultures and jackals, taking what others have sweated to earn. Milk the goat, girl, then stuff some dates for breakfast.’

  ‘Stuffed dates?’

  We usually had bread for breakfast and goat’s cheese. Stuffed dates were for feast days . . . I tried to concentrate. My mind kept seeing the dead Roman under the cliff. Dead like Ma was dead.

  ‘Stuffed dates!’ said Baratha, eyes wide, looking almost happy.

  I couldn’t tell Rabba about the dead Roman now, not with Baratha listening. And perhaps it wouldn’t make any difference if I did. If there was a safer place to hide, she would have ordered me to take her there.

  But if the Romans found us, I couldn’t defend us here. Should we try to escape down the wadi? But they’d be even more likely to see us then.

  Maybe when they found his body, they’d think he’d tripped, that the mark on his forehead was from hitting his head when he fell.

  ‘Maaaaagh,’ said the goat.

  Being milked meant hay, but I could see she hoped for barley. She was glancing at the sack. I’d have to find her some grass soon, but parched barl
ey would do for now. I swept away her small pile of droppings with an old broom that looked like it was used to sweep dust from the cave floor so it stayed dry and solid, then fed her and milked her, stopping her kicking over the bowl again.

  I drank from the bowl and handed it on to Rabba and Baratha.

  ‘You said we’d have stuffed dates,’ Baratha said. Her voice was almost a whine. She had slept long last night, but her dark eyes looked as if she hadn’t slept at all. Her face was white and strangely blank.

  ‘Make the dates, girl!’ Rabba ordered.

  It was too much. Ma was dead, my sisters were slaves, and I’d just killed a young man. He was lying dead outside in the wadi. Would the jackals and crows find him first, or his companions?

  ‘Our village has been destroyed and you want stuffed dates?’ I said.

  Rabba cackled.

  Her laughter seemed to reassure Baratha. She snuggled closer to Rabba, then obediently began to drink her milk.

  ‘We cannot make bread without a fire,’ Rabba pointed out. ‘We cannot have a fire without at least a little smoke for the Romans to see. There are plenty of dates here, and all that is needed to stuff them. We may as well eat well these next few months.’

  ‘Months?’ I repeated slowly. ‘You said the Romans would go when they’ve finished picking the pomegranates.’

  ‘And what happens then, eh? If we go back to the village, we will be at the mercy of any rebels who have escaped, or any deserters from the armies, ours or theirs.’

  ‘Where is safe then?’

  ‘Here,’ she said.

  Chapter 9

  Even I could stuff dates, and quickly. By the time Baratha had taken out a single date stone, I had removed ten, lined the holes with parched barley, almost as fine as flour but cooked and crunchy, then added an almond and closed up the holes. But the whole time I thought of the dead man in the wadi.

  Baratha pounced on the first date I completed, then reconsidered and offered it politely to Rabba.

  Rabba shook her head. ‘Eat it, child.’

  ‘Her name is Baratha,’ I said.

  Rabba said nothing.

  She has known hundreds of girls in her long life, I thought. Why bother remembering all their names?

  Suddenly Rabba put her finger to her lips to hush Baratha. Voices!

  I grabbed more barley for the goat to keep her quiet. A bleat from her might bring the men closer, looking for meat.

  I heard footsteps, men in sandals, then voices right outside our cave. I’d thought Roman soldiers would speak Latin, but these spoke Koine, just like the tax collectors.

  ‘Look, there he is. What’s he doing lying down there? Caius!’

  Of course there was no answer. Footsteps slipped and slid on loose dirt on the path.

  ‘Looks like he fell down the cliff,’ said another voice at last. ‘Caius! Caius!’

  No answer.

  ‘Do you think he’s dead?’ asked the second voice.

  ‘Probably.’ The first voice seemed further away, as if its owner was walking back the way he’d come.

  But the second stayed where he was. ‘He could still be alive. We should climb down and make sure.’

  ‘Dead or not now, he soon will be.’ The first man’s voice held nothing but irritation. ‘Look at his leg. Do you think the centurion is going to bother carting a crippled slave back to Rome? Who’s going to look after him until he dies?’

  ‘He might live.’

  ‘Who’s going to carry him, eh? No one is going to waste space on a cart for a slave. I’ll tell Rubilius to mark him off the list so no one bothers to look for a runaway.’ The man gave a short laugh. ‘At least there’s no shortage of slaves in this wretched country to replace him. Fool. He should have watched where he was going.’

  ‘I liked him,’ said the second voice. ‘We should at least scatter dust on his body.’

  ‘Why? We didn’t kill him. His own carelessness did that. His shade won’t haunt us. Come on, or we’ll have to run to catch up with the carts.’

  More footsteps, moving away from the cave now. We waited till they had gone, and then we waited some more. Even the goat had stopped chewing.

  Then Rabba asked, ‘Well, girl, what was that all about?’

  So I told her, speaking quietly while the wadi echoed with men’s shouts and the creak of wheels, donkeys braying, all the sounds of the Roman army leaving. A small part of the Roman army, now less one slave. But I didn’t tell her that a stone from my slingshot had killed him. I let her think he’d slipped.

  Rabba looked at me oddly when I’d finished. I thought she was going to tell me that it was a good thing there was one less Roman jackal. But all she said was, ‘A man must be buried by sundown, his body prepared for burial.’

  ‘But . . .’ I stared at her.

  She gazed back from tiny eyes almost lost in their wrinkles, as if to say, The destruction of your family and our village is no excuse for not doing things according to the law.

  ‘We have water,’ she said at last. ‘We have oil and cloths. You know the words to say. There are other caves at the bottom of the wadi. You can put him in one of those.’

  ‘Those caves flood in winter,’ I said. ‘The jackals will get his body anyway.’

  ‘Use rocks to block the entrance to keep the jackals out. And if they get in, or the flood carries him away, you’ll still have done your duty.’

  I gazed at the window in the cave wall. I couldn’t see the sky, but the lack of shadows told me it was noon. By mid-afternoon, the soldiers should have left. It would be safe to go out to the body. Probably.

  Caius, I thought. He’d had a name. And people liked him, or one person had at least. A slave, not a soldier. He hadn’t killed my mother then, or anyone. Probably. He hadn’t stopped them being killed either.

  No one had buried Ma, or the old women of the village who hadn’t been worth carrying off as slaves. Must I bury them too, if I could find the remnants of their bodies where the fire had been?

  And once I touched the Roman slave’s dead body, I would be unclean. There was no bath here to cleanse me, no one to say the right words.

  Rabba just stared at me with her dark date eyes.

  I moved quietly around the cave, gathering what I needed.

  We ate the stuffed dates, along with dried figs and parched barley soaked in a little milk. I fed the goat too, and gave her more water. I could take her out tomorrow, if the Romans had really gone, and tether her by some grass . . . No. Someone might see her; stragglers left to gather the last of the fruit perhaps.

  And I’m leaving footprints every time I go out, I thought. If I wasn’t careful, I’d wear a path up to the cave. I decided to tread along slightly different paths each time, and would wait till tomorrow to gather grass for the goat.

  This afternoon, as the sun sank down behind the hills, I would bury the slave’s body.

  The wadi breathed heat and the faint scents of sheep and goat and jackal. I listened, but heard nothing — no voices above, no tramp of feet or clang of metal.

  I crept up to the rock where I’d sheltered before, not down to the slave’s body. I wasn’t going to bury a Roman when the bodies of my mother and my people lay exposed to the sky.

  I gazed across the fields. The village looked strangely untouched except for its wrecked gates. I almost expected a group of women to come out to gather olives. But the only movement came from crows pecking at leftovers beyond a giant patch of black.

  I could make out a bracket from the village gate and what looked like . . . Not a skull, a pot, I told myself. I ventured closer. It was a rock.

  There were jackal droppings and chewed mutton bones and wheel tracks and rectangles in the dust where the tents had been. But no human bones that could be buried. They had vanished in the flames. Even the vultures no longer circled the sky. They’d probably followed the Romans, I thought. An army’s work meant food for vultures.

  I walked back to the wadi. The heat rising from its
cliffs hit my face, but at least it didn’t smell of cooked meat and burned bodies.

  I clambered down. The slave lay where I’d left him. Where his companions had left him too. The jackals would wait until tonight, slinking through the wadi. The smell of humans made them wary. Already a crow perched on a boulder nearby, waiting. Crows went for the eyes of a dead lamb first, and then the soft belly.

  I approached the body quietly. He was younger than I’d thought, not much older than me, fifteen perhaps. Should I apologise to him? I knew prayers for the dead, but none especially for someone I had killed.

  Were boys taught prayers for that? There seemed to be prayers for everything, so probably they were. But no one would think to teach them to a girl.

  The crow flew off, complaining. I kneeled by the body, wondering what to do first. If I washed him here, he would get dusty again as I dragged him to the crevice I’d chosen not too far away.

  The slave opened his eyes. ‘Water,’ he whispered.

  Chapter 10

  Rabba must have heard us. Heard his screaming as I hauled him up the hill, because even though I’d straightened his leg and bound it to a straight stick with the cloths I’d brought to wash him with, it jiggled. She must have heard me panting, heard the slither of his body in the dust, heard the slave swear at me just before I tied a cloth about his mouth in case any Romans left behind heard his screams and came to investigate.

  ‘I’m saving your life,’ I hissed as I tightened the gag. ‘Do you want me to leave you outside? The jackals will come tonight!’

  I didn’t tell him I was the one who’d almost taken his life. He’d seen me. He already knew.

  ‘I had to stop you!’ I told him. ‘You’d have told the soldiers you’d seen me. They’d have searched the wadi, killed Rabba, and taken me and Baratha as slaves.’ I was trying to convince myself as much as him.

  I grabbed his arms again and hauled him upwards. A moan now, not a scream. Moans didn’t carry as far. He stared up at me. I couldn’t tell what his eyes were saying. Maybe he thought I was dragging him up to the top of the cliff to throw him off again. ‘I’m saving you!’ I said, trying to make things clear.