Abigail's Story

by Ann Burton

  I wanted to be different for him, to be made different by him. I wanted him to shape me with his touch, paint me with his kisses, and fire me in the kiln of our hearts, beating together.

  Hot tears scalded my cheeks. I wanted him. But I was not free to want any man except the one to whom I was wed.

  I slid down the stone and rested my cheek against my knees. I felt hot and cold all over and trembled as if I had fever.

  “Adonai, Adonai.” I lifted my watery gaze to the sky. “What have I done?”

  CHAPTER

  12

  I did not tell Bethel or Leha about the man I had met at the spring, or about my shameful behavior. I did not think of being wed to one man and wishing to touch and be naked with another. It was a sin simply to think of such things. Hebrew women of remote villages were still stoned to death for committing adultery. Even if an adulteress were only cast out and divorced by her husband, she could never return to her family.

  That I would never allow to happen.

  I did not understand why the shepherd had made me feel such desire. I had not felt such with my husband, but I had not done my duty by him. I brooded over it until Keseke made mention of my mood.

  “What is wrong with your tongue?” she demanded as we were out gathering wild wheat stalks in a field by the camp one afternoon.

  “Nothing.” I ignored the displeasure on her face and tugged a thick, yellow-green stalk from the earth. Leha had showed me how to roast the wild wheat’s seed heads over an open fire, which made them brown and crunchy. The children especially loved them as a treat.

  “You do nothing but chatter all the time,” the serving woman said, coming to take the stalks from my hand and add them to her basket. “Now I hear not two words from you in an hour. You have not been puking, so I know you have no babe in your belly.”

  My cheeks turned to fire. “No.” I reached for another stalk. “I am not with child.” I stopped and glanced at her. “You were married once, were you not?”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. “I was.”

  “Was your duty to your husband . . .” How did I ask why Nabal and my shepherd had treated me so differently? “Was it always pleasant? Did it make you happy?”

  “Not always, but yes.” Keseke dropped the basket at my feet and planted her hands on her hips. “What did he do to you?”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “The master. He took you to bed, and the next morning you had a bruise on your face. What happened between you?”

  Reluctantly, and with great embarrassment, I told her. The duty had not been a pleasant thing. The feel of Nabal’s plump, oily flesh on mine had made me shudder. “He did not kiss my mouth, but he did pinch and fondle me a great deal,” I said. None of that had been gentle. “Then there was that other business.”

  “What other business?”

  “My friend Cetura had told me that Nabal had to put himself inside me. I lay beneath him and let him where he needed to be”—I swallowed—“but something was wrong, and he could not. I think I am not made as other women.”

  “I have seen you make your water,” Keseke said dryly. “You are just as any woman is. Why could he not come inside you? Were you too narrow?”

  “No.” I tried to think of how to describe it. “His part was so small and soft I thought it would go in without difficulty.”

  The serving woman stared at me for a long moment, and then she began to laugh. She laughed so hard that she fell to the ground and rolled on it.

  “Very well.” Humiliated, I snatched up the basket and started to walk back to camp.

  “Mistress, wait. Wait!” Keseke caught up with me and made me stop. “I was not laughing at you, girl. It was the master at fault, not you. His part must be long and stiff and hard to go into you.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “But what did he wish me to do about it? He kept saying for me to do something in words I did not know, and when I did not, he hit me and made me leave his chamber.”

  Keseke put her arm through mine and looked around until she spotted a shade tree. “Come, sit with me. I shall explain it to you.”

  I listened to everything she said and felt my unease fade as she told me of Nabal’s difficulty and how other men suffered such an affliction from time to time.

  “Well, what did he expect me to do about it?” I demanded. “It was his part, not mine.”

  The serving woman described some ways in which women could make that part of men long and stiff enough for the business of making a child. It involved much kissing and fondling of a kind that I did not think I might have done, even if Nabal had allowed such contact.

  “Cetura told me only to be quiet and obedient,” I said firmly. “I did ask him for direction, you know, just before he knocked me away with a fist and blamed me for it. He said he had no desire for me and that I should send his bed slaves to him.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What else was I to do?” I threw up my hands. “I told the steward to send the Edomites to Nabal and to show me to a separate chamber.”

  Keseke laughed again, but not nearly so long or loud. “Mistress, you were not at fault. The master has always had difficulty even with his bed slaves. Such failures strike at a man’s pride.” She smiled as if the thought of this pleased her.

  No wonder he had been angry. “How am I to get children of him, then, if we cannot do this thing?”

  The question made her go still for a moment before her sour expression returned. “It is getting late now. We should take these seed heads back to camp and roast them for the children.”

  Shearing season was only a few weeks hence, and so I applied myself to the accounting and pot making. I would show Nabal that his faith in me was not misplaced, and give him no reason to cast me off. I pushed aside thoughts of the shepherd.

  Nothing I did would shame my husband or my family.

  Working among the herdsmen’s women in the camp helped keep my thoughts from straying in unseemly directions. Perhaps that was why I began to see things I had not before.

  The sheep and goats had used up most of the graze surrounding the camp, and the herdsmen were obliged to drive them farther away each day. Food stores that had seemed plentiful needed constant replenishing, and with the uncertain weather, daily gathering was not always possible. The shepherds from the south competed for local game, which grew scarce, and the grain sacks began to empty rapidly. The growing heat and lack of graze caused the goats’ milk to dwindle, and the children would beg their mothers in vain for a cup of leban or a piece of cheese.

  With all this bounty my husband possessed, Yehud’s family were barely surviving, and they would not receive their pay for the year until shearing time.

  Nabal’s men returned at the new moon as they had promised, and after I shared the meager amount of food they had brought with the women of the camp, I decided to make the trip back to Maon.

  Keseke predicted my efforts would result in nothing but failure. “The master will not care what you say. He will send nothing for these people, and he will beat you for nagging him on it. It is better you stay here.”

  “Yehud and his sons cannot herd the sheep if they are too thin and weak from lack of good food.” I finished making up my pack of garments and food for the journey. “I have asked Leha if you may stay in the camp until I return. The women will take care of you.”

  “I do not need their coddling.” She scowled at her swollen ankle. “I serve you.”

  “They will take care of you,” I repeated, bending down and pressing a kiss against her thin cheek. “Behave yourself while I am gone.”

  She seized my hand in hers. “Mistress, do not go back to Maon. Stay.” She gestured around us. “Does the house not please you? Are we not comfortable and happy here?”

  “We are, and that makes it all the more important I go.” At her blank look, I added, “How can I live like this when Yehud and his people go hungry?”

  “The master w
ill do terrible things to you,” she muttered. “He will beat you.”

  “Nabal is my husband, Keseke. He can beat me any time he wishes, but I think he knows not to make waste of a good wife.” Her expression filled with fear so swiftly that I became concerned. “What has he ever done to make you so frightened of him?”

  “Nothing.” She would not look at me.

  “Then you must trust me to—”

  “Listen to me.” She seized my shoulder in a painful grip. “It is said that the master was not to inherit the nahalah of his family. He had an older brother, Pela, who was to have the land, the family holdings, and control of their wealth.”

  Servants always gossiped about their masters, but I was surprised she knew so much. “What has this to do with my return to Maon?”

  “Pela was murdered, as were the master’s parents. On their mats, as they slept. The master was only a young boy, ten years old, and the only one who survived the night. He told the shofet that he saw brigands come into the house in the middle of the night.” Keseke swallowed. “Some think he killed his family, so that he would have everything to himself.”

  “That is ridiculous.” I would have laughed, had the tale not been so gruesome. “A boy of ten cannot kill three adults.”

  I hardly heard what she said next, her voice dwindled so low. “Perhaps he found someone else to do the killing for him.”

  Whatever Nabal had done to her, it had twisted her mind. I was tempted to take her back to Maon with me, but given the wild tales she was spouting, Nabal might order her whipped or sold.

  “Enough of this,” I told her. “I am going now. I wish you to stay in the camp while I am gone. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and stared at her hands.

  “I shall return soon.” I kissed the top of her head and walked out to the wagon.

  The journey back from Paran seemed to take longer, now that I traveled alone in the back of the wagon. The driver and the guards had not been happy about taking me back with them and seemed disgruntled over my presence. When we stopped at the crossroads to have a meal and change the animals, the driver said one of the wagon’s wheels was loose and that we would stay the night so that the men could repair it.

  The old man seemed pleased to see me and had no trouble offering me a sleeping mat by his fire for the night. The men he sent to the barn, where there would be room for them to work and sleep.

  “We thought you would not return, Mistress,” the old man said as he brought me a bowl of soup and some bread.

  “It is earlier than I had planned, but I have need to see my husband and family.” I smiled at the old man’s wife, who was as quiet as ever but wore Rivai’s carved picks in the tidy roll of her hair. “Where is your dog?” I had expected to see him sitting and trying not to beg by the cook pot.

  “He died one night,” the old man told me. “From the signs of it, he must have eaten something that disagreed with him.” He smiled sadly. “After first we met, I heard your servant speak of your illness, and worried you might not fare well with it in the mountains. That is why your return surprised me.”

  I frowned. “But I am not ill, nor was I when last we came here.”

  “That cannot be right. She told one of your men that she expected your family to hold kispu before the new moon.” He grimaced. “My ears are old. Doubtless I heard wrong.”

  Kispu was a ritual only performed after someone died, and I had never been in better health. Why would Keseke predict such a horrid thing for me?

  The old woman came over and looked at me. “That night after you left was when our dog died,” she said, her voice shy. “I think the Adonai must have sent your sickness into him, to spare you.”

  We left before dawn the next morning and reached Maon by midday.

  The house of Nabal looked exactly as it had the day I had left it, with the addition of a few more tick-ridden animals wandering around the slaves’ quarters and deposited dung ere they roamed. My husband’s steward ushered me in and offered to bring me food and wine, but I asked to be taken to Nabal first so I could make a proper greeting.

  “The master cannot receive you now, Mistress,” the steward told me. His eyes darted in the direction of Nabal’s bedchamber. “He is, ah, resting.”

  Was he sleeping off another night of drinking and gambling, or was he exhausted from his incessant bathing? Was it all that he did? “Wake him, then, for I have need of him.”

  The steward turned red. “He is not asleep, Mistress.”

  I recalled the two Edomites. “Then please ask him to put aside his women and come to me.” Before the steward could protest again, I walked off to the kitchens.

  Only the younger female servant was working, stirring a great pot of vegetable porridge in a desultory fashion. When she caught sight of me, her eyes bulged and the spoon fell from her fingers. With a frightened wail, she pulled her head cloth over her eyes.

  “Cease that screeching.” I went to her and uncovered her face. “You know me, girl. I am the master’s wife, Abigail.”

  “You are a shade, a demon.” She cowered in fear. “Do not steal my soul, I beg you.”

  “I am mistress of this house,” I told her firmly, “and I am hungry. Bring food and wine for my husband and me to the great room.”

  I left her still staring at me and went to the room where my husband received his guests. There were no dogs or remnants of feasting this time, but stains and dirt encrusted the grimy floor. As I waited for Nabal, I thought over what I would say to him about the herdsmen, and how I wanted to help them.

  “So, you came back.”

  I looked up and smiled. “I did.”

  My husband had washed and dressed, and his linen khiton sported an elaborate hem with much hand embroidery. Gold encircled his neck and wrists, and on his head he wore the flat, round head covering of an important landowner.

  “I sent you to stay in the hills until shearing time,” he said as he came to sit in his chair. “You were not told to return.”

  “I thought I might surprise you."

  “You do.” He surveyed me. “You look well.”

  “I am well.” I frowned.

  Nabal glanced at the floor. “Damned lazy slaves.” He shouted for his steward, who came into the room, and pointed at the mess. “When I am finished in here, I want this room scrubbed down. See to it they use boiling water and lye soap.”

  The steward promised to carry out my husband’s wishes and departed. The kitchen servant then came in with food and wine, and I dined with my husband. Nabal did not attempt to make conversation, and I thought he might be in better temper if I let him eat in peace. Worried as I was about Yehud and his family, I could only pick at my meal.

  After the servant removed our bowls and cups, I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him my reason for returning. “Husband, I came back to your house because there is trouble in the hill country, trouble that needs your attention.”

  He leaned forward. “Has something happened to the flocks?”

  “The animals are fine and very healthy,” I said. “Yehud and his sons take good care of them.”

  He sat back. “If the animals are well, then what trouble could there be?”

  “The herdsmen need food, and they are too busy with the animals to gather what they can from the pasturelands. I need to take back grain, fruit, and cheese for them so they and their families will not go hungry.”

  His eyebrows rose. “From where do you intend to get this food? It will not come from my stores.”

  “I thought I might take what extra we have—”

  “We?” He laughed. “You own nothing here, wife. You are one of my possessions, that is all.”

  “I brought a kor of fine wheat and much more to this marriage,” I reminded him, exasperated.

  “Where it became mine, the day we were wed.” He smirked. “You cannot have it back, and you will not give it or any of my stores to the hill people.”

  “You would have them sta
rve before they can drive the animals to Maon for shearing?” I asked, keeping my tone polite.

  “Let them starve.” He yawned. “It will save me the year’s pay, and I can hire others to take their place.” Before I could respond, he rose to his feet. “I have business in town. I suppose you wish to visit your family in Carmel?”

  “If I may have the wagon and a driver, yes.”

  “You need not take the wagon when you can walk.” His small eyes glittered with something unpleasant. “Only take care to return before dark. I shall have use for you then.”

  After my husband left, I sat feeling bewildered and miserably ashamed of my husband. Yehud and his people expected nothing of me, but I could not go back to the hill country empty-handed. In the kitchen storage pits alone there was enough grain and dried fruit to feed the herdsmen, their families, and the dal. But Nabal would not share his stores, nor allow me to take the food from my zebed.

  How could he be so selfish?

  I supposed Nabal meant to punish me by making me go on foot to Carmel, but after two days of traveling by wagon, I welcomed the chance to walk. I also needed to think of what to do, although by the time I had crossed the distance between the two towns, I was no closer to finding an answer to my dilemma.

  The market had closed for the day, and all the stalls were empty, but I stopped by the old booth where I had sold pots. It had only been a moon since I had been spending my mornings here, and yet it seemed a thousand years ago.

  “Abigail?”

  I turned to see Rivai hurrying toward me from the town’s merchant gate. I grinned and ran into his open arms, embracing him with delight.

  “What are you doing here? Where is Nabal?” Rivai held me at arms’ length and then pulled me back against his chest. “Adonai, I thought you would not surely return until summer.”