Deborah's Story

by Ann Burton

“Hold.” A powerful-looking figure in a dark cloak appeared before me, and held up a sword as if to strike me. “Do you choose the path of the heart, or the path of faith?”

  “I choose the path with the flowers.” I did not recognize the voice, but I kept my eyes on the sword. “Who are you?”

  Lightning divided the sky and struck the ground between us with a thin, jagged blade of white light.

  “I am the Summoned,” the sword-bearer said, and pulled back the hood of the cloak. The man’s face beneath it was harsh and uncompromising. “You hold my fate in your hands.”

  “I will give it back,” I promised. “Only tell me how.”

  A thin smile appeared on his grim visage. “That is for you to decide, Truth-seer.” He turned and pointed to the other path that I had not wished to take, which was rocky and not at all appealing. “If you move in that direction.”

  I looked up at the sky. “Heavenly Father, I am a simple woman. I know sheep, not warriors and paths and the meaning of dream signs. Please make me understand this.”

  The man seized my wrist. “We two are one in destiny. We were brought into being to deliver this nation. I cannot be without you. I cannot see without your eyes.”

  Beyond him I saw Jeth waiting on the path of flowers. He looked miserable, and I knew that if I did not go to him, he would remain so—as would I. “Am I not to know any happiness, then?”

  “Your joy is in knowing the will of God,” the man told me. “As my life and honor is knowing yours.”

  “Who are you?” I asked again.

  “I am the one you will summon. The lightning from heaven, the pride of Kedesh. Take the path of faith and call me from Naphtali, and I will come. Walk the righteous way, and I will bring ten thousand to follow in your footsteps.” The man released me and stepped back, fading from sight as he did so. “Only remember pride, Truth-seer. Remember pride.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  A maidservant with a shy smile was waiting with a cup of warm herb tea when I awoke the next morning.

  “My lady Urlai wishes you not to rise until you wish to,” she told me. “I am happy to fetch you whatever you wish for your morning meal.”

  I glanced over at the long narrow window and saw bright sunlight. “What hour is it?”

  “Almost midday,” said the girl.

  I pushed back the woven blanket tangled around me and stood. Steady ground felt odd to my legs, so accustomed were they to the rocking of the riverboats. I felt guilty for my laziness. “I should not have slept so long.”

  “Oh, no, mistress, you need not rise at all. Our lady wishes you to rest as much as you like.” The maidservant pressed the cup of tea into my hands. “Let me bring you bread and fruit—or do you wish something else to break your fast?”

  I was making the poor girl as nervous as she was me. “What is your name?”

  “Eleen, Mistress.”

  “Eleen, my name is Deborah, not mistress. And I have never slept so late in my life.” I took a quick sip of the tea and put the cup back into her hands. “Where is the privy here?”

  Eleen showed me to another, smaller chamber that, like the indoor privy at my former master’s home, had been arranged to provide for a woman’s needs. After I had seen to my own and washed, I came out and asked Eleen to take me to Urlai.

  “Our lady rises early each day, for she says she cannot bear to miss the rising of the sun over the mountains,” the maidservant said as she escorted me through two passages and into another part of the long farmhouse. “On fair days she has a table brought out into her gardens where we all break fast together.”

  I had never heard of the lady of a household doing such a thing, but obviously Hebrew ways were different. Still, that was no excuse for my own idleness. I had to earn my keep, and the sooner I learned how I might do that, the happier I would be.

  “Is there much work to be done around the house?” I asked Eleen. When she gave me an odd look, I added, “I prefer not to be idle.”

  “I am the same,” she admitted cheerfully. “Once, I had twisted my ankle, and the lady made me stay abed. I thought I might go mad from boredom.”

  The place Eleen brought me to appeared to be like the weaver’s lean-to on the farm. This room, however, was warm and cozy, thanks to a number of large braziers, and held several maidservants who were in the process of carding and rolling freshly washed fleeces for spinning.

  Jeth’s mother was in the center of things, picking over fleeces and examining them in the light from one of the windows for color and thickness.

  “This gray will do well for the heavy kesut cloth,” she was saying to one of her girls. “After it is spun, we will soak it in warm water and have the weaver put it on the loom damp. The cloth will be fuller and thicker that way.” She looked up and saw me. “Deborah, you are awake.”

  “At last. I did not mean to sleep so much.” I turned and thanked Eleen before going to Jeth’s mother. “May I help with the work here?”

  Urlai hesitated before she answered with, “I would rather you come with me into the garden. The first of the frost rains came two day past, and I must gather what roots and herbs are left before the next drowns them.” She handed the gray fleece to her maid before showing me through a door to the outside.

  Tall, broad-leafed winter fig trees hemmed a tilled and tidy patch of garden ground that had been stripped of most of its plants.

  “We grow very fine melons in the summer, as well as salad greens, onions, and cucumber,” Urlai said as she took a small digging stick from a basket outside the door. To me she handed the empty basket. “Many kinds of beans and lentils and herbs come in early fall, and then we gather the figs and dates, and the root vegetables.”

  She crouched down by a straggling cluster of green and dug up a gnarled root, the like of which I had never seen.

  “What is that?” I asked her.

  “These Jeth brought me from a trader to the east he met at market in Rameh. I know not the name they are called, but the root is what is eaten, and I confess that we have grown very fond of its taste. It can be ground as a spice, or chopped and cooked with honey and dates to make a sweet spread for cakes.”

  I smelled the root, which had a sharp but pleasing scent. “It must taste better than it looks,” I mentioned as I regarded its ugly, knobbly exterior.

  “Appearances are not always a sign of what is within,” Urlai agreed. “Like you, Deborah. From the roughness of your hands and the streaks of sun in your hair, I would guess you have spent much time laboring outside. You are eager to do work here, too, like one of the servants.”

  I placed the root in the basket and took the next she had dug from her. “I was born a slave in Hazor,” I said quietly. “Your son was kind to me, and saw to it that I was freed. He brought me here to meet my kin.”

  “That explains much,” Urlai said as she dusted the soil from her hands, “but not how a daughter of Benjamin could be born in the north country, so far from her tribe.”

  “I cannot say, lady, for my mother died before she could tell me how she came to be in Hazor.” I remembered something Tarn had told me. “She was not born there—I know that. She was brought up from the south. Perhaps her people are somewhere close to here.”

  Urlai finished digging the last of the roots and placed them in the basket. “I have my own ideas about that, my dear, but that will keep until this evening, when my son returns from the barns.” She looked into my eyes, and her expression softened. “It is not easy coming to a new place, is it? And then to be made to confess to a stranger that your life was not as it should have been.”

  “My life is as it is.” I looked down at the pile of roots in the basket. “I am not ashamed of the work I did, or of the people who cared for me.” I thought of Ybyon. “There is just so much…unhappiness in my past.”

  “Let us do what we can to keep it there,” Jeth’s mother said, and touched my arm with a gentle hand. “Now, I have this stubborn nut tree over here that r
efuses to ripen when it should. Shall we see if it is finally ready to make a contribution to our household?”

  I worked in the garden gathering roots and herbs and nuts with Urlai until she declared she was famished and took me to the kitchen to see to a meal. As in the garden, we worked together there, and she showed me the Hebrew way of preparing several different dishes.

  “I always have a pot of soup kept warm over the cooking pit during the winter months,” she mentioned as we pitted some dates for a sweet lehem she wished to bake for the evening meal. “Nothing warms the belly like a good, thick broth on a cold day.”

  After we sat at the little table in the kitchen with the maidservants and ate a light meal, Urlai took me back to the workroom, where we sorted and picked over fleeces and carded the wool. The tasks were so simple and easily done that I began to feel guilty again.

  “I am very good with animals,” I told her as we gathered up the rolls of carded wool that would be bundled and taken to the village weaver. “If you need another hand in the barns, I would be glad to go.”

  “You have not spent much time on the inside of a house, have you?” she asked.

  I glanced around me. “The walls do make me a little uneasy.”

  “Then we shall take a walk outside, while the weather is still bright,” she declared. “For when the heavy rains come, little more than these walls will you be seeing.”

  I had been on Jeth’s farm only a day, so there was much I had not seen. Urlai pointed out the pastures and the different barns beyond the house, and told me of the purposes they served.

  “There are some families in the village who are too poor to afford to hire a shearer in the spring, so we have them bring their sheep and goats here,” Urlai said of the largest barn where the annual shearing was done. “Once the last fleece has been sent to the washing shed, we have a feast in the center of the village.” She stopped and frowned.

  I followed her gaze and saw two young boys who were rolling together in the grass a short distance from us. For a moment I thought they were at play, until I saw one strike the other with his fist.

  “Hetho, Poal,” Urlai called out, causing the pair to cease their tussle. “You boys come here to me.”

  The two jumped to their feet and hurried over to Jeth’s mother. As they ran, Urlai said to me, “These are two of my housekeeper’s children. They are permitted to come and help their father herd the goats in from pasture, but usually I do not come upon them pummeling each other.”

  “Lady Urlai,” one of the breathless boys said as they reached us. “Poal stole my crook from the barn and hid it somewhere.”

  “That is not the truth, lady,” Poal insisted. “Hetho has hidden it himself but puts the blame on me.”

  “Telling a falsehood is a sin,” Hetho cried out, pointing at his brother. “You will not say so, but you have wished to take it since Father gave it to me. I know you are jealous, for it is the crook he used as a boy, and as firstborn it is to be mine.”

  “No, it is you who are jealous that I am to be sent to apprentice with Adon Remaun,” Poal argued. “You wish to cause me trouble so that Father will think me too young and keep me home with our baby sister.”

  “Hold your tongues, both of you,” Urlai commanded, and the boys fell silent but continued to glare at one another. “I had not thought either of you a liar, but it seems that I am wrong.” She turned her head and murmured for my ears alone, “If only I could tell which one it is.”

  I went to the children and rested a hand on their heads. It took only a brief moment to see their truth, and then I crouched down to look into their eyes.

  To the younger, I said, “Poal, you were jealous of Hetho being given your father’s old crook. You should not envy your brother his place in the family. You are both much beloved by your parents.”

  Poal hung his head. “But it is not fair, lady. There are two of us, but only one crook.”

  “You see?” Hetho said, sounding triumphant. “I knew he stole it from me.”

  I turned to the older boy. “Your brother did not steal from you. You were careless and left the crook where you were playing in the hay. You also envy your brother’s skillful hands, and do not wish him to go to apprentice to the village carpenter.”

  Hetho’s eyes rounded, and then his chin dropped to his chest. “He is the younger, but everyone will think him more clever than me.”

  “Envy leads us to sin,” I reminded them. “Brothers share a special bond like no other. You must love and defend each other, never attack out of hatred, or you will go the way of Cain and Abel.”

  Sobered by the reminder of what had happened to the first brothers of man, Poal looked at Hetho. “I am sorry that I punched you when you called me a thief.”

  His older brother nodded slowly. “And I should not have accused you of stealing when I was careless.” He looked up at me. “May we go to the barn to search the hayloft, lady?”

  I glanced at Urlai, who nodded, and then I smiled at them. “Go, but be careful on the ladder.”

  “You have a deft touch with children,” Urlai said. “I would not have been able to ferret the truth out of them so quickly.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “all it takes is a touch.”

  The evening meal was much more formal that night, with Urlai sitting at Jeth’s right hand, while I was placed at what must have been the guest’s place across from Jeth at the cloth-covered table.

  After the hot food had been brought from the kitchen, Urlai reached to take my right hand, and Jeth my left, and they also joined their free hands together.

  “Is this a Hebrew custom?” I asked.

  “A family one,” Urlai said. “Will you say the blessing over the meal, Deborah?”

  I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. “Heavenly Father, the One and True God of our people, we thank you for this food, the warmth of the fire, and the joy of this home. All our prosperity comes from You. May we show that we are worthy of it, and Your many blessings, each day we live.”

  Something came over me while my eyes were closed, and I saw eyes like my own, only in the face of a little girl, and another, older child with a small brown birthmark next to her mouth. They were rolling a wheeled toy back and forth between them, on the clay floor of a simple but comfortable room. Two older women, their mothers, sat close by, picking over pans of beans as they watched the children play—

  I opened my eyes and released the hands holding mine. Urlai was watching me, as was Jeth, and they both looked concerned.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I did not mean to…do that.”

  “Never worry, my dear.” Jeth’s mother patted my hand. “Now, you must try the fig porridge. It is not so heavy as it looks, and I flavored it with some of the ugly root spice which my son brought me as a gift.”

  “A gift of which she still boasts over to all her friends,” Jeth assured me.

  That the two loved each other was only too clear, but the odd manner they had of jesting with each other often startled me. I spent much of my time during the meal listening and trying to fathom their jokes.

  When we had finished eating, Urlai sent for cups of spiced tea and asked us both to join her by the fire, as she had a story to tell us.

  The Hebrews did not have much furniture, but they enjoyed reclining on large pillows stuffed with soft wool. I found it another custom that would take some getting used to, for slaves did not have much reason to sit other than to milk sheep or eat.

  Once the tea had been served, Urlai dismissed her maidservants and sat back against a pile of pillows, the covers of which were woven in bright stripes of blue and green. “I have a story to tell you, one that has been a mystery to our people since I was a young girl. Most of it my mother told me later, just before she died, so I would know to tell my daughter and keep the tale alive.” She sighed. “Unfortunately your sister died when she was a baby, and in not telling, I had almost forgot it.”

  “Why did you never tell me or my brothers?” Je
th asked.

  “Because men do not feel the loss of a child the way women do,” Urlai said. “And because the men of my mother’s generation almost went to war over this.”

  I sat up. “Perhaps I should leave you two alone.”

  “No, Deborah, I think you should hear this.” Urlai set aside her tea and stared into the flames. “My grandmother was a skilled midwife, and as was custom in the old times, was the only woman permitted to attend the women of the tribe when they gave birth. She delivered the low and the high, the babies of beggars and of high priests, and held that there was no difference between them. My mother told me that she even delivered Gesala, the daughter and only child of Ehud, the great judge of Israel. She said that the child was born different. She was left-handed, as Ehud was, and had other strangeness about her. My grandmother had never seen the like of her.”

  “That is Ehud that prophet who slew Eglon?” I asked Jeth.

  “The same,” he told me.

  “Gesala cared for Ehud in his old age, and did not marry until after her father died. She accepted the offer of one of her father’s kinsmen from Kedesh, but by then she was an older woman, and so, too, was blessed with but one child. A daughter, born as her mother had been, left-handed, and strange.”

  “How so strange?” Jeth asked. “Left-handed children are rare, but not so uncommon.”

  “I will come back to that,” his mother said. “I was born three years before Ehud’s granddaughter, and as our parents’ farms were close to each other, our families became friends. Like her mother and her grandfather before her, Gesala’s daughter was left-handed and in some ways not like other children.”

  “She must have felt lonely,” I said, thinking of how my own differences had made many of the other slaves afraid of me.

  “She was, but we played together when we were girls,” Urlai said. “I remember her as a small, gentle-natured child, and the only thing I thought strange about her was that she did not like to be touched by anyone but her mother. The tribe had great hopes for Gesala’s daughter, as it was predicted that her child would become a great judge of Israel.”