The trader shrugged. “What is one woman to me? This one would have made for an unhappy journey with her weeping and complaining.”
Javan caught his smile in time. He could not have described Merab better himself.
They were able to follow Merab’s progress from the back of the camp by her shrill cries.” No! No! I will not go! I paid for transfer to Ammon, I will not go back!”
Obed’s face might have been carved in stone. He held the necklace, still out of reach, while the men varied their attentions from the struggling woman to the reward. It was easy for Javan to see which one held more appeal.
When the men flung Merab to the ground at the feet of the camels, Javan could see her hands had been bound. He wondered until he saw two of the men rub at their faces. The flickering fire sparkled against dark lines glistening wet blood. Merab had obviously given a good account for herself first.
Obed looked down at her impassively, and then tossed the golden necklace to the spokesman. “You have made yourself a good bargain this night.” He gave a tug on the reins and the camel reluctantly knelt. He slid off and walked over, ignoring her bonds. Javan felt Obed’s ache as he stared at his wife in silence. Without saying a word, he lifted her to her feet and tossed her easily onto the camel’s back, and then mounted himself behind her. She denounced him with ever more colorful curses, hurling abuse upon him with words, since her hands were denied her.
Javan finally spoke. “Our camels have need of a drink.”
The men cheerfully moved aside to let them pass. Javan went first, while Obed urged his camel to rise. His arms trapped her as he held the reins on either side, holding her in place as the camel rocked upright.
“Have you a cloth?” Obed muttered to Javan. He fit the words between Merab’s curses.
“I will find something.”
Leah watched Taleh and wondered again, as she had done each of the past days, if she had done the right thing. It had worried her, the thought of Taleh alone with slave boys not much younger than she was, whose dispositions she did not know. So she had come, to wait with Taleh for the men’s return.
Something was wrong. Taleh said nothing, but it was as obvious as sunrise that she was miserable, unhappy and afraid. She stared off into the distance and Leah caught tears in her eyes. She sighed, deep and aching sighs that trembled out of her lungs.
Leah did not want to be caught staring, so she looked away. Isaac was having a wonderful time, eating dirt, poking chubby fingers at the sheep through the fence, following ants as they scurried about. He looked up at her now from where he sat on his muddy backside, clapped his filthy hands, and chortled with glee at the sheer joy of being alive.
Leah envied him, immune from the cares of the adults.
Taleh turned from the lamb stew cooking over the open fire and smiled at Isaac. Leah saw beyond the smile to the sadness, and could bear it no longer. “Something is bothering you, Taleh. I cannot make you tell me what it is, but would it not be easier to bear if you had someone to help you?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
Leah followed the direction of Taleh’s gaze. Straight back to her son. Isaac had made his wobbly way to the fence around the sheepfold, empty now at midday. The sheep were in the near pasture, out of sight, but he was not fooled. He obviously knew they had to be close. He struggled without success to lift his baby legs high enough to get over the lowest rung of the fence, trying first one leg and then the other, and back again, but always falling short. His small, round hands clenched around the slender fence pole as though it were a lifeline.
Leah had stopped trying to keep him away from the sheepfold. It did not matter that they were bigger than he was. He was thrilled by them, going back again and again as though pulled by a string. It had been difficult getting him to sleep, with the constant sounds of sheep to remind him that they were just outside.
Leah looked back at Taleh, and finally understood. “Some day it will be your children who try to climb in with the sheep.”
“No. I do not think so.” Taleh’s words were heavy with grief. “Javan was so angry with me when he left! I knew Merab wanted to run away but I said nothing. I thought I had convinced her to stay. I did not leave with her, I told Obed about his baby, but none of this is enough to banish my guilt. Javan despises me now. How long will he keep me when he returns?”
Leah did not know what to say. Dared she speak for Javan? Leah asked carefully, “If Javan had wanted to be rid of you, why did he not bring you with him? By the time they catch the caravan, they will be nearly to the border of Ammon. How simple it would be to bring you with and exchange you for Merab. But he is gone, and you are still here. Does that tell you nothing?”
The first signs of hope lifted some of the weight from Taleh’s drooping shoulders. “I had not thought of that.” But the brightness quickly fled.
“Taleh?”
Taleh raised tortured eyes. “Javan has been trying to teach me about your god. He tells me your god is fair.” She glanced toward the sky, as though she expected instant punishment for blasphemy. “So why is Merab pregnant, and not me? Merab does not even want her baby. I would be happy to give Javan a child. Where is the justice in that?”
“Taleh, I cannot answer why God allowed someone as unworthy as Merab to conceive. Perhaps the child is to be a gift for Obed. Who can know whether His hand is behind an event? But I do know that it is far too soon for you to be worried. If you had been married two years, or five, I would worry with you, and hurt with you.”
“If it had been two years, Javan would have another wife.”
Leah could think of nothing to say. Taleh spoke truth. Javan needed a family. If she proved unable to bear children, Javan undoubtedly would take another wife.
“It is much too early to worry.” She could think of nothing better to say.
C H A P T E R 22
Javan saw the white flashes of his limestone house peeking through the slender poplar and more sturdy oak trees, and wondered at the flutter that started around his heart. He could see the clearing, too, between the trees, and smell the smoke of the fire. He wanted to push the camel to greater speed, but the path was narrow, branches waited to catch him off his guard, and the camel was tired and thirsty and ill inclined to obey.
No smell of cooking food reached him, no stewing meat or boiling vegetables. A brief moment of worry assailed him. Taleh’s robe flashed blue through the trees. He had left her in anger; he wanted to remove the hurt his doubt had caused.
Another robe flashed yellow as he moved between the trees, and he heard the squeal of a child. . Leah must be here to visit. It would be a good thing, except he wanted Taleh alone. There were things to be said that deserved privacy. The last tree passed, and he moved into the clearing around his house. The two women sat slightly away from the fire, their attention on each other. He urged the camel forward a step.
Taleh looked up, her face wavering between joy and hurt. He cursed himself for putting that there, for making her dread his return. Did he smile? Should he hold out his arms? Four days was a long time to leave her to brood and worry.
The camel drew near the fire, and he reined it in, nudging it down. He rocked with its movement, and slid off, standing beside it. How silly they must look, he thought, two people belonging to each other and yet not knowing how to take the first steps back. He held out his arms, ignoring Leah’s interested gaze, and waited.
Taleh looked at Javan’s outstretched arms. One step, another, and then she ran to him. His strong arms closed around his wife, so sweet, so missed. Joy bubbled up, and Taleh loosed peals of laughter as he swung her around in circles.
“I was wrong to leave as I did. I should have known you would not follow Merab’s path. Can you forgive me my harsh words?” Was it that easy for her to forgive?
It was. “I forgive you. The situation did not lend itself to trust.”
He looked down into her warm black eyes, open and sincere. “Perhaps not, but I had no rea
son to distrust. I could not think of a single thing you had done to mislead me in all the time we have known each other. I should have remembered that first.” Javan bent down for a kiss, and forgot the eyes around him. She tasted of joy and relief. When he lifted his head, he vowed, “I will not make that mistake again.”
Leah quietly went about picking up their bowls and cups, and gathering her belongings.
Javan’s handpicked guard agreed to take the camel to the village. Leah would ride with her son. Javan would collect the animal on his next trip to the city. Their guests were scarcely out of sight when Javan picked Taleh up in his arms and carried her into the house. He set her feet down on the floor, sobered, and said gravely, “I have missed you, wife. I thought of you during the day, and wondered if you would ever forgive me. I do not know if I could have borne it if you had rejected me.”
“How could I reject you?” Taleh framed his face with her hands. “You are my husband.”
“A thoughtless one, at times.” Javan spoke softly.
“But not too proud to admit it, and set matters straight.” Taleh smiled at him. She reached up and drew his head down, looking into his still-shadowed eyes. “I am well pleased with my husband. I would not trade you for a fortune in jewels.”
Javan ran a finger gently down her cheek and smiled in return. “How could I ever have associated you with her in my mind? I must tell you what Obed has decided. Obed will keep her under guard until the baby is born. At that time, he will give her a certificate of divorce and return her to Ammon. The child will stay here.”
Taleh shuddered. “I am sorry for Obed, for Merab. No one will be happy at the end of this matter.”
“Obed will have his child safe.”
“Yes. That is true. But the child will not have a mother.” Taleh was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps in this case it is not such a terrible fate.”
Javan drew her into his arms, settling her head on his shoulder. “Obed already loves it. He will be a very good father. Then, of course, some day he will remarry. The child will probably never know the difference.”
A deep pain wrapped around Taleh’s heart. She wondered if Merab would ever think of what she had lost. Or if it would matter. Would it be different to know her child lived, and called another ‘mother?’
Obed would give her a certificate of divorce. How very final that was. It sounded so easy, a certificate of divorce. A piece of papyrus, perhaps a goatskin, with writing on it. Everyone here knew how to write. Where was the boundary in this land, what laws made the division between a wife kept and a wife discarded?
There was so much she did not know yet, so many rules to learn. She wanted a child with unreasoning desire. She wanted a place here, next to her husband, in his arms. She wanted to give him his family, to watch them grow. Each time they lay together, she prayed to whatever god would listen for a child. Her body had never been reliable, her monthly times never dependable. Her hopes had risen to the skies, and then crashed down when the bleeding finally came. It hurt unbearably, to have those days of excited hope, that perhaps this time the delay was for real. Each month so far, her prayers had not been heard.
She believed Javan would keep her now, because she had to believe. To find out that Obed planned to send Merab away struck a blow at her trembling heart which not even his arms around her could ease.
One week later, when Taleh accompanied Javan to the village to collect his camel, she heard that Obed had already decided to take another wife.
The woman was Leah.
C H A P T E R 23
Taleh could not keep warm. The cold seemed to be waiting everywhere, sliding under the door, and rushing inside every time it was opened. Mischievous tendrils wrapped around her legs in the house, having crept around the rags stuffed between the slats of the lattices and joining the cold from the door. Whenever she ventured outside, rain the same temperature as the cold pelted her with sharp needles of wetness. She had even seen a few flakes of snow.
The cooking had to be done inside now. Javan had lifted the small wood coverings in each room, both in the stone floor and roof doors that could be lifted up to let the smoke out. Or such was supposed to happen, but the wind had other ideas, catching it and driving it back inside. The house was full of smoke. Fires were kept burning in the dirt hollows between the stone floor that the board squares had hidden. Taleh longed to fling the shutters open and let the cold do its worst just to smell air that did not make her want to retch.
She ached for the days when she cooked outside and watched the birds dance on the air, the sky so blue it hurt to look up. The sun seemed to have forgotten how to shine. The trees that bordered their fields drooped in the cold and wet, even the early blossoms hanging limp on the fruit trees.
Javan did not understand her feelings. He spent time outside each day, watching for the first shoots of the seeds he had planted, checking on the slaves in their dwellings, hovering over the sheep and goats, feeding his various animals. He would bustle in, bringing fresh air and cold with him, and Taleh would come to stand next to him, breathing the scent of outdoors that clung until the smoke found him and chased the freshness away. He always smiled indulgently, but he could not know how it was for her.
Her world’s only color was gray. She had to drag herself out of bed each day, and battled bone-deep fatigue just to complete the necessary chores.
Then, one day as she cooked a stew of lamb and lentils, garlic and leeks, the nausea she had battled for days overwhelmed her. She barely made it out the door when her knees buckled and she vomited, horrible shudders, wrenching spasms and the taste of bile. Once started, she could not stop, but remained hunched over outside the doorway, retching and trembling.
Running footsteps penetrated her misery, and Javan was at her side. “I was with the animals, and I could hear you even there. Are you all right?”
“No, I am not all right!” What was wrong with his eyes? “Do I look all right?” Her stomach lurched again.
Javan lifted her to her feet, ignoring her moan. “You cannot possibly have anything left inside. I have seen how little you eat.”
He carried her into the smoky house, but he left the door open. The sun chose that moment to peek out from behind the clouds, flashing through the open doorway, and Taleh was surprised to find she could still smile. Javan set her carefully on the divan, and her arms fell limply off on either side, brushing the floor. He crossed to their bedroom, and emerged with a blanket and a smug smile.
He tucked the blanket around her tightly. “I have opened the lattices. I will leave them open until the smoke is cleared and you can breathe.” He still had that oddly pleased look on his face. “What were you doing that made you so ill?”
“I was cooking . . . My stew!” Taleh fought the heavy blanket and her own weakness to sit up, but Javan pushed her back down.
“I can see it. It has not burned. I will watch it for a moment but I must send someone for the midwife.” He actually grinned.
“Mid . . .” Taleh’s voice trailed off as realization dawned.
“I think you carry my child,” Javan said softly and with pride. He leaned over and kissed her forehead tenderly.
Taleh’s eyes filled with tears. Please, let him be right, she thought. A child. Her life could hold no greater joy than to give him a child. One child might be enough to secure her place.
Her eyes followed him as he went out the door to send a slave to the village. As soon as he was out of sight, strange fears rose up to haunt her: Merab, well into her confinement, shortly to lose her child and husband at one and the same time. Leah, the second wife, reminding Taleh that she, too, could be supplanted, or supplemented.
She would not permit Javan to do the same to her. But how could she prevent it? She could not share him. He was her heart. How could she ever live with only half a heart?
To Taleh’s surprise, Old Sarah appeared at the doorway. The old woman greeted her with a distinctly female smile of conspiracy. “So what is this I he
ar? Do you have need of the services of a midwife?”
“You? You are the midwife?”
Sarah chuckled. “Of course. How else would news reach me so quickly?”
Another figure blocked the sunlight briefly, and Leah entered the room. She stood hesitantly just inside the door, waiting.
Taleh looked at her friend, and was swamped with guilt. Leah had done nothing against her. She had merely married the man who asked her, the man she had wanted in silence for months. Obed deserved better than Merab. Leah still had milk, the baby soon to be born needed a wet nurse, and Obed needed a wife.
It was not Leah’s fault that she had become what Taleh could not endure – a second wife.
From the loneliness on Leah’s face, she had missed Taleh as much as Taleh had missed her. Taleh held out a hand in appeal. “Please come sit by me. Tell me what is new in the village.”
Leah smiled in relief. She sat down close. “There is nothing to report. The only thing new is your . . . condition.”
Sarah interrupted. “There will be plenty of time to exchange gossip later. We do not know yet if Taleh is with child. Come to your bed now, and we will see what there is to be found.”
Under Sarah’s imperious eye, Taleh did what she was told. Frowning in concentration, Sarah pressed and felt and thought. Please let it be, Taleh prayed. Her teeth began to chatter. Her hand trembled, and Leah held it.
At Sarah’s smile, Taleh knew what she would say.
“You are with child, several months. The winter is nearly over, and spring will be here. I know you are feeling sick, but you must eat. For now, lots of dried fruits and nuts. And lots of meat, even if your husband must cook it for you. Soon it will be warm enough to cook outdoors again, and you will feel better.” She looked at the open window. “You need fresh air, you cannot continue to breathe this smoke. Wrap yourself in a blanket if you must, but you cannot continue to breathe this smoke. Drink plenty of water. Your cistern is full. Use it!”
Temper The Wind (Ancient Israel) Page 22
