by Sharon Shinn
Jerusha found them ten minutes later. “What have you been giving him? I hope he’s still hungry at dinner.”
Rebekah handed him over. “He’s always hungry,” she said.
Jerusha took a moment to smile down at her son’s happy face, wiping a purple stain from his mouth with the edge of her sleeve. “Well, he’s growing, isn’t he? That’s my Jonah, that’s my big boy.”
“I’m going to go up and sleep,” Rebekah said.
Jerusha glanced up, and then her sharp gaze lingered on her daughter’s face. “You look tired. Were you and Martha up all night talking in the wagon?”
“Pretty late.”
“Well, I’ll need your help tonight. Hector’s cousin is coming over with his sisters and his daughter, so we’ll have company at dinner.”
“All right.”
“And that one girl might stay a few days. What’s her name? Sarah.”
“How long? I want to go to Martha’s in a day or two.”
“You’ll go to Martha’s when your uncle has invited you.”
“I’m always welcome there.”
“Well, I need you here for a few days. You’re always gone.”
“Then maybe Martha can come here.”
“We’ll see what her father says.”
Rebekah shrugged and turned toward the door. “You wear one of your nice jeskas tonight,” Jerusha called after her. “I want you to look pretty for Hector’s family.”
Rebekah didn’t even bother to respond, just continued on her way through the door, down the hall, and up the stairs to her own room. She fell asleep the minute she lay on the mattress.
When she woke a couple of hours later, she lay still for a few minutes, gauging time of day by the level of activity in the hall. She could hear Hepzibah arguing with her sister, and the younger girls giggling as they hurried down the hall. An hour before dinner, probably. The guests would be arriving soon. Time to get up.
Rebekah continued to lie there anyway, hands pressed against her belly. It felt smooth, slightly rounded, hardly changed at all. Maybe a little extra heat seeped through from the interior lining out to her palms; but maybe that was her imagination. She tried to picture the creature that coiled inside her, which she envisioned as the size of a worm, maybe, but with fully formed limbs and features. How did it eat? How did it breathe? How had her body, all on its own and with no prompting from her, understood how to nurture and protect it, how to divert her consumed nutrients into its frail blood and bones? What would it look like, if it came to term? Like Jonah, with his beautiful, expressive face? Like Rebekah, with her pointed, watchful one? Like Obadiah, blond and laughing?
I cannot kill this baby, Rebekah realized, flattening her hand with some pressure across her stomach. What am I going to do?
The meal was rich and well prepared, but the dinner hour itself was overlong and dull. Rebekah sat with her stepcousins and the daughters of their guests and did not make much effort to be sociable. This would reflect badly on her mother, if the girls complained to their own mothers about Rebekah’s behavior, but she did not much care. She answered questions when addressed, tried to speak politely, and did not slurp at her food. Otherwise, she made no effort at all.
“So, Rebekah. How are plans coming for your wedding?” Sarah asked. “My father has said I will be allowed to come.”
“It will be nice to have you there,” Rebekah said politely.
“Is the dress ready? What color are you wearing?”
“Sage and varieties of green,” Rebekah said. “No, it’s not finished yet. Asa had two other weddings to sew for this winter. She’s supposed to come back—next week? The week after? My mother has made all the arrangements.”
“It must be exciting to be married,” Sarah said.
I will never know, Rebekah wanted to respond. She didn’t see how she could keep Obadiah’s baby and still marry Isaac. She was pretty sure Isaac was clever enough to know that if he married a girl and she had a baby a few months later, the baby had not been fathered by him. Therefore, she had to find a way to avoid getting married. She hadn’t yet worked out how to do this. She also hadn’t figured out how she would explain bearing a child when she was unmarried.
She hadn’t figured out anything.
“What food will you be serving? Will you have Manadavvi wines? My father says Manadavvi wines are the best, and that’s all he’ll serve at my wedding,” Sarah said.
“Are you planning to wed soon?” Anything to change the subject.
Sarah tossed her head. “Oh, my father is looking into it. It has to be just the right man, you know, from just the right house. He thinks it’s a pity that your brother is so young.”
“Jonah?” Rebekah exclaimed before she could stop and think.
“No, silly. Jordan. He’s only three years younger than I am, but way too young to marry. My father doesn’t want to wait that long.”
For the first time that evening, Rebekah gave some serious consideration to Sarah’s smug, narrow face. The girl had fine, dark skin and startlingly green eyes; she was not unattractive. But she was selfish and stupid and she didn’t know when to simply sit there and be quiet, and she certainly wasn’t good enough to marry Jordan. “No, I’m sure your father is right. You shouldn’t wait for my brother to come of age,” Rebekah said, trying to keep her voice neutral. “There must be someone much better who’s ready to be married.”
“You’re the lucky one,” Sarah said enviously. “My father says Isaac’s a strong, handsome man—smart, too. My father says he’ll be rich as Uriah someday. The best catch in the city, my father says.”
You can have him, Rebekah thought. I’m sure he’ll be happy to have you and your empty womb. “I know your father won’t stop searching until he finds someone just as good as Isaac,” Rebekah said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry at all.”
So the evening was wearisome, but it finally ended. The next day was slow and boring, as Aunt Hepzibah snagged Rebekah at the breakfast table and demanded her help in the fabric room.
“I’m stitching away all on your behalf, you might as well help me out,” the old woman said in her scratchy, irascible voice. “For you’ll need table linens and bed linens and nightclothes, and I’ve made a good start, but there’s more to do.”
She may as well sew as sit and fret. Someone would use these tablecloths and bedsheets, even though Rebekah herself would need no dowry. “All right,” Rebekah said and followed her upstairs.
The fabric room was sunny and cheerful, the overhead skylight admitting a fountain of white winter sunlight, and the work was mindless enough. Rebekah made precise hems in four sets of sheets, working slowly but competently, and paid little attention to the conversations going on around her. Hepzibah gossiped with old Aunt Gabbatha, and two of the younger girls sat in a corner and whispered about mysterious but, apparently, very funny events. Rebekah ignored them all and continued stitching.
She would have to get word to Obadiah. He might know what to do. But she had no idea when Obadiah would be back in Breven. Someday—she held on to that belief more tightly than her cramped fingers clutched the thin needle. He would return for her when he could.
She just hoped she had figured everything out by then.
The next two days passed with a similar monotony, though Rebekah continued to be amazed at how calm she was. Every morning when she woke, her first thought was, Sweet god of the desert, I’m pregnant. Every night when she lay on her mat to sleep, she thought, When I wake up tomorrow, my baby will be one day older, one day closer to being born. She believed these things absolutely. She rubbed her hand across her smooth stomach every morning, trying to note any sensible changes, reminding herself of the terrifying miracle occurring inside. But she still didn’t really believe it. It was impossible that such a thing could be true.
The colors in her Kiss made no pretense of bashfulness anymore; they glittered night and day with a manic frenzy. She had to wear her darkest jeskas to cover up its pulsing
light, and she was very careful to be alone in the water room before she stripped for a bath. Quickly in, quickly clean, quickly dressed again, before someone stepped inside and stopped dead in amazement.
She didn’t know what would happen once she was discovered, as sooner or later she would be. Something else she hadn’t figured out. She hoped to have a plan in place before that disaster occurred.
She spent the third day, all day, watching Jonah, an activity that made her seriously rethink how badly she wanted to have a baby of her own. “You were never this much trouble when you were little,” she told Jordan that evening, when he came to the kitchen looking for her. “You didn’t scream and cry until you got everything your own way.”
He grinned. “I think you probably just don’t remember. You were only six when I was Jonah’s age. You were probably even more trouble than I was.”
“If I had been more trouble than Jonah, our mother would have left me on the side of the road.”
“Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe she’ll leave Jonah at the side of the road someday.”
Rebekah sighed. “No, she loves him too much. More than she ever loved either of us. And even I love him most days. But other days he reminds me too much of Hector.”
Jordan laughed but took a quick look around to make sure none of Hector’s sisters was sitting close enough to hear. “I’m going over to Uncle Ezra’s tomorrow,” he said. “Eph and I are going to spend a day down in the markets.”
The news erased some of Rebekah’s exhaustion. “Ask if Martha can come visit, will you? Or if I can go over there. I’m so bored.”
He nodded. “Sure. When?”
“Tomorrow. The day after. Any day. I thought they were having company this week, though.”
“They are. Ezra’s cousin and his family. That’s why we’re going to the market tomorrow. Eph wants to show his little cousin some of the gaming stalls.”
“They don’t live in Breven?”
Jordan shook his head. It was rare, but a few Jansai had taken up residence in some of the other major cities of Samaria, all of them major trading centers where they could buy and sell. “Up by Monteverde, I think. Somewhere in Gaza. They came in with a merchant caravan.”
Rebekah thought of Chesed, but there must be hundreds of caravans that originated in Gaza and made the trek across the entire country. “How long will they be here? I really need to see Martha.”
Jordan grinned again. “I don’t know. I’ll ask that, too, while I’m there. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Take Jonah with you?” she said hopefully. “He’s just the right age to learn to gamble.”
Jordan laughed. “Then our mother would leave me at the side of the road. But I’ll be home before nightfall. I’ll come find you and tell you what we did.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “Enjoy the day.”
Her own day passed pleasantly enough, even though she had Jonah in her care again while Jerusha lay low with a headache. The weather was unexpectedly fine: cold, but not bitter, with a mightily shining sun to make even the wind seem friendly. Rebekah kept Jonah in the garden most of the day, letting him crawl and dig and chase winter insects until he was so tired he couldn’t keep his small head upright on his thin neck. She carried him in and placed him in his crib beside Jerusha’s bed.
“How’s your head?” she asked when her mother stirred.
“Better. If he starts screaming—”
“I’ll come check on him again in half an hour.”
She stopped for a snack in the kitchen—always hungry, always feeding her own baby—and then headed back to the garden. She couldn’t stand to waste the sunshine, rare enough in this season of sullen clouds. She brought a blanket with her and wrapped it around her shoulders as she sat on the stone bench, face upturned, eyes closed, completely relaxed for the first time this whole day.
Jordan found her about twenty minutes later, bursting through the women’s gate with such haste and clumsiness that Rebekah opened her eyes in surprise. His face was pale and his eyes were wild, and the premonition of disaster pushed her unsteadily to her feet. The blanket fell behind her to the bench.
“Jordan, what’s wrong?” she demanded, putting up a hand to his shoulder as if to offer him strength or assistance.
His face looked riven; she had never seen the happy-go-lucky boy so shocked and seared. Had he seen a murder today on the streets of Breven? “Bekah,” he whispered. “Bekah, they’ve taken Martha.”
She felt her whole body go cold in one wave of horror. “Who—who’s taken—taken her where?”
But she knew.
“We were—we were in the market. I told you. Eph and his little cousin Shem and me. And we were at the gaming stalls all morning, but then Eph wanted to show Shem the merchandise booths, and Shem said he wanted us to meet the others in his caravan, and we didn’t care about those people, who would, they’re Manadavvi, but Ephram was trying to be nice to him, Shem’s a little guy—”
“Martha,” Rebekah said, her mouth so dry she could scarcely speak.
Jordan nodded. “So we got there—to this booth—all these Manadavvi wagons lined up in back and their sleeping tents set up, and Shem was having us meet everyone they’d traveled with. And he kept saying, ‘Chesed, where’s Chesed? You have to meet him, he’s the best.’ And somebody laughed and said, ‘Where is Chesed? Back in the tent with that girl of his, I’ll wager.’ And so someone went back to roust him out, and you could hear a man laughing, and you could hear a woman laughing, and in a few minutes this Manadavvi man came out of the tent. And right behind him—right behind him—”
“Martha,” Rebekah whispered again.
“And her veil was off and she was smiling and she was tugging on her jeska, like maybe she had had it off—”
“Sweet lord of the desert,” Rebekah said.
“And Eph—and Eph saw her—and she saw Eph—and they just stared at each other. And Shem, he was so happy, saying, ‘This is my friend Chesed, he lets me hold the reins when we’re driving, he lets me sample the grapes and the bread,’ and everyone else was silent, just staring. And we were in the middle of the market, there were hundreds of people around, some merchants from other provinces but mostly Jansai, and all of a sudden, Eph lets out this yell.”
Rebekah closed her eyes. She could picture it, the brightly colored stalls, the milling crowds, the Luminauzi and Manadavvi in their booths selling goods, the colorful Jansai buying and selling and laughing, hundreds of Jansai, all of them men—
“He yelled, ‘Kirosa! Kirosa!’ over and over again, and at first I couldn’t think what it meant—”
“Broken,” Rebekah said. It was the feminine form of the word. “Broken girl.”
Jordan nodded. “And it must have been—it was like a signal—all these Jansai men came dashing to our booth, leaping over stalls and wagons, like they were running to help, like they were coming over to help put out a fire. And Chesed and his family—they were startled, they didn’t know what was happening at first, and then they realized—all these Jansai, all these men, they were coming for Martha. So they tried to protect her, push her back into their tent, but Eph had grabbed her, and some men I didn’t know, and they were pulling her out into the market. And Chesed was trying to come after her, he was screaming and yelling, but his own people were holding him back. Shem was crying—I don’t know, I might have been crying—and Eph had his face up in Martha’s face and he was howling at her, calling her names—I’ve never heard a man say such things out loud—and she was just—she was sobbing. She was on her knees, she was begging him, I think she was begging him to let her stay with the Manadavvi. But he—but he hit her, he hit her over and over again, and the other men were holding her arms, holding her so she couldn’t get away—”
“Sweet god,” Rebekah murmured. She couldn’t hear any more of this. But she had to. She had to hear every single word, every horrifying detail. “Sweet Jovah.”
“ ‘Someone find my father!’
Eph shouted, and half a dozen people ran off. A couple of the Manadavvi, older men, came forward and tried to reason with Ephram, but he shoved them away, and then there were more Jansai pushing them away. I don’t know what happened to Chesed—I didn’t see him again—but pretty soon Uncle Ezra was there. ‘What’s this? What’s this?’ he was yelling, and then he saw Martha, and then he—I can’t explain it. It was like he became even taller and darker, like he was full of anger, except he got so quiet—”
Rebekah had seen Ezra in a state of righteous rage before. “Like Jovah,” she said, “just before he throws a thunderbolt.”
“Yes! That was exactly it! And he started tossing orders at people—‘Samuel, get a wagon and some horses. Joseph, food and water for two days.’ And Martha started shrieking at the top of her lungs—‘No, no, no, no!’—and I still didn’t know what was going on, I—and then Eph looked at his father and said, ‘Can I come in the wagon?’ and Ezra said, ‘You can drive it.’ And then I thought—then I realized—”
“They took her out to the desert,” Rebekah said, her lips so stiff they could barely shape the words. “To leave her.”
Jordan nodded. “It was awful. Standing there waiting for the wagon to come. Martha sobbing and Shem crying and Eph every once in a while remembering to hit Martha and Ezra just standing there looking grim—and it took forever. And then the wagon came and they threw her into it and maybe ten men climbed in the back with her—men I didn’t know, I don’t know if they were friends of Ezra’s or just people who happened to be in the marketplace—and Eph and Uncle Ezra climbed onto the seat in front. And Eph looked at me and he said—he said, ‘Come with us. We’ll be back by tomorrow night.’ And I said, ‘No, I have to get home, I have to tell the others.’ And Eph looked like he wanted to argue, but Ezra said, ‘No, that’s good. We need a witness to tell the true story. Jordan, you go on home and tell Hector what tragedy has happened here today.’ And they drove off. They drove away.”
