Just a Girl

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Just a Girl Page 9

by Jackie French


  ‘Is it still there?’

  ‘The mistress’s cat ate it. I cried, and was beaten for that too.’ He looked at me, then said tentatively, ‘I have just discovered that a freeman can choose to stop awhile and simply sit.’ It was a request too. I nodded.

  He spread a sheepskin on the ground outside the cave and lowered himself onto it. I sat next to him, thinking he wanted to rest his leg, or just enjoy the freedom to do nothing for a while. Suddenly I understood. He was giving me time to cry.

  I could cry up here, I realised. I didn’t want to cry in front of Baratha. She hadn’t seen the horror in our village, must never know how bad it had been. I bent my head into my hands and sobbed.

  Caius sat quietly beside me until I had finished. I blew my nose, then wiped my fingers on my veil. I would wash it tonight and hang it up.

  ‘Was life good in your village?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Yes. Even after the men and boys went to fight, and I had to leave spinning and cheese-making and do a boy’s work.’ I didn’t want to admit, even to him, that I’d liked herding sheep out in the open better than spinning wool in a courtyard all day. ‘The soil is fertile around the village, even if the land has to be terraced. The springs seep out from among the rocks even in midsummer, so the crops are good. We had meat to eat at all the feasts!’

  I looked up proudly at the pomegranate trees, just visible at the top of the wadi. ‘When the drought came four years ago, we had a good harvest even when other villages went hungry. Even a small field here is valuable. My sisters and I had good marriages arranged for us because of that.’

  ‘You’re married?’ He looked at me in shock.

  ‘Of course not. I was still too young to wed when Jakob went to war. I’m betrothed. Or I was betrothed. I don’t know what I am now. I think Jakob must be dead.’ Did Caius look relieved? I changed the subject quickly. ‘What was your life in Rome like?’

  ‘Better than that of most freemen, except I wasn’t free. It . . . it hurt when your Sawtha Rabba said I could not possibly have been a scribe. A skill is the only thing a slave owns; that and his soul.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Many in Rome would say a slave has no soul, just as a dog doesn’t have one.’

  ‘Rome must be beautiful,’ I said. I imagined it like the Jerusalem of my dreams: a city of pure white stone, with paved streets instead of dust, and people in coloured robes . . .

  ‘It’s ugly,’ said Caius bluntly. ‘Except for a few public buildings and the palace and some private homes. It’s so crowded you can’t walk in a straight line. It stinks of people and old garlic and the night soil people throw into the street. Every day you walk in muck, unless you’re rich and are carried in a chair. The nights are filled with the rumble of carts bringing in food or furniture, or taking out the dead, and the yells of the drivers.’

  ‘But it’s the centre of the Empire!’ I said.

  ‘What does that matter to ordinary people? Most live in small rooms in large buildings many storeys high that are so old only the filth and cockroaches keep them upright. Sometimes the buildings crumble and people die, but the space is soon filled with more tiny apartments for people, and rats.’

  ‘You lived like that?’ I asked in horror.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. My master’s house had dogs to kill the rats, and more rooms than there were people in the household; large rooms, with frescos painted on the walls. It was quiet within its walls, or music played in the courtyard. I slept with three others in a small room off the kitchen. The food was good — leftovers from the family’s meals.’

  ‘So it’s better to be a slave in Rome?’

  ‘No.’ He met my eyes. I still wasn’t used to a young man doing that. ‘I had food, and beauty, and scrolls to read as I copied them. When you can read scrolls, you meet every person who wrote them. You can learn the history of the world, hear people dead for hundreds of years argue about what is right and wrong. I loved my scroll work. I had a place to sleep and safety from cutthroats at night.’

  ‘What did you lack then?’

  ‘Myself. If you are a slave, you can’t think, I wonder what is around the next corner, and go and look. You can only go where you are told. You can’t think, I want to be a Christian, like my parents. A slave is supposed to think only what he is told to think, no matter what ideas he hears, or reads in the scrolls.’

  ‘But you became a Christian.’

  ‘An intelligent slave learns to hide his thoughts,’ he said bitterly. ‘Those who don’t get sent to the mines. That’s probably where they sent my father.’

  ‘What happens to the slaves in the mines?’

  ‘They work awhile and then they die, and the masters buy more rebel slaves, cheap.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. It wasn’t enough, but I could find no words to match his pain. ‘What happened to your mother? Do they send women to the mines?’

  ‘No. They send women for the mine overseers to use. My mother wouldn’t have been trusted to be a hand servant again. Whoever bought her, I don’t think she lived long.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It must have been hard to lose them, terrible to know what might happen to them. Not to be able to do anything to save them or help them.’ Just as I had felt when I watched my village die.

  ‘Every time I ate leftover stuffed dormice or honey cakes, every time I listened to the lyre play, I felt guilty,’ he said, ‘knowing my life was soft compared with theirs. It was a harder life when I was sent to serve my master’s son in the army. Hard in many ways.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Back in Rome I copied manuscripts, or wrote letters for my mistress and carried them to her friends. I had time to read, and to listen to speakers when I carried the messages. But in the army there are no tents for calones. I slept on the ground, ate old bread and scraps. I did whatever job was needed, except when there were letters to write or tallies of plunder to keep.’

  ‘You must have longed for Rome again.’

  ‘No. I prayed to be free.’ He laughed. ‘And now I am. Look at me! I have a cave to sleep in, by myself. A soft bed and good food. I can sit here and watch the beauty of the world. See how the light glitters on the saltbush. And look, the clouds are playing together in the sky.’

  I looked. There must have been a high wind, for the clouds were running and tagging each other . . . and it was beautiful, just as Caius said. I had lost the ability to see beauty in the past few days. Suddenly I had it again, all because of the young man beside me. I could not bear to think of him having to serve a master, pretending not to be himself.

  ‘Do you really think there is a danger you might be made a slave again?’ I asked.

  ‘Not once the Roman army has left Judea and as long as I stay away from Rome. It’s unlikely anyone left here to keep the peace would recognise me, especially once I grow a beard and am taller.’ He met my eyes again.

  I lowered mine, embarrassed again at looking directly at a man. I felt like crying, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just had more tears that needed to be shed.

  ‘Will the army really leave Judea?’

  ‘Yes. The general’s father, Flavius Vespasian, has been made Caesar — the ruler of Rome. He needs his son and his army at home, to help rule and keep order. Judea is a small country, not important. Once Masada is taken, the army will go back to Rome.’

  I thought of our ruined village, all our people killed. Villages just like it must lie all across Judea, the ‘small country’ that was ‘not important’.

  ‘So they just sail away,’ I said sadly, ‘leaving an empty land, no people, no villages, a wilderness, except for wolves and jackals.’ A shadow crossed us, and I looked up. ‘And vultures too, feeding on the dead.’

  Caius stared at me. ‘Judea isn’t a wilderness. There are cities, towns, villages . . .’

  ‘But you said the Romans have destroyed the villages. Made everyone slaves, or fed them to the lions . . .’

  He said slowly, ‘Only the Jewish villages and rebels. Mo
st people who live in Judea are Gentiles — Romans, Greeks, people from many countries. Maybe even two out of three are not Jewish. Didn’t you know?’

  I stared at him. The people in our village had all been Jewish, and in Jakob’s village too. The only Greeks or Romans I’d ever seen were the tax collectors, and once an Egyptian trader who’d brought dyed cloth to sell, but gone away when no one had money to buy it. I had never thought that other villages might be different — though I knew from Rabba’s stories that there had been other races in Jerusalem.

  ‘So . . . so there are still people in Judea and cities?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Big cities, like Caesarea and Sepphoris, as well as villages. If I went to one of those cities and sat with the scribes in the marketplace, I could earn a living. Not much of one at first, but a good scribe soon earns a reputation.’ He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as well as me.

  I tried to imagine Caius sitting in a marketplace and writing letters. But I had never seen a city, or even a marketplace. I’d hoped to travel to Jerusalem after I married Jakob, but no one had ever told me about other cities. Why should they?’

  At last I said, ‘You’d need to comb your hair before anyone would hire you to write their letters. And wash your tunic.’

  He grinned. Already he looked so different from the slave I’d hit with my stone, even from this morning. Had being able to sit in the sun on a sheepskin just because he felt like it made such a difference?

  My life had been limited by our village walls and fields. Caius had sailed and marched across the world, even if all he’d seen of it had been the military camps. But neither of us had been free.

  Nor were we free now, I thought. Rabba would want attention, and we needed more firewood, and to dry grass for hay for the goat before winter came. At least in the cave, I had shelter and safety. But what could I do if we left it? I couldn’t write letters. No one would hire me as a cook, and certainly not to look after their sheep. I was just a girl.

  I stood. Caius grabbed his stick and clambered to his feet too. He stood next to me as I gazed at the dust-coloured cliffs, the dull green of saltbush. If I climbed a little higher, I’d be able to see our village, and the olive terraces and fig trees.

  Something rustled below us. I gestured to Caius to be still, and picked my sling and a stone out of my belt. It was a fat coney, but coney is an unclean meat. Just then a pigeon flew low, just above the coney. I hit it first shot. We’ll have grilled pigeon with stewed lentils, I thought, flavoured with onion and oregano and mint.

  I glanced at Caius, wondering if he disapproved of my hunting. But he looked at me with admiration. I smiled and went to pick up my pigeon.

  Chapter 17

  The first autumn rain came that night, soft as baby hair. The air was still fuzzy with drizzle the next morning, and Caius’s tunic was wet when he hobbled in from his new sleeping cave to join us for breakfast.

  We should plough the barley field now the ground has softened, I thought automatically. If we wait too long before sowing and ploughing, the heavy rain would wash the soil away unless it was covered in new barley shoots. But we had no ox, and the Romans had taken our donkeys and the plough. A girl, a child, an old woman and a young man with a bad leg couldn’t plough a field. The land must lie fallow. Maybe some of the fallen grain would grow.

  ‘We need to gather more wood,’ I said to Rabba, ‘before the winter rain sets in. We’ll need a good fire all day and night soon.’

  Or Sawtha Rabba will, I thought. The damp of the cave had already given her a cough. Damp wood would make a smoky fire that would make her cough worse.

  We ate parched barley mixed with chopped almonds, dates, raisins and fresh goat’s cheese with herbs for our breakfast, then I went outside and hung the rest of last night’s goat’s-milk curds in a clean cloth on a branch under an overhang to set into more cheese.

  It was as if I had stepped from one life into another, each with its own routines.

  Every day I tethered the goat somewhere new, usually near an overhang where she could shelter when it rained. They were only showers still, not the heavy rains of midwinter. Whenever there was a sunny day, we picked grass to dry for hay and stored it in an overhang well out of flood reach. We stored firewood there too.

  Caius helped as much as he was able. His knee healed, but he still needed his stick. I thought it still pained him too. He did most of the jobs about the cave now — the women’s jobs, like grinding and baking, storing the cheeses in oil, even washing the cheesecloths and sheepskins in a mix of wood-ash lye. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Sometimes I thought he accepted the jobs so he could spend more time with Rabba, in case she spoke about the Christians in Jerusalem or his messiah’s mother. But Rabba wouldn’t speak of Jerusalem again. If the loss of Jerusalem hurt me, who had only heard of it in stories, what must it be like for Rabba, when the heart of her life had been spent there?

  At first I picked olives to preserve in wood-ash water, but after a few weeks, I left them for the birds. We had amphorae full of olives, enough for years. A few melons grew, not ripe nor very sweet, but still good. A cucumber ripened enough for me to scrape out the seeds to dry and plant next summer. I managed to pick a few pomegranates too, for they don’t ripen all at once on the trees, and there were wild prickle figs too, and greens that grew about the wadi to add to our stews. It was good to have fresh food as well as stored. The land still cared for us, despite the enemies around us.

  The days grew shorter still and even colder. The late autumn winds howled above us, like wolves calling from the hills. Our wadi was protected from the worst of the gales, but gusts sneaked down and sent ash from the fire across the cave floor. I used the broom to sweep the ash and dirt off the goatskins.

  ‘I think I should harvest the rest of the onions,’ I announced one morning.

  ‘Onions last well enough in the ground all winter,’ said Rabba. She sat on rolled sheepskins on her pallet, spinning wool. I wondered if she realised there was no longer a loom in the village to weave it.

  ‘The deer might eat them, or goats,’ I said. Wild animals had begun to graze around the village now the people had gone. I turned to Baratha. ‘Would you like to come with me? You can help me carry back the onions.’ She hadn’t been out of the wadi since we’d arrived.

  She looked at me, startled. ‘No!’

  ‘We needn’t go into the village,’ I said gently.

  ‘I don’t want to go back there! I won’t!’

  ‘I need you to help me with the goat today anyway,’ said Caius quickly.

  All the goat really needed was to be tethered near some good grass. Her milk was drying up now. But maybe it was best if I went to the village alone. I might even get a young deer with my slingshot, as well as harvest the onions.

  We ate meat nearly every day now — sparrows or pigeons or other birds that flew across our land each autumn. The pigeons never seemed to learn that I might be sitting in a pomegranate tree as they pecked the fallen grain. But I longed for a big hunk of roasted meat, on a spit over the fire, dripping juices. Animals grew thin in winter, like people. If I killed a deer now, it would still have its summer fat. I could boil the fat down to make candles, or seethe it with mint and mallow to make an ointment for Rabba’s dry skin. The marrow inside the bones would be good for her cough too. It had grown worse with the cold weather, coming from deep down in her chest. And no matter how well we made the fire, the cave was always slightly smoky.

  ‘Come,’ I told Rabba. ‘Time to go outside, away from the smoke and into the sunlight.’

  She seemed even lighter when she crawled onto my back, despite our daily feasts. She definitely needs marrowbones, I decided, and more oregano tea with honey.

  I placed her on the warm rock ledge, brought out sheepskin cushions for her and a pot of oregano tea, then dragged out our pallets and draped them over the saltbushes. They grew damp and musty in the cave.

  Baratha’s voice fl
oated up from further down the wadi, where she and Caius had already tethered the goat and were gathering more grass. ‘Have you ever seen a camel?’

  Caius laughed. He laughed often these days. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Like a . . . like an ox with long legs and two humps. And they spit at you if they don’t like you.’

  ‘Errk. I don’t like camels then. Rabba says we aren’t allowed to eat camel anyway. What is the sea like?’

  ‘It’s like the land, except it’s water. It’s too salty to drink. It just goes on and on. The waves are like hills, though when there’s a storm, they can grow to be the size of mountains.’

  ‘I don’t like the sea either then.’

  ‘It can be interesting, on a boat,’ said Caius.

  ‘What are boats like?’

  ‘Some are as small as your cave. Some as big as your village.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. They have big pieces of cloth called sails to catch the wind, and slaves to pull on lengths of wood called oars to make them move across the water.’

  ‘Is the sea scary?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘Only in a storm, or if you get seasick . . .’ Their voices faded as they turned a corner into a smaller wadi, one where the grass grew thick, and I couldn’t hear the answer. Caius is good at answering questions, I thought. He would make a fine teacher, if he could become a scribe again.

  Rabba grunted behind me. I turned and found her staring at me. ‘You’re slower than a three-legged ox today, girl. Stop mooning after that boy and go get the onions. There’s nothing better than an onion in the stew in winter. You’d better hurry. I smell rain.’

  ‘I wasn’t mooning,’ I began, then stopped when she grinned at me, showing her black gums.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said again, glancing up at the sky. ‘There’s a storm coming, not just a rain shower. A big one.’

  My feet squished through mud as I climbed up to the village, then slipped quietly up into the olive terraces. If I harvested the onions before I hunted, the deer might smell if I was nearby. But here, upwind, they wouldn’t know I was here if I stayed quiet . . .

 

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