Just a Girl

by Jackie French

  Chapter 22

  Midwinter had passed when we woke one morning to ice-clad cave walls. Even the goatskins glittered with ice crystals. Rabba shivered as she sipped the hot carob I’d made her. The goat looked even more annoyed than usual, as if we had arranged the ice just to make her cold.

  The smoked meat was almost all gone now, and it had been weeks since I’d seen a pigeon. They had probably left the shadowed wadi and its icicles for the lusher growth up top. It was time to hunt in the village fields again.

  I thought the idea of hunting might tempt Baratha up to the village fields, but she just shook her head. Nor did Caius offer to come. So I set off alone, so wrapped in sheepskins I probably looked like a sheep.

  My leather boots slipped and slithered on the frozen mud as I climbed the wadi. But I had to move quickly. A blizzard might sweep down from the mountains, blinding me, killing me. I was panting when I reached the top, but even so, I gasped.

  The world was ice. Ice jewels glittered on juniper bushes, fig trees, pomegranates. Ice spider-webs sparkled between the barley stubble.

  And over there a mob of wild goats . . . Upwind of me too. I had only hoped to get a pigeon or two.

  No man had ever given me hunting lessons, but I was a girl who listened. Like Baratha and, I suspected, Rabba too. I stood motionless so my feet didn’t crackle on the ice, then turned sideways so the goats didn’t see me as a two-legged human. I kept my eyes down so they didn’t see me stare at them.

  The goats came nearer. I picked out my mark: a young doe, limping slightly. I wondered if she had fallen in the ice. Her coat was dappled red and white and orange, so like our goat’s that I hated to hunt her. But Rabba needed meat broths and marrowbones. And it was easier to stay warm with meat in your belly than lentils and barley.

  Could I send a stone hard enough to kill a full-grown goat?

  I moved slowly, imperceptibly, then fast. But the doe moved just at the wrong time. I hit her foreleg, and then above her eye, but it was enough to bring her down. The other goats fled. Three more stones and she lay motionless.

  As I ran to her, I wondered if I had just stunned her. Maybe we could keep her as a companion for our goat, and have twice as much milk next year if we could tempt a wild male to mate our tethered goats. But when I felt her chest, she had no heartbeat.

  I cut her throat and was about to gut her, then hesitated. She was too heavy to carry, and if I dragged her, the meat would be too filthy to eat. And if I cut up the carcass, the jackals might take the meat before I could get back to it. We needed all of it — the marrowbones, the heart and liver, the intestines so Caius could wash them out for more of his sausages. They were really very good. It would be so much easier to drag the whole unskinned carcass down the wadi, and less risk of being trapped in a blizzard too.

  I dragged her to the wadi without too much difficulty. The girl sheep-herder had become even stronger now. I slid and slipped my way down to the cave, took the carcass inside, then pushed back some goatskins to dump it on the bare floor.

  Baratha and Caius were crouched by the fire, making bread. Baratha grinned at me, then held her finger to her lips. Rabba was truly asleep for once, her breathing warming a small patch of ice on the wall above her pallet, so it dripped water that refroze below.

  I glanced at the goat. She munched hay placidly, as if not realising that the animal on the ground was a relative of hers.

  I gutted the carcass, put the intestines in an amphora, then skinned it quickly. I’d had more practice than the others. The doe still had a little fat on her, though nowhere near what she’d have had in summer.

  Rabba woke as Caius cracked the doe’s skull with a rock to get to the brains, a soft rich food that Rabba loved. She blinked feebly into the winter dimness. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Judith caught a big goat!’ exclaimed Baratha. ‘See how fat it is even in winter!’

  Rabba pushed herself up to sitting, her eyes bright with sudden fury. ‘You brought the whole carcass in here, dripping blood all the way? You stupid girl. Why?’

  ‘So you could have the soft brains and marrowbones,’ I said defensively. I’d risked being caught in a blizzard out there and slipping on the ice. Rabba might at least have thanked me. ‘Caius needs to wash the intestines for more sausages too.’

  ‘What are brains and sausages compared with our lives! There’s blood everywhere, soaked into the ground,’ she snapped. ‘The wolves will smell it!’

  I sighed. ‘Sawtha Rabba, it’s been years since anyone heard a wolf howl near here. Anyway, there are lots of wild goats up by the village for them to eat. And they can smell there are humans here. Wolves stay away from people. Everyone says that.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Who Knows The World? What do you know of winters like this, eh? The wolves will be hungry, and scared goats run fast. Hungry wolves are bold.’

  ‘Wolves don’t come near fires,’ I said, not quite so certain. ‘Do they, Caius?’

  ‘They don’t come near fires and large armies. That is all I know of wolves,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t like wolves,’ muttered Rabba. ‘I’ve never liked wolves.’

  ‘No one likes wolves. Anyway, it’s too late now,’ I said. ‘The meat is here.’

  And fresh meat meant a feast. I eased the brains out of the skull, then threaded chunks onto sticks to grill over the fire. Caius and Baratha cut up the meat and put the bones on to roast. We grilled the liver too, and the meat around the ribs, and I scraped out the marrow from the bigger bones for Rabba. A year ago she could have sucked out the marrow herself, I thought. But now . . . She will be better in spring, I reminded myself.

  I mixed water with pomegranate honey and a little wine for us all to drink, with more wine and less water for Rabba; and Baratha put raisins and bees’ honey into the bread dough. We didn’t bother eating lentils or barley that night. Instead, after the meat and bread, we ate dried figs and raisins, and dates and pistachio nuts. There was only one amphora of the nuts and I’d been saving it for something special.

  We ate and ate, and finally even Rabba laughed as the fire leaped and made strange shadow shapes on the ice-clad walls. She told us of the time a snake had slithered into the village bath, and Anna, daughter of Ezekiel the potter, had jumped out with no clothes on and run screaming up the street.

  ‘Luckily her betrothed lived a day’s walk away,’ said Rabba when we’d finished laughing. ‘Or he would surely have put her away. What man would take a woman to his father’s home if he knew the whole town had seen what should be his alone?’

  We prepared Rabba’s warm rocks then, and covered her with sheepskins with the rocks tucked into them, then built up the fire. I fell over the dark cliff into sleep, exhausted from the day. Even my nightmares had deserted me.

  The goat woke me. I was going to roll over and go back to sleep when she bleated again. ‘Maaagh!’

  I sat up and saw the flash of red eyes peering through the cave’s opening, glinting in the dim firelight. I fumbled for my sling, but there was no time.

  A black shape slinked across the cave and grabbed the hindquarter of meat. A second wolf leaped over me in a foetid reek of fur and urine. I felt its fur brush my face. I raised my hands automatically to stop it reaching Rabba and Baratha. Suddenly it fell, smothering me in wolf stink.

  I rolled out from under it to see Baratha pressing another stone into her sling as the wolf scrambled to its feet. Her first rock must have stunned it. Its jaws opened. It tensed, about to leap.

  I felt rather than saw Caius jump towards me. He landed on the wolf’s back. I heard a crack. The wolf lay still.

  The first wolf had vanished with the meat, but other shapes lurked by the cave entrance, red eyes gleaming.

  I lunged for the fire and grabbed a burning log, using my cloak as a mitt. Caius scrambled above Rabba and Baratha, shielding them with his body. I waved the flaming log, yelling as loudly as I could. Baratha’s stone thudded through the firelit cave, and then another. Caius
had grabbed his slingshot too.

  Then suddenly the wolves were gone.

  Rabba coughed. ‘You can get off me now, boy.’

  ‘He was saving your life, Rabba!’ said Baratha.

  ‘Did I say he wasn’t? But he is heavy too.’ I saw her head turn to me in the firelight. I could imagine her glare. ‘All that blood — I said it would bring the wolves. I told you, didn’t I? I told you!’

  ‘Yes, Rabba,’ I said.

  ‘No one listens to an old woman!’

  ‘We are listening now, Wise Mother,’ said Caius, piling more wood on the fire. ‘The wolves might come back. We have to be ready for them. From now on we need to block the entranceway with rocks at night.’

  Rabba sniffed, then coughed. ‘A wolf can climb over rocks,’ she muttered.

  ‘Not if we put shards of glass and pottery on top,’ Caius said. ‘There’s plenty of both up in the village. Householders in Rome armour their walls that way to stop thieves climbing over them.’

  I thought about it. It would be a lot of effort, but it might work. And it would be worth it to know we were safe each night from wolves. The wolf pack knew where we were now. And where wolves led, jackals might follow.

  I gazed at the dead wolf and shuddered. If it hadn’t been for the goat’s alarm call, and for Baratha and Caius, I would be lying dead on my pallet, instead of the wolf.

  ‘I’ve always wanted a wolfskin cloak,’ said Rabba wistfully. ‘A winter-soft fur cloak tipped with white for an old woman before she dies . . .’

  Which meant I’d have to skin the wolf tomorrow. It was forbidden to eat animals that ate other animals, not that I would want to. The wolf carcass stank. ‘You’ll get your cloak,’ I muttered.

  I lugged the body over to the side of the cave, my hands still shaking. Suddenly I realised I hadn’t heard the goat since the attack. I glanced over, afraid of what I’d find. But she just stared back at me. ‘Maaagh,’ she said uncertainly. It was the first time I had ever seen her scared.

  I scooped out parched barley for her, then heated wine with bees’ honey for us all. As I drank it, slowly my shivering became just from cold and not from fear.

  Rabba coughed, then held out her cup for more hot wine. ‘It is something to have outwitted wolves,’ she allowed.

  ‘Do you think they’ll be back tonight?’ asked Baratha. She had been so brave before. Now she sounded like a frightened little girl.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said to comfort her, though I had no idea if the wolves might try again. Caius and I would need to stay awake all night, then gather rocks to block the entranceway as soon as it was light.

  Rabba reached her withered hand over to pat Baratha’s. ‘Did I ever tell you how I escaped from wolves when I was your age?’

  ‘No, Rabba.’ Baratha sounded more excited than scared now. We had heard Rabba’s stories so many times, but never one about wolves.

  ‘The servant was ill, so my mother sent me to the well for water. It was a hot summer and our own spring in the courtyard had dried up.’

  ‘I thought wolves only came in winter,’ I said, wondering if the courtyard spring was the ‘fountain’ Rabba often boasted about.

  ‘Am I telling this story or are you?’ she snapped, with some of her old fire. ‘I don’t remember seeing you there at the time. It was summer, and I walked by myself down the street to the well. Usually there were many women there, but they had collected their water earlier in the cool. It was so hot even the shadows had shrunk. And then I heard it. A wolf’s howl, just behind me.’

  ‘In the town?’ breathed Baratha.

  ‘There in Nazareth. I turned as shadows flickered in the doorway. But that house should have been empty. It belonged to Simon, son of Benjamin. His wife and daughters had died of the flux. He and his son went away to Sepphoris each day to work. Maybe last night wolves had sneaked in and eaten Simon and his son! And now they were going to eat me!

  ‘Something snarled behind the door.

  ‘I clutched the water pot in terror. And then I ran. But not far. A girl’s hand stopped me. A gentle hand. I looked up and there was Maryiam.’ Rabba sipped her wine again, her gaze far away.

  I shot a quick look at Caius. If he said anything about the mother of his messiah now, Rabba would stop talking. And Maryiam was a common name. Maybe this was a different girl. But he stayed silent in the flickering firelight.

  ‘She was older than me. Not beautiful, as I was. No one would ever compare her ankles to willow wands, or her hair to an ebony waterfall, like mine. Yet somehow she was the loveliest girl in Nazareth. Her smile . . . I will never forget her smile. And she smiled at me now.

  ‘“There are wolves in Simon’s house!” I sobbed, still clutching my empty pot. I tried to pull her along the street. “We have to run!”

  ‘“Let’s go and see,” she said.

  ‘“But they might eat us.”

  ‘She looked down at me solemnly. She didn’t say, “No wolves would invade a village, especially not in summer. Don’t be a silly girl.” Nor did she say, “No one’s heard wolf howls in the night.”

  ‘She just said, “We must be brave, and do what is right. We need to see if the village is in danger.”

  ‘She took my hand and suddenly I did feel brave. And also if the wolves had eaten Simon and his son, maybe they wouldn’t be hungry again yet . . .

  ‘We paused in front of Simon’s doorway. I waited, ready to run if a wolf snarled or leaped out from the dimness. But instead I heard giggling from inside the house. I glanced up at Maryiam. She grinned at me.

  ‘“Boys,” she whispered. “Don’t let them see you heard them laugh. Let them think you are so courageous you aren’t scared of wolves. We’ll fill your water pot, then you can walk past as if a pack of wolves can’t scare you.”

  ‘She helped me haul the heavy water bucket up from the well, and then walked home with me, with no snarls or laughter behind us. And from that day on, no boy in Nazareth ever teased me again, because I was a girl who had the courage to walk past wolves.’

  ‘But ours were real wolves,’ said Baratha.

  ‘And we faced them together,’ said Rabba softly. ‘And we won, because even though we were scared, we fought back. Maryiam could have laughed at me. She could have told the whole town how I’d run away. But she helped me, even though I was just a little girl. She told me to be brave that day, and then suddenly I was.’ Rabba cast a look at me. ‘And that is why I would like a wolfskin cloak.’

  ‘To remember Maryiam?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘To remember other things,’ said Rabba shortly.

  I sighed. I couldn’t get out of skinning the wolf now. I was reluctant to touch it again too. Wolf meat was forbidden. I suspected wearing it, or even tanning its skin, was forbidden too.

  ‘Maryiam was nice,’ decided Baratha.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rabba quietly. ‘She was nice.’

  Caius sat silently. I knew he wouldn’t ask. So it was I who said, ‘Was that the Maryiam who was betrothed to Joseph?’

  Rabba stiffened in the firelight. ‘There were many Maryiams in Nazareth. Must I remember every Maryiam I ever met? I should never have told you that old story.’

  Which was no answer. ‘But, Rabba —’

  ‘It was just a story for Baratha. Do not pester me about it!’

  ‘But was it true?’ I persisted, because Caius had not asked, would not ask, although his very posture yearned to know.

  ‘I am a tired, old woman. I need my sleep.’ Rabba sounded truly upset now.

  ‘I’ll keep watch,’ I promised her gently.

  ‘So will I,’ said Caius. ‘We did not mean to pester you. We owe you everything, Wise Mother. Our food, our safety.’

  Rabba blinked at him as if she had forgotten he was there.

  ‘You are a good boy, in spite of everything,’ she said. She curled up as thin as a lizard, with Baratha like a dormouse next to her. Baratha fell asleep first. At last I heard Rabba’s restless snore, broken by her
coughing. Once she cried out in her sleep, a name that might have been ‘Maryiam’.

  Caius and I sat wordlessly side by side, putting wood on the fire to keep it high and bright, and our eyes on the darkness at the entrance.

  Chapter 23

  No wolves came again that night. As soon as it was light, Caius and I collected the largest rocks we could carry and barricaded the cave door, then topped them with sharp points of broken plates from the village. Each time we left the cave we had to haul some away and clamber over them.

  It made the cave darker during the short winter days too, but we could sleep safely. It also meant we could leave Rabba alone without worrying she might be attacked. Hunters went for the weakest in the pack, and day by day Rabba grew frailer.

  The wolves did not return. We heard them howling for a few nights, then silence. Rabba said they’d probably just been passing through the wadi on their way north.

  Did the wolves smell bodies to the north? I wondered. Was it the smell of death that brought them here? But I said nothing.

  I skinned the wolf carcass the next afternoon, and left the meat for the jackals up in the barley field. Then I scraped it, and rubbed its cooked brains into it to soften it. Every day I stretched and scraped it some more, then hung it above the fire to smoke, to make Rabba’s cloak.

  It was just in time. A gale roared up the wadi and lasted three days, starting with sleet, then snow, and finishing with cold rain that melted the ice. But we had food and warmth, and the flicker of the fire and oil lamps. Baratha and I trimmed Rabba’s cloak. It smelled a bit, but she seemed to like it.

  As soon as the storm eased, we took Rabba outside for fresh air, wrapping her well in sheepskins with the wolf cloak above her. It didn’t smell as bad outside. I ran down into the wadi to pull up more stringy onion-like bulbs of wild garlic; steeped in honey, it was good for coughs. Rabba sipped the garlic-honey drinks I made her, but her cough did not ease. The strength she had shown the night of the wolf attack seemed to have left her weaker still.