Mother was right behind him, lifting her tunic with one hand so she could keep pace. From her anxious face, I could tell he had waited to share this good news.
“Astra! Wake up!” I nudged her awake before jumping up, fumbling for a lamp. I stumbled toward the door, thankful for the soft light shining behind Father in the doorway.
“Let me light a lamp, Father. Wait for me!” I picked up a crock of oil, tucking it under my arm, and grabbed a small lamp before dashing into the courtyard to our community fire pit. I wanted to hurry, but this was not a task the wise girl rushed through. I filled the lamp with fresh olive oil and tested the length of the wick. I rubbed the top of the wick between my fingers, making sure it had not dried out. My fingers were slick and shiny, so I pulled a burning stick from the fire and lit the wick. The flame was flat and lifeless. The wick needed a trim to get that dancing effect I loved but there was no time, not if I wanted to hear Father’s news.
I cupped one hand around the flame, walking back with care. Once inside, I set the lamp on the low table in the far corner, and set to work lighting the other two lamps in the house.
Father did not wait for me to finish. “I sold all my rugs.”
“What?” My mother screeched. Astra ran to hug him. He pushed them back to show them his money bag, which always hung limp on his belt. The bag had grown so heavy since this morning, as if by magic, forcing him to hold it, supporting it from the bottom.
“Are we rich?” Astra squealed. “We’re rich, aren’t we?” Her eyes flashed the news to me. If we were rich, she hinted, my troubles were over. I would not have to be married right away, not even if the Hebrew demanded a payment for his injury. How much could he get for a bruise, anyway?
“We’re richer than we were this morning,” Father said, flicking his hands to set her back to her chores. He pulled Mother close and kissed her right on the mouth. We giggled to see such extravagance.
“Wait! You were in the fields today. I saw you!” Mother shook her head in confusion. “You weren’t at the market at all.”
“True, but a remarkable event happened. While I worked in the fields, a man the size of two oxen walked toward me. He had hair that cannot be described! It was longer than I have ever seen, hair all the way to the ground! And he was a huge man, a son of the gods, surely.”
“This man, this son of the gods, bought your rugs?”
“Indeed he did.”
I watched him for a hint of what was to come. Had the Hebrew revealed to him our crime? Dread sickened me, boiling around in my stomach.
“And what sort of man would he be, wandering around during the harvest?” my mother asked. “Has he no family of his own? Or perhaps his gods do not need to eat.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Father sounded hurt, hearing her tear down his best customer. I worried that a fight was coming. They fought a lot in the lean years.
“What did the man say to you?” I asked.
“At first, he was interested in my sash. He was on the road leading out of Timnah and spied it from a distance. Turned right back and walked up to me, asking me where I had found it.”
“What did you say?” My voice was thin and weak.
He shrugged. “I told him the truth, of course. You should always tell the truth, girls. Tell the truth, and you will escape many dangers.”
He was so wrong! He had no idea what he had just done, what disaster his truth had just unleashed.
“So what did this man say about the sash?” I tried to sound interested, not panicked.
“The sash? Nothing. I assured him I was a merchant with many beautiful wares to offer. If he found the sash to be striking he should see my rugs. So he followed me to our stall at the market and bought them all.”
Smart Astra moved to pick up the blankets, deciding to busy herself. If my face looked anything like hers, Father would see our guilt and confusion before we said even one more word. This Hebrew was a serpent setting a trap for us. I could already see Father had fallen into it and was besotted with him.
I needed a chore. I needed busy hands and a clear mind, so I looked around the room to find something to do. I could see all of our home from where I stood. Like most of the families in our village, we had one large downstairs room separated by support beams for the roof. In the far right corner were the pallets we slept on, preferring to sleep closer together during the winter. To my left, along the back wall, was a low table where we took our meals, sitting on our bottoms. My mother had another, smaller table just in front of me, where she often did chores such as stringing fruit to hang from the support beams to dry or sewing a patch onto a tunic. She had good light here from the door, which she liked to prop open whenever the weather held. Her friends knew that when the door was open, she was doing the sort of chore that was always better when good friends provided chatter.
I decided to tend to the meal table, which needed a good oiling after the drying heat of summer. Mother kept a small crock of olive oil on the table, so all I needed was a rag to rub it in. I rummaged around in the basket on the floor where Mother kept her rags, made from old clothes that were not worth repairing any longer. We never changed tunics, wearing the same one for every season and every chore, so our clothes did not last long. She was devout, however, in supplying us with new scarves quite often, especially before festival seasons.
I chose a small piece of knobbed linen with pitiful tears running through it. Pouring a thin green streak of olive oil across the tabletop, I knelt down beside the table and set my mind on my work. Astra came over, holding a blanket up for my inspection, as if I needed to see that yet another hole had torn the fabric.
“Why would he do that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. We owe him double now, though. You cracked his head, and Father sold him cheap rugs that won’t last the winter.”
A little spark of life passed between us, the familiar tweak that made us see the situation from a stranger’s eyes. Astra giggled first. I shook my finger at her before I gave in to my own giggles. My ears heard my father speaking, but my mind was slow to bring his words into focus.
“We need a goat,” Father told Mother. “And do we have any remaining cheese?”
I waved my hand at Astra’s face to quiet her. We were having guests for dinner.
“None. The goats are pregnant.” My mother’s tone was thin and tense. This was the worst possible month to have guests for dinner. Pregnant goats gave no milk. We couldn’t roast a pregnant goat, even if we were desperate, because it would mean giving up two goats. And the harvest was coming in, but it was hardly ready to serve guests. Olives had to be pitted and pickled and pressed; grapes had to be crushed and poured into wineskins; wheat had to be separated from the chaff, ground, and made into bread. All month, we ate raw heads of wheat, raw olives, and grapes. But you would not serve such a meal to strangers.
Father soothed Mother by stroking her shoulder and then reaching for her hand. He placed the fat bag into her palm and grinned at her.
“We have money now. Go and buy what you need. Go and buy everything you need. The other families will sell whatever you need. And fill the oil jar, to the top!”
I had never seen what money could do, and certainly never on my mother’s face. She grew younger in the blink of an eye. She reached to me, wiping the tears away from my cheek. She thought I was crying in relief, and she was moved by my tears, which made her cry.
Father looked at me, and then back at Mother, with her own tears now, and threw his hands up in exasperation.
“You’re all crying? I just made you wealthy, and you’re crying.” He groaned. “I’ll be on the roof. Amara, bring me a bowl of grapes and call me when dinner is ready or our guests arrive.”
He fled from us.
Mother ticked off her instructions to us, assigning chores and making her shopping list. Astra and I set to work as she left.
“Mother! Wait!”
She turned to me, a smile on her face. She delighted
in me. Money in her palm made me more delightful too, I could tell.
“Which neighbors did Father invite for the celebration?”
I would have loved to have Sirena and her husband as our guests.
Her eyebrows rose and she gasped. “I didn’t ask. Isn’t that funny—money makes everything else unimportant!”
Astra and I danced as we worked, a lightness sweeping our feet along. Friends from the village were coming for dinner. We didn’t even care who they were; we were blessed. Money meant joy in our hearts and freedom in our family and health to our bones. And money made us numb, so that we did not demand an explanation as to who our inopportune guests might be, or why a Hebrew beast would buy so many rugs, or even what else might happen that day.
One lie would catch up to us, but much later. Astra could now be given in marriage, too. After all, her monthly cycles had started.
Sirena brought our bread by while we worked, and Mother set to work kneading another loaf. The oven outside was free so Mother could get one more loaf in, and as long as the gods didn’t spit on her plans, it’d be done by the time our guests arrived.
Astra and I worked until our tunics were stained with sweat. We finished polishing the tables, tidying the pallets and blankets, and removing old, dried herbs from their hanging hooks on the support beams. Mother had bought a new batch of herbs, and we worked bundling those together with ribbon and hanging them on the hooks for a fresh-smelling home. When there seemed to be nothing else remaining to do, Mother gave us a critical eye and a new list of chores, all of which involved our appearance. She thought we could use some attention ourselves.
The roof, with those breezes we loved in the summer, was turning too cold for a bath, so Mother heated water outside over the fire and brought a crock in for each of us to freshen up. She plaited our hair, securing them at the back of our heads with a sprig of rosemary for adornment. I suspected the rosemary was to help disguise any remaining scent of our hard labor.
Father came downstairs at last, keeping a wary eye out for more unexplained tears, and tightened the familiar red sash around his waist. As he did, a knock at our door echoed through the room. Astra clutched my hand in excitement. We hadn’t had guests for months. I hoped it was Sirena. She might let me rest my hand on her stomach and feel the babe kick at it.
“I hope it’s Talos!” Astra whispered. “He’s more fun than Sirena.”
I glared at her. For all her wisdom, she didn’t see the danger in talking to boys.
Father opened the door, his back blocking our view as he offered solemn words of welcome. He stepped away, one arm sweeping back, gesturing for the guests to enter.
The Hebrew stood on our threshold with an elderly couple behind him.
Astra’s grip on my hand turned ferocious. I knew I would have a bruise, but I felt no pain. I felt nothing, because nothing stirred in my body. My blood froze in my veins, my heart stopped, and I could not breathe. Only my eyes still worked, taking in this massive Hebrew man-beast, with that black mane cascading down to the ground, his dark eyes twinkling as if he found amusement in my shock and horror.
He lifted up his leg, which looked like the massive trunk of an oak tree, and crossed the threshold into my home and into my life. For that moment, as he moved through the doorway, he eclipsed all remaining light from the outside world, the torches, the stars, the oil lamps in windows. Everything went dark in his shadow. I shuddered.
He stood before my mother and nodded. “Ahaziku. Strength to you.”
“And success to you,” my mother replied in kind to the traditional greeting. She cut her eyes to my father, who was busy exchanging small pleasantries with the elderly man.
“I am Jocasta. Welcome to my home.” Mother gestured to my father. “You have met my husband, Adon.”
The man-beast nodded. “I am Samson. And this is my mother.”
I gasped, just a little, as did Astra. I knew exactly what she was thinking. This woman was ancient. She could not have birthed this man—not unless she had given birth in her seventies. She was close to ninety. I would have bet my life on it. I shuddered again. The Hebrew was a strange man from strange people.
The elderly woman stood behind him in the soft light, nodding curtly. She had a soft, square face and must have been attractive in her day. Her lips were still shapely, and she had colored them red with a steady hand. Her eyes, though surrounded by deep folds of wrinkles, were clear and sparkling. But this is what puzzled me: Both she and her husband had neat, well-groomed hair. Her husband had a short, white beard and thinning white hair combed back away from his face. Her own hair was white as clouds and pulled into a single tidy braid, which was wound around the top of her head and secured with a jeweled pin. Their robes were clean, and the mother wore a single gold ring on her hand. These were not people who would raise a feral child.
My mother gestured to the low, long eating table. “Please be seated while my daughters prepare our dinner.” They all moved to the table while Mother pulled Astra and me aside, presumably to give us instructions.
“Your father did not tell me they were Hebrews,” she whispered. Astra and I stood mute, terrified to be implicated in this.
“They must be the ones who bought all his rugs!” Astra whispered. “That’s why he invited them to eat with us. He thinks they will bring him more business.”
Mother glanced back at the table. Father was helping the elderly couple lower their half-dead bodies to their seats on the floor. Samson was already seated. He looked like a giant of Gath with a child’s play table in front of him.
“I hope you are right. I cannot imagine another reason why your father would invite them in,” Mother said.
Astra reached out and took hold of our arms, pulling us closer in, a tribe of three conspirators.
“We can do anything for one night. We will be as pleasant as possible, just for one night.” Astra declined to mention that we needed to be kind because she had smacked this giant in the head with a stick, and that he had cause—and means—to devour us all on the spot.
Mother rewarded her with a wide smile. “And they will return again with heavy purses? You think like your father.”
“I am uneasy,” I confessed. “The big one makes me nervous.”
Astra’s grip on my arm grew tight. “That is why we must be so pleasant, sister. We will disarm him with kindness. And then send him on his way.”
I pursed my lips and let out a long silent stream of prayer. Dagon was miles away in his temple. I didn’t know if he could hear me. Mother broke away from us and moved to be seated. Astra and I remained standing, awaiting orders.
Mother nodded to us. Dinner had begun. “Astra, pour the wine.”
Samson’s mother shook a finger at Astra. “None for my son.”
We were all silent. Finally Mother spoke. “Your son does not take anything with his meals?”
“My son does not drink wine or strong drink. If you have milk, he will take that.”
I could not help but giggle. This enormous man-beast Samson drank milk with his meals like a babe. He looked unhappy with his mother but said nothing.
Mother shrugged in deference. “Astra, when you are finished with the wine, pour our guest a nice bowl of milk.”
Astra drew up a ladle filled with scarlet perfection from our wine crock and filled the bowls one at a time, setting them on the table. Neither of us missed the scowl Samson’s mother made when Astra set a bowl of wine in front of Mother. As if she was tainted because she drank wine and they did not. Astra poured an extra full bowl for Father.
“Olive oil, bread, and chickpeas, please,” Mother commanded. Astra and I moved to serve the feast, carrying the dishes from Mother’s work table to the dining table, laying out a straight row of delicacies right down the middle of the table. A normal meal for us was just one thing—stew, perhaps, or bread and olives. Tonight we got to sample a little bit of everything, plus Mother had clearly splurged on tonight’s wine. The bite of fermented g
rapes stung my nose and made it twitch. We Philistines were known to our enemies for our use of iron and weapons, but to those as well cultured as ourselves, wine making was our best achievement. We had yet to find another culture that could make a wine to rival ours. Not even the Egyptians, with their chemists and magicians, had been able to summon enough magic or technology to overtake us in this most important of achievements. Without good wine, my father often said, life’s labors were too much for any man.
Samson’s mother took a sip of her wine and raised a fist to her mouth to hide a cough.
Mother leaned forward, concerned. “Are you all right? Is the wine too strong for you?”
“Too strong? No, that is not it. I am used to the Hebrew wines, that is all. Our grapes are better. We have the best elevation.”
Only Astra and I would have recognized the flexing of Mother’s jaw muscles and known how that comment riled her. The Hebrews occupied the higher ground to the north and the hills to the east so that they looked down at us. Not a day went by that we did not feel their eyes trained on our homes and our land. Everything had been fine, Mother told me, until the Hebrews came. They wanted our land but could not drive us from it, unless they had decided to make us so miserable that we would leave.
“Yes, the wine of the Philistines is quite different.”
I beamed with pleasure. Mother offered such a gracious reply. She could handle this woman.
“Don’t feel badly about that.” Samson’s mother brushed off the comment with one of her own. My shock at her poorly veiled hostility made me almost drop my plate of bread. I glanced at Astra and noticed little beads of sweat rolling down her temples.
Father was still too busy, sitting at the end of the table with Samson’s father, to realize anything was amiss. Samson himself sat at the far right end, the three men making a horseshoe around the end of the table. I noticed that the seat to Samson’s left was empty. Astra or I would have to sit there when we were done serving.
Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) Page 4