In the Field of Grace

by Tessa Afshar

  Now Izzie and Gerazim’s land was as wasted as Imri’s. So much for Molech’s blessing. She would never seek it. No, the temple wasn’t for her.

  “Rahab,” her father pleaded, biting an already ragged fingernail. “Think of the life you’ll have outside the temple. You’re young. You don’t understand.”

  It wasn’t that she felt no fear. Life for prostitutes outside the temples was hard, risky, and shameful. But she feared that life less than she feared serving Canaan’s gods.

  “Father, please. I don’t know if I will be able to survive temple life.” Daughters were expected to obey their parents without question. Her objections and pleas could be construed as disobedience. Her father could take her to any temple by force and sell her, and she would have no recourse. She told herself her father would never stoop to such behavior, but then remembered reassuring herself only the night before that he would never ask her to prostitute herself either. The very ground under her feet had been shaken. Nothing seemed secure anymore.

  Karem, who had walked in halfway through this exchange, burst out, “Father, you can’t do this to the girl. She’ll be ruined!”

  Imri slashed the air with an impatient wave. “And you have discovered a way to support the family through the winter, perchance? You have arranged a job? An inheritance from a rich uncle we knew naught about?”

  “No, but I haven’t tried everything yet. There are other jobs, other possibilities.” Rahab’s heart leapt with hope at her brother’s support. But the hope died quickly with her father’s response.

  “By the time you realize your confidence amounts to nothing, your pretty bride and unborn child will be dead of starvation. Rahab is our only sure means of survival. Our only means,” he repeated with brutal assurance.

  Karem dropped his head and did not speak again.

  Rahab sank to the floor, unable to check her tears. Imri moved to the opposite side of the room and sat in a corner, staring into space. All discussion ceased as their unspoken words separated them. In that silence, Rahab felt a wall rise up between her and her father that was as impregnable as the walls of their city.

  It occurred to Rahab that they were both mired in shame. He because he had failed her as a father—a protector—and she because of what she was about to become. She felt numb with his betrayal. A sense of loneliness darker than anything she had ever known closed in over her heart like the seal of a tomb.

  In the end, Imri could not refuse his daughter’s one request. Rahab’s refusal to enter the temples put her parents in a quandary, however. How were they supposed to find customers for Rahab? At the temple things were straightforward. But doing things Rahab’s way meant none of them knew how to go about it.

  “There’s a woman who lives round the corner from us; she used to train the temple girls,” her mother said. “Now she helps girls that are on their own.”

  “I know the one you mean,” Imri whispered. “She seems hard.”

  “I know her too.” Rahab had seen the woman slap one of her girls until blood spurted out of the girl’s ears. “Perhaps that is not the best plan.”

  “You are ever contrary to my suggestions,” her mother said, her voice trembling with reproach. “Do you know how much this hurts me? Do you know what it does to a mother’s heart to have to bear her child’s pain?”

  “No, I probably do not,” Rahab said, her words stiff as wood. She thought it politic to swallow any obvious references to her own pain. That would only set her mother off on another attack of guilt and suffering, and Rahab did not feel up to comforting her while grieving her own shattered dreams.

  “Look, why should I give half my profits to a woman who’ll probably cheat me? If the intention behind this enterprise is to earn enough money to see us through the year, we can’t afford a dishonest partner.”

  “Rahab, we don’t know how to … how to manage this affair,” her father said, banging his fist on the wobbly table.

  The taste of bile rose in her throat. Ignoring it, she rasped, “Take me to Zedek the goldsmith. He’ll know what’s to be done.” Her father ran errands for Zedek now and again. He was a rich man, goldsmith to the king, and well connected among the aristocracy of Jericho. For the last six months, every time Zedek saw Rahab on the street, he stared at her with an intensity of desire that even she couldn’t mistake. She knew he didn’t want her for wife. He would have asked her father already. But she was willing to bet he would pay well for the other. And she intended to make him pay well. If she had to go through this horror, she would gain a little something besides her family’s bread for the drought year. She would free herself from her father. She loved him still, and her devotion to her family remained absolute. But she determined never to place herself under his protection again.

  “What has Zedek got to do with it?” her mother asked.

  Imri didn’t answer her. He dropped his eyes, mopped his head with the back of his hand, and said, “As you wish.”

  Rahab snuck into the garden to weep in private.

  “How much will it take to feed us for a year?” Rahab asked her father as they walked toward Zedek’s shop. Her legs shook with each step, but she refused to give in to the fear that strangled her from the inside out.

  “Why?”

  “Ask for that much. Plus a gold necklace, earrings, and bracelets for me.”

  “Girl, you’re pretty, but not that pretty. No man in his right mind would pay that much for one night, not even for you.”

  Was she attractive enough to tempt Zedek to part with his fat purse? She knew she’d been drawing men’s eyes for the past two years, since her body had blossomed and her hair had lost the wild wiriness of adolescence and settled into soft curling masses of deepest red and brown. Would she do for Zedek? “Not one night,” she replied absently. “Three months. He gets to have me while I’m still young and fresh … before anyone else …” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing this thing one night at a time, with different men spinning in and out of her life. A steady lover might become tolerable with time.

  “I’ll ask, but don’t expect him to accept.”

  “It’s a good bargain. He’ll accept. Mind you, three months and not one day more.” Her father looked at her like he’d never seen her before. Perhaps he hadn’t. She hardly knew herself.

  Zedek was a well-fed man with protruding front teeth. He dressed richly, ornamented with gold from his beard rings to the dainty bells on his woven shoes. When he saw Rahab and her father walk into his shop he came straight over, shoving the hireling aside. “Good day, Imri,” he said, staring at Rahab.

  In his dark irises she could see the reflection of her own face—thin nose, full lips, large hazel eyes puffy from tears. She had washed her hair for this visit, and now it peeked from under its veil, an unruly mass of bright chestnut coils surrounding her face and cascading down her back. Recalling the reason behind that washing she blushed with shame and desperation—and held Zedek’s gaze.

  Her father cleared his throat. “Can we speak with you, my lord? Privately?”

  Zedek haggled hard, but Imri, to his credit, did not budge. Zedek stared at Rahab, fingers rubbing his lips, and threw out one last sum. When Imri shook his head, the goldsmith walked away. Rahab took her father’s hand and rose to go. He shot her an agonized look, but Rahab pulled hard and he stood. Zedek, perceiving their determination, came back and accepted their offer. Rahab noticed that her father looked astonished. She schooled her features into a bland mask, covering her own surprise. Like her father, she could hardly believe that Zedek was willing to pay so much for her.

  For three months, Zedek was her master. He liked that she knew nothing. He liked that for the first week she cried every time. He liked comforting her afterward, too. He wasn’t cruel to Rahab. He never beat or abused her. And if a disgust of herself and of him settled into her stomach, she never let him see it.

  When the three months were over, Zedek gave Rahab a bag full of gold. He threw in a
pair of anklets in addition to her original demand, and when she tallied the coins she found he had overpaid her as well. She assumed a mistake. “My lord,” she said, “you gave me too much.”

  “My little Rahab refusing money?”

  “I don’t cheat my customers.”

  “Customers?” He rolled his eyes. “You’ve had but one. And you aren’t cheating me, girl. I’m giving it to you.”

  Rahab bowed her thanks and clutched the money, half hoping that Zedek would ask her to stay longer. He was right. She hadn’t known any man but him. She didn’t care for his touch, but she would prefer being the consort of one man than the plaything of many. But Zedek showed no interest in continuing their association. Clearly he had had his fill of her.

  She returned home and handed the bag of gold to her father. “From Zedek. Payment for three months.”

  Her father peered inside the bag and gasped. “So much! I never thought he would give so much!”

  “That’s the last of it. He’s finished with me. He doesn’t want me anymore.” Rahab blinked back the tears.

  “What did you expect?” Imri threw her a quick glance before returning his attention to the bag. “It’s a wonder he stayed with you as long as he did, Rahab. He’s a man of the world. He’s accustomed to the best.”

  Meaning she was not the best. Rahab slumped on a cushion. Her father’s words hammered home a truth she hadn’t dared admit to herself. Once a man really came to know her, he would not want her anymore. She must be undesirable or insufficient in some way. Her father knew it. Zedek knew it. Now she knew it. Suddenly she felt cold. She laid her head on her knees, wrapped her arms around her legs, and began to rock. Her father went into the next room to show her mother and brothers the gold. But for occasional gifts of wheat and oil from Zedek, their family would have starved by now. This gold would see them through the rest of the year and buy seed for the following year’s harvest.

  Through the thin curtain separating the rooms she heard her parents’ muffled voices as they spoke. “Imri, what’s to become of her now?” her mother asked, her voice thin and reedy. “Can’t you persuade Zedek to keep her?”

  “How am I supposed to manage that? He’s bored with her and that’s that.”

  “What are we to do with her then? No one will marry her now.”

  “You knew the answer to that from the first day, woman. She’ll have to make the best of it. We all will. Her looks will serve her well. There must still be men who want her. For a season anyway.”

  Rahab curled deeper into herself and swallowed a moan. Without thinking, she took a fistful of the lavish silk of her dress in each hand, bunching the fabric the way a scared infant might cling to a blanket. She felt choked with fear as she thought about her future—about all the Zedeks that would walk in and out of her life. Her bed.

  She mourned the dreams that would never be, the destiny she would never have. She mourned the choices lost to her. Finally, exhausted from crying and the strain of loss, she shut her eyes and lay on the cool floor. In the midst of her hopelessness a thought occurred to her. She did have one choice. Though she was reduced to selling her body for money, she could choose her own lovers. She could begin and end every liaison according to her own desire. She had tasted rejection from Zedek and it was too bitter to swallow. This bitterness, at least, she would avoid. She would be master of her own heart. She would let no one in, and she would cast each one out before they realized, as Zedek had, that she was unlovable.

  During the months Rahab had been under Zedek’s protection, she had met other influential men of his acquaintance. Several of them had hinted that when Zedek was finished, they would be happy to replace him.

  Rahab chose carefully, and only one lover at a time. She was stinting in her acceptance of men. Her clients were few, but generous. Her unusual selectiveness enhanced her popularity among men of the higher classes. Each wanted to be chosen over the others. Rahab became the competition they sought to win.

  “Rahab, you are the most beautiful woman in Jericho,” more than one man told her. “Even the king doesn’t have a woman in his household to compare to you,” they whispered in her ear.

  Some days such words put a smile on her face, though it was a shallow joy that never lasted. In her heart she believed that any of those men who claimed her to be incomparable would tire of her inside of three months and discard her like bones after a feast.

  Sometimes after being with a man, she would curl on her mattress and shake, unable to stop. There were days when she would kiss her lover good-bye, smile at him as though he were the center of her world, close the door and vomit. She hated what she did. But she did not stop. She believed she had no alternative. What else could she become after what she had been? Her life was locked into this destiny.

  By the time Rahab was seventeen, she had enough silver to purchase an inn on the city wall. Leaving home came easier than she imagined. Two years of absent nights and shamed days had taught her to distance herself from her family. Her body followed where her heart had long been. It’s not that she loved her family any less than before. Often in her little inn, she was lonely for them, but found that being with them only made her lonelier. So she increasingly gave her time to the demands of her inn.

  Most innkeepers in Canaan were also harlots, so much so that the terms had become interchangeable. Rahab, however, separated her professions. Not everyone who stayed at her inn was welcome to her bed. She made certain that her inn gained a reputation for simple elegance and comfort. Decorating it with woven tapestries and rich carpets, she avoided the gaudy ornamentation common among other inns. The location helped. The wall remained an exclusive dwelling place in Jericho, and in spite of the inevitable diminutiveness of the residences and establishments built into it, they represented some of Jericho’s most desirable properties. By the time Rahab turned twenty-six, her inn was as popular as she herself, though like her body, it often remained empty. It was that very exclusivity which made it a sought-after destination.

  Chapter Two

  The first time Rahab heard about Israel, she was entertaining. Sprawled under a carelessly flung linen sheet, she watched through half closed eyes as her lover, Jobab, paced about. His brow was so knotted it reminded her of a walnut shell. She could see he was agitated, but waited with patience until he was ready to speak. Men admired women who kept quiet at the right times. When he finally tired of striding about like a trapped lion, he spoke.

  “Rahab, the Hebrews defeated King Sihon and his sons last night. The great king of the Amorites was routed by a band of nomads. Now all of Canaan is in danger.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, pulling the sheet around her and sitting up. “Sihon can’t be defeated.” Sihon, one of the great kings east of the Jordan River, ruled like an eagle over his kingdom. She had heard men call him undefeatable, his kingdom secure forever.

  “He was defeated, I tell you. By the Hebrews. Their leader, an old man named Moses, sent a message to Sihon requesting permission to travel the King’s Highway in peace. Sihon not only denied them passage, but he mustered his army and attacked them at Jahaz. He must have thought it would be an easy victory. However, it didn’t take long for the Hebrews to turn the battle.” Jobab stopped speaking and stared at nothing in particular as if words had failed him. “They’re fierce. They don’t even have proper armor. So when Sihon’s army started to run—”

  Rahab sat up straight. “Sihon’s army ran?”

  “What am I telling you? They were pulverized. And those not killed immediately ran. But the armorless Hebrews ran faster and caught up with them. They even killed some with slings. Sihon’s glorious capital, Heshbon, brought down by slings. Who shall sleep safe in their beds after this?”

  Rahab’s mouth dropped open at his words. To her, as to all who first heard of these events, they seemed outlandish. Impossible. “Who are these Hebrews? I’ve never heard of them. How do they wield such power?” Her voice sounded shrill in her own ears.


  “That’s the wonder. They are nobody. A bunch of runaway slaves.” Jobab sank down to the floor and slumped against the wall. “Forty years ago they ran away from Egypt, and they’ve been wandering in the wilderness ever since. They have no cities, no walls, no fields to plant or plow, no vineyards to harvest. Everyone has ignored them.”

  “What you say makes no sense. How could an army of slaves run away from Egypt? As if a pharaoh would ever allow it. This is an empty rumor.” She looked at him, her fears reined in. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against a pillow.

  Jobab raised his arms in exasperation. “Rahab, you’re just too young to know about it. There was a great revolt in Egypt among the Hebrew slaves, led by this same man, Moses. He claimed his god wanted Pharaoh to free the Hebrews. Pharaoh refused at first, but so many plagues befell the Egyptians at the hands of the Hebrew god that Pharaoh had to let them go. Egypt was in ruins. Then, at the last minute, he changed his mind. As the Hebrews were leaving, Pharaoh mobilized his army and pursued them.”

  “Don’t tell me the slaves brought Pharaoh’s chariots down with their slingshots.” Rahab smirked.

  Jobab sighed. “Nothing so ordinary. Their escape route brought them to a dead end against the sea. Behind them came Pharaoh’s invincible army. Before them lay a body of water impossible to cross. They were doomed. And then their god parted the sea.”

  Rahab raised an eyebrow. “Come now.”

  “He parted the sea, I tell you! Divided it right up the middle. They walked straight through to the other side on dry ground with the water piled up all around them. Then, when Pharaoh and his army tried to follow, the waves came crashing down on top of them. Every single one of them perished.”

  Now that Jobab was rehearsing the story, Rahab remembered hearing about the mysterious death of one of the Egyptian Pharaohs and his army. It was when her parents were young. Egypt had not yet recovered its great strength after that loss. What kind of god wielded so much power? If this was all true, who could stand against such a god? She began to understand the scent of fear that clung to Jobab.