She’d gone from blushing to pale as I ranted. “No. I would not have left.”
Bitterness welled in my mouth. “And when you discovered your situation you did not try to return?”
Head down, she shifted on the pallet, tugging at the hem of her tunic. “No. I couldn’t. I could not leave Nessa. It was too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shortly after we arrived in this city with the traders we’d be traveling with, she . . .” Rivkah sighed. “She met a man. She insisted that he cared for her and would provide the two of us a place to live. She went to live as his wife, but he refused to give me shelter unless . . .”
“Unless?” I prompted.
“Unless I provided him with some”—her eyelids fluttered—“incentive . . . to do so.”
Fury curled my hands into fists as I discerned the underlying meaning to her statement, and every muscle in my body slipped into battle-readiness. No matter what Rivkah had done, any man who would dare suggest such perversity deserved to be torn limb from limb.
Taking my physical response for anger at her, she threw up her palms in defense. “I refused! I swear to you. Nessa was horrified that she’d put the both of us in such a situation. Without a place to live, I had nowhere else to go and no way to provide for Amit when he was born. The traders made it clear I was not welcome to continue on with them either.”
Although her explanation helped to file the rougher edges from my rage, I could not keep the sharpness from my tone. “You left Kedesh with a bag full of jewelry and silver. Why did you not simply use that to return home?”
Her chin dropped again, as if she were loathe to meet my gaze. “It was stolen from me. In Laish.” The words were barely above a whisper, the current beneath them making it clear there was much more to the story. But for now I’d settle for more immediate answers.
“How did you come to this household?” I asked.
“One of the traders heard that Samil’s personal scribe had recently died. She negotiated my indenture contract with him. For a profit, of course.”
A huff of air burst from my lungs. “You are enslaved?”
Her head jerked back at the force of my words. “Malakhi. Look around you. Are these the quarters of a valued wage earner? I had no choice. I was with child. Alone. And desperate.”
“You sent a message to your father a month ago. Why not back then? We would have come. Especially had we known about . . .” I waved toward the courtyard where my nephew was laughing with some other child. The date must have done its job, since he was no longer crying. I lowered my voice so he would not overhear through the open window, although my words came out like daggers. “We would have moved earth and sky to bring him home. You know we would have. And instead you sold yourself?” I could not keep the revulsion from my voice as I jabbed a finger toward the pallet she sat upon. “Does this master of yours exert his rights of ownership here too?”
A gasp slipped from her mouth. “No, Samil has never approached me in that way. He has two beautiful wives less than half his age who keep him . . . occupied.”
Relief was swift, but it took a few more moments for the rush of my pulse to calm.
“We have been treated well here,” she said. “We are provided with shelter. Food. Clothing. And because Samil relies on me so heavily for all his dealings, I am afforded some luxuries that other servants in this household are not.”
Scoffing, I waved a hand toward her stained and charred tunic. “Such as these fine garments?”
“Anataliah, the young woman who shares these quarters with us, burned her tunic in the kitchen. We traded so she could go back to work before one of our mistresses noticed her absence.” Her expression softened. “What I mean is that Amit is allowed to play with Samil’s children and even to participate in some of their household celebrations. He is not forced to labor, but instead is allowed to be a child. I don’t think he even realizes that I am a slave. At least not yet.”
I’d seen the sharp scrutiny behind her son’s eyes. He was small, but if he was anything like Gidal, I was almost certain he noticed differences between himself and his wealthy playmates. The thought of my nephew living in slavery made my stomach roil, but he did seem to be healthy and cared for, in spite of the situation Rivkah had trapped them in. And it was plain to see that for all her transgressions, she adored Amit.
Uneasy silence poured into the room as I stared wordlessly at the woman I’d wanted so badly. It had not only been her beauty that had drawn me to her, nor even the honey-sweet voice I’d heard in song, but the way she never backed down when I provoked her. And once I’d stopped seeing her like a sister, I’d begun to admire her quiet strength after the death of her mother, and the way she spent every morning bent over potsherds with a reed pen or practicing letter shapes with a stick in the dirt, and the way she hovered around the foreign traders in the marketplace in the afternoons, soaking up their languages like a thirsty sea sponge.
Although her outward beauty had bloomed into a richer shade of loveliness, the broken woman who sat before me barely resembled the girl I’d known. With shoulders hunched, her expression unsure, and her hands wringing themselves white in her lap, it was as if her once-bright flame had been snuffed out.
She lifted wary eyes to meet mine. “You have changed.”
Surprised and unsettled by the way she’d reflected my own thoughts, I volleyed back with her own last words to me. “I am not the same spoiled boy I used to be.”
Her entire body jerked. And although I felt a tinge of regret for my harshness, I could not forget that she’d brought this on herself. She’d left. Stolen Gidal’s son. Kept him from us for five years.
I was not here to rekindle the desire I’d once had for her. I was here to deliver a message. I reached into the pack at my hip, pulled out the small roll of papyrus Amitai had given me when I’d agreed to make the journey, and held it out to Rivkah.
Her hand trembled as she took the offering. She ran a finger over the grooves her father’s signet ring had pressed into the clay seal before breaking it to unroll the missive. After only a moment of taking in whatever her father had written, she lifted her golden eyes to mine, tears shimmering. “I can’t go back,” she said, her tone mournful. “There is a year and a half left of my indenture contract.”
I stood blinking at her, weighing the implications of her statement, but before I could respond, a loud knock sounded at the door. “Rivkah,” shouted a man’s voice. “Samil wants you. Now!”
With surprising speed, she tucked the note from her father beneath her pallet and sprang to her feet. Then she brushed past me to grab a document off the floor. “You must go. Now. He cannot see you here.” The vehemence with which she delivered the command was nearly like the old Rivkah, but the panic beneath the words was not.
“What would he do?” I demanded as she snatched a threadbare over-garment from a hook on the wall and slipped it over the burned tunic she wore. The messenger outside banged on the door again, and her expression went stony as she placed her hand on the latch.
“Just go, Malakhi,” she whispered, without looking over at me. “Don’t come back.” Then she slipped outside and slammed the door behind her.
CHAPTER
twenty-three
Rivkah
My hands would not cease trembling. I forced myself not to look back over my shoulder as I walked away from the servants’ quarters, and from Malakhi. As soon as I passed through the rear door to the villa, I scurried over to peer out a nearby window from an angle that would ensure he’d not catch me watching. I never should have left him there, so close to Amit. I held my breath, waiting for him to emerge from my room and walk away from my son.
I could not wrap my mind around Malakhi’s appearance here in Edrei, nor could I reconcile the drastic change in both his appearance and his mannerisms. The Malakhi of my childhood, the smiling, jesting mischief-maker, had been replaced by a scowling, snarling stranger. A stranger with a frame that
barely fit through the small door to my quarters. Nothing about him was the same, except those silver eyes, but instead of dancing with amusement like they used to, they now steadily regarded me with five years’ worth of bitterness.
Full-bearded and radiating contempt, his presence had filled the room to the point of suffocation. I’d nearly exhaled a relieved sigh when Estebaal, Samil’s bodyguard, called for me. What better excuse to flee Malakhi than to heed the summons of my master?
But I should not have left Amit in the courtyard, since Malakhi could easily slip through the side door and abscond with my precious boy and take him back to Kedesh, back to the family that in all likelihood had far more legal right to him than I did. The way he’d locked his attention on Amit’s face the moment he’d appeared in the doorway, I’d known that he’d seen what was more than obvious: Amit was every bit Gidal’s son. And after what had transpired in Laish, I was glad of it. I would never want his heritage questioned because of my recklessness. But still, it had taken everything I had in me to not snatch Amit in my arms and run the moment Malakhi’s keen gaze had landed on him.
I caught my breath as Malakhi exited my home, his head ducking to pass beneath the lintel. He paused, his face turned toward the villa, his chin tilted as if he were listening to the sounds of Amit and his friend Bensam playing together in the courtyard. My heart beat a double rhythm until he turned and walked away, and I slumped against the wall, relief coursing through me.
“Rivkah!” Estebaal’s voice made me jump and spin away from the window. His muscular arms crossed over his chest and his deep blue eyes were locked on me from the end of the corridor. “Samil is not happy that you’ve taken so long. I’d rather not be taken to task for it as well.”
“Apologies,” I said, dropping my chin in a gesture of submission, and then followed the tall Aramean to my master’s chamber. The man was Samil’s most trusted personal bodyguard, and as such, dressed in clothing nearly as fine as our master’s. One could almost mistake him for a rich man himself were it not for the thick copper ring in his right ear, the sign that Estebaal had taken a vow of lifelong service to Samil. Without knocking, Estebaal opened the door to usher me inside before taking his usual station outside the doorway.
For the first few months of my service here, I’d quaked whenever I crossed this threshold, worrying whether Samil would ultimately dishonor the contract Nessa’s trader friend had negotiated, for I’d insisted on the stipulation that I’d not be considered a wife, nor a concubine, and that it was only my skills as a scribe that were to be sold, not my body.
But as the months progressed and even as I grew heavier with child, Samil always spoke to me as he did his male servants—with condescension but lacking indecent suggestions. Once I realized that he valued me solely for my skills and their ability to build his wealth, I’d gradually eased into my role.
Besides, one look at his two young Canaanite wives, Ofira and Dilara, and it was evident that his tastes ran toward the exotic, the flamboyant, and the well-endowed. Even now, halfway through her pregnancy, Dilara sat on Samil’s lap, stroking his beard with her henna-tinted fingernails, dressed in little more than a few strips of linen that barely covered her ample breasts. The manservant who was trimming Samil’s hair was forced to move around them as he worked, his well-trained eyes locked on the razor he wielded against our master’s graying brown curls. Dilara glared at me as I entered the room but continued scraping her fingernails up and down her husband’s cheek.
“Rivkah,” said Samil, pushing aside Dilara’s hand and waving off the manservant, who scuttled out of the room without a word. “What took you so long? What have you learned of the contract?”
I explained my findings, not coating my words with honey. I’d discovered that Samil valued my honest opinion and was much less apt to lose his temper at me if I spoke straight facts rather than trying to placate him. He tensed as I laid out the terms of the document, and by the time I’d finished relating the wording the scribe had used to cheat him out of his expected due, he’d pushed his vexed young wife off his lap in order to stand and pace the room. Dilara’s hands went to her shapely hips, and she scowled at me with nearly as much vitriol as Malakhi had done earlier.
I cared nothing for Dilara’s obvious contempt. I was used to it, since for some reason she seemed to blame me for Samil’s single-minded focus on trade. Whenever he turned his attention from her to business, she whined and fussed like a child, as if the gold and jewels that dripped from her neck and ears had come from underneath a rock and not her husband’s conscious efforts to build a lucrative trading conduit between Israel and the lands in the east.
However, Malakhi’s disdain was another matter. He may have teased and taunted me as a child, but he’d never glared at me like that, as if his piercing gray eyes saw right into the ugliest part of me and hated what they beheld. The longer I’d been in his presence, the higher my shame roiled in my gut, and deservedly so.
Halting at the other end of the room, Samil turned his sharp gaze on me. “What is his weakness?”
Still thinking of Malakhi, I blinked at my master for a moment, scrambling for comprehension. Then I realized he was speaking of the man who’d defrauded him of six years’ worth of interest.
I’d spoken to the farmer in question when Estebaal and I were sent to deliver Samil’s demands a few days ago. Like my master, he was of the tribe of Manasseh, and older than I’d expected. When I questioned him about the contract, he was relatively defiant, insisting that the scribe the two of them hired that day had written the terms exactly as discussed. But by the sweat that lined the edge of his brow and his upper lip, I guessed he was fully aware of the deceit.
Even more telling was the way his gaze kept flitting to his wife, where she lay on a low bed in the corner of their one-room home, pallid, unmoving, and obviously deathly ill. Samil’s methods were well known in Edrei; it was clear the farmer feared his sick wife might bear the brunt of any retaliation.
“Please,” he’d pleaded, his tone slipping from insolence into fear when he realized I’d discerned the truth. “All I have left must go to the healers.”
“His oxen,” I said, offering up something that might profit Samil instead. “He has a fine pair, purchased with your loan, I would guess.” Without the animals, the farmer’s lentil and chickpea crops would be difficult to put in the ground next season. He’d be forced to plow by hand again, like he’d done before he came to my master.
Samil paced again, contemplating, then called for Estebaal. “Take his oxen, tonight. Don’t be seen. I know a buyer who might be interested.” He paused. “And destroy his plow.”
The farmer would likely be ruined by losing the most important tools of his trade, but at least Samil would not guess that barring the healers from giving the man’s wife comfort in her final days would inflict a far greater toll than losing his livelihood.
Estebaal and I exchanged a look behind Samil’s back. He’d seen what I had in the farmer’s home. As head bodyguard, he was charged with carrying out Samil’s commands, to whatever lengths necessary. Would he contradict me? Reveal the man’s true tender spot? I held my breath until Estebaal nodded and returned to his post.
Thankfully, Dilara had distracted Samil from the silent exchange between his bodyguard and his scribe by wrapping her body around him and speaking intimacies in his ear, doing little to lower her voice as she did so. Nauseated by their shameless display, I turned my gaze to the ivory inlay table beside me, feigning interest in a depiction of the goddess Ishtar I’d seen hundreds of times, but unable to go until Samil gave me leave. I cleared my throat softly.
“Have you finished the contract for the new overseer?” Samil’s question drew my unwilling eyes back to the man and his scowling wife, still unrepentantly entwined in each other.
“Nearly.”
He kissed Dilara’s neck. “Go then. The one I dismissed last week was useless. At the rate his crew was going, the final addition to the villa wouldn
’t be finished for years. I want it done by Sukkot, so we can celebrate properly.”
“Of course.”
“And let it be known that I desire more carpenters as well. That shipment of cedar logs arrived three days ago, and I want construction to begin immediately. Hire as many men as necessary. There are less than two months until the festival.”
Knowing that it was useless to argue whether the extravagant project could be completed within that time, I dipped my chin in submission, but Samil did not notice, since he’d been drawn back into Dilara’s caresses. He’d already told me to leave, so I spun away, gratefully fleeing the room.
But as I passed Estebaal outside the doorway, he gripped my wrist and murmured, “I heard a man’s voice in your room.”
A hard knot formed in the center of my chest. “A messenger,” I said, attempting a casual air and digging up pieces of a conversation I’d had in the marketplace yesterday in order to appease him. “Delivering a missive from Ishtallah. She acquired a new lot of fabric from Ur and thought Samil might have interest in a trade.”
He lifted a black brow, his dark blue eyes narrowed as he mulled my lie.
“I forgot to tell him.” I tried to look frustrated with my apparent oversight, then darted a look back at the closed door, unable to conceal my disgust. “However . . . I’d rather not go back in there just now.”
Estebaal watched me for another moment, and then one corner of his mouth turned up, the closest I’d ever seen to a smile on the burly Aramean. When he spoke, it was in his own language. “She is relentless, isn’t she?”
Since Samil had never bothered to learn any language but Hebrew, he would have no understanding of our exchange, but I dropped my voice anyhow. “You’d think she would at least let him conduct business in peace.”
He huffed a low chuckle.
With a silent gesture of farewell, I continued a few more steps down the hall. But just before I turned the corner, Estebaal spoke in his own tongue again. “Take care, Rivkah. Our master guards his possessions well.”
Until the Mountains Fall Page 16