Abigail's Story

by Ann Burton

I left the head cloth where it was and did not argue with her. Over time she had told me that both of the goats, the birds that nested in the courtyard, and even some large stones were my siblings. It was easy enough to indulge her whimsies until she forgot about this day’s pretend babies.

  I guided my mother out to the front room and gave her a rusk spread with date honey to snack on while I swept the floor and worked on preparing the evening meal. I set a pot of broth with lentils, onions, and garlic to heat on the cooking fire, and then mixed and shaped barley flour dough to make two large lehem, the wheel-shaped rounds of bread we ate on ordinary days. I saved what little fine wheat flour and honey we could afford to make a special sweet loaf for Shabbat dinner.

  “It is good of you to make the meal,” my mother said, as formally as if I were a guest. “May I help?”

  “Of course.” I gave her a bowl of figs I had taken in trade at market. Picking them over was busy work, but if she cooked, inevitably her attention wandered off with her thoughts, and things burned. Shadows stretched across the room as the sun dropped behind the hills.

  “Where is Rivai?” Even if my brother had gone over to Shomer’s house to commiserate with Tzalmon, he should have been home by now.

  “These figs are too green, child. You shall give yourself a sour belly if you eat them.” She peered at my loaves, saw that I had pinched off a bit of dough to save in the leavening jar for tomorrow’s baking, and nodded her approval. “Who is this Rivai?”

  “Our son, Chemda.” My father, Oren, hobbled in, leaning heavily on his crutch.

  Once my father had seemed like the strongest man in the world to me: tall, broad of shoulder, with long, tireless arms and clever, callused hands. Though he worked at the wheel every day, he held his back straight and his head high and proud. His were the eyes of a dreamer, deep brown and gentle, oh, so gentle. As a child I would tug at his thick, curly brown beard with my little hands whenever he carried me, until he would use it to tickle my neck and make me giggle.

  Those memories made it all the harder to look upon my father as he was now. Age, work, and worry had caused him to shrink in on himself like a poorly thrown jug, his shoulders slumping, his back permanently curved, his head sunken on his neck. His once clever hands hung knotted and gnarled, the fingers twisted, the joints as fat as overripe grapes. White streaked his hair and beard, and his dreamer’s eyes were almost lost now in drooping, wrinkled folds.

  “Dinner is almost ready, Father.” On my way to the oven stones I gave him a kiss of welcome and felt the tension in his shoulders. The pain must be very bad today. After I left the loaves to bake on the flat stones in the center of the oven, I asked him, “Would you like a cup of tea?” I had enough kushtha left to brew a strong remedy, which I would flavor with coriander to mask the taste of the medicinal herb, and by which he would pretend to be fooled.

  Dignity was vital to my father, and preserving his was everything to me.

  “My thanks, Daughter.” He came to sit on the bench by our table and saw the empty strings. “Trade was brisk today?”

  For a moment, I debated on whether to tell him about my strange encounter with the m’khashepah, but he already worried over me going to market alone. “Very much so, Father. I sold all but one.”

  Rather than reassure him, that seemed to make the worry lines bracketing his mouth deeper. “I shall have to spend some extra hours at the wheel this night.”

  That he could not do, not without crippling himself for the next week.

  “We also have some special orders from two of the merchants,” I told him, “who asked for Rivai’s work. I promised he would fill them as soon as possible.”

  My father gave me a sharp look. “Your brother is out with those Egyptian friends of his.”

  That meant Rivai would be drinking and gambling, two more things he did with little restraint or skill.

  “He and I shall work later.” To hide my dismay, I stirred the soup. “It is cooler and quieter then, anyway.”

  When our father first began to suffer from joint pain, I made a bargain with my brother. Rivai would turn the big stone wheel for me, but I would let everyone think that the pots I made were his handiwork. He had agreed—reluctantly—and only because I offered him part of what I took in trade. Profit always outweighed Rivai’s sense of masculine outrage.

  Lately, it had outweighed everything.

  I brought in the baked lehem from the outdoor oven, set our meal on the table, and joined hands with my parents as my father said the blessing. Worry over my brother and the words of the m’khashepah slipped away as I gave thanks for the food.

  What we had might be humble, but it was ours, and it was enough.

  My parents went to sleep early that night, but I stayed up to tidy the house, milk the goats, and wait for Rivai. He had not arrived home by the time I finished inside the house, so I sat in the garden and watched the stars appear in the night sky.

  I always watched them alone.

  My parents were not of a noble line, and famine and sickness had taken all their kin. What little surplus we had was saved for Rivai, so that someday he might offer something for his future bride, if he ever found one.

  This I knew, and accepted, but to my great shame, I still prayed for a husband.

  It was a habit of which no one knew. Every night I sat among the herbs and vines and begged Adonai to bless me with an offer. I did not even ask for a young and handsome man anymore. I knew myself; I would be satisfied with a simple man of modest means, a companion and protector who would give me a home to care for and babies to love. A lesser merchant, a shamar, even a farm worker or shepherd would have satisfied me.

  I could not depend on Rivai to look after me, not when he had no trade or wife. I did not want to die alone, an old and unloved woman begging or dependent on the charity of others. I wanted a home of my own, and many children to love, and I could not have those without a husband.

  Wife you will be.

  This night I had no entreaty for the Adonai; the thief’s foolish words had torn a veil from my eyes. It was time I accepted my lot. I had nothing, and I could not leave my parents to Rivai’s uncertain care.

  I would be alone forever.

  A scuffling sound came from the street, and then I heard my brother singing. With haste I tucked my head cloth around my face and hurried out to the front of the house. There, two strange men stood with my brother, who was staggering on his feet and bleeding from his nose.

  “Two days,” one of the men said before he shoved Rivai at me.

  I caught Rivai by the arms and dug my heels in before his weight knocked us both over. My brother stood as tall as our father had in his youth, but thankfully was much leaner. His khiton was torn and spotted with blood, while his breath smelled of strong wine. When I looked over his shoulder, the two men had gone.

  “Abigail.” Rivai clutched at me as if unable to stand on his own. He gave me a silly grin. “My favorite sister.”

  “Your only sister.” I grabbed him as he lurched. Too much to drink again. I helped him inside, eased the door shut, and kept my voice low so as not to wake our parents. “What happened? Were you in a fight?” Someone had obviously hit him in the face, for his nose and lower lip were red and swollen.

  “My ribs,” he gasped when I caught him again to keep him from falling over. “Are they broken?”

  I gently touched his sides to check, but felt no ominous swelling or shifting of bone. “I think only bruised. Rivai, what did that man mean?”

  “What man? Why does the room spin like a top?” My brother collapsed at the table, his breathing choppy as he gripped the edge. “Bring me wine and go to bed.”

  “You are sitting in my bedroom, and I think you have had enough to drink.” I brought him water instead. “Who did this to you? Were you robbed?”

  “That is it. Yes.” He sipped from the cup. “I was robbed by Maon scum.” Absently he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The sight of the blood seemed to surpr
ise him. “I should bathe.” He tried to rise, but his face paled and he abruptly dropped down again. “Maybe later.”

  I saw fresh blood trickle from his nostrils and brought a damp cloth for him. “Is your nose broken?”

  He used the cloth gingerly. “Almost. Cowards. They ganged up on me, you know. Four on one.” He felt the middle part of his nose. “Or maybe it was five.”

  “I shall wake Father.” We Carmelites generally avoided people from the nearby town of Maon, and they did the same with us. If they were coming here to rob our men, then Father would notify the shofet. Choab would take quick action and ban the wretches from entering our gates.

  Before I could go to my parents’ room, Rivai reached out and seized my wrist. “Do not wake him, Abi. I was not robbed.” He grimaced. “Not exactly.”

  “What happened to you, then, exactly?”

  He shrugged. “I went to Maon with Nefat, and we stopped at a gaming hall.”

  Maon was a settlement built on a high hill a mile to the south of our town. It was a rough place frequented by sheepherders and shearers from Ziph and Juttah. Maon was where they spent their wages on drink, gaming, and the Adonai knew what else.

  To my knowledge, my brother had never been there before. “Father does not permit you to go there.”

  “I am a man now, Abi. Father does not own me.” He felt his nose again. “It is almost broken, those dogs. A debt is no reason to beat a man. I told them I would pay it.”

  “You have a debt?” My brother had never gambled outside our town or wagered more than he carried. We were too poor to merit credit from anyone. At least, I had thought we were.

  “I was cheated.” Rivai sat up and gave me an indignant glare. “The dice were switched, and the last were weighted, I swear it.”

  I still could not get past the fact that my brother had gambled beyond his means to pay and had been beaten for it. “How much do you owe?”

  “A debt is a matter for men,” he said, all haughty male now. “You would not understand.”

  Would I not? Who did he think managed the household income? Our mother? “Then I shall wake Father,” I said, “and you two men can discuss it.”

  Again my brother moved to stop me. “No, please, Abi.” His manly arrogance vanished, leaving behind only a frightened boy. “You cannot speak of this to him.”

  “I promise, I shall not.” Why is he so afraid? I braced myself even as I reached out to take his hand in mine. “How much did you lose, Rivai?”

  He looked at the table. “Eight.”

  “Eight pots or eight measures of emmer?” The pots we could begin making tonight and, if we worked late, have finished in two days. It would be harder to put together so much grain. I had earned two sacks of millet from today’s trading; perhaps Cetura would exchange—

  “Eight maneh of gold,” Rivai said.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Eight maneh of gold.

  Rivai’s words rang in my ears, and I felt as if my blood turned to clay. I barely felt his hand slip from my numb fingers.

  “Gold.” I could barely shape the word with my lips. “You gambled with gold?”

  His head drooped before he nodded.

  No, it could not be. We had no gold. We had never had any gold. There was a little silver, saved from the very best years, but no one was permitted to touch it. My father had put the silver aside to serve as mohar for my brother’s future wife.

  Gold was wholly beyond us.

  “From where did you get this gold?” A more horrifying thought occurred to me. “You did not steal it?”

  “I am no thief.” Rivai gave me a highly offended look. “Nefat took me over to Maon to a gaming house. The man playing, Nabal, was drunk and making reckless plays. Nefat lent me enough to bet against him. I won the dice, and then the throw, and then I kept winning.” He leaned over, lowering his voice to an excited whisper. “By moonrise he had lost twelve maneh of gold to me, enough to buy a house in the west quarter and you a husband. None of us would have had to work for the rest of our lives.”

  I stopped listening so that I could calculate. Twelve maneh were equal to six hundred gold sheqels, or a whole bar of gold, more wealth than I or anyone in our quarter could expect to see in a lifetime. It was a veritable fortune: a family of twenty could live in luxury on but half such an amount for as many years.

  “You should have seen me play,” my brother continued to boast. “Every throw was mine. Why, if I had—”

  “You said you owe eight,” I reminded him.

  His shoulders slumped, and his face fell into a familiar, belligerent expression. “My luck turned, and that drunken fool began to win. I had to keep playing to recover what I had lost, didn’t I?”

  “So you lost your winnings plus eight you did not have to this Nabal.” Who had likely not been drunk or a fool. “How could you do such a thing?”

  “I was tricked,” he insisted. “Nabal pressed me to drink. When my gold was gone, Nefat whined about the stake I owed him. I could not stop.”

  It was sounding more and more as if my brother had been swindled. “Is Nefat your friend, or Nabal’s?”

  “Nefat was taken in, the same as I.” He scowled. “I know why the Maon switched the dice. Nabal’s losses made him fear my great luck.”

  “I am certain that it terrified him.” I rested my throbbing forehead against my palm. “We have not eight silver sheqels to our name, Brother. How do you mean to repay this man?”

  Rivai yawned. “I can borrow from friends.”

  “Friends like Tzalmon, who cannot afford to wed,” I suggested, “or Klurdi, who has nearly beggared his parents with his own drinking and gaming?”

  “Nefat will lend it to me.” There was a new uncertainty in his eyes and voice. Perhaps my brother was only now realizing how few sensible friends he had. “Or someone else.”

  “Let us imagine no one can,” I said. “What then? Will this Nabal have you arrested?” He shook his head and looked away from me. New dread poured atop the cold knot in my chest. “Rivai, what will he do to you if you cannot pay? Tell me.”

  “Maon law gives Nabal leave to take the debt owed from my family from our go’el,” he muttered. “We have no kin to pay our debts, so it must come from Father.”

  We were not subject to Maon law unless we lived or worked in that town. However, Maon’s distractions kept many undesirables away from Carmel, and I suspected that our shofetim would not bar the town’s authorities from pursuing and prosecuting my brother, even from a suspected swindler.

  “Our parents cannot pay this anymore than you can.” No one in our quarter could.

  My brother’s mouth tightened. “Father could borrow from one of his friends.”

  “No one has the means to loan him that much, and we have nothing of value to serve as collateral. The house is practically worthless. The wheel, perhaps, might bring some money, and the goats; only then we would have no pots to sell or milk to . . .” The memory of mad, burning eyes silenced me. Under Hebrew law, those who could not pay their debts were considered equal to thieves. “Would Nabal force Father to sell one of us into slavery?”

  My brother made a sound of contempt. “Don’t talk foolishness, Abigail. For eight maneh, he would have to sell himself as well as you and me and Mother.”

  I knew the law. A man’s debts had to be paid, however he obtained the payment. As long as we were healthy, we would go to the slave caravans.

  “If you do not pay this debt, he shall be held responsible. He shall do what he must.” Such a thing would break my father’s failing spirit.

  No, my heart informed me. It shall kill him. Long before the deprivations of life as a slave would.

  “It is a stupid law,” Rivai flared, slamming his fist into the table. He winced and shook it. “It matters not what the law says. I am a grown man. I shall give them what I can borrow, and Nabal will have to be satisfied with that until I can find the rest.”

  “And if he is not?”
<
br />   My brother nursed his hand, his expression sulky. “I shall go to the shamar, then, and explain that it is not my fault, that the game was rigged—”

  “When the shamar are finished laughing, they shall put us all in chains and lead us to the slave caravans.” Too upset to remain still, I rose from the table. “Who is this Nabal?”

  “He has the biggest herds of sheep and goats in Judah, and much property in Maon. They say no one has a tighter fist than Nabal, and that is why he has no wife or family or friends. Even his hired herdsmen are said to live like beggars.” Rivai gave me a cautious look. “Are you going to tell Father?”

  “I said I would not.” I needed to think, and I could not do that by weeping and wailing over my brother’s idiocy. “Come, wash and change out of your khiton. You must turn the wheel for me tonight.”

  My brother gaped. “You still mean to work?”

  “There is no market for our tears,” I said simply.

  Eight maneh of gold.

  As I walked to the storage room, the reality of the enormous debt seemed to loom over me like a towering ziggurat.

  Which it was, compared to our extremely modest income. A very good week of selling at market earned us barter equal to perhaps two silver sheqels. Most of that I traded again to other merchants for what my family needed to live: food and medicines, dyes for cloth and clay, hardwood for the kiln, oil for the lamps, flax and wool for weaving, fodder for the goats . . .

  Eight maneh. More gold than might be earned in ten good years.

  The red clay used to make our pots was very smooth and pure, thanks to the clean water of the spring near the bank from which we took it. Once a month my brother and I borrowed one of our Shomer’s carts to haul our pallets to the spring and refill them, a long and exhausting task that, like so many, had become too much for our father to perform.

  What will we tell Father when the Maon’s men come for payment?

  Earlier in the week I had washed and tempered a large mound of red clay, treading it with my bare feet, which rendered it malleable enough for the wheel. From this I gathered as much as I could carry, and asked my brother to bring the jar of soft rainwater I used for slips and turnings.