A Garden Locked

by Naomi Ruppin

  “I buried Ya’ir in the pine forest, far from the house,” Ruth continued. “I intended to remain on the land myself and perhaps remarry. But I cannot live with you. There’s no love between us and I’ve sinned against you grievously. I’ll take the fate I intended for you upon myself. But if you wish it, I’ll stay until Regev is weaned.”

  Ayala was silent for a long time, hugging her baby and rocking him all the while. Finally she said, as though the words lacerated her tongue as they left her mouth, “I’ll give you a third of the flock, if the king will change his ruling.”

  Ayala looked at the king and he gave a brief nod.

  “I do not want you as a daughter-in-law again; on this much we agree. My lord, what may be done about the law of redemption?”

  “The precedent is to wait for the child to come of age and let him decide,” the king said. “However, I think an amendment to the law is long overdue. I rule that the exemption ceremony may be performed by proxy, if the child’s parents approve.”

  The king looked out over the audience.

  “We certainly have enough witnesses. We’ll perform the ceremony now.”

  “Who will serve as proxy?” Ayala asked.

  “My personal guard will suffice.”

  The guard, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, gave a start and stood at attention. The king descended the steps from the stage and motioned for the guard to sit on the left-hand bench and for Ayala to stand behind him with the baby. Ruth knelt before the guard.

  The guard, prompted by the king and looking extremely uncomfortable, recited, “Acting of my own free will, I refuse to take this woman as my wife.”

  Then Ruth repeated after the king, “Let the public hear that this man refuses to marry me, the widow of his brother.”

  To complete the ceremony, Ruth unlaced the guard’s right shoe, threw it across the floor, spit at the guard’s feet and declared, “So shall be done to the man who will not raise up his brother's house and name.”

  “It is done,” the king said to Ruth. “No obligation remains between you and the child.”

  “A thousand thanks, my lord,” she said.

  “Normally I’d hold you to account for bearing false witness in my court,” he continued, “but I leave you to be punished by your grief and your own decision to leave your home.”

  He spoke to both women.

  “You’re dismissed. May you know no more sorrow.”

  The king swept out the back door of the Hall, his personal guard hopping after him as he retied his shoe. Other guards herded the chattering crowd of spectators out the main entrance, and I was swept along with them. As I walked back to the palace, feeling simultaneously thrilled and exhausted, I thought about the strange trial. There had been no dazzling display of the king’s logic, as there often was. And it had been a more ambiguous experience than others I’d attended. I couldn’t identify one side as completely in the wrong or enjoy the tidy satisfaction of virtue being rewarded and sin punished. Neither woman had been blameless in her conduct. But Ayala had been fighting for her son; Ruth for her livelihood. The truth had emerged in the end and I did feel that justice had been done. But as always, I felt no closer to understanding the man behind the king’s courtroom façade than I had been before.

  §

  Now, standing in the entrance to the woman’s tent, my father was close enough for me to touch. I gaped at him, fighting an undignified impulse to turn on my heel and flee. The tent’s owner was still sleeping on a pallet a few paces away. The king was dressed—I thanked my fortunes for that at least—in a simple white robe. Finally he spoke.

  “Come.”

  I held the flap for him and he stooped to exit the tent. He walked swiftly towards the palace and I hurried after him, terrified, struggling to keep up with his long stride, and wondering just how foolish I looked with my sack of tablets clanking over my shoulder. I stayed to his side and a step behind, so I wouldn’t have to look at his face, but he slowed his pace so we were walking abreast.

  “So. You’re the girl who’s been carrying out this census I hear of, apparently on my command, though I have no recollection of it myself?”

  I looked at him, speechless. How stupid I had been. Of course, considering the hundreds of women I’d interviewed, the chances that not a single one would relay this information to him had been next to none. I had falsely used the king’s authority. How much trouble was I in? But he was waiting for an answer and I could see no way around it.

  “Yes, sir.”

  We entered the palace and came to the stairs that led to the king’s chambers on the second floor. I stopped walking, defiant and desperate. He also stopped and faced me.

  “Come,” he said again.

  I had no choice but to follow him up the stairs to his chambers. There was a guard outside the door, who stood at attention when he saw the king, then opened the door for us. The guard didn’t look surprised to see me—he didn’t know me and probably thought I was the king’s newest concubine. I was too frightened even to be annoyed by this. I followed the king into the room and the guard shut the door behind us.

  Needless to say, I had never been in the king’s chambers. The room we entered appeared to be a guest salon. There was a large, oval trestle tray in its center, silver embossed with gold, around which divans and chairs stood, opulently plump with padding and covered in a fine, light-blue cloth that shimmered like the surface of water. Low tables and shelves lined the walls, displaying plates and goblets of gold and silver, some inlaid with precious stones. Two gold cages were suspended from the ceiling, containing small colorful birds of a kind I had never seen, which were peeping softly. An open door to the right led to a room with a large wooden table and chair, and shelves from floor to ceiling, covered with rolled-up scrolls. A second door to the left was closed—I guessed it led to the king’s bedroom.

  The king ascended two steps to sit on an ornately carved wooden chair, leaving me to sit uneasily on a low, backless divan that was meant for reclining. Our difference in heights reminded me of the king’s courtroom, with me on the bench of the accused. I laid my sack gently on the floor beside me. The king stared at me and it took all the nerve I had to look back at him. Miscreants in his court often blurted out confessions with no further goad than his unwavering gaze.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

  “It’s not impossible. I am your daughter and we both live here,” I heard myself say, before I could consider the wisdom of my impudence.

  “Your name?”

  “Abigail, daughter of Ophrah.”

  “Ophrah…she is the tall one, with a stutter?”

  “She is not!” I retorted. Then my annoyance faded to uncertainty as I realized that I didn’t remember my mother well enough to know if this was true or not. “I don’t think. She is no longer living.”

  “You will tell me who sent you to poke about among my wives.”

  “Sent me? No one. I did it of my own accord.”

  “You did this on your own? A girl child? To what purpose?”

  “No purpose, really. I was just curious to know if you really have a thousand wives.”

  He didn’t reply, but looked entirely unconvinced. I thought for a moment, then proceeded on a hunch.

  “How many horses do you have, my lord?” I asked.

  He looked surprised but answered without hesitation, “Ninety-one in the palace stables. Another seven hundred and thirty-nine at the cavalry encampment.”

  “You keep records? Of breed, lineage and so on?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I wanted to do the same for your household. I wanted to create a record of how many wives and children you have, where they’re from and so on.”

  “Who put this notion into your head?”

  “No one. I told you. It was my idea.”

  “It would be impossible for you to make such a record unless—I did hear a fantastic rumor from the woman who told me about yo
u. I dismissed it because little of what she says is worthy of regard. She said you wrote down what she told you.”

  I had no choice. I drew from my sack the one tablet that was partially filled from the rounds of the day before, and held it out to him. He took it from me to examine. Some columns contained words, and others cryptic symbols. There was no legend explaining what each column indicated, but most of the entries’ meanings were obvious. He drew his finger across a row as he read, leaving a faint black trail. I made a small noise and he looked up at me.

  “You’re smudging the writing,” I said. I thought I might have gone too far, but to my utter amazement and relief, rather than anger him this remark made him relax his expression and his posture. He sat back in his chair, laid the tablet on the trestle tray and pointed at it—without touching it.

  “What is this column?”

  “Those are your children. Lines for boys and circles for girls. Triangles indicate pregnancies.”

  “And this one?” He pointed at the column containing the beauty lines. I searched my thoughts frantically for some idea other than the truth but my mind refused to cooperate.

  “That indicates the woman’s beauty. Three lines for the most beautiful.”

  His eyebrows shot up. He pointed at the ninth column.

  “And what are these? A single horse, cow or goat. It seems low for a dowry.”

  I gave up all attempt at invention. “Those are the women’s body types. Goats are small and skinny. Cows are large and fat. Horses have beautiful curves.”

  Was it my imagination or was there a twitching behind his beard that could have been a smothered smile?

  “How did you learn to write?”

  “I used to watch and listen to the boys’ lessons in the Hall of the Throne.”

  “What about the music lessons? The lessons for girls?”

  “I…I had no interest in them. I wanted to learn to read.”

  He was silent for some time, then said, “I have known only one other woman who had such a hunger for knowledge.” I was intensely curious to know who that woman was, but for once I kept silent. I couldn’t help feeling a little pleased that he had called me a woman. He gestured at my tablet. “These markings will need to be tallied.”

  “Of course,” I said. Was he implying that I had his permission to continue with my survey?

  “How were you planning to figure such large numbers?”

  “I have a system.” I raised my chin and looked him straight in the eye.

  “Show me.”

  “I’ll need something to write on.”

  “Come.”

  He stood and I followed him into the scroll room. There he took a sheet of papyrus from a shelf and set it before me on the table, along with a dish of black ink and a reed pen sharpened at the end. I’d heard of such writing instruments but had never used one, and I had to ask him to show me how. He squeezed the flexible reed and inserted its end into the ink, then released the pressure, causing the ink to be drawn up into the reed. He handed me the pen. I could not resist stroking the papyrus with my hand and writing my name. It was as different from scraping ash onto hardened clay as smooth linen next to your skin is different from scratchy wool. Then I drew four small lines.

  “These represent single units. If I count ten units, like the fingers on both my hands, I represent them with this symbol.” I drew a small square. “And this symbol means one hundred.” I drew a square and crossed it with two diagonals. “So all these together come to one hundred and fourteen. So far I haven’t had to count higher than several hundreds.”

  I glanced at him. He was staring at me with courtroom intensity again and I quickly turned back to the symbols on the page.

  “How did you devise this system?” he asked.

  “The priest taught the boys how to count using letters for symbols, so I learned that method from him. I used to like to count things when I was bored.”

  The king raised his eyebrows and I blushed.

  “Well, perhaps I still do. Anyhow, it’s an inconsistent method, and limited once you get to higher numbers. So I thought about it and I came up with this system.”

  “You’ve constructed an abacus. Logically speaking, that is,” he said.

  “What is an abacus?”

  He went over to a cupboard and took out a strange but beautiful object about the size of a loaf of bread, which he put on the table in front of me. Six slim copper arcs were nailed to a wooden platform. On each arc, ten beads made of semi-precious stones were threaded, each group a different color: red, black, purple, white, blue and green.

  “This is an Egyptian abacus.” He pointed to the right-most arc, which was threaded with red beads. “These represent single units, as in your system. The next one represents tens, then hundreds, then—”

  “Thousands,” I completed.

  “Correct. Then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. So if, for example, you wanted to add fifty-six and eighty-nine…” He swept all the beads to the backs of the arcs, then clicked the beads back and forth as he showed me how to represent a number and then add to it, exchanging ten beads on the same arc for a single bead of a higher order on the next arc. The beads were smooth and colorful, and they made a pleasing pebbly sound as the fell against each other. I was fascinated, and longed to touch the abacus myself.

  He said, “You may borrow it for your reckoning, and return it to me when you show me your completed report.”

  “Then…you wish me to continue?”

  He handed me the abacus. “I might as well derive what wisdom there is to be found in all these details. At that, it may be useful for adjusting the taxes.”

  I could hardly believe my luck, and was already imagining Moth’s suspense and astonishment when I told him the story. One more thing would make it perfect.

  I said boldly, “May I have some sheets of papyrus and a pen as well?”

  Chapter Three

  The Twenty-Third Princess

  That evening I rapped on Moth’s window shutters. He opened them, and when he saw me he looked right and left to make sure no one was watching.

  “Well?” he said. “Are you coming in?”

  “No. I just stopped by before I interview the last few women. Then I’m finished, except for the final tallies!”

  “Isn’t it too dark already? You might meet the king.”

  “I already have!”

  I leaned my elbows on Moth’s windowsill and my chin on my hands, and watched with gratification as his expression changed from alarm to incredulity as I told my tale.

  “I told you this would get you in trouble!” he said, when I’d concluded.

  “You said no such thing! Anyway, it didn’t.” He just shook his head.

  I finished off my rounds of the remaining women in an easier frame of mind, now that I truly did have the king’s official sanction. Over the next two days I sat in my tent with the flap tied back for all the daylight hours, preparing my final report. I tallied each sum three times, partly to be sure of its accuracy, and partly for the joy of sliding the multi-colored abacus beads through my fingers. I also searched the results for any interesting conclusions, but most of the findings were of an obvious nature, such as the fact that concubines were prettier than wives, or that the plainer wives had fewer children. The only new thing I learned was that apparently women who come from mountainous areas are more beautiful than women from desert regions. I could think of no logical reason for this assertion and could hardly consider it a compelling insight. As for the thousand women of legend, in reality at that time they amounted to a mere four hundred and sixty-six, among them two hundred and seventy-nine concubines and the rest wives. I noted this with satisfaction, and hastened to crow to Moth that I’d won our wager and that my guess of five hundred women had been near perfect.

  I also used seven large scrolls of pearly papyrus to record a list of all the king’s children, ordered by age. I was my father’s one hundred and forty-ninth child. Counting o
nly daughters of queens, I was the twenty-third princess.

  Having rushed to finish my report, I then had nothing to do but wait and fret. The king hadn’t named the day we were to meet again, and though I briefly considered requesting an audience with him, I didn’t quite have the nerve. I checked my figures twice more and examined the scrolls anxiously. One had a small smudge in the top right corner, and the last line of another sloped slightly downward. I copied out those two sheets again.

  About a week after I’d finished my report, I was sitting in the women’s courtyard eating breakfast when Khepri arrived. As he worked his way across the courtyard, tossing lavish greetings at the women like sparkling jewels, it occurred to me that I could have cut my survey short by many hours simply by sitting him down and recording all that he knew. I was wondering which fortunate woman would be graced with a visit from the king that night, when Khepri stopped in front of me.

  “Abigail,” Khepri said, “the king commands your presence at noon. I’ll come to fetch you. You’ve prepared what he asked of you?” I nodded. “Excellent. And by the way, have you heard of a marvelous new invention called a ‘comb’?”

  Khepri raised his eyebrows at me significantly and I laughed. He turned and sauntered back out of the courtyard, snatching bits of food off the women’s tables and ruffling children’s hair as he passed. The women who had been close enough to hear Khepri’s summons quickly reported the news to their neighbors, and I felt as if the whole courtyard was staring at me. For once in my life, I had lost my appetite. I rose and headed back to my tent to comb my hair.

  One of the many reasons for the disdain with which I regarded my sisters was the unreasonable amount of time they devoted to talking about clothes and the ways to dye, trim and embroider them. For the first time, I regretted never having taken the slightest interest in the topic of dress. Just this once, for my meeting with the king, I wanted to be wearing something particularly becoming. I tried on my entire sparse collection of dresses, searching for one that was pleasing to the eye but still sober-looking. In the end I settled on one that was close-fitting and white, with black trim around the neck and hem. I had been unprepared for my first meeting with the king. This time I was determined to be calm and confident, and impress him with my intelligence, and should the occasion permit, with my charm and wit.