After Abel and Other Stories (16 page)

That was what she wondered as she sat in her garden as Artakama, her sister's favorite—and only—eunuch, directed the servants who would no longer be in her service after today, though she could see the pity in their eyes when she lifted her head. The same question went round her head ceaselessly. How could I have predicted this?

Mostly, she stared at the soil. Only yesterday, her sons' feet had pounded it, one after another, chasing each other through the gardens. Now, the only sound was of the dampened whisper of servants moving around. Every so often, a maid sobbed and then ran into a far courtyard so she wouldn't disturb her mistress.

Zeresh felt the activity around her. She heard as if from a distance as Artakama directed her headman what to dispose of before the new owner took possession and told her women to pack for Zeresh. “Just clothes and linens. Leave the fine silks behind.”

“Madam, we must go,” he said to her after the work had been done. She could hear the kindness in his voice. He has grown used to being kind to broken women, she thought, but she didn't thank him for it.
Her throat had closed around all words. She doubted it would ever open again.

“I have sent your things ahead,” he continued. “But we must go.”

She didn't look up. She didn't acknowledge where she was or that he was standing beside her. He looked to the servants for guidance, but they had never seen her immobilized like this before, either.

Eventually, she knew, she would have to stand up. She would have to take a few steps, and then a few steps more, but she didn't know how to tell him that.

Instead, he cupped her elbow, his touch gentle but sure. So this is what my sister meant about the eunuchs' hands, she thought. Not pleasure, but safety. She had never, she realized, been touched like this, not by her father or her husband. Not even her sons' soft hands, since she passed them along to wet nurses as soon as they were born. She regretted everything, but maybe that most of all, the line of nurses and tutors who had known her boys better than she had. She had been so focused on their father, on what she could make of him, thinking she was setting them up well for a good future, each in his turn.

Artakama's hand stayed on her elbow, the other guided her back.

“Mordechai's men will be here to claim the house soon, Madam.”

“They've taken everything from me,” she finally said.

“You have me now.”

And he led her, slowly, as tender as ever, to the gate, where a litter more magnificent than she had ever ridden in stood waiting, curtains open, inviting as the womb. He helped her in and then pulled the curtains shut. It was dark and warm. She thought she would like to stay in there forever, her cheek against the silk, her finger tracing the threads in the fabric. It would take a lifetime to move over the entire expanse, one silken thread at a time. She could start with the reds, then move to orange, blue, and green. She'd save the yellow that fringed the curtains for last, end with something to remind her of the sun.

Even as she thought it, she felt the litter begin to move, heard the gates pull back. Changing her mind, she reached for the curtain. She would look at her home one more time while it was still hers, but Artakama's hand clamped down on hers from outside, rougher now than before.

“You can't look at it, Madam. It's just a house now.”

He gave the order to move, and protected her from seeing the head of each of her sons, spiked through and planted in the ground.

They didn't travel far. Clever punishment, she thought, to house her sister here, so close to those who cared for her and then keep her locked away. When the gates, made of thick but unornamented wood, opened she saw how much larger the grounds were than they seemed from outside.

It was a comfortable prison, though she saw little of it in those first, terrible days. The sound of her sons' screams still echoed in her head, the feel of her youngest being pulled from her, his boy-soft skin still hot against hers, never left her. She stayed in her room, allowed Vashti to spoon broth into her mouth and stroke her hair.

She wished for death, but no one would kill her. She wanted to run into another life. When she finally rose, she ran to the compound's walls, walked their boundary over and over, imagined the life that was passing outside. She heard the thud of horses' hooves, and the slower plod of slaves' feet.

Soon the sounds died down, too. Susa grew silent. She thought they must be the only people left in the world, until Vashti reminded her that the court had probably moved on to Persepolis. “The summer will come soon, sister. You have never known such heat. We will see it through.”

CITY OF REFUGE

“Most blessed of women be Yael, Wife of Heber the Kenite, Most blessed of women in tents. He asked for water, she offered milk; In a princely bowl she brought him curds. Her [left] hand reached for the tent pin, Her right for the workmen's hammer. She struck Sisera, crushed his head, Smashed and pierced his temple. At her feet he sank, lay outstretched, At her feet he sank, lay still; Where he sank, there he lay
—
destroyed.”

Judges 5:24-27

T
his is the sin of the city-dweller,” her father taught. “To dig stone out of the ground and build a house. Such permanence leads to nothing but problems. First the house, then the neighbor who wants to take it from you, then the wall to protect it from that
same man.”

Yael sat at her father's feet with her brothers, sisters, cousins, all the children of the caravan. She was entranced by him, the thick braids that fell like ropes around his thin face, the passion that filled him when he taught them the lessons of their people.

“Remember this. We live in tents so we live free. We make no claim to any plot of land. The entire desert is open to us, and we go where we please.

“We were here before they arrived,” he continued, “and we will be here when they all pass away from the earth. We make peace wherever we pitch our tents. The desert was ours before these people came, but they have built cities, while we remain in tents. They claimed the land, and we still roam.”

The caravan had passed through this land every year of Yael's brief life. The men pitched their tents on the great plain between two walled cities. Her father found a lesson in each place they stayed, pointed to the cities, the fields, and showed the children what their gods demanded of them.

“We Kenites will always be welcome. City dwellers have no time to learn the old trades, to stoke the fires, hammer the bronze and iron. So long as we make their pots and the tools to drag through the ground behind their oxen, we will go where we please.”

There was only one law they must not break, he
warned. “Never make a sword for an outsider. It is as my father taught me and his father taught him.”

He lifted the scarab ornament that hung from a cord around his neck to show the children. Curved and intricately carved, it mimicked the pendants every adult around her put on at twelve years old as a sign of adulthood. Yael counted the years in her head until she received her own. It would be smaller, more delicate than her father's, more fit for a woman, but like his it would be holy and symbolic.

“We wear these to remind us of our duty to the gods, our pledge to live in peace with those around us. We must never raise our hands against another man. We must never make war with him.”

Yael grew up with the security of the treaty makers. Just as her father promised, her family's caravan was welcome wherever it went. Agreements were made with all the leaders they encountered. The Kenites pitched their tents in exchange for the metalwork they provided. They stayed out of the skirmishes that surrounded them, watched as Israelites made war with Ammonites, and Ammonites went into battle with Philistines, who in turn fought the Moabites.

All around them, men struggled to take what the other had. Yael felt nothing of it. She grew up in a chrysalis of peace, her people's traditions as steady as the change in season. They moved, made peace, crossed
paths with other Kenite caravans with whom they sang their songs to the gods. Before they set off in opposite directions, the young men switched places so they could learn a trade and find wives.

Heber had come as an apprentice to her father. Yael's mother had sat with the women of the neighboring caravan, investigated his lineage even as she already knew he was a cousin, as were all Kenites, then welcomed him into their extended family. Heber worked in her father's shop for two years, sanding pieces of bronze into perfect ovals, rectangles, squares until his fingers calloused and his wrists hardened with muscle. Only then did her father allow him to approach the fire. It was then he taught Heber how to fan the flames, to smelt the iron from the ore. He placed a hammer into Heber's hand and guided it along the metal.

By then, Yael had taken Heber to the caves that dotted the Judean hills. Once she received her pendant, she was freer to roam away from the tents. She had found the caves when they first arrived on the plain, then brought him into the cool semi-darkness where she kissed the cords of his neck, his jawbone, his mouth.

After he forged his first dagger, Heber went to her mother to ask permission to marry. Her mother sniffed, as all mothers do, and pretended to be offended by the thought of joining her precious daughter to this unworthy man.

She sent him away, as all mothers did.

He came back, presented her with seed cakes, washed her feet, asked again. She sent him away. Outside the tent flap, he laughed with Yael about their people's ritual of courtship.

The third time, her mother looked him up and down. She sighed, as if still troubled. “You'll have to do,” she said, then rose from her cushion and embraced Heber, whom she had loved as a son from the moment he joined their tents, whom she had pushed Yael to notice from the start. She had encouraged him to dance, even when he was new and shy around the older men. She pointed out his shapely legs and broad shoulders, then found ways to allow Yael to sneak away with him.

Yael's life had gone as planned. Her father had hung her pendant around her neck on her twelfth birthday. At fifteen, the women of the caravan piled her black braids onto her head, crushed gemstones to powder to redden her lips, cheeks, and forehead. One year later, she married. By the time her thirtieth year came, she had a husband respected by his neighbors, a tent of her own, and children clinging to her thighs. Until Heber pulled back the tent flap at the end of a long day. “We have to leave,” he said. “They're going to kill me.”