Apprentice (8 page)

Shayla frowned at the crowd that had gathered, causing them to slink toward the exits. When she saw Mother staring at her expectantly, she sighed and added, “Very well. All of Nachman's brothers may bring their nurses to Sura if they so desire.”

Mother held out her arms to Pinchas, who hurried to embrace her. Then she beckoned for me to join them. “As long as you are all here, I am pleased to announce that once we are settled in our new home Hisdadukh will become betrothed to Rami bar Chama.”

The room broke into cheers. I blushed at the attention and looked down at the floor. But inside I was bursting with joy, along with a good deal of relief. Father had confirmed my choice of bridegroom, and my
future was assured. I was also filled with admiration at how Mother so adroitly changed an unpleasant situation into a sweet one.

Before I knew it, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot were behind us, along with the hottest days of summer. The air was sweet with the scent of boiling pomegranate juice that Cook was distilling down to make the most delicious syrup. Pomegranate seeds appeared at every meal, and children delighted in sticking out their purple-stained tongues at one another. I was a betrothed maiden now, so I tried to keep the evidence of my pomegranate indulgences inside my mouth, although Keshisha's teasing made that difficult.

Finally moving day arrived. The household was in such commotion that I once again took refuge on the roof, safely out of the way of slaves toting heavy containers. Standing in the remains of our sukkah, where my family had dined and slept during the weeklong Sukkot festival, which celebrated how the Israelites had dwelt in similar shelters in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt, I had an excellent view of people hurrying to and fro below. No sooner had our slaves filled a cart with crates, baskets, and storage jars, than carters hitched up the donkeys and off they went.

From my secluded perch, I could follow the cart as it wove its way through the crowded streets until it reached the dock, where porters loaded the contents onto a waiting boat. At the same time, an empty cart headed back to our house, where slaves waited with more items to fill it.

The process was fascinating to watch, but the afternoon sun was warm and I eventually grew tired from running back and forth to keep the carts in sight. I sat down in a shady corner, and since I had been too excited to sleep well the previous night, I soon began to doze.

I woke with a start at how much cooler it had become, and how much quieter. The sun was heading toward the horizon, and a glance below showed no activity in the courtyard. I frantically scanned the streets and saw no donkeys pulling carts either to or from our house. Our boat was sitting at the dock, but the porters were gone.

Ha-Elohim! They'd finished loading everything and were ready to leave, but I was still on the roof.

I scampered down the ladders and raced toward the courtyard gate, nearly colliding with a slave carrying water. She stared at me in dismay and after a moment of indecision ran into the house, calling for help. But
I didn't wait. I was convinced, based on my observations from the roof, that I could get to the canal quicker by myself.

I bolted out into the street, turned left after two blocks, and then right after three more. But instead of finding myself in a small square with roads leading in each of four directions, I was staring into a crowded street lined with shops. I knew the canal was located on the other side of the souk, so I plunged in among the shoppers.

That was a mistake, one of many I made that afternoon. At first I reveled in the myriad smells emanating from food sellers' carts and open doorways—pungent spices, roasted meat, fried onions and garlic. But jostled by the crowd, I soon lost track of the direction I was going. I tried to see which way was west, but the streets were roofed, and it worried me that I couldn't see the sun. It seemed a very long time before I finally broke free from the souk's twisting alleyways, and my heart sank when, instead of water ahead, I saw only a narrow residential road lined by courtyard walls. I wandered through the neighborhood, coming to one dead end after another, until I gave up and decided to try crossing the souk again.

If anything, it was even more congested than before. The noise of so many individuals shouting was deafening, and I nearly fainted from the odor of countless bodies, both animal and human, crammed so close together. Still, I fought down my rising panic. Surely I'd made a simple error that would be easy to rectify.

This time I went more slowly and took note of specific merchants as I passed them. I could tell that people were staring and pointing at me, but I didn't dare admit I was lost or ask for directions. That would only make my position more dangerous. Mother had drilled Achti and me to never go out on the street without at least one slave in attendance, and preferably with two. Desert Saracens liked to kidnap girls who walked alone, especially girls who looked like they had wealthy families to ransom them. Two of Rav Nachman's daughters had been kidnapped, and it took so long to ransom them that they married their captors in the meantime.

My heart was pounding so hard I was sure everyone in the souk could hear it, but I kept my head down. I stumbled among the alleys, trying desperately to avoid those I'd already passed through, while at the same time trying to notice if a stranger was following me.

After an eternity, I detected the scent of water on a passing breeze, and a moment later I rounded a corner and glimpsed a liquid shimmer at
the end of the street. I couldn't have run faster if demons were chasing me, and I eventually burst out onto the canal's tow road. There was the dock in the distance, but when I got close enough to see the boats, I stopped in horror.

There was a different boat docked where my family's had been. They had left without me.

T
ears streamed down my cheeks as I tried to remember how to get back to our house. I wasn't sure which way to go, but I knew I had to get away from here immediately. I wasn't wearing a slave's collar, so I had to be either an escaped slave or the daughter of a free man. Exposed and vulnerable, I was surrounded by all sorts of dockworkers and disreputable men. I felt them watching, wondering about me.

Suddenly I sensed someone approaching. In terror I bolted toward the nearest street that led back to town. But I had started too late. A strong masculine hand grabbed my arm, and as hard as I struggled to escape, my captor held me fast.

“So there you are,” came a familiar voice. “We've been looking all over for you.”

I looked up into my brother Yenuka's round brown eyes and burst out sobbing.

“Don't worry, they haven't left yet,” he said, drying my face with his sleeve. “The porters need this dock for loading, so our boat is waiting upstream.”

I sniffed back tears as we walked together. “Mother and Father will be angry.”

Yenuka couldn't deny this but he squeezed my hand. “They'll be more happy than angry, seeing you unharmed.”

I shamefacedly climbed onboard; I couldn't bear to meet anyone's
gaze. As Yenuka predicted, Mother clasped me to her generous bosom and a broad smile replaced Father's worried visage. But surely they would still hold me responsible for delaying our departure and making everyone agonize over my disappearance. My apprehension heightened when Achti hissed that I deserved to get the switch this time and Keshisha, usually the one in trouble, shook his head in empathy.

At first I was afraid that I had delayed our journey so long that we couldn't leave until the next morning. But my lucky stars were shining. Just as the Euphrates and its canals flowed both day and night, so did traffic on their waters. Our boat set sail with enough time before sunset that I was able to observe quite a bit of the countryside before darkness descended.

Not that there was much to see beyond the shore. The riverbanks were crowded with tall leafy trees and thick stands of reeds. Of course the water level was lower than the surrounding embankments, so even if there had been a magnificent palace on the other side, I wouldn't have been able to see it. Occasionally we passed a dock where I caught a glimpse of a city or village, but they didn't look much different from the waterfront in Kafri.

What I did see were huge flocks of noisy birds silhouetted against the sky as they looked for a place to rest before dark. I watched in delight as birds swooped down as if to land, until suddenly, at some invisible signal, they pulled up and continued their flight. I marveled at the rustling of thousands of wings as the birds flew low across the sunset before dropping in unison onto the water.

Who was their leader and how did the other birds choose him? What made them pick a certain spot to land yet reject others that looked similar? Only Elohim knew.

The silence after the birds found their nests was a tremendous disappointment. I tried to keep the birds in my mind when Achti and I lay down on our sleeping mats at the boat's stern. But I couldn't avoid thoughts of the punishment that awaited me once we arrived in Sura. Even counting the multitude of stars overhead couldn't distract me from my impending doom.

Thus I was still awake when we came to a sudden halt. The sailors jumped ashore and tied the boat tightly to a shadowy dock. Someone lit a torch. Standing on deck out of the sailors' way, I could see my parents'
faces peering into the distance as additional torches appeared, coming down the embankment.

Once we disembarked, Father held my hand tightly as he led me up a small hill. I winced with shame when he whispered that he had no intention of letting me wander off by myself again.

The torches soon illuminated a wall looming in the distance, and a short walk took us through an open gate. We arrived at a large room with woven mats on the floor, which I assumed was the
traklin
. Father announced we would all sleep there that night.

I didn't see Nurse or Achti among the women, so I looked hesitantly around for someone else to lie near. To my surprise, Mother beckoned me to her side, and we lay down together. I don't recall ever having slept with her before, although I suppose I must have when I was a baby. It was very pleasant to snuggle up to her warm softness and then drift off while listening to her breath and smelling her fragrant jasmine perfume.

In the morning I saw that the room where we'd spent the night was not the
traklin
at all but merely an anteroom or reception hall. An anteroom larger than our
traklin
in Kafri! The true
traklin
, I soon saw, was so big that fifty people could easily fit inside. Its floor was paved with wide, flat stones, unlike in Kafri, where our entire first floor was tamped earth. Here only the kitchen and storage rooms had dirt floors.

After receiving permission from Mother, who said we could go wherever we wanted as long as we stayed within the villa's walls, Achti and I set out to find our
kiton
upstairs. But the entire second floor seemed to consist of one bedroom after another, and we saw no way of discerning which was ours. Soon the house was crawling with slaves either carrying containers or unpacking them, so we headed outside, only to find the courtyard bustling with activity as well. Hoping we wouldn't be in the way on the roof, we looked for the nearest ladder.

And saw none. Instead of ladders there were actual staircases leading from the courtyard to balconies on the second story and then continuing to the roof. Of course every staircase had people either hurrying up or hurrying down, and sometimes both. So we walked through the courtyard to the gate at its far end, intending to continue along the house's perimeter until we found a ladder.

Suddenly, as we approached the well, it struck me that something was
missing. Poultry, geese, and goats had roamed our courtyard in Kafri. “Achti, where are all the animals?”

“They're in the souk, silly child, waiting for Mother to buy them.” My sister's dark curls shook as she laughed at my ignorance. “Did you expect animals to travel with us on the boat?”

“Of course not.” I was chagrined that I had given my older sister yet another opportunity to emphasize that, compared to her, I was still a little girl. “I just thought she would have bought them already.”

I stopped at the well, eager for my first taste of its sweet water. I wondered why there were no privies in the courtyard, but I didn't want to invite more of Achti's ridicule, so I said nothing until we exited the courtyard.

I couldn't suppress an awestruck, “Ha-Elohim!”

I had expected the villa walls to run close to the house, with perhaps space for a small orchard. I never imagined the broad field of vegetables and row upon row of fruit trees stretching out before me. And that was just on the south side. Achti and I raced around to the west to enter a newly planted garden with paved paths, several of which led back to the house. I recognized jasmine vines and roses among the other bushes, but these wouldn't flower until spring.

We passed through the aromatic herb garden to the front of the house, where a wide track led from the heavy outer gate to the main courtyard entrance. Now there was only the east side of the villa to be investigated. As we approached, I grinned to hear that Achti was wrong about needing to buy animals. For immediately as we turned the corner, a cacophony of honking geese announced our presence.