Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) (4 page)

“Thank you, Astra,” Mother said, gesturing to the front door. “Set them there. I’ll take them outside later in the afternoon and hang them up for a beating.” She turned her attention to me next, taking me in, then frowning. “Where is the bread?”

My cheeks burned from shame.

“Sirena is baking it for us today.”

Mother raised an eyebrow. “Should I ask why a woman, so heavy with her first child, is baking bread for me, when I have two able-bodied girls standing right here?”

“My cycle started.” Astra lifted her tunic and showed just the edge of the blood smear.

Mother stared at Astra, who gave her the biggest, widest, most innocent smile I had ever seen. Mother frowned, sensing mischief but unable to resist Astra’s charm.

“I have to go to the fields. I can’t stay with you.”

“It’s all right, Mother. Amara will stay with me. She’ll show me what to do.”

Mother looked between us, her eyes boring into our very souls. I squirmed under her intense gaze; Astra did not. I think she enjoyed it a little.

“Very well. Amara, show her how to bind herself with the linens. But I’ll expect you both to work while you’re home. Get the late meal prepared, ready our beds for tonight, and check the baskets to see if any need to be repaired. I don’t want them to break while carrying the wheat. And make sure the crocks are clean, and carry them all to the roof. I don’t want to lose any time once we bring the last of the olives home.”

I was going to twist Astra’s arm, hard, for this. Her ingenious plan had not completely saved us. We were still in for a day of backbreaking labor.

Mother wrapped her scarf over her head, careful not to obscure her face. She wanted protection from the sun, not a veil to announce she was a prostitute. We had to be careful with our scarves. A strong breeze could ruin a reputation. With her scarf tucked into place, framing her face but not obscuring it, Mother left.

I folded my arms and looked at Astra. “Get to work.”

“What? By myself?”

“You got us into this. I’m going to take a well-deserved nap, and when I wake up, if Mother’s chores are not finished, I’ll tell Father and Mother everything you’ve done.”

“You would not!”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I know you, sister. You would take a secret to the grave.”

She was right, and I knew it. But I kept my arms crossed, keeping my own secret this time, glaring at her until she set to work with a pitiful pout.

I woke, sweat beading down my neck into my tunic. The room was dark; Astra had let the oil lamps burn out. She slept soundly beside me, curled into a ball like a kitten.

Father’s voice shook the reed walls as he approached the house. “Good news, girls!” He threw open the door and swept in, lighter on his feet than he had been all year. We were in the year of less, the year when we worked harder and ate little. He and Mother were never light or happy in these kinds of years. They aged terribly, each lean year making them two years older. I wished we had a way to make the fields produce more even harvests, especially the olive trees. We had no command over nature.

Mother was right behind him, lifting her tunic with one hand so she could keep pace. From her anxious face, I could tell he had waited to share this good news.

“Astra! Wake up!” I nudged her awake before jumping up, fumbling for a lamp. I stumbled toward the door, thankful for the soft light shining behind Father in the doorway.

“Let me light a lamp, Father. Wait for me!” I picked up a crock of oil, tucking it under my arm, and grabbed a small lamp before dashing into the courtyard to our community fire pit. I wanted to hurry, but this was not a task the wise girl rushed through. I filled the lamp with fresh olive oil and tested the length of the wick. I rubbed the top of the wick between my fingers, making sure it had not dried out. My fingers were slick and shiny, so I pulled a burning stick from the fire and lit the wick. The flame was flat and lifeless. The wick needed a trim to get that dancing effect I loved but there was no time, not if I wanted to hear Father’s news.

I cupped one hand around the flame, walking back with care. Once inside, I set the lamp on the low table in the far corner, and set to work lighting the other two lamps in the house.

Father did not wait for me to finish. “I sold all my rugs.”

“What?” My mother screeched. Astra ran to hug him. He pushed them back to show them his money bag, which always hung limp on his belt. The bag had grown so heavy since this morning, as if by magic, forcing him to hold it, supporting it from the bottom.

“Are we rich?” Astra squealed. “We’re rich, aren’t we?” Her eyes flashed the news to me. If we were rich, she hinted, my troubles were over. I would not have to be married right away, not even if the Hebrew demanded a payment for his injury. How much could he get for a bruise, anyway?

“We’re richer than we were this morning,” Father said, flicking his hands to set her back to her chores. He pulled Mother close and kissed her right on the mouth. We giggled to see such extravagance.

“Wait! You were in the fields today. I saw you!” Mother shook her head in confusion. “You weren’t at the market at all.”

“True, but a remarkable event happened. While I worked in the fields, a man the size of two oxen walked toward me. He had hair that cannot be described! It was longer than I have ever seen, hair all the way to the ground! And he was a huge man, a son of the gods, surely.”

“This man, this son of the gods, bought your rugs?”

“Indeed he did.”

I watched him for a hint of what was to come. Had the Hebrew revealed to him our crime? Dread sickened me, boiling around in my stomach.

“And what sort of man would he be, wandering around during the harvest?” my mother asked. “Has he no family of his own? Or perhaps his gods do not need to eat.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Father sounded hurt, hearing her tear down his best customer. I worried that a fight was coming. They fought a lot in the lean years.

“What did the man say to you?” I asked.

“At first, he was interested in my sash. He was on the road leading out of Timnah and spied it from a distance. Turned right back and walked up to me, asking me where I had found it.”

“What did you say?” My voice was thin and weak.

He shrugged. “I told him the truth, of course. You should always tell the truth, girls. Tell the truth, and you will escape many dangers.”

He was so wrong! He had no idea what he had just done, what disaster his truth had just unleashed.

“So what did this man say about the sash?” I tried to sound interested, not panicked.

“The sash? Nothing. I assured him I was a merchant with many beautiful wares to offer. If he found the sash to be striking he should see my rugs. So he followed me to our stall at the market and bought them all.”

Smart Astra moved to pick up the blankets, deciding to busy herself. If my face looked anything like hers, Father would see our guilt and confusion before we said even one more word. This Hebrew was a serpent setting a trap for us. I could already see Father had fallen into it and was besotted with him.

I needed a chore. I needed busy hands and a clear mind, so I looked around the room to find something to do. I could see all of our home from where I stood. Like most of the families in our village, we had one large downstairs room separated by support beams for the roof. In the far right corner were the pallets we slept on, preferring to sleep closer together during the winter. To my left, along the back wall, was a low table where we took our meals, sitting on our bottoms. My mother had another, smaller table just in front of me, where she often did chores such as stringing fruit to hang from the support beams to dry or sewing a patch onto a tunic. She had good light here from the door, which she liked to prop open whenever the weather held. Her friends knew that when the door was open, she was doing the sort of chore that was always better when good friends provided chatter.

I decided to tend to the meal table, which needed a good oiling after the drying heat of summer. Mother kept a small crock of olive oil on the table, so all I needed was a rag to rub it in. I rummaged around in the basket on the floor where Mother kept her rags, made from old clothes that were not worth repairing any longer. We never changed tunics, wearing the same one for every season and every chore, so our clothes did not last long. She was devout, however, in supplying us with new scarves quite often, especially before festival seasons.

I chose a small piece of knobbed linen with pitiful tears running through it. Pouring a thin green streak of olive oil across the tabletop, I knelt down beside the table and set my mind on my work. Astra came over, holding a blanket up for my inspection, as if I needed to see that yet another hole had torn the fabric.

“Why would he do that?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. We owe him double now, though. You cracked his head, and Father sold him cheap rugs that won’t last the winter.”

A little spark of life passed between us, the familiar tweak that made us see the situation from a stranger’s eyes. Astra giggled first. I shook my finger at her before I gave in to my own giggles. My ears heard my father speaking, but my mind was slow to bring his words into focus.

“We need a goat,” Father told Mother. “And do we have any remaining cheese?”

I waved my hand at Astra’s face to quiet her. We were having guests for dinner.

“None. The goats are pregnant.” My mother’s tone was thin and tense. This was the worst possible month to have guests for dinner. Pregnant goats gave no milk. We couldn’t roast a pregnant goat, even if we were desperate, because it would mean giving up two goats. And the harvest was coming in, but it was hardly ready to serve guests. Olives had to be pitted and pickled and pressed; grapes had to be crushed and poured into wineskins; wheat had to be separated from the chaff, ground, and made into bread. All month, we ate raw heads of wheat, raw olives, and grapes. But you would not serve such a meal to strangers.

Father soothed Mother by stroking her shoulder and then reaching for her hand. He placed the fat bag into her palm and grinned at her.

“We have money now. Go and buy what you need. Go and buy
everything
you need. The other families will sell whatever you need. And fill the oil jar, to the top!”

I had never seen what money could do, and certainly never on my mother’s face. She grew younger in the blink of an eye. She reached to me, wiping the tears away from my cheek. She thought I was crying in relief, and she was moved by my tears, which made her cry.

Father looked at me, and then back at Mother, with her own tears now, and threw his hands up in exasperation.

“You’re all crying? I just made you wealthy, and you’re crying.” He groaned. “I’ll be on the roof. Amara, bring me a bowl of grapes and call me when dinner is ready or our guests arrive.”

He fled from us.

Mother ticked off her instructions to us, assigning chores and making her shopping list. Astra and I set to work as she left.

“Mother! Wait!”

She turned to me, a smile on her face. She delighted in me. Money in her palm made me more delightful too, I could tell.

“Which neighbors did Father invite for the celebration?”

I would have loved to have Sirena and her husband as our guests.

Her eyebrows rose and she gasped. “I didn’t ask. Isn’t that funny—money makes everything else unimportant!”

Astra and I danced as we worked, a lightness sweeping our feet along. Friends from the village were coming for dinner. We didn’t even care who they were; we were blessed. Money meant joy in our hearts and freedom in our family and health to our bones. And money made us numb, so that we did not demand an explanation as to who our inopportune guests might be, or why a Hebrew beast would buy so many rugs, or even what else might happen that day.

One lie would catch up to us, but much later. Astra could now be given in marriage, too. After all, her monthly cycles had started.

Sirena brought our bread by while we worked, and Mother set to work kneading another loaf. The oven outside was free so Mother could get one more loaf in, and as long as the gods didn’t spit on her plans, it’d be done by the time our guests arrived.

Astra and I worked until our tunics were stained with sweat. We finished polishing the tables, tidying the pallets and blankets, and removing old, dried herbs from their hanging hooks on the support beams. Mother had bought a new batch of herbs, and we worked bundling those together with ribbon and hanging them on the hooks for a fresh-smelling home. When there seemed to be nothing else remaining to do, Mother gave us a critical eye and a new list of chores, all of which involved our appearance. She thought we could use some attention ourselves.

The roof, with those breezes we loved in the summer, was turning too cold for a bath, so Mother heated water outside over the fire and brought a crock in for each of us to freshen up. She plaited our hair, securing them at the back of our heads with a sprig of rosemary for adornment. I suspected the rosemary was to help disguise any remaining scent of our hard labor.

Father came downstairs at last, keeping a wary eye out for more unexplained tears, and tightened the familiar red sash around his waist. As he did, a knock at our door echoed through the room. Astra clutched my hand in excitement. We hadn’t had guests for months. I hoped it was Sirena. She might let me rest my hand on her stomach and feel the babe kick at it.

“I hope it’s Talos!” Astra whispered. “He’s more fun than Sirena.”

I glared at her. For all her wisdom, she didn’t see the danger in talking to boys.

Father opened the door, his back blocking our view as he offered solemn words of welcome. He stepped away, one arm sweeping back, gesturing for the guests to enter.

The Hebrew stood on our threshold with an elderly couple behind him.

Astra’s grip on my hand turned ferocious. I knew I would have a bruise, but I felt no pain. I felt nothing, because nothing stirred in my body. My blood froze in my veins, my heart stopped, and I could not breathe. Only my eyes still worked, taking in this massive Hebrew man-beast, with that black mane cascading down to the ground, his dark eyes twinkling as if he found amusement in my shock and horror.