Angel-Seeker (35 page)

“Oh, hush. I just said that one of my cousins had taken a lover. I didn't say which cousin and I certainly didn't describe her lover! But I told him about the signal you use, a special item dropped into the courtyard. We picked five pieces of cloth from his father's stores—different colors, because wouldn't it be odd if every few weeks another pink scarf blew into your garden?—and he'll drop them in on the night before the day that he wants to see me. It is such a clever system! I'm amazed that you and Obadiah thought of it. You aren't as easy with deception as I am.”

“Oh,” Rebekah said on a sigh, “it's a skill I'm learning very well.”

Late that night, Hector returned from a long trip north to Gaza, the wagons loaded down with merchandise and the man himself delighted at some of his deals. The girls heard all the news through Jerusha, who joined them the next day at the breakfast table, wearing three new gold necklaces and a soft shawl of the most exquisite design. She also looked dreamy and smug, smiling like a little boy who'd left frogs on his sister's pillow. Rebekah knew what that look meant. She'd worn it herself recently, on mornings after a tryst with
Obadiah. Hector had been gone nearly three weeks; no doubt he had missed his wife.

Rebekah found she didn't really want to think about her mother and Hector enjoying the act of love.

She spent the day instead helping the cooks prepare an evening feast, because Hector had invited his new business partner's family over to celebrate the successes of their trading venture. Martha had petitioned to stay for the event, and permission had been granted, so once all the food was ready, the girls retired to Rebekah's room to put on their finest clothes. Simon's sister was spiteful; she loved nothing better than to appear dressed in the most gorgeous fabrics and then make purring little comments about the other women's clothes.

“We'll show her. I sent Ephram back to pick up my green silk jeska. You know it always brings out the color of my skin,” Martha said. “And you in that deep red—stunning. She hasn't seen that jeska yet. She'll be jealous and hateful all night.”

Rebekah was tugging the close-fitting hallis in place, and frowning in front of the mirror. “No, but it's not laying right. It's making me feel all squishy.”

Martha came over to inspect the problem. “What? Here across your bosom? It's all bunched up in back, wait a minute—”

But even with Martha's adjustments, the hallis felt too tight for comfort. “I don't understand it,” Rebekah said. “Hepzibah just made this for me a month or so ago.”

“Have you gained weight?”

“A little, I think, but not there!”

They both giggled. “It doesn't matter,” Martha said, whipping the looser-fitting jeska over her cousin's head. “No one will be able to tell once you're fully dressed.”

And, indeed, the two of them were quite pleased with themselves as they stood side by side, examining their images in the glass. Rebekah was all dark hair and brilliant color; Martha was a desert blossom, green stalk and golden tassel of hair.

“
So
jealous,” Martha said again. “I can't wait.”

The dinner was sumptuous: rich courses of meats and gravies, flavored with exotic spices and set off by a variety of wines. Hector often reserved the best dishes for the men's table, but because
Simon's wife and sisters were dining with them that night, the fare in the women's hall was just as grand as food in the main dining room. Rebekah and Martha gorged themselves, and everyone around them did the same.

After the meal, Jerusha shooed Rebekah out into the garden. “It's too
cold,
” Rebekah whined, but Jerusha merely told her to get a heavy cloak and stroll around the perimeter. Martha giggled and fetched wraps for both of them, and they paced around the garden for twenty minutes, shivering, before Isaac and Hector's uncle made an appearance.

“So I've heard my nephew's account of the trip to Gaza,” the old man said. “What were your thoughts?”

“I was impressed by the great wealth of the Manadavvi people, but I found their customs distasteful,” Isaac said in a serious voice. Martha elbowed Rebekah in the ribs and made a mocking face.

“How so?”

“They display their riches in pointless ways. I understand the value of a grand house, and I even understand investing in beautiful furnishings, but they overspend. The houses are too grand. There are so many empty rooms just piled on for show. There are too many useless treasures hanging on the walls or standing about in the statuary. I saw door handles made of gold and walkways lined with chips of diamond. A Manadavvi flaunts his wealth, whereas a Jansai merely enjoys it.”

“They are ostentatious,” the uncle said gravely.

“Yes. And arrogant. They were willing to make deals with us, but their disdain was evident. More than once I wanted to say, ‘My opinion of you is even lower than yours of me.' But I did not.”

“No, for a good trader pretends every man is his friend, even a man with no goods or money at hand. For who knows when such a man may acquire wealth or merchandise?”

“And their women,” Isaac continued.

Now Rebekah and Martha exchanged quick looks, mirthful but curious.

“They treat their women badly,” Isaac said.

“Now, that is something I hadn't noticed,” Hector's uncle said.

Isaac made a little grunt of disgust. “They parade them around
the room like the gaudiest of possessions! They show them off like their women were prizes they had wrested from the marketplace. A woman should be guarded so carefully that no other man knows what treasure you possess. A woman is too precious to be gazed upon by strangers.”

Martha made a little bobbing motion with her head, as if she liked the way he phrased his answer, even if she didn't agree with his philosophy.

“Unfortunately, none of the other peoples of Samaria share our views on this matter,” the old man said. “They consider women ordinary and commonplace.”

“Well, the Manadavvi at least have no understanding of what gives a woman value,” Isaac said, a note of contempt creeping into his voice. “And the women themselves behaved with a shocking lack of virtue. We were forced to dine with them, you know—men and women mixed all together at a single table in one room.”

“Yes, I have dined with the Manadavvi before.”

“And the women spoke shamelessly with the men seated around them, not at all embarrassed to be out in public and on display in such a fashion. And some of the women—young women! unmarried women!—were deep in conversation with men, completely unsupervised by any father or brother that I could see. I swear I saw one girl slip away from the room in company with a Luminaux merchant in our train, and they did not return. I can only guess, with horror, what might have passed between them when they were out of sight.”

Now the looks Martha and Rebekah exchanged were half rueful and half apprehensive.

“Shocking, indeed,” the old man said. “But again, their customs are not our customs, their ways not ours.”

“Some truths are universal,” Isaac said firmly. “A young woman is a piece of glass, fragile and beautiful. It takes only a single careless motion to brush that glass to the floor, to see it shatter and break. A young woman who has been compromised is useless—she is valueless.
Kirosa,
” he added, using the Jansai word that meant
broken.
“She must be swept aside and forgotten, and a new glass found to fill her place. The Manadavvi cover their broken pieces of glass with bright shawls and expensive jewelry, but I see the shards beneath the
finery. I would cast such a woman into the desert. She would have no worth to me.”

The men kept on walking, but Rebekah and Martha were standing stock-still, staring at each other with their eyes wide and their mouths parted in horror. All Jansai men felt this way; what he said was no surprise. But it was one thing to know something, to acknowledge it while pretending it had no significance to you. It was another to hear your affianced husband say out loud the words that could seal your death warrant if he ever learned the truth.

Two days later, Jordan brought Rebekah her embroidered scarf. “This is yours, isn't it?” he asked. “I found it in the garden yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”
she exclaimed, snatching it from his fingers. Her imagination, no doubt, but it smelled of snow and starlight. “You've had it all this time?”

He looked surprised. “Yes. I'm sorry. Were you looking for it?”

She tried to choke back her hysteria. “It's just that—I'd lost it, and Martha was upset with me. She made it, you know, and she says I'm so careless with all the gifts she's given me—which isn't
true
—”

Jordan shrugged. “Martha's a little unsteady these days.”

She was wholly focused on the significance of the scarf, on the fact that Obadiah was in town—or had been in town a day ago—but something in the tone of his voice caused Rebekah's gaze to lock onto Jordan's face. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged again. “Eph says she's always fighting with her mother and her aunts, sleeping till all hours of the day, hiding in some corner of the house where they can't find her whenever there's work to be done. He says if he didn't know better, he'd think she'd gotten into their father's liquor store, but all the wine is kept in the men's kitchen, and he knows she wouldn't cross the dividing wall.”

Rebekah was fairly sure there was no part of Ezra's house that Martha hadn't crept into at some point. She knew for a fact that, whenever the men were gone on an extended journey, Martha would get up in the night and glide through the men's quarters, exploring, while the servants and the young boys were asleep. The wine cellar would be Martha's playground. She no doubt had a bottle or two stashed in her own room at this very moment.

But such transgressions, of course, were the least of Martha's crimes.

“Martha's just—Martha,” Rebekah said lamely. “She's always been a little wild.”

“Well, she'll need to calm down soon if Uncle Ezra's going to find her a husband.”

“Is he trying to make a match for her? She hasn't said anything.”

“Maybe she doesn't know,” Jordan said a little smugly. “Eph says their father has been talking to Michael and Elam. They both have good trading routes, though Eph says Elam is shrewder and more likely to turn a profit.”

“I didn't know Elam had any sons,” Rebekah said.

“He doesn't. But his wife died three years ago.”

“He's fifty years old!”

“A steady man for an unsteady girl,” Jordan replied. “That's what Eph says.”

“I think maybe you've been spending too much time with cousin Ephram,” Rebekah said sharply.

Jordan looked surprised. “Why shouldn't I?”

She shook her head and was unable to explain. “Because he's—because he—oh, Ephram is always such a braggart, always showing off how much he knows or how much smarter he is than everyone else. He doesn't need to be monitoring his sister's behavior and plotting with his father to see her married off.”

“Of course he does. If she doesn't marry, Martha will be his responsibility. Just as you would be mine, if you didn't marry Isaac.”

It was too ludicrous. Rebekah had been helping care for Jordan since the day he was born; she'd rocked Ephram in his cradle while Martha tickled his tiny feet. Impossible to think that these little boys would suddenly become judgmental men who saw their sisters as burdens, as objects to be sheltered or bartered. But Jordan was perfectly serious, and Ephram, she knew, had always wanted to race headlong into the duties and delights of manhood.

Something to consider another day. Her hands were nervous on the scarf, winding and unwinding it around her fingers. What had Obadiah thought last night, when she did not appear in response to his signal? No doubt he had waited for her in his hotel room for
hours last night, his hopes gradually fading, his eager face falling into lines of disappointment or worry. Jovah's bones, he would be frantic with anxiety, convinced that her failure to appear meant that some disaster had befallen her on the streets. She must go to him now, right away, soothe away his fears and remind him that she loved him—

Not now. Tonight.

She did not think she could endure the intervening hours.

“I wouldn't mind, though,” Jordan was saying.

She had no idea what they were talking about. “Wouldn't mind what?”

“If you never married. Or if you came back to my house after you were widowed. You've always been the best sister to me, and I would do everything to care for you, if that task came to me.”

She kissed him impulsively on the forehead, though he tried to duck, and thought how much he looked like Jonah. Sweet Jovah singing, might it be
Jonah
who someday entertained the same grave thoughts about how to best care for his aging sister? Oh, very easily. Hector was twenty years younger than Hepzibah, after all, and she'd lived in his house for at least a decade.