Angel-Seeker (52 page)

Elizabeth smiled, trying to hide her embarrassment. “Oh, I don't know that he will make all his calculations around me.”

Naomi made a
tsk!
sound of disbelief. “You! He cannot take his eyes off you! He carried you with him how many hundred miles so he did not have to spend a night away from your body!”

This was plain speaking indeed—another Edori trait—but Elizabeth felt it almost a relief to confess the truth. “I'm not so sure—that is, as for my body—well, we have not—not yet—”

“You have not yet made love?” Naomi demanded. “Oh, now, that's a sin. A beautiful girl like you and a man as handsome as Rufus? Such gifts are not to be wasted. We must work to remedy that.”

“Well, but I—and it was such a long trip—I feel so dirty with dust from the road and no chance to get really clean—”

Naomi lay down her spoon and called for one of her daughters. A small, shy, smiling girl, maybe eight years old, emerged from
Naomi's tent. “You watch the cook pots for me,” Naomi instructed. “Elizabeth and I will be gone for a little while.”

“Gone where?” Elizabeth asked as Naomi took her arm and pulled her away from the fire.

“To the water tents. You didn't know we had such things set up? No, it never occurs to a man to talk about luxuries. Do you have soap with you? Scent?”

“Soap, yes, a little, but scent? No.”

Naomi
tsked
again. “And clean clothes? Something soft and beautiful? With your hair, I would think you wear a lot of rich colors? A lot of greens? I have a lovely dress, not exactly a dress, a wrap that hangs about me like a robe. Very soft, very pretty—girlish, you know what I mean.”

“Feminine,” Elizabeth supplied.

“Exactly! And some perfume—I bought it in Luminaux, it smells like flowers on a summer night. Do you have pins for your hair? Anything that sparkles? Glitter in your hair will draw a man's eyes to your face, did you know that? Yes, I assure you, it is true.”

Helpless and fascinated, Elizabeth followed Naomi inside her tent, where the Edori woman tossed through a trunk to find the items she wanted. Then she followed Naomi through the entire campsite—though they paused hundreds of times to exchange greetings or gossip with others that they passed—to a long row of tents set up on the very perimeter. All of these tents straddled a small stream that meandered around the camp and southward. Each of the tents appeared to be floorless, unlike the sleeping tents set up inside the camp.

“Normally, we do not go to such trouble, but the Gathering is special. Everyone wants to be clean for the god! So we have the water tents here—the
necessary
tents, as some people call them—so you don't have to wander out to the bushes in the middle of the night. And then we have bathing tents here, one for the men, one for the women. See?”

Naomi pulled back a flap of one of the long, low structures, and they stepped inside. It was quite an unexpected scene, filled with steam and scented with woodsmoke. A substantial fire burned on one bank of the stream, its smoke vented through a hole in the tent
roof; over it hung a massive cauldron of water. Half a dozen naked Edori women lounged about on stools or on mats spread upon the ground on either side of the creek. They were drying their hair or smoothing cream into their skin. All of them looked up when the other two women entered, then smiled and returned to their preoccupations.

“See?” Naomi said again, gesturing. “Hot water to bathe with. And it is nice and warm in here, so you can take your time scrubbing your body. You can get much cleaner than you can hopping into a mountain river in the middle of the winter.”

“You can get your
hair
clean,” one of the other women said.

“And you will feel much better than you would have believed possible,” Naomi assured her. “Come. Let's get you out of your travel clothes.”

And Elizabeth, who was not used to stripping down in front of strangers, allowed Naomi to help her out of her dress and her underthings and position her on the rocky bank so the wash water would fall most naturally into the river. Fire or no, it was still chilly standing naked on the edge of the stream, waiting to be doused with water, and Elizabeth shivered a little. But the idea of being truly clean and dressed in pretty clothes held her feet in place, and she gasped with delight when the first bucket of warm water splashed over her head.

Dinner that night was a lively communal affair as all the Chievens gathered around Naomi's cook-fire and engaged in banter and discussion. Everyone wanted to hear Rufus's story, though he told it haltingly: the massacre of the Kalessas, followed by the misery of slavery and the aimlessness of freedom. Elizabeth listened closely to see if there were any details she could pick up, any more clues. She thought she understood him; she wanted to know if she had missed or misinterpreted any signals.

Her own story was demanded next, and supplied, and then conversation became more general. The men talked about the day's hunt, the children chimed in with tales of their own adventures, the women shared glances of amusement and recounted some of their own stories. Elizabeth could not tell which child belonged to which
parent, since the children seemed to turn with equal affection to every adult in the circle. Naomi's daughters sat with women who were situated across the fire, and Naomi herself held on her lap two small boys who hadn't been in the camp during the daylight hours. Elizabeth wasn't even sure if these children belonged to the Chievens or had wandered over from some other clan and been accepted with the impartial welcome that seemed to be extended to every wayfarer who stumbled in this direction. It made her, briefly, long to be small enough and incautious enough to be able to seek sanctuary at any likely haven, sure of affection. She thought it must be a wonderful thing to be an Edori child.

Unless your tribe was ravaged and annihilated, of course. Unless you were ripped from safety and serenity and thrust into a life of captivity. She understood a little of what it was like to go from security to privation, but she had not lived at either edge of the extremes, as Rufus had. She was not sure she would have emerged half as assured as he had.

Though the wounds were there, she knew.

She was not sitting next to Rufus during dinner, though she was not sure how that had happened. She thought perhaps Naomi had engineered the seating arrangements, placing Elizabeth between a good-looking Edori man of about her own age and an older woman with grizzled gray hair and a radiant smile. Elizabeth was getting a fair idea of Naomi's thinking process by now, and she could read the Edori's intent: Show off Elizabeth's youth and beauty by placing her next to a grandmother, awake a spark of Rufus's jealousy by seating her next to a handsome man. She wasn't sure it was working, though. Rufus seemed perfectly happy chatting with Luke and one of the other Chievens as he sat across the fire from Elizabeth. He did look over at her and smile from time to time, but he seemed neither alarmed at her chance for flirtation nor struck by her alluring appearance. Elizabeth smoothed the soft blue folds of her borrowed gown and smothered a sigh.

The meal was good, and everyone made a point of complimenting the bread once Naomi let it be known that Elizabeth had prepared it. Once the food was cleared away, the singing began. Some of the songs Elizabeth recognized—lullabies and ballads—though some of
them were offered in the Edori tongue, and she knew only the melody, not the words. Most were unfamiliar to her, some plaintive, some joyous, all of them with the power to shift her mood within a few measures. Naomi, who had the loveliest voice of the clan, sang a duet with Luke, and then harmonized in a trio with two other women. Everyone applauded and called out praise when the song ended, but Naomi shook her head.

“I miss Raheli's voice,” she said with a sigh, coming over to sit beside Elizabeth. “Have you ever heard her? The god himself grows mute and bedazzled when Raheli sings.”

“Perhaps I'll be at the Gloria someday, and hear her then,” Elizabeth said politely, sure this was quite unlikely.

“Do you sing? Let us hear your voice,” Naomi urged.

Elizabeth felt a small current of alarm glow through her. “Me? No. I never—I don't sing.”

“Come. One piece? A love song?” Naomi said, letting her eyes dart toward Rufus and then back again.

“I—really, I can't. No treat to hear me.”

“You can join the general voices,” said the old woman now sitting on the other side of Naomi. “We will all sing a good night prayer to Yovah, and you can sing along then.”

Elizabeth nodded numbly. “If I know the song.”

“Oh, everybody knows this song,” Naomi said, and launched into the first verse. It was an old melody, a simple one, sung by children in every city in Samaria, and apparently every child in the tents and wagons of the Edori as well. Elizabeth did not understand the Edori words, but she obligingly sang along in the language she knew, hearing her own rusty, untrained voice blending agreeably with the Edori voices around her. Angeletta had told her once that she sang like a screech owl on a disappointing night, and Elizabeth had never sung in public again. But here, at this camp, with these people, she didn't mind participating in the universal chorus, adding her imperfect notes to the great swell of supplication and thanks. No one could hear her, except perhaps the god; and though he treasured a beautiful melody above all things, he cherished any faithful heart that lifted up a song in prayer. Or so the priests had always said. Elizabeth sang a little more loudly.

That was the last event of the day. People were on their feet even as the final amens sounded, yawning through the last note and wishing each other sweet dreams. The old woman was once again complimenting Elizabeth on her baking when Rufus materialized at her side, smiling in the firelight and taking her chilly hand in his.

“Time to rest after a very long day,” he said, tugging her in the direction of their tent. “I am sleepy if you are not.”

Elizabeth could not help herself. She glanced quickly at Naomi, who was standing close enough to listen, and who responded with a quick nod of encouragement. “I am ready to go to our tent,” Elizabeth responded. “A long day indeed!”

In a few minutes they were ensconced inside, hearing all around them the sounds of the Chievens settling in for the night. It was completely dark inside and much colder than it had been sitting before the fire, shoulder to shoulder with others, and for a moment, Elizabeth felt both lost and despondent. What was the point of wearing a dreamy blue dress and placing pins in her hair if she was just going to shiver on a blanket in an unlit tent? Who would notice her finery, who would be moved to passion by her arts?

Rufus was on his knees, maneuvering around the tent poles, but it was hard to get lost in such a small space; he fetched up against her immediately. She felt his arms slip about her, chasing away some of the cold. “Ah, I thought I caught a sweet aroma when I pulled you away from the fire,” he murmured into her hair. “What is that scent? It makes me think of springtime.”

She smiled in the dark. “Something Naomi lent me.”

His fingers ran lightly over the soft folds of the wrap. “And this? This lovely outfit you are wearing? I don't remember seeing it at any time while we were on the road.”

“Another gift from Naomi. A loan.”

“And is there any reason this Edori clanswoman would have for lavishing exotic perfumes and sumptuous fabrics on a
allali
woman who has just happened by for a visit? Jewels in your hair, even. What could she mean to accomplish with such decorations?”

Elizabeth could feel her lips bow into a smile. “I don't know. Perhaps she felt sorry for me, bedraggled and grim from my travels. Perhaps she thought she might make me beautiful to catch the eye of an
Edori clansman. There are one or two handsome men among the Chievens, I noticed.”

His hand now was combing through her hair, pulling out the glittering pins one by one. “Did you now? And do you have extensive experience with Edori lovers?”

“I do not,” she said primly. “I don't know if they're joyous or solemn, faithful or faithless, whether they boast about their conquests or keep every secret whispered to them in the dark.”

“Joyous,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. Her skin warmed under his lips. “Faithful. Keeping every secret.”

She turned in his embrace, putting her arms around his neck and drawing him close enough so that she could whisper her next words against his mouth. “I would take an Edori to bed, then,” she said. “I would learn what such a lover is like.”

“So little choice,” he said. “Only one Edori in the tent.”

“Then I would make love to him.”

“There is much still to be decided between us,” he said, but his arms tightened around her back, and she felt the pace of his heartbeat quicken.

She laughed softly, her breath mingling with his, and then she pressed her mouth to his in a long kiss. “This will help us decide,” she said at last. “Let me take off this gorgeous blue gown.”

E
verything was so simple once Rebekah decided what she must do.

She had to leave Breven. She had to go to Cedar Hills with the angel.

She had no choice; she could see that now. All her worries about leaving behind her family, entering into a new life surrounded by strangers—none of those mattered when measured against the likelihood of losing her life. She could go with Obadiah and transform herself completely, or she could stay in Breven and die.

And her baby would die.

She was astonished at the fierceness of her determination to protect the life inside her. She had always known she would have fought to the death to save Jordan from harm, and Jonah had such a hold on her heart that she could not imagine what it would be like to leave him, but even these emotions paled before the intensity of her love for her unborn child. She schemed for this child; it figured in every calculation. Every night she dreamed about a baby who was fair and serene and watched her with dark, unreadable eyes. So strong were her tactile impressions of holding and nursing this child that when she woke in the mornings, her arms empty, she was assailed by a sense of ungovernable loss. She had not known it was possible to love—love so
much
—something invisible, intangible, alive only in imagination.

Yet the mound of her belly grew more rounded every day, and the Kiss in her arm pulsed with a dangerous fire. Not so intangible after all.

She must leave Breven as soon as possible, before she was discovered. Long before her marriage. She thought there was a good chance she could conceal her pregnancy until very late in her term if she carefully chose her jeskas and ensured as much privacy as possible when using the water room. So, although it was imperative that she leave Breven, it was not urgent. Not yet. She still had time.

The knowledge that she was truly going to leave her family, her home, every single familiar detail of her life, at times overwhelmed her with a grief so great that only an even greater corresponding fear kept her resolution intact. She did not know how quickly the angel might return and how swiftly she might be able to plot her escape, so she could not gauge how much time she had left among the people and the things she loved. Her days were invested with melancholy as she did her routine chores. She might never sit in the garden again in the winter sunlight, watching Jonah crawl between the bare, spindly bushes. She might never again linger at the communal dinner table, listening to the old women gossip and the young women whisper. She might never hear Jordan boasting about some horse he had mastered, though Hector told him he was not strong enough to hold such a brutish animal. She might never endure another public scold from her mother and then late in the day receive, not an apology, but a kiss on the cheek or a gentle “thanks.” She might never know if her mother loved her. So often she had been sure Jerusha did not, but when Rebekah was far away, lost to her forever, would Jerusha weep into her pillow until Hector begged her for silence?

She would never know that, either.

It was impossible to guess when Obadiah might reappear. She had taken pains to make him think she was safe, so he would not haunt the streets of Breven, looking for her, drawing more attention than would be good for either of them. But that plan might have been miscalculated, since she had no way of letting him know her situation would soon be desperate. She did not think she could convince Jordan to deliver a second missive to the Hotel Verde, since he had been so reluctant to carry the first. She had had to explain over
and over again how she had met Zoe at the house of one of Martha's cousins, how she was a nervous and fretful girl, prone to imagining the worst.

“She will have heard what happened to Martha,” she said. “And she will be crazy with grief and worry over me.”

“What do we care what a Manadavvi girl worries about?”

“Please. She's a friend. I have no other way to reach her.”

In the end he had consented when she allowed him to read the letter—so carefully composed, so full of hidden messages!—and agreed that he could toss it away and disavow it if by some chance it seemed too dangerous to deliver. This had not kept her from pouncing on him the instant he returned and demanding to know if he had put the letter in Zoe's hands.

“No, of course I did not! I gave it to some man inside the hotel. He looked Manadavvi—her brother, perhaps.”

“But you told him it was for Zoe? He knew?”

“Her name was on the paper.”

“But you told him?”

“I told him.”

And she was fairly certain the letter had been forwarded to Obadiah, for there were no more signals dropped on her roof or in her garden in the next few days. But he would be back. She knew him well enough by now to be sure of that.

She spent a great deal of time imagining what their next meeting would be like. What would she say first? “I want to leave Breven to be with you” or “I'm carrying your child.” What would his reaction be to either of these statements? She had no doubt, none at all, that Obadiah was an honorable enough man to see her to safety even if he no longer loved her, even if he was horrified or repulsed by the news of her pregnancy. But he might be rendered speechless by the miracle, might be struck dumb and senseless by joy. She rather thought Obadiah was that kind instead.

How to meet him to share this news was another one of her preoccupations. It was not clear when the extreme measures of security would be lifted from Hector's house—indeed, from all the wealthier houses of Breven. The men no longer slept in their beds; they slept on
the floor before the kitchen door, on the landings between stairwells, anyplace that might conceivably be considered an exit. There was no way to steal from the house by night.

Rebekah could not help imagining scenes of great daring and boldness. She pictured herself charging down the steps in the middle of the day, sprinting through the garden with Hector and his brothers in full pursuit, dashing down the street at a flat-out run as her Jansai relatives grew ever closer—and then being snatched up by an angel swooping down from the hard bright sky. The trouble with this scenario, of course, was that Obadiah would have to know in advance just exactly when she would require him to be swooping.

More likely, she thought, was that he would leave some token on the skylight and she would find a way to creep up the back stairs by night. Perhaps it would be Jordan guarding the upper floor on the night she wanted to escape, and he would let her pass without even a question. Perhaps it would be one of Hector's brothers, both of them big men who liked to drink, and who might sleep soundly even on the rough floor of the hallway. Perhaps they would be easy to step over and leave behind.

Now and then she thought about a third course, as risky as the others. She would sneak from the house in her boy's guise—night or day, whenever the opportunity arose—and make her way to the Hotel Verde. There she would wait, hidden and sheltered in one of the opulent rooms, until Obadiah could be sent for. There was little risk that the Jansai would track her down there, and so she could wait in relative safety for however long it took Obadiah to arrive. No one would think to look for her in such a haven; no one would have any reason to suspect she had any association with the Manadavvi.

Except Jordan.

Once that thought occurred to her, she turned it over and over in her mind. She could not believe Jordan would betray her, would lead Hector and his family to her hiding place, knowing what would befall her at their hands. He had been so distraught over Martha's expulsion that she could not believe he would engineer her own. And yet, Ephram was the one who had denounced his sister, and he had
been greatly lauded among the Jansai for his quick and ruthless action. Jordan might be hungry for some honor of his own.

No. Not Jordan. Not that sweet, funny, generous, happy boy.

But still she made no plans to don boy's clothes and creep out into the street. She would wait until she knew the angel was in town. Her escape would be much more certain then.

Even though she would rather not have, Rebekah accepted Hali's help in finishing up her bridal trousseau. The companionship was pressed on her by Jerusha, who claimed Hector's niece would be a good, steadying influence on Rebekah, who had “seemed so flighty these past few weeks I honestly don't understand how you make it through the day.”

“I'm just fine. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're jumpy as a child before a festival, looking around you all the time as though you expect something strange or marvelous to be leaping out at you from the corners.”

That was a fairly accurate assessment, Rebekah had to admit, though she was surprised that her mother had noticed. “There's a lot happening,” was all she said. “Martha—and my wedding—”

“Don't you talk about Martha,” Jerusha hissed, looking around quickly to see if anyone had overheard. They were sitting together in the fabric room, and Jerusha had just expressed her impatience with the endless task of hemming linens. Her eyes had fallen on Hali, sitting demurely across the room, hands busy with some mending and expression indicating that she was listening patiently to Hepzibah's harangue. “Martha is dead, do you hear me? They went back a week ago and found her bones. If you even mention her name, you could be dead, too.”

Rebekah raised her eyes briefly to her mother's face, her own expression so stark and level that Jerusha actually recoiled.
I could be dead for crimes more appalling than speaking my cousin's name,
she thought. “I know that Martha is dead,” was all she said.

It took Jerusha a moment to recover from the strangeness in Rebekah's expression. When she did speak again, her voice was a little strained. “So. You will make new friends. Martha was always a
wild one. But Hali. She's a good girl. Quiet. She never does anything to make her mother worry.”

“I don't like Hali.”

Jerusha slapped her none too gently on the fingers. “Don't say things like that! You'll have her help you with your dowry. You girls should be friends. That would make your father happy.”

She didn't even waste breath saying,
He's not my father
. “I don't care who does the sewing,” she said instead, too tired to argue anymore. “If Hali is willing, let her help.”

So Jerusha invited Hali to join Rebekah, and then she casually decided to “leave you young girls alone to talk.” Hali barely noticed.

“Oh, I love the fabric you've chosen for your sheets,” she exclaimed, running her fingers over the smooth, fine cloth. “This is for your wedding night? It's from Luminaux, isn't it?”

“My mother picked the fabric,” Rebekah said.

“And the jeskas you're to wear for your first year! I want to be a married woman so I can wear fabrics so beautiful. Did you embroider all the hems in gold?”

“Three of them. Two I embroidered in silver for feast days.”

“How long will you live in Simon's place? How long before Isaac has his own house? I would not want to live alone in a house, just my husband and me. Will you bring some of Isaac's sisters with you?”

“I think it will be a while before he can manage a household of his own. We might live with Simon for years.”

“Or perhaps Simon will
die,
and Isaac will take over his father's house! That would be excellent, would it not? His house is very big.”

“It would not be so excellent for Simon, I suppose.”

“No, but you know what I mean! He will have to die sometime.”

So the conversation went, for the next two dreary hours—and the next two dreary days. It was the bitter tail end of winter, just weeks before shy spring was due to arrive, but the weather was colder and windier than it had been all season. As if winter could not bear to release her bony, hateful grip on this southern land, as if she wanted to prove that an old lady's whims were more powerful than a young girl's fertility. So they had all stayed indoors for three interminable days. There were no feasts coming up, so no need to spend
hours in the kitchen, baking; none of the men were planning journeys in the next few weeks, so there was no rush to mend the tents or put their clothing in order. Nothing to do but work on Rebekah's trousseau.

“When I am married I will have only sons,” Hali said to Rebekah on the third day. The two girls sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by piles and piles of fine cloth. Hepzibah and her sisters were gathered in one corner, working on household projects and grumbling about something Hector had done. “Five of them.”

Rebekah knew a little about the unpredictability of pregnancy, and she couldn't let this pass. “I'm not sure you are allowed the ordering of such things,” she said. “When you will have children, or how many. Or what kind.”

“Yes, but I don't
want
any daughters,” Hali said earnestly. “It's the sons who will look after you when you're old, and take you into their homes. A daughter would have to ask her husband if you could take up space in his house, and you would have to be very meek and do everything he told you to do. But your own sons would still have to listen to you and show you honor.”