Sunrise on the Mediterranean (27 page)

Fearful of screwing up, I ran after Shana—the woman could walk fast for having such short legs. “Forgive me,
g’vret
, but—”

She turned, hands on hips. “What now?”

“I, uh, don’t know what you want me to do.”

For a moment she was silent. “You don’t know how to make bread?”

Hesitantly I shook my head. “You don’t know how to grind grain?” Her voice was rising. People all around the courtyard were
starting to look, to see what the commotion was about.

I shook my head again, tried to smile beseechingly. My face was warm.

“You are the most useless slave I have ever known!” She turned to look at her audience. “Look at her! An adult woman! With
a husband! She can’t make bread! She can’t even grind grain!
Ach
! Thank Shaday no children have graced you,
isha.
They would have starved!”

My face was so hot, you could’ve fried an egg on it. She looked back at me, as though public humiliation might have taught
me how to use the millstone. I focused on her feet, waiting for the next scathing remark.

“
Ach
! So you were raised a
g’vret
, a lady. It is no wonder our god can beat yours; our women are not so delicate. Delicate women breed delicate babes.”
Tch
’ing her way back, we returned to the millstone.

’Sheva, the human mushroom, was sitting motionless, staring into space.

“
Yelad
”—Shana called ’Sheva a child—“hurry and fetch some grain!” She clapped, and the mushroom ran. “You!” she said to me. “Sit
here.”

I was supposed to sit on the doughnut? Fumbling with my skirts, I managed to straddle it nicely.

“You will spin around, while the
yelad
pours the grain into the hole, you see?” I nodded my head. I would have agreed even if I’d had no clue. I’d been embarrassed
enough for one day.

“See here,” she said, gesturing to a channel that ran from beneath the millstone. Then I realized that the millstone was two
pieces, and the device made sense. I was using the combined weight of myself and granite to scrape the little grain pods until
they were as fine as dirt. Then the
yelad
would collect them, weigh them, and either store or use them.

“Grind seven measures,” Shana said, “then I will teach you, poor Pelesti fool, how to make bread.”

She left just as ’Sheva returned.

If this were ancient home ec, I would have failed. The first batch was too rough, so I had to regrind it. Then it was too
fine, more like dust than flour. It looked like the stuff Mimi had used, but since I didn’t know what was next in the process
I was quiet. Shana had given up yelling at me. She just sighed extravagantly, then poured more grain so I could do it again.

By lunchtime I had three measures. Since I was running behind, I had to work instead of eat. ’Sheva mechanically poured grain
in the hole while she picked her nose. I kept a careful watch on her two hands, just to make sure the pouring hand and the
picking hand didn’t overlap.

My back ached, my legs hurt, and my backside was really sore. This action reminded me of being a little kid, sitting on the
playground roundabout and spinning it while seated. However, stone on stone didn’t move with any great ease.

For the first time I really missed being a priestess or a princess or an oracle. Hell, even a mermaid! This was bloody hard
work.

By dusk I could barely move. Shana sighed but dismissed me. Once through the vineyard, I climbed the steps slowly. Our room
was dark, empty. I fell face first across the pallet—

Later Cheftu woke me. I think he tried to talk to me, but I kept falling asleep.

I awoke with the rooster crowing at dawn. I felt as though I’d been under the granite doughnut. Cheftu was already gone.

Since I’d worn my only set of clothes to grind in, then sleep in, I slipped into my old dress and hobbled through the vineyard.
In the distance I could see the men working the barley fields already. Some were cutting, some were sorting grain from chaff
by throwing it in the air, and some were standing around. I couldn’t pick out Cheftu from this distance.

By midmorning I was through about five measures. Shana allowed me some food, then sent me back to work. Cheftu came home late,
hot, and tired and we both lay on the pallet, too exhausted even to eat.

By week’s end, however, we were in much better condition. In fact, we lived life so autonomously that, except for the chains,
it was almost like being free. Though he was exhausted, Cheftu never complained. He said it was a nice change from medicine.
That seemed an odd comment, but I didn’t ask any more. He taught me a song they sang in the barley fields, a farmer’s almanac
set to swing.

“Two months to harvest the olives; two months of planting grain. Then two months of late planting. The month of hoeing up
flax, a month to harvest the barley. Then two months of vine tending, and a month of the fruits of summer.”

Israel was an exhausting, hardworking place, but the people really did whistle while they worked. We could even hear them
singing in the courtyard of the palace as we gave thanks for being pampered palace slaves.

“Sing with joy to Shaday, it is fitting for his people to praise him. Praise him with harp, sing along with the tenstringed
kinor,
sing to him a new song. Play skillfully and shout with joy.

“From the heavens el ha
Shaday
looks down, sees all the earthlings. From his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth. He who forms the hearts of
all, who considers everything they do.”

The barley fields were considered Dadua’s property, which of course
haMelekh
didn’t glean in person. The cutters walked in a circle as though they were oxen tied to a pivot point, for the harvest. The
fields were square—and this cut a perfect round of grain for Dadua. I was out distributing water when I noticed them for the
first time. The poor.

Though I was technically enslaved, I had food and shelter. Though they were technically free, they didn’t. Suddenly I understood
why so many people sold themselves or their children into slavery. In a way it was almost a better life. That seemed terribly
perverse.

I saw them clumped in the corners, picking barley. When I asked about it, Shana said, “It is the law. Not everyone has inherited
fields, so those who have are bidden to share with those who have not. They are allowed to glean whatever is left, and the
corners.”

When I returned to the courtyard and talked about it, ’Sheva got excited for the first time, offering to go to the fields
with me. It was possibly the longest sentence she’d ever constructed. We walked there together, and then she left me, running
toward some of the gleaners.

“It’s her family,” another of the slaves said. “They sold her because they couldn’t afford two girls and a boy.”

I watched as ’Sheva stood before a stoop-shouldered man and a cowering woman with a baby at her breast.

“As soon as she was sold, they had another child. A son,” the slave explained. Obviously they had kept him. Poor ’Sheva.

No one touched the mushroom, and then we saw her family walk away. She bowed her head, picked up her jug, and stumbled farther
into the fields. She was going the wrong way, neither toward the palace nor toward the town. We watched her in silence.

“All those corners end up being about a quarter of the harvest. That seems a lot to lose,” I said conversationally.

The other slave’s eyes turned cold. “They are tribesmen. Either we care for them this way, or they will have to beg or become
as we are. Slaves.” She moved on, leaving me standing, pondering, until I heard my cue:

“You!
Isha
! Water!”

That afternoon I tried to be sweet to the mushroom. She was in prime fungal form, bundled up and inwardly focused. There were
lifetimes between us, though she wasn’t much younger than Wadia and I’d bonded with him immediately. I sighed, turning the
stone.

“She comes!” suddenly echoed through the courtyard. Shana came out of nowhere and pushed me off the grindstone. One of Dadua’s
concubines, Hag’it, gathered the flour quickly, then both women vanished through the courtyard gates.

Who was coming? Men and women began to flood through the courtyard, and no one paid me and ’Sheva any attention. “Did you
see the spectacle he is making of himself over her?” I heard.

’Sheva’s head rose up, like a puppet on a string. She turned to me, eyes focused. “Mik’el,” she said, grabbing my hand. We
ran through the courtyard, out the gate, and into the crowd.

It seemed as though every citizen of Mamre was outside, all pushing toward the gate. ’Sheva was lean and slippery, and she
never let go of my hand as we squeezed through the crowds, pushed and shoved through the throng by the gates, until we stood
in the front. Dadua stood at the city gate wall, dressed in his finery.

Sunlight glinted off the crown on his head. He wore a purplish blue dress edged in gold that spiraled around his legs. His
beard and hair were oiled, and gold hoops hung in his ears. Even his sandals were gold. N’tan stood to his side, his official
white ensemble brilliant in the afternoon light. At certain angles N’tan looked really familiar.

“Isn’t he divine?” ’Sheva said, staring at the monarch.

What was going on? I glanced at Dadua. “
Ken
, he is very comely.”

“He writes the most divine music,” she said, entranced.

I was peering over the crowd, trying to see what we were all waiting for. The crowd had bottlenecked, so we couldn’t move
forward. I muttered something affirmative to ’Sheva.

“He is divine with a slingshot,” she continued. The girl was a groupie, I realized. With a one-word vocabulary.

“I see the years haven’t humbled her,” somebody behind me said.

Through the shadows of the gateway a woman approached on a white donkey led by a finely dressed warrior. A man followed behind,
ashes smeared on his head, his clothes torn so that the dingy white of his undershirt showed. Behind him trailed four small
children, the eldest carrying an infant.

“It took so long to gather her because she needed to wait out her time of impurity. She just birthed her last son,” another
crowd member said.

“Look at her, dressed as a bride,” a woman scoffed. “A virgin, by the eye of Ashterty, I think not!”

“Only those arrogant Binyami would dare send a bride who was married to another man.”

“It’s a wonder Dadua wants her back.”

“She’s a harlot!”

“She was a tool of Labayu’s revenge.”

Comments floated all around me, useless since I didn’t know what was going on and no explanations were forthcoming. Even ’Sheva
was paying no attention, just watching Dadua and sighing. This child had a major huge crush on the king of Israel. I imagined
she could get in a long line on that count. Though he always had the option of adding to his collection, I doubted he’d ever
look at her.

The object of all the surrounding gossip walked right in front of me. She was veiled, and gold disks hung from her headdress
and the edges of her veiling and banded around her arms and legs. The woman carried at least twenty extra pounds in currency.

Who was she? “Why is she back, then? If she was so happy?” The crowd conversation continued.

“Dadua made it part of the
b’rith
covenant when he agreed to rule over Yuda and Y’srael.”

“
Ach
, so he unites the old house of Labayu with the new house of Dadua.”

She was Mik’el, Saul’s daughter? Dadua’s first wife? The weeping of the gray-haired man following her made my heart clench.
He must love her deeply to humiliate himself like that.

Mik’el didn’t spare him as much as a glance.

Dadua stepped down and lifted her off the donkey, then set her beside him. A snap of his fingers produced another crown. He
lifted her face veil, shielding her from the crowd with his body. As the crown touched her head, the wails of the child, forsaken
by his mother, rent the air. Dadua kissed Mik’el on both cheeks, then turned her to face her subjects.