Word Fulfilled, The (28 page)

Her mother sat motionless. The only movement in the room, save the flickering of the torches, came from a tear that streamed down her cheek.

“I don’t understand. My father then . . .” Ianna’s whisper faded.

Her mother shook her head. “No, Abim was not your father.”

Hulalitu stifled a sigh of relief as the elder woman’s voice resumed, although now more quietly. She edged closer to the corner of the platform, but the women’s hushed tones were lost in the sputter of the nearby torch. She leaned out from behind the platform. Neither woman was visible around the front of the podium. Hulalitu paused, wracked with uncertainty, but only for a moment. Despite the risk, she couldn’t bear to lose the rest of the story. Her decision came quickly.

The
naditu
slipped around the corner of the platform and sidled along its wall until she reached the staircase. The voices grew clearer. She surmised the women must be on the steps. Hulalitu turned her back to the platform and slid to the floor. From here she could hear every word.

“Abim did not return with the remnant of the army. There were stories of a battle that had gone poorly. Many men were lost. Abim, we feared, was one of them.”

“Then my father . . . ?” Ianna pressed for clarification.

“It is the custom among our people that, if a married man dies, it’s the duty of the next older brother to take the widow as his own wife. Your father honored the law, and I entered his house.” She drew a deep breath. “He was not my Abim, but I learned to love him.”

“‘Our people’?” Ianna cocked her head.

Her mother nodded. “The home your grandfather left was Jerusalem.” She reached over and lifted the medallion from her daughter’s lap and traced its surface with a fingertip. “This emblem is called a
menorah
. It is the symbol of the Hebrews. You are a child of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Ianna. You are a Jewess.”

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!

Ianna’s fragmented thoughts flew back to that evening when the young man in her bedchamber told her of such a God. A God, he said, who valued her. A God who loved her and wanted only her love and devotion in return. Although such a notion had struck her as foolish, to be discarded as sheer nonsense, she recalled that something in his words would not leave her. Could it be that this God was in the young man’s words themselves, that the words carried a power released the moment they were uttered? Did gods do that? Did they work that way?

She felt no such tug on her conscience when she chanted the prescribed devotions to Mother Ishtar. Could the man have been right? Ianna remembered telling him she was cursed. She also remembered that she had no answer when he asked if she ever felt cursed before coming to this temple. The answer now sprang to the forefront of her mind. No. She had never felt cursed until she crossed the threshold of this shrine.

She squeezed her eyes shut. What was happening to her?

Her mother’s voice penetrated her troubled mind. “Before your father was Mordac, he was Mordecai, a Jew of the tribe of Judah. Before Hani, I was Hannah, a Jewess of the same tribe. My family was displaced to Nineveh in an exile many years ago. When your father lost his brother, Abim—his name also shortened from the Hebrew name Abimelech—his heart was broken. Your grandfather died within a year, and I think something in your father snapped. His heart hardened. He blamed God for the loss of his home and his family. He determined then to live without God, to meld into Ninevite society and establish his legacy here. That’s when he changed our names, even the name of his late brother. He wanted to obscure our Hebrew roots, so we would better fit our new Assyrian identity.”

Hannah’s voice dropped further. “It also drove his desire, his need, for a son to carry on his name. After many years of trying, I gave him a daughter, but my labor was very difficult. I could never carry a child to term again. He withdrew from me more with each failed pregnancy.”

Ianna’s mind reeled. There were so many more questions she needed to ask, but she had no idea where to begin.

“Your temple ceremony was all part of fitting in. It was—” her voice caught—“‘what is done.’”

Ianna slumped against the steps, her strength ebbing with every word her mother spoke. The disparate fragments of her life finally came together. She felt anew her father’s distance, the perpetual sadness latent in her mother, her own lack of self-identity, of self-worth in a family and a world that never seemed at peace together. Her jaw tightened at the realization of what she was in the light of what she was meant to be. Because of her father’s weakness, her family had lost everything it could have been in his quest for what it could never be.

Hannah shook her head. “I didn’t want you to come here. Your father insisted. I begged him to reconsider. I told him this is not the way for a child of the Promise. Your body, your soul, your very life belong to God. I told your father the ritual was a travesty—that your first love should come in the arms of your husband in the sanctity of your marriage bed. Like mine was.” She looked back up at Ianna, fresh tears on her cheeks. “Not in the arms of a stranger, not in this . . . this pagan brothel they call a temple.” She hung her head. “I should have fought harder. I should have . . .”

Ianna closed her eyes, at a loss for a meaningful word of solace for her mother.

“Your father and I expected you back within a day or two. That’s all it should have been. I secretly prayed I could make it up to you, that God would somehow forgive our idolatry, our transgression. Also, that He might heal you of this foul act.”

“When you didn’t return after a week, I came to the temple. I tried to see you more than once but was turned away. I began then to believe that we were under judgment. We turned our backs on God, so He left us to pay for our error. When I was told they made you a priestess, and that we had lost you, I was certain He had forsaken us. We allowed—no, we forced—you to surrender your precious virginity on the altar of a heathen goddess, an idol. For that, surely there is no forgiveness; there is no healing.”

“Mother?” Ianna touched Hannah’s arm.

“We lost . . . I lost all hope of ever seeing you again. I believed if I came here with the brooch, something tangible, that you might relent and see me.” Her mother’s hand trembled under Ianna’s touch.

“Mother, there is nothing to heal.”

Hannah looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I was never consummated.”

Her mother shook her head, puzzlement evident in her eyes.

Ianna’s cheeks tinged pink in the glow of the torchlight. “Over the months I received many men in my bedchamber, but none was able to follow through, to perform. I don’t know why, Mother, but I remain a virgin.”

Hannah’s face broadened in joy and disbelief. “But how, then, can you be here, in this room as the High Priestess? I don’t understand.”

Both women jumped at the hoarse voice that split the air.

“I am to blame for that.”

Lll

Ianna leaped to her feet, the fire back in her eyes. The gold medallion clattered to the floor. Hannah twisted in her seat and gaped in the direction of the voice.

“What are you—how did you get in here?” The High Priestess drew herself up, her jaw clenched as Hulalitu rose into view beside the stairs.

The
naditu
kept her eyes on the floor and clasped her arms across her waist.

Hannah pushed slowly to her feet. “You . . . you’re the priestess who turned me away when I tried to visit my daughter.”

Hulalitu nodded but didn’t look up.

Ianna stalked around the edge of the platform to within a pace of her former mentor. She bore down on the cringing woman, her hands jammed onto her hips. “I could have you banished for this,” she growled through clenched teeth.

“Ianna . . .” Her mother’s voice barely pierced her fury.

“How dare you enter these chambers unannounced! I demand to know how you got in here. Now! Before I have you dragged out and beaten,” Ianna seethed as she unleashed all her pent-up emotion at the silent priestess.

Hannah’s voice sharpened. “Ianna.”

“Answer me when I speak to you!” Ianna raised her arm and threatened a backhand across Hulalitu’s face.

Her mother’s shout froze her. “Ianna!”

The irate
Entu
spun and glared at her mother.

Hannah’s voice softened. “Ianna . . . look at her.”

The High Priestess swiveled her head back toward the silent
naditu
, her eyes mere slits. Hulalitu had not moved, even under the threat of Ianna’s hand. She stared at the floor, and her body shuddered in the sudden stillness. A single tear fell from her cheek and disintegrated into a ragged splotch on the floor.

Ianna’s chest heaved and she lowered her hand, but her face remained hard. With a deep breath, she settled back on her heels.

Hannah exhaled. “Perhaps she can explain. If we let her.”

Ianna’s eyes remained on Hulalitu. “She
will
explain.”

Hulalitu appeared frozen in place until Hannah stepped forward and touched Hulalitu’s hand. Then the
naditu
jolted and lifted her eyes. She stared at Hannah, then broke her stance with a shallow cough.

Hannah clasped the priestess’s hand and motioned to the steps. “Come. Please sit down.”

Hulalitu took a half step forward and glanced toward her High Priestess but didn’t make eye contact. She allowed herself to be led to the steps, her hand limp in Hannah’s.

Ianna did not move but watched her mother and Hulalitu settle onto the stairs. Anger, pride, and the imperiousness even her short time as High Priestess fostered in her kept her from joining the other two women where they sat. She stood with her arms crossed and waited.

Hannah released Hulalitu’s hand. “What is it you need to tell us? What do you mean you are to blame for Ianna’s presence here?”

Hulalitu swallowed. “Perhaps I should start from the beginning.”

Lll

Fourteen-year-old Hulalitu sat quietly on her sleep mat four weeks after her
ishtaritu
ceremony. Her consummation in the arms of a nameless stranger had come six nights after she came to the temple. She had remained because there was nowhere else to go. Her parents had left for Kal
ḫ
u to be near their son. They did not send for her.

Prahthath hovered over the young girl, her hands on her hips. “What do you mean? What are you telling me?”

The young
ishtaritu
flinched. “I have not yet stained the cloth. I should have with Sin’s full face. He has gone dark now.”

“Are you sure?” her mentor’s voice rasped.

“I am.”

“What were you thinking, you fool! You do not come for your ceremony when you are fertile. You plan your initiation rite around that. You knew that.”

“But I—”

“But what? There is no ‘but’!” Prahthah spun on her heel and paced the room.

Hulalitu pleaded, “My womanhood began late. I thought I knew my cycle, but it has not been regular—”

“Nonsense!” The
naditu
stomped her foot. “Do you know what this means? It’s a disgrace to conceive during your initiation to the Mother Goddess. And it disgraces not only you, but me as your mentor.” She rolled her eyes. “How could you do this?”