In the Field of Grace (47 page)

“Are you afraid of him—of this god?” she blurted out.

The fact that she had asked him this question would have been an insult to any other man. But Debir took no notice of the impropriety of her words. He stood suddenly and began to pace in the narrow room. “The
Lord
. That’s what they call him,” he said, dropping to one knee very close to Rahab. She could feel the warmth of
his wine-soaked breath as he spoke. “Everyone’s afraid. Even the barracks are filled with dread. If Og and Sihon couldn’t withstand the
Lord
, how can we? He isn’t interested in terms. He isn’t interested in compromise. He is like a consuming fire. You ask me if I’m afraid. Rahab, I have never known fear … until now.”

“You think we’re going to die.” It wasn’t a question. She could see the conviction stamped on every line of his face. The Lord. Finally, she had encountered a god of power
and
compassion. And he was her enemy.

“Yes. I do. I imagine it’s not going to happen for many weeks yet. The river is on our side because it’s at flood stage. You can’t cross an army through at this time, but as the waters dry up, they will come.”

“How will they get through our walls? No one has been able to do that, not for centuries, not since it’s been built up to this height and width.”

“You’re right. No
army
can get through these walls. But we’re not talking about an army; we’re talking about a god. No wall can withstand his will.” Debir bowed his head as he said this, and she caught a glimpse of something she never thought to see on his face. Despair. He had no hope. In that moment she became convinced of Jericho’s doom.

When Debir left, Rahab was filled with a sudden desire to be outside, away from the constraint of her home. Her sandals clattered down the stairs inside the dark bowels of the wall and then, relieved, she emerged into the bright day. Taking a deep breath she began to walk, her feet moving of their own accord.

A short way from her inn she turned down a narrow lane and came upon a group of playing children. Their noise drew her from her thoughts, and she gazed at them with a smile. Her smile faded as she realized the nature of their game. They had surrounded a beggar and were pelting him with stones and obscenities. The old man crouched in a corner, his trembling hands covering his face.

As a sharp rock cut the man’s forehead, blood welled up on the wrinkled skin and began dripping into his eye.

A girl pointed a finger at the beggar and shouted, “Look how his white beard is shaking—he’s starting to cry! Hit him again!”

“Cry nothing,” laughed a boy. “I think he might wet his pants!”

“Ee-uw!” Several spectators gasped, and cheered with laughter. “Leave him alone!” Rahab shouted.

The boy, about to hurl another rock, stopped short and looked at Rahab in her fine clothes. “My lady, he’s just a beggar, can’t you see?”

“Leave him alone, I said.”

They were all staring at her now. “What do you mean? He’s just a beggar. He stinks!”

Rahab grew very still. It was true that her people treated vagrants worse than stray dogs. She herself would have walked right by him without a glance on most days. She might not have tormented him, but she certainly wouldn’t have thought about his plight, either.

She examined the young faces before her. They displayed no remorse. No conviction. No regret. These were mere children, yet already they had learned to step on the weak and hate the helpless.

“Get out of here,” she rasped. They obeyed her, partly because she was an adult, but also because her clothes were finer than theirs. The people of Jericho did know how to respect money.

She knelt by the old man. “Are you hurt badly?”

He shrank back and said nothing. She saw that his cut was superficial, another injury to add to the scores he had received in the course of his life. Reaching inside her linen pouch, she found a few silver coins, probably more than the old man had ever seen in one place. Placing the coins in his palm she said, “Go and find a safe place to wash and sleep. And put some warm food in your belly.” His jaw dropped open, and she saw that his teeth had rotted away. The pathetic sight of that mouth, toothless, filled with decay, stinking of putrefaction, made her heart melt with pity instead of disgust.

He wrapped shaking fingers around the coins. Raising that wobbly fist he cried, “A curse on them! A thousand curses on those children!”

“Shhh,” Rahab whispered. Without understanding her own
actions, she reached out and held the man as a mother might hold a precious child. Surprisingly, he began to weep, broken sobs that seemed to have no end.

With painful insight she realized they were not much different. She too had putrefying wounds, though they were deep within. She too was forsaken. She too was rejected. Her life too had been wasted. No, she felt no disgust for him. Only sorrow and pity.

When he had quieted, she rose up. “Lady,” he rasped. “No one has held me like that since I was a boy.”

Rahab smiled and nodded. Drained by the encounter, she began to walk away, then broke into a heedless run toward home.

She recounted the story to Debir when next he came to visit her. He shrugged, dismissing it with ease. “He’s a beggar, Rahab. I don’t know why you bothered.”

Rahab studied him silently. Debir was closer to a friend than anyone she had known since childhood. She liked his forthrightness, his intelligence. She basked in his unusual acceptance of her. And yet she had to admit he was hard. Impenetrable. “Do you think the god of the Hebrews would care about beggars?” she asked, trying to goad him into some feeling.

“How should I know? Am I a Hebrew? He cares for babies and slaves. Maybe he cares about beggars too.”

Rahab turned away bleakly. “And yet he plans to destroy us.”

“Yes.”

She felt torn between fear and longing. Terror over a god who despised her people and longing for a god who championed the forgotten. Terror won. Without thinking, she reached for Debir’s hand and held onto its rough, broad surface until her fingers turned white. “Debir, let’s escape. Let’s run from Jericho.”

“There is no escape. Don’t you see? The
Lord
has marked out this whole land for his people.”

“We’ll go somewhere else. We’ll—”

“Rahab, stop. I’ll not run. Why should I bend my knee to this wandering rabble and their tenderhearted god? I am a man of Jericho, a lord of Canaan. I will not betray my position or my people.” He pulled his hand out of hers and moved away.

Rahab opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again. Debir felt none of the pull or longing for this new god that she felt. He was only afraid of his power. And that fear did not compare to the measure of his pride. How could Rahab pit herself against Debir’s pride when his own fear of the Hebrew god could not dent it?

A great sadness settled over her as she studied his tense back. Their time together was at an end, she knew. He was a man who believed he had no future. A man preparing to die. Dying men returned to their families. Suddenly the very things they avoided as annoying or cumbersome seemed precious and worthwhile. Their harlots no longer answered for their needs.

She approached him and waited near him until he acknowledged her with a glance. She caressed his face with a tender hand. “May you live long, my lord.”

“Are we saying good-bye?”

“It is best.”

He nodded with a soldier’s disciplined movement. “May the god of the Hebrews deal kindly with you. Our own gods seem to have abandoned us.”

“I abandoned them first, so their loss is no great sorrow to me.” He gave the ghost of a smile. “I will send you a token. Don’t bother saving any of it. Spend it as soon as you can.”

In the ensuing days Rahab spent long hours brooding over her future. She thought about the destructive ways of Jericho and of the pointless passions of her countrymen that led only to unhappiness and destruction. She thought about the Hebrews and their
strange customs. Most of all, she thought about their god. She could not pluck him out of her thoughts. Could there really be a god who ruled over everything? Could he be real, this phantom of the Hebrews who saved some and condemned others with incomprehensible rationale? Did he really champion slaves?

After three days of such thoughts and no human contact she knew she was in need of a diversion. She decided to call on her family.

“Do my eyes play tricks on me or is my younger daughter actually honoring me with a visit?”

Rahab’s smile was dry. Her mother reached on tiptoes and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Izzie and Gerazim are here too. The whole family’s together.”

For a moment Rahab felt a wrenching pang. If she had not happened by, would they have invited her? And why should they? She had spurned so many of their invitations in the past. Though she often sent gifts, her visits were few.

“I’ll be glad to see everyone,” she said honestly.

“Is that my little sister?” Izzie cried and ran over to envelop Rahab in a hug. “Looking ravishing as always. Come and soil your exquisite robe. I’m cooking and I could use your help.” She leaned closer so that only Rahab could hear her. “Mother is causing me to lose my mind.”

Rahab laughed, feeling the tension drain from her body. Cooking with Izzie sounded delightful.

“Mother, now that I have Rahab, you can rest from cooking,” Izzie announced. “Why don’t you go enjoy your grandchildren?”

“What, and leave you girls to ruin our supper? I don’t think so.”

Izzie growled under her breath. “Pardon, but I have been running my own household long enough to manage a family dinner. As for Rahab, she owns a famous inn.”

“Thank you for the reminder, as if I could forget,” Rahab’s mother said, her lips turning white.

Now Rahab remembered why she rarely visited. Izzie dug a
sharp elbow into her side. “Ignore her. You come with me.” To Rahab’s relief, their mother did not follow, and she spent two hours helping prepare several dishes for the family’s supper. Her sisters-in-law joined in after a while and Rahab found herself laughing over stupid stories. She missed her family in spite of their annoying comments and stressful expectations. She had missed them and hadn’t known it.

As the days unfolded, she found herself spending more and more time with them. With the women she weeded the garden, fetched water, made cheese and yogurt from goat milk, bartered in the bazaar, and spun wool. In time, the season for harvesting the flax and barley arrived, so Rahab joined her family in the fields more out of a desire for companionship than for financial gain. Debir’s “token” turned out to be a substantial bag of gold large enough to see her through a year. If she had a year, which she doubted.

She didn’t believe she had a future anymore. Still, she scraped her hands raw, pulling flax from the root to protect the fragile stems that would yield linen. Who would live to use these stalks? Who would put the yarn on a loom and weave them into linen? Who would dye them? Sew them? Wear them? And yet she pulled and pulled, until the field about her was cleared and her bundles piled high.

Her family wasn’t immune to the dread spreading over Jericho as continuous reports of Hebrew victories reached their gates. By its very nature, harvesting forced them to think about the future. And their future boded ill. The enemy was close.

The night they completed the harvest there was little of the usual joviality that accompanied the last day of reaping. Rahab took her share of the flax stalks home in an old cart and laid them out on the roof to dry. She was exhausted from her labors. Too weary even to wash the sweat from her skin, she slid down against the wall and rested her head on her knees.

She hurt, flesh and heart. An overwhelming sense of isolation swept through her. For all the time she spent with her family these
days, and despite their kindness toward her, she felt as if she belonged to no one. She longed for sleep to release her from the pain of thinking. Of
feeling
. But sleep would not come.

She was trapped. Trapped in the solitude of her heart, which no amount of companionship seemed able to pierce. Trapped in her body, the body of a harlot besmirched by a dozen men. Trapped in Jericho, which stood trembling before an enemy whose advances could not be turned away by walls of stone and mortar. Trapped in Canaan, which was marked for destruction by a god who claimed to have dominion over the whole world. She was trapped.