Rashi's Daughters, Book II: Miriam (13 page)

Meir must have realized this. “I’m sorry, Meshullam. I’ve been acting like a spoiled child.” He sounded beaten and broken.

There was silence on the other side of the bushes, and Joheved held her breath for fear that they might discover her. Then she heard Meshullam’s voice coming from down the hill.

“Let’s keep this to ourselves. No point upsetting Mama and Papa with talk of what will happen after he’s gone.”

“Agreed.” The last words Joheved could make out were those of her husband. “I also need time to break the news to my wife.”

Oblivious to the coltsfoot beneath her, Joheved sank down on the ground. It was so unfair—Meir would be miserable in Ramerupt, buried in the countryside. Look at Papa. Even now, ten years later and head of his own small yeshiva, he still missed his old colleagues in the Rhineland and bitterly regretted that he’d been forced to leave them.

The coltsfoot
. She jumped up and was relieved to see that the small plants were undamaged. She picked as many as she could carry, the jubilation she’d felt when she’d first found the elusive herb now gone. Somehow she’d have to hide her despair. Meir mustn’t know she’d been listening.

Pushing her way through the bushes, Joheved stopped to look down at the bucolic scene. The gentle hills were green with new grass and dotted with sheep, whose soft bleating drifted up to her. Below, the manor stood serene and protected behind its grey stone walls, surrounded by fields of wheat. How peaceful and pleasant it looked. It didn’t seem possible that anyone could be unhappy living here.

She was still admiring the view when a new thought startled her.
I will have to move to Ramerupt as well.
A stab of guilt assailed her; she’d probably be happier living here than her husband. Nobody in Ramerupt would know she’d been poor. Here she’d have more servants than she’d know what to do with, and they’d call her Lady Joheved. No one could make her spin and do embroidery if what she really wanted to do was study Torah, and she’d have Meir for her study partner. But her good life would be bought at the price of his misery.

Still trying to sort out her feelings, Joheved reached the manor gate. The doctor and Meshullam’s family had arrived; the courtyard was a bustle of people. Francesca and Miriam were talking to a small, slender woman dressed in traveling clothes, whom Joheved assumed to be Meshullam’s wife, Mathilde.

Marona was hugging two reticent little girls, while Moses was talking with an extremely thin boy. Joheved tried not to stare, but it was difficult, for there was obviously something wrong with his legs. He wore some kind of leather supports tied to them, and he leaned heavily on a pair of crutches. As Joheved surmised, the girls were introduced as Meshullam’s daughters, Columbine and Iris, and the crippled boy was his son, Jacob.

After
souper
Joheved returned from the privy to find that the men had taken the children to search for
hametz
on this night before Passover began. Marona had secreted small crusts of bread in several rooms, and Joheved could hear the children’s squeals of pleasure as they discovered them. Relieved at avoiding Meir, she sat down at the table with the women. Their conversation revolved around childbirth, and Joheved was glad to let her sister and Meshullam’s wife supply the bulk of it.

“It was a miracle that I survived Jacob’s birth,” Mathilde said breathlessly, as if she had only given birth recently.

Miriam leaned over and whispered something in her ear, so that the two of them quickly glanced at Francesca before Mathilde continued, her demeanor subdued. Joheved listened with only half an ear as her sister-in-law first described the harrowing ordeal that had left her poor son so disabled, followed by her efforts to starve herself during subsequent pregnancies so as to produce babies small enough to fit through her narrow birth passage. It was only when Mathilde declared that she’d decided not to bear any more children that Joheved’s attention returned.

Francesca’s eyes were wide with surprise. “But won’t your husband divorce you if you won’t have relations with him?”

“Who said anything about not having relations with my husband?” Mathilde said. “All I do is apply some spearmint juice to a
mokh
before we use the bed, and drink a cup of wine mixed with a spoonful of wild carrot seeds the next morning, and, voilà, no more babies.”

“Miriam, is that the same as Yehudit’s sterilizing potion in Tractate Yevamot?” Joheved had forgotten her audience. When she saw the shock on Mathilde and Francesca’s faces at her mention of studying Talmud, she blushed and hesitated, leaving Miriam to explain.

“In the Talmud, we learned about Rav Chiya’s wife Yehudit, who bore two sets of twins and suffered so terribly during their births that she disguised herself and asked her husband if women, as well as men, were commanded to procreate.”

Joheved could no longer remain silent. “He told her that women were not obligated to procreate, so she drank a sterilizing potion. When Rav Chiya found out, he was greatly grieved, but he couldn’t challenge her decision.”

“I don’t think Yehudit used wild carrot seeds in wine.” Miriam answered her sister’s original question. “Her potion sounds permanent. Where did you get your recipe, Mathilde?”

“My midwife told me to use it.”

“I know mint’s a contraceptive, but I’ve never heard of using wild carrot seeds before,” Miriam said. “I’ll have to start growing them for my patients.”

 

Salomon, Rivka, and Rachel arrived early the next morning, and as happy as they were to find Miriam in good health, she was happier to see them. Joheved had warned her about Rachel, but Miriam was awed by her not-so-little sister’s beauty and a little sad to see the grey in Papa’s beard when she hugged him. Of course he and Mama were getting older too. Still, it felt so good to have her family together again.

Surrounded by friends and family, grateful that her husband had escaped the Angel of Death, Marona hummed a happy tune as she laid out her best linens and dishes for the festive meal. Freed from the burden of preparing their own homes for the festival, Rivka and Mathilde cheerfully discussed which ritual food would be best placed on which platter as they set the table. Rivka was especially pleased at how well Miriam looked, not that she would tempt the Evil Eye by saying so.

Francesca insisted on helping Miriam make the
haroset,
the thick concoction of fruit, wine, nuts, and spices meant to recall the mortar from which the Israelite slaves built bricks for their Egyptian task masters.

“To think that I never believed the rumors about Rav Salomon teaching you and Joheved Talmud,” Francesca said.

Miriam grinned. “Now you can tell everyone that they’re true. And I hear that Rachel is studying Talmud as well.” For months she’d had to sleep all alone, and now she would share a bed with her little sister again. If only Aunt Sarah could have come, but one midwife had to remain in Troyes.

Besides the usual apples and walnuts, Francesca added some chopped figs and dates that her mother had sent from Rome. Then, with an embarrassed smile, she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you what a
mokh
is. I didn’t want look stupid last night.”

“A
mokh
is a small plug of wool that a woman places in her womb to prevent pregnancy,” Miriam explained. “Most women don’t know about them because they want to get pregnant.”

The
haroset
was almost done. Miriam mixed in the cinnamon and ginger, used because they contain some stalks even when ground, thus resembling the straw that the Hebrew slaves kneaded into the clay. She sighed with pleasure as Rachel chose the most perfect circles of matzah from the batch her family had brought from Troyes and carefully stacked them on the table.

The delicious smells coming from the hearth had everyone’s mouths watering when Salomon stuck his head in the kitchen and announced, “You women had better start getting dressed; we’ll be starting the afternoon prayers soon.”

“But Papa, we saved the garlic for you.” Rachel held out a handful of the cloves.

“I’d better get to work then.” He hurried to the pantry table. “Heaven forbid that I should be responsible for delaying the seder.”

Miriam smiled as her father sat down. She could not remember a festival when Papa hadn’t cut up the garlic. He had a special technique for chopping the cloves into tiny pieces without any sticking to the knife. He sprinkled a pinch of salt and a drop of olive oil over the garlic, then he began to dice it.

“You see,” he explained to Mathilde’s curious daughters, who were amazed to see the scholar working in the kitchen. “The salt acts as an abrasive, helping to cut the garlic, and the oil keeps the pieces from sticking to the knife’s blade.”

When Joheved and Miriam finished their prayers and came downstairs, Joheved dressed in her blue silk wedding dress and Miriam in the deep yellow outfit that Marona had given her, Rivka’s face shone with pride. If Rivka noticed Rachel’s look of envy, she gave no indication of it. As much as Rachel begged for a new dress for festivals, Rivka insisted on no new clothes until her daughter stopped growing. If the family’s old wine-colored wool
bliauts
were good enough for her and her husband, they were good enough for her daughter.

Once everyone took their seats around the large table, Salomon began by breaking off a piece of matzah, holding it up and declaring, “This is the matzah, bread of affliction, which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.” Then, gazing fondly at his middle daughter, now healthy again, he asked, “Matzah is also called the bread of poverty. How do we remember this?”

Miriam, who had heard Papa explain the significance of matzah many times, was ready with the answer. She smiled at him and replied, “The rest of the year, we eat our bread with salt. But salt is too expensive for slaves, so tonight we eat our matzah, the bread of poverty, without salt.” And indeed, there were no saltcellars on the table.

Now it was time for the youngest boy present to ask the four questions, whose answers were found in the Haggadah, the text that told the story of the Israelites’ redemption from slavery in Egypt. Rachel always asked them at home, and she stared sullenly at her plate as Jacob struggled through the text.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?”

His words, which seemed to require a great deal of exertion, were garbled and strange, but it didn’t matter. Everyone knew the questions; they were the same every year. Miriam felt a wave of sadness for the boy who spoke with such difficulty. But Meshullam and Mathilde beamed with pride.

As they continued with the seder, telling the story of the Israelites’ delivery from slavery into freedom, then thanking and praising the Holy One for the miracles that brought this about, Meir grew increasingly morose. Here they were, singing about freedom, and he was as much a slave to this estate as the villeins were. And it would take a miracle to free him.

 

The next morning, when Miriam and Joheved were gathering more coltsfoot, Miriam confronted her sister. “Is something the matter between you and Meir? I haven’t seen you both so miserable since the demon bound him.”

Joheved explained what she had overheard, and it was as if a weight had been lifted from her even before her sister spoke.

“Poor Meir, no wonder he looks crushed.” Miriam thought for a moment. “I don’t understand why he can’t let the steward run the estate for him. That’s the fellow’s job, after all.”

Joheved didn’t know what was the lord’s responsibility and what was the steward’s, and she said so.

“I spent a lot of time riding with the countess and her ladies this winter.” Miriam’s voice rose with excitement. “And I learned that lords rarely stay home and oversee one estate.”

“They don’t?”

“All noble ladies manage their husbands’ estates when the men are off fighting or visiting other lords.” Miriam grabbed Joheved’s shoulders. “And you can too.”

“
Moi?
” Joheved nearly dropped her armful of coltsfoot. “Run this estate by myself?”

“Not right away. At first you can just help Samuel and Marona,” Miriam said. “You’ll need a good steward, but that’s easy. The squires here are training to become stewards, and when you get a good one, you keep him.”

As they filled their bags, Joheved pondered her sister’s proposal. Suddenly tears came to her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Miriam asked.

“I know your solution is a good one, but if Meir stays at the yeshiva in Troyes while I live in Ramerupt, I won’t have anyone to study with.” And she’d also be spending most of her nights alone in bed.

Miriam put her arm around Joheved’s waist. Another loss. She and Joheved had grown up studying Torah together. “Troyes isn’t that far away, surely you can spend Shabbat with us.”

 

Miriam’s feelings warred within her when Salomon suggested that the festival week would be a good time to review Tractate Pesachim. She very much missed studying with her sisters, and if Joheved’s scheme worked, this might be their last opportunity to study together. But how could she study Pesachim without thinking of Benjamin? That was the tractate they were studying when he asked to marry her.

Joheved longed to study with Miriam and their father. But Mama wouldn’t want her openly learning Talmud with Meshullam and Samuel, and heaven knows what Marona and Mathilde would think.

Rachel had no such inhibitions. After the midday meal, when Salomon laid his
kuntres
on the cleared table, Rachel eagerly asked him what tractate they would be studying, smiled at his answer, and sat down next to him. Then she called to Miriam, “Come be my study partner.”

Miriam quickly sat on Rachel’s other side, and Joheved sighed as their mother’s lips set into a tight, angry line. A moment later Rivka stalked out, muttering, “Excuse me. I need some fresh air.” Marona and Francesca followed her.

Mathilde could see that her older daughter’s interest was piqued, and she quickly ushered the two girls from the dining room. Columbine’s plaintive, “Why can’t I stay and study too? Jacob gets to,” was followed by Mathilde’s, “Because I said so.”