Rebekah: Women of Genesis (13 page)

At once someone touched her arm. Rebekah whirled to see a stern-looking man looming over her, holding a lamp inside a pierced jar. Of course Ezbaal had set a guard to watch over the women’s tent!

Rebekah waited to be recognized, but then realized that was stupid. She had not been seen without her veil by any man in Ezbaal’s party, so how would this poor fellow recognize her? Indeed, if she had been thinking straight, she would have worn her veil—in fact, she could not think why she had forgotten to wear it, since it had been second nature to her for years to put it on whenever she ventured outside, day or night. Yet tonight she had forgotten it, and so would not be recognized.

All this thought passed in a moment, and she was about to begin to explain who she was when the man’s expression changed to one of embarrassment.

“Ah, mistress, no one told me you were abroad tonight,” he whispered. “But why wouldn’t you simply go in?”

His seeming recognition of her confused him. Had Akyas and the other women described her
so
carefully? And why should she simply walk in? “Am I expected, then?”

“You are careful, mistress,” he said with a shy smile. “I hope I passed your test.” Then he backed away into the darkness, taking the faint lamplight with him.

Different households trained their servants in different ways, apparently. What was there to do now, but simply part the flap and go inside?

The lamp flickered from a low table, and before it a woman knelt, praying to an image—of Asherah, Rebekah supposed, since it was obviously of a woman—while on two of the three sides of the tent, two heaps of blankets and the slight sound of breathing showed where Ezbaal’s mother and grandmother no doubt lay asleep.

Rebekah was surprised that it was prayer that kept Akyas awake, and not conversation with the other women. But they were older, and had seen many a wedding, so no doubt they needed their sleep in order to make a good showing in the morning.

After a moment, Akyas—for Rebekah supposed it was she, from the slightness of her figure and the fullness of her hair; and who else of the three would be awake the night before the wedding?—finished her prayer, touched her forehead, kissed her fingers, then dipped them into a tiny bowl before the idol and anointed the statue’s head and breasts and hips. Only then did she turn to see whose entry into the tent had made the wick of the lamp flicker and move within the oil.

Her eyes widened in surprise. So Akyas had been expecting to see someone, but not Rebekah.

Rebekah dared not speak loud enough to be heard across the tent—she did not want to waken the others. So she made as if to leave.

Immediately Akyas beckoned to her, insistently, as if she would brook no argument. Rebekah came quietly across the rugs—fine thick rugs, heavy for the beasts to carry, but just what Ezbaal was bound to provide for the women of his house. Akyas lifted the lamp and held it between them. So quietly that her breath did not make the lamp’s flame flicker, Akyas said, “I hoped that you would come.”

That might be true enough, thought Rebekah, but it didn’t change the fact that she had been expecting someone else. “I would have come sooner,” Rebekah answered, “but I did not know if your seclusion . . .”

Akyas waved her hand dismissively. “Let’s go outside to talk. Old women sleep lightly.”

“I heard that,” murmured Ethah.

“And thereby proved me right,” said Akyas softly.

“Get out, you pack of hooting baboons,” Ethah said; and then, almost as a continuation of the same sentence, she snored.

Akyas, laughing silently, led the way out of the tent. When they were well away from any one tent, Akyas spoke quietly. “I wish you could have met Ethah under better circumstances. She has quite a sharp sense of humor.”

“Or you have,” said Rebekah, smiling. Dim though the nearly moonless night might be, her eyes were used to it by now, and she could see that Akyas’s face was not just pretty in the way people thought, but also lively and intelligent. “I’m so glad I came tonight, though I was afraid you wouldn’t want me.”

“Afraid?” asked Akyas, laughing softly. “You walked right into my tent.”

“But your man outside told me—”

“It’s all right,” said Akyas. “As I said, I hoped you would come. Ezbaal suggested that I stay hidden and veiled, partly I suppose out of pique—he didn’t like having to bargain for you sight unseen—but I thought it would make everything simpler, too. The hardest part of my seclusion has been not seeing you.”

“You flatter me.”

“Not at all. I thought I might gain you as a sister, but will you mind too much that I will have you as daughter instead?”

“Not too much,” said Rebekah with a smile. “I was the first to suggest to Father that there was more than one way to tie the families together.”

Akyas reached out and brushed a wisp of hair out of Rebekah’s face. “Who tends your hair?”

“Deborah, my nurse.”

“You still have a nurse?”

“I was so young when my mother died, Deborah is the only mother I knew. She’s also a kinswoman, and just a bit feeble-minded. She serves me well, and I plan to keep her with me all my life.”

“You’re loyal, then.”

Why did Akyas still seem to be measuring her? “Loyalty begets loyalty,” she answered. “Deborah would die for me. I’m the center of her life.”

“So you have not been wishing for a mother.”

“I see mothers all around me. I don’t see how they treat their children differently from the way Deborah treated me. I think what I’ve missed isn’t so much a mother as having a wife in my father’s life. I see the other women with their husbands, and I think, was my mother like this with my father? Or like that? A nag? A scold? A cowering slave? Or a friend, a strong companion? Trusted or mistrusted? Things I’ll never know.”

“But haven’t you heard stories about her?”

“No one speaks of her,” said Rebekah. “When I was little, and I asked, they said Father didn’t like to have her spoken of. I suppose it made him too sad.”

“And what did
he
say?” asked Akyas.

“He just . . . didn’t answer, when I asked about her. But he got such a sad look on his face, so far away and regretful, that I learned not to mention her. Until his deafness, he was always with me, and I think I made him happy. I thought of that as my job in the camp, the way other women cook or farm or spin.”

“And after he became deaf?”

“I took my place as head of the women. He needed that more, since even
my
presence made him unhappy then.”

“You write to him, so he can understand you.”

“Yes. Laban and I tried to invent how to do it but we got it all wrong. He taught us the writing of the holy books.”

“I can’t write, you know,” said Akyas.

“But of course I’ll teach you.”

“Isn’t it a holy language? I serve Asherah. You know that, don’t you?”

“If I didn’t before, I do now,” said Rebekah. “But no, the language is just . . . the common speech of every day. The letters aren’t holy, only the books.”

“Ah. Religious things can be so complicated. You never know what a man will get prickly about.”

“And Father will let you worship Asherah?”

“In private. That was worked out in advance.”

“And what about your children?” asked Rebekah, thinking of the problem she had faced.

To her consternation, Akyas laughed aloud, catching herself at once, but continuing to laugh silently, as if this were the most amusing question in the world. Finally she spoke. “I think it is safe to say that any children I have with Bethuel will grow up loyal to his god.”

His god. Well, there was one person, at least, who didn’t call him the God of Abraham. But hearing it said that way made it sound as if God were just one god among many. He wasn’t the god of Bethuel, he was God. But of course he wouldn’t seem that way to Akyas. This was going to be complicated. To have someone in the camp who didn’t speak of the Lord as if he were the only living God.

“And that doesn’t bother you? That your children will not serve Asherah?”

“I made my peace with Asherah long ago. If a woman has to choose between her children and her god, I think the children are the better choice.”

Rebekah looked away. It was not the choice
she
had made. Or . . . no, it rather
was
the choice she made, wasn’t it? Not to marry a man at all if he might make her face such an awful choice.

Akyas touched her arm. “My dear child, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Ezbaal will make some girl a wonderful husband, and he will have strong and mighty sons. But I saw that night at supper that you were not the one for him.”

“Oh,” said Rebekah. “I thought you had decided I
was
for him.”

“I did. I did decide that, because I wanted you with me. But it was selfish of me. I was thinking that perhaps I could help you to be happy in spite of the problems that might arise.”

“So you liked me, even though I was so awful to everybody?”

“I liked you
because
you were so awful to everybody. And that wasn’t why I didn’t think you should be with Ezbaal. I simply . . . I know the kind of man Ezbaal is. He will have many children. In fact, he already
does
have many children. No wife, mind you.” Her mind made a sudden turning. “I’ve heard that Bethuel has been chaste ever since your mother . . .”

Rebekah blushed. She had never thought about that aspect of her father’s life. It was rather as if all the flirting and affection she saw between women and men were something for ordinary beings, while Father was above all that.

“Of course you wouldn’t monitor what he does in his travels,” said Akyas.

“In all my life,” said Rebekah, “he has never done anything to cause dissension in the camp.”

Akyas blinked twice, and then apparently understood how obliquely but fully Rebekah had answered her question. “So there is no woman in the camp who will especially resent my coming.”

“They will all be equally delighted,” said Rebekah. “And I suppose they’ll be glad not to take their instructions from a mere girl.”

“You’re hardly a mere girl any more. You’re old enough to marry, after all!”

“I’ll always be a child in this camp. No one doubted my authority, mind you, but most of them had seen me as a naked baby and they didn’t . . . well, they didn’t ever come to me for counsel, if you see what I mean. Orders, but not advice. Everyone was my teacher. And that was good. I think I know every kind of work done in our camp.”

“Which guarantees that when you do marry, it will probably be to a town man, where almost nothing you learned will be useful,” said Akyas wryly.

“Was that a joke or a curse?” asked Rebekah.

“A memory,” said Akyas.

“Ah. Your first husband was a man of the city?”

Akyas looked off into the distance for a moment. Rebekah knew the look. Akyas did not want to talk about her unhappy marriage. She could hint about it, so that people would know that she was not a woman who had reached this age without a husband, but what made the marriage so awful was not to be discussed.

“Rebekah,” said Akyas. “Tomorrow, will you stand with me? To write my words for him? Since he can’t hear my voice.”

“But that’s Ezbaal’s place,” said Rebekah.

“It’s whoever’s place I say it is,” said Akyas. “Ezbaal is my brother. Do you think Laban would dare thwart you if you wanted
me
to stand beside you at
your
wedding?”

“But my father is still alive, so that wouldn’t be Laban’s place.”

“I need an interpreter,” said Akyas. “Someone we both love and trust, to stand between him and me.”

“Then I’ll do it,” said Rebekah. “Though I will
not
go into the marriage tent with you.”

Akyas laughed. “No, there are some things that a deaf man has to do for himself, without interpretation.”

“Why would you . . . why do you say that you love and trust me?”

“Because I do,” said Akyas. “And that’s all the explanation you’re going to get, because . . . well, because you’ve never met you, if you see what I mean, so you don’t know how easy it is for someone to love and trust you.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Rebekah. “Because Ethah and . . . ‘Mother’ . . . didn’t find it all that natural.”

Akyas laughed again. “Oh, you’re a delight. ‘Call me Mother’ indeed. But she . . . simply has to be intimate with everybody the moment she meets them. But of course that means she’s never really intimate with anybody, since everybody is at exactly the same level of intimacy, the stranger and the longtime friend and the family member, all the same. She’s not Ezbaal’s mother, you know. Or mine. She was simply Ezbaal’s father’s senior wife at the time he was murdered. His real mother died giving birth to him.”

“I had no idea.”