Abigail's Story Read Free Page A

almost too old to be considered betulah anymore. In my heart I had accepted that no one would ever offer for me, for I would bring nothing to a marriage, no portion of animals or nahalah land. Bahur, the young Hebrew men eligible for marriage, expected something in return for the mohar, the normal price they paid to the family of their bride.
    â€œYou do not believe me.”
    I stared at the old thief. Perhaps she was as crazed as she was odorous. “I am not to marry.”
    â€œYet.” The broken edges of her crusted fingernails stabbed into my flesh. “For my debt to you, this is what I see: One king fool, one fool king.” She appeared ready to collapse, but she would not release me. “Whose shall you be, and whose truth shall you speak?”
    â€œI don’t understand.” My wrist hurt, though, and there would be bruises to explain if she did not turn me loose.
    â€œYou shall, Father’s Delight. When you doubt, go back to the wheel. Turn the wheel.” All the strength seemed to go out of her, and she sagged against me and groaned. “Turn the—”
    â€œHold!”
    One of the shamar pulled me away while the other two seized the old woman. She fought them like one possessed of demons, scratching and writhing between them. “Misbegotten sons of Amel’s countless whores! I conjured truth for him! I curse your souls to be devoured! May the snapping jaws of—”
    A heavy leather gauntlet came down on her head, stunning her into silence and making blood spill over her lip.
    â€œPlease!” I reached out a hand to ward off a second blow. “She is too old; you shall kill her.”
    â€œDo not your eyes work, woman?” The guardsman who had struck the thief grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back, revealing her face for the first time. Foreign-looking dark blue tattoos of spirals circled her cheeks and brow, but her skin had the unlined, early bloom of youth.
    Whoever she was, from wherever she had come, she was not Hebrew. Uneasy now, I drew back a step. “Who is she?”
    â€œA m’khashepah,” the guard said, and released the thief’s hair. Her head drooped against her chest. “She stole a jeweled chalice from Shofet Choab and fled his house.”
    Choab was a powerful man, a town leader and a judge who had the ear of King Saul himself. A descendent of the tribe of Aaron, he held sway over many of the shofetim in our region for twenty years, making him a judge of judges. He also served the king as a military commander in times of war. Somesaid the shofet broke Hebrew law as often as he adjudicated it, but he was not a man with whom one trifled, or of whom one made an enemy.
    Stealing from the shofet was a terribly grievous offense; for that—and practicing witchcraft within the walls of the town—the thief would likely be sold into slavery.
    Yet something was wrong with this charge. I looked her over. Her ragged garments possessed no hidden pockets or folds where something so large and expensive could be concealed. “She carries no chalice.”
    â€œLikely she hid it somewhere ere she fled, intending to retrieve it later. It matters not. Her lies will earn her chains.” The largest shamar hefted the thief under his arm like a limp sack of grain.
    â€œWait.” I felt oddly indebted to the thief/m’kha-shepah, but what could I do? To gain an audience with Choab took weeks, and then only a man could petition the minister. My father was not well enough to do so, and Rivai wouldn’t care about an issah nokriyah, a foreign female, especially not one accused of thievery and witchcraft.
    Feeling helpless and foolish, I crouched down and laid my hand on the lolling, white head. What had been done to her, to steal the color from her hair and the sanity from her mind? “I am sorry, but I cannot help you in this. I shall pray to the Adonai to have mercy on you.”
    Her head lifted