Early the next morning, hearing the hermits chattering outside her cave as they noisily unloaded supplies from a wagon, Samara laughed: Milo and Omman reminded her of her young cousins who managed to play even while working.
She missed her family, yet was glad to be here for awhile, far away from the plague of Romans that filled her city. She had seen Romans swarming through the whole nation of Judea like locusts, devouring everything. People were living in makeshift shelters on the streets, begging for food. Rome was taxing her people to death and taking away their jobs, bringing in cheap foreign labor. Her beloved Jerusalem was overrun with swaggering soldiers, whorish women and grinning tax collectors. This place of caves may be desolate, but she felt with satisfaction that it was an all-Hebrew place!
The loneliness, the hunger and the heat were wearing on her, though the praying and meditating did make her feel stronger, and she sensed her thoughts becoming sharper, more focused.
Stepping out of her cave, she stood between the two hermits. “Milo, are you and Omman going to help me learn who stole the goods from my storehouse?”
The men exchanged a glance. “Her villains,” said Omman. “She wants us to flush out her villains.”
Milo said, “We may be able to give you some ideas.”
She offered, “I may be able to help you in some ways as well.”
Omman said, “I don’t think a woman could know much to help a pair of desert rats.”
“But Omman,” she said, “women know many things that men do not.”
Omman snorted. “Female things.”
“Things that can help men,” she persisted. “For example, I know how to stop a person from snoring.”
Omman raised his eyebrows. “You know that? Show me.”
“Is it your brother Milo who is the problem?”
Omman grunted, nodding. This was an opening with him, and it excited her. “Then,” she said, “I’ll have to show you alone.”
Omman stood. “Come,” he said. She followed him around a bend in the dusty road.
A few minutes later they returned, Omman with a grin.
Milo, suspicious, asked, “What did she show you?”
Omman laughed. “You shall see. Or maybe you shan’t.”
“How do you know it’s going to work?”
“Even if it doesn’t, I shall enjoy doing it.”
Milo stared at both of them, visibly unsettled. “Woman,” he blurted out, “you gave something to my brother. What shall you give me?”
She searched his face, looking into his eyes. She’d found an entry point into his brother’s feelings; could she do the same with him? “I can see that you bear a burden,” she said.
“Burden?” He laughed. “I have no burden. I live in the holy caves. I am a free man. Much more free than you city dwellers.”
“Yet something is hurting you.”
Omman touched his forearm gently. “Milo, it must be what our sister Adina said to you.”
Milo’s face stiffened. “No, no. Our sister has nothing to do with it.”
“Didn’t Adina always say you should go to yeshiva and study?”
Milo sighed, then squirmed, then scowled. Finally he said, “All right. Samara, our sister used to say I should become a rabbi. Maybe she was right. But here I am instead, just another hermit in the desert.”
“You’re a kind man,” Samara said. “Not all rabbis are kind.”
“Any rabbi is better than me. I could never become such. The rabbi does more good than the hermit.”
Why did he love himself so little? “Milo, I’ve dealt with many men – rabbis and merchants, princes and slaves – and kindness is what distinguishes a man. I’ve seen your kindness with the people who come here. You’re a far better man than most. Don’t you know that?”
He snorted. “If I agree with you, then I’d be obliged to treat you with kindness.”
“But you already have, Milo – so far.”
He looked at her with a half-frown, half-smile that told her she’d touched him. “Samara,” he said, “you must go back to the city now and forget us.”
She stood and sighed. “If I must, I shall go back, yet I’ll not forget.”
“Your voice,” said Milo, “sounds like Adina’s voice. You look like her, too. Same hair. Same mouth.”
No one spoke. The wind faded to silence. Tension growing in her, she hoped against hope that they’d offer her some wisdom to help her solve her problems. Who was stealing from her family? How could she get out of marrying Hod?
Finally Milo said, “All right. So I agree to tell you some stories before you leave.”
Samara let out a whoop, and the echoes bounced around the cave; both men shushed her hurriedly.
Milo began a long and rambling tale about hedgehogs, rabbits and eagles. The hedgehogs, he said, stored up turnips to eat for the winter, and the rabbits tried to raid their burrows, but unsuccessfully. Finally, the rabbits made such a nuisance that the hedgehogs dropped their turnips to chase the rabbits away, and then the eagles swooped down and flew away with the food.
“You must mean the Romans,” she said. “They have eagles on their standards.” “No Romans were directly involved. Your goods were snatched by some people who should never have snatched them.”
She was flustered. “But it stands to reason that the Romans stole our goods from the storeroom. My Caleb was convinced that they were stealing from Hebrew merchants for decades. He thought they were keeping what they stole from us in their Jupiter temple. Yet I learned otherwise.”
The brothers looked at her curiously. “How did you learn that?”
She paused and wished she could take the words back. Should she admit her outlandish act? She’d gotten nothing but grief for it up to now. “Late one night,” she murmured, “I broke into the temple and looked for the stolen goods in the sanctuary, yet they weren’t there.”
The hermits leapt to their feet, both speaking at once. “You broke in? How bold! How unusual! Just like our Esther! Our Judith!”
She blushed. “Stop, Milo, Omman, please.”
Omman frowned, recovering his serious demeanor. “Samara, you do have courage. Yet think. Your Caleb should have known that if the Romans took the goods, they would’ve had no reason to stash them in the city. They would have sold them forthright.”
Samara bit her lower lip and looked into space. “You’re probably right. Then that leaves the question wide open.”
It was a bit painful to let go of an idea she’d held for a decade, yet a relief at the same time. Her belief in Caleb’s wisdom also went down a notch.
She looked sharply at Omman. “You said they were taken by people who should never have snatched them. What does that mean?”
“Whoever took them,” said Omman, “should have known better, because it is going to mean the ruin of those individuals. They were people without hhak-mah, wisdom!”
“Why should it mean their ruin?”
“That, you shall have to learn for yourself. When you do, come back and tell us.” Milo laughed, winking, jostling Omman, who after a moment laughed too.
Samara’s anger rose; they were having fun at her expense. “Do not take me so lightly.”
Omman jumped to his feet. “Sorry. I don’t relish your being angry with us. Let me change the subject and offer you some things that should make you happy. First, whom you marry shall be a big surprise to you. A good surprise! Next, we shall tell you of some hidden Hebrews with whom you might engage in trade.”
She looked at them skeptically. A surprise husband? Hidden Hebrews? “I’m listening. You definitely have my full attention.”
“You should know that there have long been Hebrew tribes in the land of the silkmakers, called China, which we call Sinim. You can also find our people in great India, and in Africa far south of Egypt. The legends tell about black Hebrew empires there. One of them was the home of the Queen of Sheba.”
Samara felt her heart pound. She was surprised at how her deepest feelings came forward when she thought about a Hebrew Queen. “The Queen of Sheba. What kind of a woman was she?”
“A flower of beauty,” said Milo, “and a woman of power. Makena was her name.”
Makena. Samara felt as if she knew this woman. How? She lived a thousand years before. “If she were a Hebrew,” Samara said, “her father must have assigned her a husband.”
“They didn’t have those customs then,” Milo answered. “She took King Solomon as her lover.”
A strange feeling arose in her. “I knew that.” But how could she have known it? “Scripture doesn’t say they were lovers, yet everyone knows it. How is that?”
“Some matters not fit for scripture,” Milo assured her, “are nonetheless known in the heart.”
“Well, why would the King not marry her, if he loved her?”
“Solomon loved Makena,” said Omman, “yet the priests didn’t. Nor did Solomon’s other wives. She was not like them. She was strong, an Empress.”
Milo said, “Once Makena knew she could not be with the man she loved, she returned to Africa.”
Samara’s pulse raced again. “You speak of Hebrew lands in Africa. What are those lands like today? Are they still Hebrew?”
“We know little of them,” said Milo. “Yet we have heard that today, some of them are Hebrew and Christian mixed. And that some of them are ruled by women, Queens they call Candaces.”
“No one ventures there,” said Omman. “You cannot cross the desert to the south. There are strange headless creatures in the southern desert that eat people.”
She blanched. What an ugly image. “You have told me enough for now.” She stood. It was time for her to go to her cave and try to sleep. “Oh, by the way,” she said on her way out, “as for your legend – eagles do not eat turnips.”
Deep in the night, moonlight filled the cave where the hermits slept, and so did Milo’s snoring.
Omman sat upright on his bed and remembered Samara’s instructions. He took a gourd of water to Milo’s bedside and whispered, “Brother, roll over on your side, or I’ll drench you with this water.” He dipped his fingers into the gourd and flicked droplets onto his brother’s face.
Milo, eyes remaining shut, jerked, then slowly turned onto his side, and his rough snorts became smooth and silent. Smiling, Omman now knew he could always banish Milo’s snores. He put the gourd aside and said a prayer of thanks for Samara and her water cure.
Samara stoked a small fire in her cooking pit and sat staring into the flames. A warmth grew inside her, soon becoming an uncomfortable heat. Were there really Hebrew communities in Africa, in India, in China? Were the ones in Africa really ruled by Queens?
Sweat poured off her and her breath came faster. The heat grew into a passion that started to goad her. Its voice spoke relentlessly.
Go, woman. Go wherever your heart leads you. For you must be free to live in your own way.
The flames in her fire pit were subsiding. Pouring sand on them, she pulled her shawl up to her throat, lying back on her cushions and letting sleep overtake her. She had come to the caves to find out what to do about Hod. Not for this, never for this. Now she was seriously thinking about ripping her roots out of her homeland and traveling to unknown nations, unthinkably remote, in a part of the world where no one went. Where Queens reigned. Deep in the heart of Africa. She would go. She had to go.
And what about this surprise husband? The idea stopped her mind in its tracks. Now nothing in her life could ever be the same.
Drifting in and out of sleep, she heard the wind rising outside. She sat up and looked at the dying embers in her fire pit. Narrowing her eyes, she clearly saw the image of a man. She was looking at him from behind, only able to make out his thick neck and closely cropped blond hair. For a long moment she was spellbound, unable to move, chills pulsing through her body. Then, slowly, the image faded.
The strange vision, the hha-zon, if that is what it was, didn’t come with angel songs or the smell of frankincense. Yet it was so lucid, as real as the lambs bleating outside her cave. The image haunted her until she fell asleep.
Two more weeks dragged by uneventfully. Omman visited to thank her for stopping Milo’s snoring. No more visions in the embers, no more life-altering revelations from the hermits. Not even more useless stories like the one about the hedgehogs and the rabbits and the eagle. Even though the memory of what she saw in the fire – the image of the back of some man’s head – kept intruding into her thoughts, she was constantly embroiled in the stunned aftershock of a huge unknowable mission having been dropped into her life. Africa.
Three weeks had passed, and she sent for the carriage to take her home.
“Faster, driver!” The carriage wheels clattered on the cobblestones, echoing the urgency she felt in her heart. She was ready to change her life, yet she trembled at the harm she might bring on herself.
At her father’s house, not pausing to wash the dust off her face, she strode into the storeroom. The last light of day made slanted shadows on the table where Gershon and Ephraim sat poring over her ledger books.
“Gershon,” she said abruptly to the back of her cousin’s head, “I’ll require your report this evening.”
Startled, Gershon turned, looked her over and frowned. “You’re back. What have you done to yourself? You’re thin and ragged.”
“Gershon,” said Ephraim, “don’t talk like that to our good kinswoman.” He beamed at her. “Your face is dirty, Samara, but it’s glowing like you were sixteen again. Are you in love?”
“You’re always so kind, Ephraim. As for you, Gershon, if you cheated any of my merchants, you’ll answer for it. Have all the accounts ready for me tonight. I’ll be handling that tomorrow morning, because in the afternoon I’ll be going to visit my friend Leah.”
Ephraim stood. He looked nervous. “Remember, Samara, before you left, I told you that Leah didn’t look well?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Samara, she’s lost her husband.”