I had heard that story of B’rinna’s many times. “Come, Lila.” Picking up a basket of grapes, I led my little half sister back up to the rooftop. “We will make raisins.” This should cheer up Lila, who loved sweet things.
One section of the flat roof was taken up with the loom and the bundles of fleece waiting to be combed and spun and woven. The rest of the space had been covered with sleeping bodies last night, but now the pallets were rolled aside. I showed Lila how to spread bunches of grapes out to dry.
Standing up to move the basket, I looked out toward the hills again. Both the armies were out of sight now, although dust kicked up by their feet and hooves was rising from the valley. The view in my favorite direction, north, was mostly blocked by the governor’s mansion. But I could see a bit of the main north-south road, the King’s Way, rippling over the hills.
Northward from Ramoth-Gilead stretched the best grasslands. Father’s second son, one of my half brothers, was out there somewhere, working with the cattle herders. The Yarmuk River, the border between Gilead and Bashan, ran through these pastures, although it was hidden by the folds in the land.
If a traveler started out from Ramoth-Gilead and followed the King’s Way north, he (or she! I thought) would cross the Yarmuk River and the high pastures of Bashan. He would travel on past Mount Hermon, topped with snow even at this hottest, driest time of year, and enter Aram. On the fourth day perhaps, the traveler on the King’s Way would reach Damascus, where King Ben-hadad ruled. These days Father (and all the landowners of Gilead) paid taxes to Damascus, although we usually spoke Hebrew like the Israelites.
Of course King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel wanted Gilead to pay taxes to Samaria instead. They needed more ivory beds for their palace, B’rinna said bitterly, and more costly purple robes. I did not say so to B’rinna, but I longed to see such a fabulous palace.
Damascus … Samaria! Sometimes I repeated the names of distant cities under my breath, just to put myself into a feverish state. If I were Queen Jezebel, I thought daringly, and could do whatever I liked, I would order a great caravan for myself. I would set out on the King’s Road, and I would follow it north even beyond Damascus, across the Eastern Desert to Babylon.
I let Lila set out the last bunch of grapes. “You can chase the birds away from our grapes,” I told my half sister.
“Go ’way, bird!” shouted Lila into the sky.
I smiled, and then I saw the bird — not a grape-stealing sparrow or blackbird. That bird up there, floating over the town on outstretched dark wings, was a vulture. It was watching the battle. Although I shivered, I wished that I too could watch the battle. But no one could see the battle from the town, unless they were standing on the walls like the men.
B’rinna called us to breakfast, and I took Lila back down the steps to the courtyard. Galya would send the workers’ sons to take turns on the roof, scaring the birds away with their slings.
The morning dragged on. Over the noise in the courtyard, I listened to the faraway rumbling and thudding, the shouts, the clash of metal on metal. If King Ahab and General Naaman were not making war outside our walls, I thought, we could be out in the vineyards. We would be piling the two-handled baskets with bunches of grapes and carrying them to the stone vat. As the laborers trampled grapes, their legs purple to the thighs, we would all sing the merry wine-pressing songs.
I used to think of the year as a wheel that turned in place, bringing the wine festival around every summer. Each month was like a spoke in a wheel of a cart. I had begged Dov to show me how to write the names of the months. He had drawn a circle in the dirt and scratched letters for each month, reciting their names.
Adar, the month of my birth, also came around each year, and so did the lambing season and Passover. So each year was the same — and yet each year was also different, I had begun to see. The wheel of the year did not spin in one place; it rolled forward.
Last harvest time Galya had not even been pregnant. This year she had watched the grape harvest from under a canopy with her new baby boy, Guri. For as many summers as I could remember, we had celebrated the wine festival in peace. This year we had fled the vineyards with the harvest only half-picked and hurried into the walled town with a few jars of grape juice and a few baskets of grapes.
Slowly the shadows in the courtyard grew shorter. Just before midday, one of Father’s workers returned to let the women know about the progress of the battle. I listened as he told B’rinna, Galya, and Hannah. “The fight is fairly even so far. At first the Aramean archers had the advantage. But then the battle moved toward the town — ”
“ — and then it was the Israelite archers who were shooting from above,” I finished, pleased that I understood. Galya frowned at me. I supposed she thought I should be more modest, especially in speaking about men’s affairs. But if I worried every time Galya frowned at me … !
When the midday meal was ready, I ate my share of barley stew from the common bowl. Then I grabbed another round of bread and went off to the edge of the courtyard. A boy named Yanir, who had just come down from chasing birds on the roof, joined me in the thin strip of shade cast by the wall. I tore a piece from my bread and offered it to him.
Tucking his sling into his belt, he took the bread. “Listen to the battle now! It must be right outside the town.”
I nodded, propping one elbow on a lamp-niche in the wall. I could hear the low blast of a ram’s horn and the brighter note of a trumpet. “If only I were a man, I could watch from the walls.”
“If I were a vulture,” said Yanir with his mouth full, “I could watch from the sky.” He laughed so hard at his own wit that bread crumbs fell out of his mouth.
Scowling, I chewed in silence for a moment. Then an idea struck me like a gust of wind. “The passageway! We could take the passageway to the underground well and out to the spring to watch the battle from there.”
“Ah, no — not me,” Yanir drew back. “The master would beat me raw for that.”
He was right, of course, but a demon of mischief had gotten into me. “Well, of course, if you are afraid … ”
His face reddened. “I might be afraid of the master, but you are afraid to go through the passageway by yourself.”
“I am not at all afraid of the passageway.” In fact, I felt almost pulled toward the cool, dark tunnel.