Bright sunlight woke Lia.
‘Mm … not yet, Emmenza,’ she murmured, turning over. The bed seemed so much harder, narrower than usual. And why did every bone in her body ache so?
She opened her eyes. For one moment, she lay unmoving in the column of mote-speckled sunlight, staring at the unfamiliar rough-stone walls. And then, hearing the clucking of the chickens outside the window, the bleating of goats, she remembered.
She was in Tifereth.
She struggled out of the narrow wooden bed and went over to the little window, wincing with each step. Even the slightest movement was an agony; she was stiff all over.
The window was set deep in the thick stone wall and she had to stand on tiptoe, leaning on the stone ledge, to see out.
Brown hens pecked and chattered in the gravel below her window. A little girl, barefoot, was trying to guide white ducks towards a pond with a stick. Goats were nibbling the sparse grass. The yard was more like a farmyard than the inner courtyard of a college. How could the scholars study with all this clamour?
She limped back across the bare boards and sat down to examine her feet. Blisters had rubbed and broken, leaving raw red weals on her heels and toes. She sucked in her breath as she tried to touch the tender places. If only she could remember the herbs her mother used to make a soothing foot-bath …
Mother.
She would not allow herself to admit how much she missed Zillaïs.
She would ask Selima if she had any salves for blistered feet.
But first she would have to find Selima.
She picked up her worn shoes, wondering how she could squeeze her sore, swollen feet into them. Gingerly, she tried to ease the right one on.
No. She would rather go barefoot than rub the little remaining skin from the blisters. She picked up the shoes and slowly, painfully set out to locate Selima.
Rahab had – out of habit – been up since sunrise. He had washed, eaten delicious fresh-baked bread and fruit from Elon’s orchard … and now he did not know what to do with himself. Picking up the irresistible scent of frying onions, he sniffed his way down the winding passageways and found the kitchen, where Selima was busy chopping vegetables. A little girl of five or six years sat at her feet, happily engrossed in making patterns with the peelings.
‘Where’s Malakhi?’ he asked Selima.
‘In council.’ She stopped to rub her cheek with her knuckle. ‘With the Elders.’
‘I see.’ Rahab nodded, absently picking up a chunk of carrot and nibbling it. ‘In council’ meant that he and the amulets were the subject under discussion. The very thought of it made him uneasy.
Selima darted to and fro between the chopping board and stirring the vegetables in the soup pot. Watching her work reminded him suddenly, vividly, of Chadassah in the kitchen in Arcassanne, the little girls kneeling up at the table beside her, playing at being bakers with lumps of dough.
The memory brought tears to his eyes … though it could have been the pungent juice of the onions …
‘Do you need any help?’ he asked, wanting something to do.
Selima smiled up at him, expertly chopping the carrots into thin slivers.
‘You could go fetch me some herbs. I need thyme, marjoram and basil for the soup. Oh – and some parsley.’
‘Where’s the herb garden?’
‘Outside, beyond Elon’s orchard. You’ll find Talmai there. If you lose the way, one of the children will show you. Ask my boy Laban.’
Rahab set out to find Elon’s orchard. Beyond the crumbling walls on the western side of the castel he spotted a cluster of trees, their branches laden with fruit: russet apples, purple plums and late peaches. As he came nearer he saw a man busy with a hoe at the far end of the orchard.
‘Is this the herb garden?’ he called.
The man turned and Rahab saw that it was the young scholar Bar Talmai.
‘Selima’s sent me to fetch some herbs.’
Talmai beckoned him closer.
‘Be careful where you tread. The wasps are busy amongst the windfalls.’
Rahab made his way through the rough grass between the rows of trees; the air was noisy with buzzing wasps and flies, gorging themselves on the rotting fruit.
Talmai stood, leaning on his hoe, watching Rahab.
‘So what does Selima want today?’ he asked.
Rahab counted the list off on his fingers.
‘Help yourself,’ said Talmai, returning to his hoeing.
Rahab hesitated.
‘I know quite a bit about tailoring,’ he said, feeling foolish, ‘but when it comes to herbs …’
Talmai laid down the hoe, and without comment went to pick the herbs for him. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out a bunch of aromatic green leaves, still wet with dew. As he handed them over, his clear gaze locked with Rahab’s.
‘How do you like Tifereth?’
Rahab gave a small, noncommittal shrug of the shoulders.
‘It’s … different from what I expected.’
‘Oh?’ Talmai said, still regarding him intently. ‘In what way different?’
‘It’s – it’s too quiet up here, for a start.’ Rahab said. Talmai’s scrutiny was making him feel awkward. ‘Except for the whine of the wind. Doesn’t that get on your nerves after a while? There’s nothing here between you and the sky. I’m city-born. I like the noise of the city, the clatter of carts, the street cries, the bustle. The feel of cobbles under the feet. It centres you.’
Talmai was quiet for a few moments, and Rahab wondered if the conversation was at an end. But then Talmai suddenly turned to him and said, ‘Barakiel is still with you.’
Rahab felt his eyes narrow, frowning. Till that moment all he had been aware of was the green, earthy fragrance of the herbs, the brilliance of the morning sun, burning off the heavy dew. Now a seed of disquiet stirred, deep inside him.
‘I can sense His presence.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rahab found his voice.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Me?’ Rahab was caught off-guard by the directness of the question. ‘A little shaky still … like when I’d had the quinsy. I was nine, maybe ten. When the fever dropped and I tried to get out of bed, my legs were so weak I fell over. Even seven days later I was staggering round in a daze. That’s how I feel now,’ he ended lamely.
Talmai looked shocked.
‘You have been touched by the power of the Covenant,’ he said sternly, ‘and that’s the only way you can describe it? The aftermath of a childhood illness?’
‘It’s an honest answer,’ Rahab said, stung by the young scholar’s sanctimonious attitude. What did Talmai know, sheltered up here from the dangers of life in Arcassanne? ‘What did you want me to say?’
‘But what was it like? When the Guardian took you?’
Rahab opened his mouth and then found he did not know how to give an honest answer. How did you put such an experience into everyday speech?
‘It was like – like nothing else that has ever happened to me. Terrifying. Yet exhilarating.’
Talmai said nothing. When Rahab glanced up at him, he saw that the scholar was staring out across the valley.
‘How old are you?’ Rahab asked, seized with a sudden, strange apprehension.
Talmai glanced up.
‘How old? Is my age relevant?’
‘I … I just wondered how you came to be here. At Tifereth.’
Talmai looked away, as though unwilling to elaborate.
‘I don’t know how old I am. Malakhi … found me. I was six, maybe seven years. Wandering. Starving. Abandoned. I have no memory of what was before.’
‘Wandering?’ Rahab said, his throat tightening. ‘Wandering where?’
‘On the road from Galicys.’
Galicys. The sky seemed to spin. Could … could Talmai be …?
‘And you remember nothing? Not even your name?’
Talmai shook his head.
‘Malakhi has been a father to me. He gave me my life back. He gave me my name. Before him … nothing. I remember nothing.’
Now Rahab could not stop staring at Talmai, trying to match the tall, ascetic young man who stood before him with his hazy memories of a hot, sticky little hand clutched in his own, a tangle of tousled golden curls …
‘So now you must be, say, eighteen, nineteen years?’
‘Why does my age matter?’
‘I lost a brother in Galicys.’ The constriction in Rahab’s throat was so great he could hardly whisper the words. ‘He would have been about your age.’
The clear eyes clouded.
‘There were many children orphaned in Galicys.’ Talmai’s voice sounded distinctly hostile.
‘Our father’s name was Chazhael; he was a scholar. Our mother’s name was Ariel.’
Talmai stared blankly at him.
‘We lived next to the shul in the Street of Blue Fishes. There was a mosaic on the wall; chips of blue and green pottery set in white plaster. Shaoni used to like to count the fishes. Whenever we went past we had to wait whilst he counted; there were nine but sometimes he insisted there were ten …’ Rahab’s voice died away. It was as if he was talking to himself; Talmai was not paying attention, his eyes had fixed on a buzzard wheeling high above the ravine.
Rahab felt bruised, angry. Why had he revealed so much of himself to this austere young stranger? Even now, years later, just saying his parents’ names aloud was difficult. Maybe it was too much of a coincidence that after all this time he should find his lost brother, waiting for him here in Tifereth …
The fresh smell of the herbs reminded him of the reason for his coming; without realising, he had been crushing them in his hands. ‘Selima will be needing these,’ he said. He wanted to put some distance between himself and Talmai. ‘I’d best take them to her.’
Talmai gave a little shrug and picked up his hoe.
As Rahab strode away, he heard the chip of the metal biting into the stony earth.
‘You walked all the way from the Gorge in these?’ Selima held up Lia’s battered, blood-stained satin shoes in horror. ‘These are shoes for dancing – not for walking!’
‘There wasn’t time to go back and change,’ said Lia wryly.
Selima shook her head as she examined the torn soles.
‘You won’t be walking far today with those blisters … or tomorrow. But feet heal quickly – if you bathe them regularly.
You can help yourself to hot water and salt from the crock in the corner.
Lia nodded her thanks.
‘No matter as it’s shabbath tomorrow evening; no one will be going anywhere,’ Selima said, wiping her hands. ‘Still, you could polish the besamim box; I was going to get one of the girls to do it, but it’s a fiddly job.’
‘The besa – excuse me?’ Lia had no idea what Selima was talking about. And when the older woman brought out a little tower of intricately crafted silver and placed it before her with a cloth, she sat staring at it, baffled.
Selima had said polish it – so she began to rub the cloth over its tiny pinnacles, and a wonderful gingery-cinnamon smell spiced the air. She stopped to sniff. It reminded her of going on board her father’s barque just after it had returned from overseas: dustily, richly aromatic, redolent of the strangeness of distant countries.
‘What’s inside?’
‘Spices.’ Selima was busy chopping vegetables again.
‘A spice-shaker? Like a salt-shaker?’
Selima stopped chopping.
‘You mean – your mother never taught you?’
There was such incredulity in her voice that Lia felt rebuked. Defensively, she snapped back, ‘It was difficult for us in Arcassanne. You have no idea how difficult.’
‘Difficult? It’s always been difficult for us.’ Selima turned back to her preparations. ‘But what kind of a mother doesn’t teach her daughter about shabbath?’
Lia put down the cloth. She wanted to shout out, ‘It wasn’t her fault. She’s a good mother. She did what she could.’ What was she doing defending her mother? It was Zillaïs’s desire for secrecy, for concealment, that had caused all this mess. It was Zillaïs who had kept the truth of her heritage from her. Now nobody wanted her, neither the Gentiles, with whom she had grown up – nor the Tsiyonim, her blood-kin.