into my mind was the wooden box in which Haran stored his secret documents. It was as if in my dream Nephthys had escaped from her confinement on the lid, as if the box had been thrown open and all the scrolls set free.
I lay very still and tried to remember everything about those moments when Thaddeus showed me the box—the key, the creak in the lid as he lifted it, the cluster of scrolls inside, reading the death notice twice. Then, in my memory, I heard Thaddeus say, The laws do not require notification of the death of a child, only of an adult male who is taxable. It’s done, but rarely. I recall thinking it odd.
The statement had seemed irrelevant at the time, but I wondered now why my uncle had taken the extra precaution of declaring Chaya dead if it wasn’t required. Why had it been so important to record it? And something else came back to me: she’d only been two when she’d died. Was it not strange that her life had ended so soon after Yaltha had been sent away?
I bolted up.
I was waiting in the scriptorium when Thaddeus arrived. “I must look once more inside the locked box in Haran’s study,” I told him.
He shook his head. “But you’ve seen the death notice. What more is there?”
I thought better than to tell him about the dream or my feeling that something was amiss. I said, “My uncle has already left to conduct his business in the city. It will be safe enough.”
“It’s not Haran I’m worried about, but his personal servant, the one with the shorn head.” I knew which one he meant. He was said to grovel before Haran, as well as snoop for him—anything to ingratiate himself.
“We’ll be quick,” I promised, and gave him my most pleading look.
He sighed and led me to the study. I counted nine scrolls inside the box. I unraveled one and read a harsh repudiation of Haran’s second wife for failing in her oath of fidelity. The second scroll was a settlement of their divorce.
Thaddeus watched me, his eyes roving toward the door. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but it would be prudent to read faster.”
I didn’t know what I was looking for either. I smoothed open a third scroll, anchoring it on the desk.
Choiak, son of Dios and a keeper of camels in the village of Soknopaiou, his wife having died and left him toil and suffering, does hand over his two-year-old daughter, Diodora, to a priest of the Temple of Isis for the sum of 1,400 silver drachmae.
I stopped reading. My mind began to reel a little.
“Have you come upon something?” he asked.
“There’s mention of a two-year-old girl.” He started to question me further, but I held up my hand, signaling him to wait as I continued to read.
The purchaser, who is granted anonymity by virtue of his status as a representative of the Goddess of Egypt, receives Diodora into his legal ownership and from this day will possess, own, and have proprietary rights over the girl. Choiak henceforth has no power to take back his daughter and through this sale agreement, written in two copies, gives his consent and acknowledges payment.
Signed on behalf of Choiak, who knows no letters, by Haran ben Philip Levias, this day in the month of Epeiph, in the 32nd year of the reign of the illustrious emperor Augustus Caesar.
I lifted my head. Heat crept from my neck into my face, a kind of astonishment. “Sophia,” I whispered.
“What is it? What does it say?”
“The two-year-old belonged to a man named Choiak, a destitute father whose wife died. He sold his daughter as a slave to a priest.” I glanced again at the document. “The girl’s name was Diodora.”
I rummaged in the box for Chaya’s death certificate and placed the two documents side by side. Two-year-old Chaya. Two-year-old Diodora. Chaya died and Diodora was sold in the same month of the same year.