breath and repeated it more forcefully. “I refuse the betrothal.”
Father’s hands, wet and dripping, went still over the ewer.
“Truly, Ana,” Mother said. “Will you now flaunt your disobedience in front of your father, too? You have no choice in this matter.”
Yaltha planted herself before my father. “Matthias, you know as I do that a daughter must give consent.”
“You have no say in the matter either,” Mother said, speaking to Yaltha’s back.
Both Father and Yaltha ignored her. “If it were left up to Ana,” he said, “she would never consent to a marriage with anyone.”
“He’s a widower; he has children already,” I said. “He’s repulsive to me. I would rather be a servant in his house than his wife. Please, Father, I beg you.”
Lavi, who’d been staring grimly into the basin of water, lifted his gaze, and I saw that his eyes swam with sorrow. Mother had an ally in Shipra—scheming Shipra—but I had Lavi. Father had bought him a year ago from a Roman legate who was glad to rid himself of a North African boy better suited to housework than military life. Lavi’s name meant lion, but I’d never heard the faintest roar in him, only a gentle need to please me. If I left to marry, he would lose his only friend.
Father assumed the air of a sovereign issuing a decree. “It is my duty to see that you marry well, Ana, and I will perform that duty with your consent or without it. It makes no difference. I would like your consent—things would go much smoother that way—but if you do not give it, it will not be difficult to convince a rabbi to preside over the betrothal contract without it.”
The finality in his tone and the hard set of his face abolished my last hope. I’d not known Father to be this cruel in the face of my pleas. He strode toward the study where he conducted business, pausing to look back at Mother. “Had you performed your duty better, she would be more compliant.”
I expected her to lash back, to remind him that he was the one who’d given in to my pleas for a tutor, who’d allowed me to make inks and purchase papyrus, who’d led me astray, and any other time she would have, but she restrained herself. Instead she turned her wrath on me.
Wrenching me by the arm, she summoned Shipra to grasp my other one and together they dragged me up the stairs.
Yaltha trailed us. “Hadar, release her!” A demand that did nothing but stir a mighty wind at Mother’s back.
I do not think my feet touched the floor as they whisked me along the balcony past the array of doors that opened to our various quarters—my parents’, then Judas’s, and finally my own. I was pushed inside.
Mother followed, instructing Shipra to remain outside and prevent Yaltha from entering. As the door banged shut, I heard my aunt shout a curse at Shipra in Greek. A beautiful one having to do with donkey dung.
I’d rarely seen Mother so lit with fury. She stomped about as she castigated me, flame-cheeked, puffing clouds from her nostrils. “You’ve disgraced me before your father, your aunt, and the servants. Your shame falls on me. You will remain confined here until you offer your consent to the betrothal.”
Beyond the door, Yaltha was now hurling slurs in Aramaic. “Bloated swine . . . putrid goat flesh . . . daughter of a jackal.”
“You shall never have my consent!” I spewed the words at Mother.
Her teeth sharpened in her mouth. “Do not mistake my meaning. As your father explained, he will make sure the contract is sanctioned by a rabbi without your permission—your wishes are irrelevant. But for my sake, you will at least appear to be a compliant daughter whether you are or not.”
As she started for the door, I felt the weight of her callousness, of being locked away in a future I didn’t know how to bear, and I struck out at her without thinking. “And what would Father say if he knew the lie you’ve been perpetuating all these years?”