“Ah, the ivory leaves. They’re the only ones of their kind in all of Galilee.”
“Where did you come upon them?”
“Tiberius sent a parcel of them to Antipas some months ago. I took one of them for myself.”
“And did you write the invitation yourself?”
“Are you surprised that I write?”
“Only at the power of your script. Where did you learn it?”
“When I first arrived in Galilee, I spoke only Arabic, but I couldn’t read or write it. I missed my father terribly despite him sending me away—it was always in my mind to return to him. I set out to learn Greek so I could write to him. It was your father who taught me.”
My father. The revelation cut through me.
“Did he teach you, also?” she asked.
“No. But he brought me inks and papyrus from time to time.” That sounded self-pitying and meager. I wanted to believe that teaching her Greek was what had softened Father to my own desire to read and write, why he’d given in to my pleadings despite Mother’s disapproval, why he’d hired Titus as my tutor, but it didn’t change the envy that had surfaced from some old, deep place.
Then, as if we’d conjured him, my father was limping toward us on the portico. His feet dragged as if shackled. His eyes were cast down. Phasaelis, too, studied him. Something was wrong. I sat up and waited for what would come.
“May I speak freely?” he asked Phasaelis. When she nodded, he eased onto the couch beside me, grunting like an old man, and up close, I saw that it was not only sadness on his face, but a quiet infuriation. He looked plundered, as if he’d lost the thing dearest to him.
He said, “Nathaniel recovered from the fever sickness, but it left him weakened. It is my burden to tell you, Ana, he died this day while walking in his date grove.”
I said nothing.
“I know the betrothal was a yoke for you,” he continued. “But now your condition is worse. You will be treated as a widow.” He shook his head. “Yours is a stigma we will all bear.”
In the curve of my ear I heard the rush of wings. I saw the ibis lift away.
xxviii.
In the aftermath of Nathaniel’s death I was required to wear a robe the color of ash and go about with bare feet. Mother put dust on my head and fed me the bread of affliction and complained that I did not cry with loud and bitter wails or rend my clothes.
I was a fifteen-year-old widow. I was free. Free, free, free! I would not enter the chuppah with despair and dread over what my husband would do to me. The cloth of virginity would not be placed beneath my hips and paraded around afterward for witnesses to inspect. Instead, when the seven days of mourning ended, I would beg Father to let me resume my writing. I would go to the cave and dig up the incantation bowl and the goatskins stuffed with my scrolls.
At night when I lay still in my bed, the knowledge of these things would break over me and I would laugh deep into my pillow. I assured myself the curse I’d written played no part in Nathaniel’s dying, but still, my jubilation often brought on bouts of guilt. I rebuked myself for rejoicing in his death, I truly did, but I would not have wished him back.
O blessed widowhood.
At his burial, I walked with his sister, Zophar, and his two daughters at the forefront of a throng of mourners, as we accompanied Nathaniel’s body to the family’s cave. His linen shroud had been poorly wrapped and when he was carried to the cave entrance, the hem of it snagged on a thornbush. It necessitated a laborious effort to extricate him. It gave the impression of Nathaniel fighting his interment, and it struck me as comical. I pressed my lips together, but the smile broke through, and I saw Nathaniel’s daughter, Marta, not much younger than I, glare at me with hatred.
Afterward at the funeral banquet, remorseful that she’d observed my amusement, I