quarrel, and he had been angered; he wasnow seeking what had formerly served as a remedy. A deep satisfaction moved within her; she had won after all! She had known from the first that their unions had meant more to her than to him, that she, in a fashion, had always been the supplicant, he the obliger. And when the bed bond had been broken under her nagging and his apathy, she had been, very decidedly, the loser.
Even his threat to strike her, earlier in the evening, helped now towards her self-deception; so did his behaviour over the stew and the blanket. That was real man’s behaviour. So was this.
She cast one look at the slaves; they were sleeping soddenly, worn out by all they had done that day. Her sense of propriety was satisfied, and desire, the more powerful because so long unappeased, began to move in her. She gave in. She smiled and lifted the blanket.
“Come, then,” she said, invitingly.
He recoiled as though she had spat in his face.
“Not that,” he said, “I want you to do something for me. A favour. I know it’s a lot to ask. The woman out there—you were right; she is having a baby; it’s started. And, Eunice, she’s so young; it’s her first. She’ll need a woman’s help….”
It was her turn to recoil.
“I never had a child,” she said in a small, bitter voice.
“But you’d know what to do.”
Her eyelids were swollen, still damp from her tears, but between them her eyes were stony.
“I know nothing about it,” she said.
“I’d tell you what to do,” he pleaded.
“I’d help you. And the man carries carpenter’s tools, so he’s a handy man, too. We’d help.”
“If you’re both so clever, do it yourselves. Why bother me?”
“A woman should be there; for decency’s sake.” While he pleaded he reckoned the alternative; there was a woman, in the crowd on the sleeping place beside the yard; a woman with a child. But to rouse her he’d have to wake a score of people; and he had no idea what kind of woman she was. Then there were the slaves, young, silly, heavy-handed. Eunice, with all her faults, was sensible and competent; he thought of how well she had tended him when he was helpless.
“Eunice, please If you’ll just do this one thing for me, I’ll… I’ll love you for ever. I know you’ve had a bad bargain in me, but I’ll be different I swear. I’ll love you, Eunice.”
Her whole life had been spent in trading one thing for another; you handed over so much money and bought so much wine, so much food and fodder, then you parcelled them out into smaller portions to be exchanged for smaller coins. Only once had she given something for nothing, and that was when she nursed Ephorus—and she’d received exactly nothing in return. Upon that thought, her sound good sense halted; she hadn’t cared for the stranger for nothing; ill as he was, starved as he seemed and poor, she’d seen possibilities in his youth and good looks; so that had been a bargain, too. All the same, she had dreamed of something that wouldn’t be mere payment, of something that would have been an offering, a flower laid in the lap. It had never come.
Now here he was, promising what she had dreamed of, not as a gift, another bargain. But as things were, and at her age, a sensible woman must compound for the best she could get. She pushed the blanket aside and heaved her weary body to its feet. As she reached for her outer clothing Ephorus gave a great sigh of relief.
“I’ve heard plenty of talk,” Eunice said.
“There’s nothing much to birthing a baby, really.”
“And you’re so clever,” he said.
“There’s nothing you couldn’t do, if you tried.”
She gave him a sidelong, sardonic look, intended to let him know that she wasn’t taken in by his flattery; and she was startled by the expression on his face. Never, not even in the early days, when he had most reason to be grateful to her, had he looked so grateful, so admiring, so almost … almost adoring.
“It’s cold out,” he said.
“You’ll want this.” He turned and unhooked her cloak from the door and held it open for her. As he folded it around her, his hands lingered for a second, touching her; a middle-aged body, a trifle too solid, but
a goodcomfortable armful of woman still.
She bustled into the stable, with all her vigour and energy suddenly replenished.
“Well,” she said, briskly, but not unkindly, ‘this is a fine to-do. But don’t fret. We’ll manage. I don’t want you, or you,” she said to Joseph and Ephorus.
“Go in the kitchen, make up the fire and heat some water. I’ll call when I need it. Better warm some wine, too.”
In a momentary respite Mary unclenched her teeth and said:
“You are kind. God must have sent you.”
Eunice, the Greek, thought—What a typically Jewish thing to say! She felt like retorting that Ephorus had sent her. But if faith in her God was a help to the girl, let it go; she was going to need all the help she could get.
“I don’t think this will be a long job,” she said.
“And if you want to yell, yell. There’s nobody to hear except me.”
TEN
A FIELD
2 miles This would be his fifth winter of tending another man’s sheep—and to that he was not resigned, and never would be. This would be the fifth winter since his bereavement—and to that he was not resigned, and never would be.
-People, meaning well, had said, “You have other children; another son.” But a heart once given is given and cannot be retracted and bestowed elsewhere. People, meaning well, had said, “Time is a great healer.” So it might be, for small wounds; but had time, he asked himself, ever enabled a man to grow a new limb to replace one sawn off? People had also said, “It was a hero’s death.” And the reply to that, in the depths of his heart, was always, “It was the wasted death of a fool.”
The would-be consolatory remarks had ceased within a year. It seemed to him sometimes that he was the only person who remembered at all; and he thought that even he might have remembered less, had he taken on a job where he had to be busy and bustling. A shepherd, even a good one, giving his flock every care, could think with a part of his mind, and on the journeys from pasture to pasture, and between watering holes, he must dawdle along with little to do but think.
On the other hand, what could he have done? Nobody could learn a trade overnight; to set up in business one needed money. He was forty-three when ruin came upon him, a big, slow-moving, seemingly slow-thinking man, marked by weather and a scar or two—not everybody’s idea of an employee. Except as a shepherd. Sheep he knew about. He had lived with them and for them since he was seven years old. Also, he had wanted to stay in the district where Martha, his wife, had family and friends. Being a shepherd’s wife could be a lonely business.
He had not been forced to the humiliation of actually askingfor a job. He had sold his flock—a magnificent one—to a man named Ezra, and as soon as the transaction was made, Ezra asked:
“And you, Josodad, what will you do now?”
“I must get to Jerusalem, and move heaven and earth to save the boy. Beyond that I can’t think.”
Ezra had been the first, or almost the first, to remind him that he still had a family.
Josodad said heavily, “I know.” He was fond of them all, two little girls and a boy of two, but he had never felt and could never feel for them the wholehearted love that he felt for Nathan, his first-born, who had for a long time been his only child, who had toiled beside, watched with him, through at least twelve lambing seasons, who was at once like him, often so much like him as to seem his other self, and yet endearingly unlike, being merry, and musical, and gregarious. The girls and the little boy were his children. Nathan was his son.
“They must eat,” Ezra reminded him.
“I shall leave their mother enough for their needs,” Josodad said, and was turning away. Ezra understood that at the moment the man should think only of his errand—in Ezra’s opinion about as hopeless a one as any man ever set out upon; but he was thinking of himself, too, and what a pity it would be if, when Josodad was trudging, defeated, home, somebody else should step in and offer him a job.