The Romans piled the pyres high with bodies—not only the dead were cast onto the flames but also the weak and the sick, those not worthy of being slaves. The sound of their cries echoed throughout Judea. Some women in our fields vowed there had been a rain of stones on that day, and when the last of the figs had been dashed to the ground, there had been ants inside the sticky fruit, destroying it from the inside.
There was a prayer meeting at the synagogue, and the men who gathered were stricken by the horror of the news. That evening we heard not only prayers but arguments. How could we avoid the fate of Machaerus? We could hear Ben Ya’ir’s low, steady voice. We knew it was he because when he spoke all others fell silent.
“We’ll never let our women and children die on pyres,” he told his warriors.
There was no choice for us, he cautioned, no retreat. It was apparent that our strength emerged from his courage; all the same, when I went into the fields I saw that the figs had indeed fallen; in what should have been the greenest time of the year, that golden fruit lay blackened on the ground.
YAEL WORRIED not only for Wynn but for her child as well. Arieh had served as the key with which to open the barred door in the tower. He had been presented to our leader’s wife for her amusement in exchange for permission to bring provisions to the slave. But some keys can be used for many locks and should never be lent or given away. Our leader’s wife had taken a dangerous liking to Arieh, and a new prison had sprung forth, one made from her arms and from the net of her desires.
I had spied this dark woman alone in the evenings, walking beside the wall that surrounded us, as though she were a shadow in search of the substance that would bring her to life. Perhaps the child was such a cure for the ailment our leader’s wife carried within her, her barrenness and her despair.
Ben Ya’ir’s wife had begun to withhold Arieh when Revka came for him at the end of the day, insisting on keeping the baby through the night, rocking him as though he were her own. She threatened that, if she could not keep Arieh with her, she could no longer offer the slave her protection. Why should the barbarian live and she have nothing for her efforts? She went so far as to go to the priest to choose an auspicious day for Wynn’s death.
Yael herself went to the small palace when she heard of this. She bowed her head to Channa, but told her in no uncertain terms this was to be Arieh’s last visit in exchange for the life of the slave. When she returned to retrieve the child that evening, the door was bolted. A guard was stationed outside, there at Channa’s bidding. He was a friend of Amram’s, Uri, who had brought Yael to the fortress, a good-natured young man who was liked by all. Yet he denied her entry.
“We do as we’re told,” he said apologetically. “She speaks with her husband’s voice as well as her own. You understand. I have no choice in the matter.”
Yael took to lurking around the palace, much as beggars roam the markets, hands outstretched. On nights when Revka kept vigil beside Yael, it was the older woman who wept, blaming herself for what had come to pass, for it was she who had fashioned the agreement with Channa. My mother had warned that nothing good could come from a bargain with Ben Ya’ir’s wife. She was dangerous, my mother said. More so than she appeared. I’d overheard Revka insisting that Channa’s interest in the baby was only a lonely woman’s attachment.
My mother had laughed coldly in response. “Then perhaps we should say a snake has an attachment to a dove when we speak of his hunger. Wait and see how much Channa is willing to devour.”
Now Yael came to my mother, tearful, desperate for a spell that would help her regain her son. “There must be something you can do,” she pleaded.
I was certain my mother would help her favorite. Instead, she shook her head sadly. “You shouldn’t have let her touch him. Now she has him in her claws.”
“Give me something to defeat the demon,” Yael begged.
“She’s not a demon, she’s a woman,” my mother said sadly. “In this case, that’s worse.”
I BEGAN to keep watch with the others. We had all come to despise Channa for the liberties she took, showing off the child, dressing him in a tunic she’d had woven for him. This woman, who had set herself apart for so long, whose servants toiled in her garden and kitchen while the rest of us went hungry, was now prideful, strutting through the plaza in the afternoons with the baby on her hip as though he were her own, chatting with the other women, who were quick to admire him, how handsome he was, how easily a smile came to him.
Revka’s grandsons acted as spies on our behalf, tracking Ben Ya’ir’s wife each day, reporting her activities to us. Noah and Levi had the ability to fade into the shadows, though their voices had come back strongly. People say that when you have lost something and it returns to you, it is doubly sweet, and so it was with Revka’s grandsons. When they spoke, their words captivated a listener. It seemed the conversations that had been silenced for so long could now be released in honeyed tones, and what they described they did artfully, their reports appearing before us as though written in the air.