“Perhaps I have a favor to grant you,” I said.
My husband had often convinced customers to buy more loaves than they initially thought were needed. You will never go hungry, he told them. Your table will be the envy of all. Possibly there was a bargain to be struck. In the bakery this was always so, why not at the palace door?
Ben Ya’ir’s thin, dark wife eyed me, suspicious. Her lips were bright with blood. “No one can help me.”
I assured her that someone could. I would offer her proof that for every ailment there was indeed a cure. When I turned to leave, Channa called for me to bring the baby if I were to return. My prediction was correct. He was the key that would open a doorway so the Man from the North could escape his plight.
I WENT DIRECTLY to Shirah’s chamber and sat at her table. We shared a tea made of the dried root of the hyssop. The boiled water was tinted sky blue. There was a plate of dried fruit, raisins and figs. My grandsons were in the courtyard with Shirah’s son, Adir, along with the Essene boy, Yehuda, Tamar’s son, who had become their great friend, though he’d been commanded by his people to stay away and pay more attention to his studies. All were taking turns with the spinning top, so we had our privacy.
“Did she speak to you?” Shirah tried to be offhand about the matter, but her gaze was sharp. “She locks her door to most.”
I wondered how it was possible that others did not see the truth as I did. Did they not take note of the unusual color of Aziza’s eyes? The shade was not unlike the Salt Sea, changing with her mood, now gray, now green, now dark as stone. Only one other person had such eyes. At the mention of Ben Ya’ir’s wife, Shirah was struck with grief. When I spoke of Channa’s illness, however, she did not seem surprised.
“While the hyssop flowers, she can go out only at night, when the flower closes and the scent evaporates,” Shirah informed me. “She keeps the same hours as the rats.”
Shirah took a sip of her tea, made of the bloom that caused Ben Ya’ir’s wife such difficulty. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy its sharp flavor.
“I didn’t realize you knew her.”
Shirah laughed grimly. “I’ve never met her.”
I thought this over, how it could be possible for Shirah not to know this woman, yet still be acquainted with the most intimate details of her life. In our world a man who was married could lie with an unmarried woman and no one would think him the worse for doing so; he might be required to pay her family for her shame. But a woman who gave herself to such a man had no legal rights. Even her bones would be sentenced to lie alone if she was convicted of any wrongdoing; they would be cast out and unburied so that she would forever be unable to find rest among her own kind.
“Channa has the power to open the prison gate,” I reminded Shirah. “She might be willing to do so in exchange for a cure.”
“Then we pay the jailer,” Shirah said moodily. “Is that what you want of me?”
“Is that what she is?” When Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s wife had peered out from behind her door, she had seemed like a prisoner rather than a jailer to me. “I pity her.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Shirah admonished me. “Is what we see on this earth all there is? You understand there is a shadow world. Can you not spy a demon in the corner even though you cannot see her or feel her breath upon your skin?”
Shirah was convinced to find a remedy, for there was no other recourse. She went to the shelf where she stored herbs. There were brown sheaves wrapped in cord and containers of powders, thistle and garlic, wormwood and cinnamon. When she returned she held out a leather pouch of crushed myrrh. Her instructions were simple: I was not to let the fire flame too brightly or to add other ingredients to the mix when I presented it to our leader’s wife. Cures such as this were strong and therefore dangerous. Death could occur if care wasn’t taken.
“If she breathes in sparks, she may never breathe again,” Shirah remarked as she closed the cord of the bag. There was a certain delight in her tone.
I reached for Shirah’s hand in order to gaze into her palm. I was not educated in such matters, yet there was one sign I knew quite well. The brand I carried, the one that signified a murderer, a mark that had twisted into my flesh on the day I’d become the thing I was now. I was relieved to find that Shirah’s hand was clear of such an abomination.
“Did you think you’d see her blood on my hands?” Shirah demanded, drawing away. She laughed, well aware of what I had been searching for. “If I’d wanted to accomplish that, I could have done so when I was a girl.”