The Sons of Isaac(33)
The boy hesitated and quickly Isaac reached in his knapsack and held out a big chunk of smoked cheese.
The boy grinned and reached for the cheese. “I did catch just a glimpse of her. This Eleazar was giving me instructions and she leaned forward to hear.” He stopped and took a big bite of the cheese.
Isaac reached out and held his arm so he couldn’t take another bite, “So you saw her …”
“Yes,” the boy said, realizing he would not get loose until he had told more. “A wind blew up and caught at her mantle,” he said, “and before she could pull it around, I did see her.”
“You saw her?” Isaac asked with growing curiosity.
“I did. I saw her. Well, to tell the truth, it was just a glimpse.”
“And …” Isaac tightened his grip on the boy’s arm.
“She knew I had seen her and at first she looked frightened. Then she smiled. For a moment I swear it was like the sun was shining.”
“She smiled? Why?” Isaac asked.
“I don’t know. Anyway before I left, when no one was looking, she motioned me over to where she was sitting so tall and splendid on her camel. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘take this and forget what you have seen.’”
The boy reached in his leather pouch and pulled out a perfectly round flattened piece of gold. It had a delicately etched palm tree and some letters. Isaac saw at once that it was the kind of charm women wore as decorations framing their face. She obviously had been concerned enough to part with one of the coins in her headpiece. He felt a twinge of guilt to think of how he had pried her little secret out of this simple boy.
His feelings of remorse quickly passed as there was one more question he must ask the boy before he let him go. “Where was Eleazar when he gave you this message?” he asked.
“In Jericho,” the boy answered with an obvious impatience to be off.
“Then go quickly. If you follow this path, you will come to the brook Besor and you will see the tents of Abraham spread along its length. I’ll see you in my father’s tent, and it will be as though we had never met.”
The boy quickly stuffed the rest of the cheese in his mouth, brushed past Isaac, and hurried off down the path and disappeared into the mist.
* * *
As Isaac hurried back along the path, his mind whirled with the preparations that must be made. “A fine lady, on a camel with elegant trappings,” the boy had said. For the first time he worried that living in a tent might seem too difficult for her. He would, of course, take her to his mother’s tent.
He knew that his uncles lived in the city and only went out to the fields to plant and herd their flocks. She probably preferred the city. He paused and tried to imagine how their camp would look to someone who had always lived in the city. To him the time they spent out in the fields was wonderful, but to a wife it could look very different.
I must hurry and set my mother’s tent in order. She must not have reason to despise anything that belonged to my mother. He started to run and was back at the camp in an amazingly short time.
He went directly to his mother’s tent, and on lifting the flap paused to look around. He was mesmerized by the familiar odor of jasmine mixed with musk and patchouli that still filled the air. A soft linen robe lay just where she had left it thirteen years before when she went up to Hebron where she had died. It was flung across the carved chest she had brought with her from Ur. Her fine brass mirror hung by a leather strap from the tent pole, and her incense burner had tipped over beside the fire pot. He removed the stopper from an alabaster jar to smell the contents. It was her favorite fragrance, the rare and expensive patchouli.
In one corner, neatly stacked, were her cooking utensils. A tripod and goatskin container for making leban from the sweet, fresh milk of the goat, a wooden bowl for kneading bread, a clay bowl that had always held the bubbling ferment that made her bread light and fluffy. There were a few tongs and ladles and clay jars holding flour and smaller ones holding her spices. Hanging above from one of the tent girders were strings of dried beans, peppers, and clumps of garlic and onions. She had always cooked for her family, and Isaac wondered if the young girl Eleazar was bringing would do the same.
He paused beside her loom, which held a partially finished piece. He rubbed his hand along the well-worn beams while he looked around the room. He tried to imagine someone young and beautiful moving among his mother’s things. He thought he would despise her if she should not like his mother’s belongings. How could he endure it if she insisted that she wouldn’t cook and had his mother’s treasured, carefully collected cooking things removed. He suddenly wished he could be free of the whole complicated business. He would much prefer remaining as he was. He had to admit he had been lonely, but that was not as bad as having some disagreeable young woman making demands on him.