The Book of Longings(23)

He studied us. “Her mother has ordered that no one should see her.”

Yaltha spoke in a commanding voice. “Go and tell her mother this is the daughter of Matthias, head scribe to Herod Antipas and the overseer of her husband. Tell her he would be offended if his daughter were refused.”

The servant shuffled back to the house and returned minutes later to open the gate. “Only the girl,” he said.

Yaltha nodded at me. “Lavi and I will wait for you here.”

Their house wasn’t as splendid as ours, but like those of most palace officials, it had at least one upper room and two courtyards. Tabitha’s mother, a large woman with a bulbous face, led me to a closed door at the back of the house. “My daughter is not well. You may visit her for only a few minutes,” she said, and, thankfully, left me to enter alone. Turning the latch, I felt the drumbeat start in my chest.

Tabitha huddled on a mat in the corner. At the sight of me, she turned her face to the wall. I stood there a moment adjusting to the thick, dim light and the uncertainty of what to do.

I went and sat beside her, hesitating before resting my hand on her arm. She faced me then, covering my hand with hers, and I saw that her right eye had disappeared into the swollen fold of her lid. Her lips were bruised purple and blue, and her jaw was puffed out as if stuffed with food. A bowl, a very fine gold one, sat beside her on the floor glinting in the shadowy light, brimming with what looked like blood and spittle. A sob rose in my throat. “Oh, Tabitha.”

I pulled her head to my shoulder and smoothed her hair. I had nothing to offer her but my willingness to sit there while she endured her pain. “I’m here,” I murmured. When she didn’t speak, I sang her a familiar lullaby, for it was all I could think to do. “Sleep, little one, night has come. Morning is far, but I am near.” I sang it over and over, rocking her body with mine.

When I ceased singing, she offered me a faint smile, and it was then I saw a ragged bit of cloth protruding oddly from the side of her mouth. Keeping her eyes fastened on mine, she reached up and pulled it slowly through her lips, a long bloody strip of linen. There seemed no end to it. When it was fully disgorged, she lifted the bowl and spit into it.

I felt a wave of revulsion, but I didn’t flinch. “What has happened to your mouth?”

She opened it so I could see inside. Her tongue, what was left of it, was a morass of raw, mutilated flesh. It writhed helpless in her mouth as she tried to form words, utterances that flailed about and made no sense. I stared at her, uncomprehending, before the truth hit me. Her tongue has been cut out. The tongue from my premonition.

“Tabitha!” I cried. “Who did this?”

“Faah-er. Faaaah-er.” A dribble of red ran down her chin.

“Are you trying to say Father?”

She grabbed my hand, nodding.

I only remember getting to my feet, stunned and desperate. I don’t remember screaming, but the door flew open and her mother was there, shaking me, telling me to stop. I tore away from her. “Don’t lay your hands on me!”

Rage shredded my breath. It clawed straight through my chest. “What crime did your daughter commit to cause her father to cut her tongue from her mouth? Is it a sin to stand on the street and cry out one’s anguish and beg for justice?”

“She brought shame on her father and this house!” her mother viciously exclaimed. “Her punishment is spoken of in Scripture—‘the perverse tongue shall be cut out.’”

“You have raped her all over again!” I ground the words slowly through my teeth.

Once, after Father had upbraided Yaltha for her lack of meekness, she’d said to me, “Meekness. It isn’t meekness I need, it’s anger.” I’d not forgotten this. I knelt beside my friend.

The shine of the bowl caught my eye once again, and I knew what, until that moment, had been obscured. Getting to my feet, I picked up the bowl, careful not to spill the contents. I thundered at Tabitha’s mother, “Where is your husband’s study?” She frowned and did not answer. “Show me, or I will find it myself.”

When she didn’t move, Tabitha rose from her mat and led me to a small room, while her mother followed behind shrieking at me to leave her house. His sanctum was furnished with a table, a bench, and two wooden shelves that were laden with his scribal possessions, shawls and hats, and as I suspected, the three other golden bowls stolen from Antipas’s palace.

I looked at Tabitha. I would give her more than lullabies; I would give her my anger. I flung her blood across the walls, the table, the shawls and hats, Antipas’s bowls, the scrolls, vials of ink, and clean parchments. I went about it with calm and measure. I could not punish her rapist or give back her voice, but I could do this one act of defiance, this small revenge, and because of it her father would know his brutality had not gone unwitnessed. He would at least suffer the rebuke of my anger.

Tabitha’s mother charged at me, but she was too late—the bowl was empty. “My husband will see you punished,” she cried. “Do you think he won’t go to your father?”

“Tell him my father has been charged with finding the one who stole Herod Antipas’s bowls. I would be pleased to inform Father of the thief’s identity.”

Her face slackened and the fight left her. She understood my threat. My father, I knew, would hear nothing of this.