Chapter 1 · Chapter 1

The betrothal sheet was still in my mother's hand when the men of the tribe came to settle me.

They set the lamps in a ring and stood me at the edge of the light, where a woman is counted. My promise to my cousin had been made years ago, by our fathers, over a bowl of milk I was too small to lift. I had never been asked. Tonight I understood that a promise made without me could still be broken with me standing in the middle of it.

My cousin's father spoke first. He used the word for a pledge broken, then the word for a price, and between the two of them he did not use my name. Behind him the women made a low sound, the sound a tent makes when the wind turns.

My cloak was closed to my throat. The veil was drawn to my brow, and beneath it my face was as hot as a stone at noon. I kept my eyes on the dust and let them talk.

Then Shimon came in from the dark and stood in the centre of the ring, and said nothing. He did not need to. The talking stopped where he stood. He had come up out of Egypt with nothing a camp could name — no father seated, no herd, no ground — and still the circle widened for him, and men who had been shouting found their hands quiet.

He turned once, slowly, so that each of them had to look at him. Last of all, my cousin's father.

"Give me the sheet," he said.

My mother did not move.

"Put it in my hand," he said, "and I will answer this claim tonight, in front of every one of you — with a covenant, not a price."

Someone's hand found the tent rope and held it. The lamp between us guttered, sank, stood again — and in that light I saw his wrist, the cord knotted at it, the dust worked into the weave of his sleeve.

The lamp steadied. My mother's hand stayed closed on the folded cloth.

"Say it, then," my cousin's father said. "Say this covenant and let the camp weigh it."

Shimon turned until he was speaking to the ring and not to the man. "She was seen at the well. That is the claim. A cup went from her hand into mine, and out of that cup you have built a broken pledge." He let it stand a moment. "The cup was mine. The hand that took it was mine. Put the claim on me."

"You are nothing here," my cousin's father said. "No house. No herd. No father seated with the elders. What do you have to answer with?"

"What I have."

A man at the back of the ring laughed, one note, and stopped when nobody joined him.

"There will be a sitting," my cousin's father said. "She stands in it and answers. That is how a name is cleared, or it is not cleared."

"That is how a name is spent," Shimon said, "and you know it. Once she stands in that ring, it does not matter what comes out of her mouth. The camp will only remember that she stood."

My mother's thumb moved once on the cloth and went still. That was the first moment all evening I was afraid.

"So." My cousin's father spread his hands. "A broken pledge. A price, then, and the thing is finished."

"No," Shimon said. "A covenant, and the thing is finished. I answer for her name. Tonight, in front of every man and woman standing in this light, and after tonight no one in this camp says it in the dust — not in a ring, not at the well, not behind the tents where you think I cannot hear it."

"And if you fail to answer?"

"Then you come to me for it, and I will be standing where you can find me."

Somebody's rope creaked. The women behind me made no sound at all now, which was worse than the low sound.

"The sheet," Shimon said.

My cousin's father blinked. "What?"

"The betrothal sheet. Give it to me."

"It is not mine to give."

"I know," Shimon said. "I was not asking you."

Every face in the ring turned to my mother. She is not a tall woman. She stood with the cloth against her chest the way you hold a child that has already been named, and she looked at Shimon for a long time, and she did not move.

I had listened to them decide me for the length of a lamp burning down. I was twenty-four years old. I had been promised over a bowl of milk I was too small to lift, and I had been discussed this evening by men who never once put my name in their mouths, as though I were a boundary or a well.

"I have listened," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted and did not shake. "I will say one thing and then I will be quiet."

My cousin's father turned, surprised, the way a man is surprised by furniture.

"My name is Arwa." I said it into the ring, to all of them, and let it be heard.

"Twice tonight this ring has settled what I am. Not once has it used my name. My father is under the ground and cannot answer for me, so I answer." The veil was hot against my brow. I kept my eyes up.

"I did not break the pledge. No one asked me to make it. And if there is to be a breaking, then let it be done in the open, with the words said properly, and not settled quietly over my mother's head like a debt."

Nobody spoke.

"The sheet stays with my mother," I said, "until the covenant is written and read out. When it is read out, I will hear it in my own ears. If it holds, the sheet can move. Not before."

An old man near the fire cleared his throat. Sheikh Aber had been sitting so still through all of it that the lamplight had made him part of the tent post. He was the oldest man in the camp and the only one who had not stood up when the shouting began.

"The girl has spoken well," he said, "and she has spoken last, which is her right." He put his hand flat on his knee.

"Egyptian. In the morning, come to my tent. You will sit, and we will write this covenant line by line, and I will put my seal under it, and then it will be read out where everyone can hear it. Until it is read out, the ring is closed on this matter.

Take your claim home," he said to my cousin's father, without heat.

"You will have your answer by noon."

My cousin's father looked as though he wanted to say something with weight in it, and found that the weight had gone out of the evening. He gathered his cloak and went, and two of his men went with him, and the ring came apart the way a ring does, in pieces, one lamp at a time.

My mother's hand found my elbow and pulled. Women closed around me, and the tent rope was lifted, and I looked back once under my arm.

Shimon had not moved from the centre. Men were passing him on both sides and giving him room without meaning to. The cord was still knotted at his wrist, and the dust was still worked into the weave of his sleeve, and his eyes were on the place where the cloth had been against my mother's chest.

---

He came to the edge of our lamplight an hour before dawn and stopped there, at the rope, and did not put a hand on it.

I came out with my cloak closed and my veil on. The cold was coming up off the ground. Somewhere past the last tent a dog was arguing with nothing.

"You should be asleep," he said.

"So should you."

He took something from inside his sleeve. A scrap, the size of a palm, worn soft at the corners, the colour of weak tea. He held it flat on his hand between us.

"What is it?"

"Papyrus." He turned it. One side had a column of small marks down it, ticked in a line. The other side was blank. "A tally-man dropped it in the brickfield. It was written full on the front. He had no use for the back."

"And you did?"

"I kept it three months before I dared put anything on it." He touched the first mark at the top with the edge of his thumb, the way you would touch a scar to make sure it has closed.

"This one. There was an old man in my gang. He could not lift the straw any more, and he could not lift the water, and one morning the taskmasters took him out past the last row of bricks and beat him until the dust went red around him." He said it evenly, the way a man says a thing he has said to himself many times in the dark.

"Nobody counted it. In the tally it was a Tuesday of bricks. So I made a mark. My first. The first day I was not in Egypt, even though my feet were still in it."

I looked at the column of marks. There were a great many.

"You have run out of room," I said.

"I have." He was quiet. "A man whose days are counted by another man's tally is not his own. So I count mine."

The wind moved the tent wall behind me. My mother would be lying on the other side of it with her eyes open; she has never once slept while a thing was unsettled.

"Then mark tonight," I said.

He looked at me for a moment too long, and then he did something I did not expect. He set the scrap down on the flat stone between us, and he set the reed beside it, and he stepped back.

"You mark it," he said.

I picked up the reed. It was warm from his hand, which I did not say. I leaned down and drew one stroke at the bottom of the column, and my hand was steadier than my voice had been in the ring.

"What will you call it?" he said. "The covenant will be read at noon. Give me the word for tonight, and I will write it the way you say it."

I put the reed down. The stone was cold through my palm. He was a whole arm's length away and had not come closer once.

"Call it begun," I said. "Not finished. Begun."

He nodded slowly, as though weighing it, and picked up the scrap and put it away inside his sleeve.

"Then at noon," he said.

He turned and went back into the dark without a lamp, and I stood there until I could not hear his step, and then I went in.

The cloth was still folded against my mother's chest. Her fingers were still closed on it. I lay down on my side of the tent with my cloak on and my veil still over my hair, and I did not tell her what had been written on the stone, and she did not ask, and we both watched the roof of the tent go grey.