I wished to be forgiven.

“It was always so in the eyes of God,” Shirah told me.

She let her robe slip from her shoulders so that I could take in the full measure of the forbidden red tattoos on her skin that I had spied in the cistern. I knew what they represented: loyalty to the goddess, a life given in service, a woman’s deepest sacrifice, scorned by our own people.

“Should I judge myself?” she ventured to ask. “Or should I leave that to the Almighty, who forgives us all for being what He made us?”

Beneath the mulberry tree I had nearly been moved to renounce my faith alongside my son-in-law. Who was there to look down upon my trials and my transgressions? Who could heal a wound that might never be closed? Shirah had tasted my sorrow and had trusted me enough to reveal herself to me in return. If she could, and if God would allow it, my son-in-law would be granted his heart’s desire.

Perhaps then I could forgive myself.

I PRACTICED patience throughout the month of Tishri, for this virtue did not come easily to me. In truth, patience had never served me well in the past. If I’d had patience, my grandsons would have been beside the pool of green water when the renegades came to us, waiting like sheep to be slaughtered. If I’d had patience, my daughter’s murderers would still be walking this earth. I thought of my husband and how he had waited for the dough to rise, never rushing the loaves into the oven. He’d known the exact moment to take the linen cloths from the rising loaves, when to slide the wooden board into the red-hot oven. It was as if he was the challah as well as its maker, and therefore understood its mystery from the inside out.

I began to study the slave. He, too, was a deeply patient man. He waited without complaint every evening, settled upon the stones of the dovecote until Yael’s return the following day, as calm as the doves who waited for our return. But I took note of the heat in his pale eyes; he couldn’t hide that. Even his patience would last only so long.

It was a difficult season, and the heat had not dissipated. Sleep did not come easy to me, although the others beneath my roof slept well, including Arieh, who was more than two months old, a healthy, quiet little boy. There came an evening when I was tidying our chamber, setting new straw into our sleeping pallets, when I looked out to see movement beside our door. I noticed a shadow, as I had at the oasis when the darkness of the soldiers crossed the sand. That was my talent. I could observe what was only half there: the beasts on the ridgetop, the rat in the corner, the woman meeting her lover, the vial of poison behind the spice jars, the lanky form of a man lingering outside our chamber. I thought it was a spirit who had risen to walk among us, having left his slumbering body behind. But, no, he was flesh and blood.

*

WHEN I recognized him, I understood that the Man from the North was not as patient as I had imagined. Perhaps this was true for all men. I now remembered there had indeed been days when the Baker cursed the ovens for being slow, when he pulled the loaves from the racks before they were fully cooled. Even the most patient among us has a breaking point. On this evening when I saw the figure slinking along the wall, I knew such a time had come for the slave. He wore a head scarf to disguise himself, but anyone could tell he wasn’t one of us. His fair hair shimmered. You would think a man from the world of ice would hold little feeling, but that wasn’t the case. How hot ice could be, how impatient, ready to melt.

The Man from the North was fortunate that I alone spied him. Anyone else would have set upon him immediately, and even if he was quick to surrender, whoever might have chosen to murder him would have been within his legal rights. I waved him away, clapping my hands, as I would to chase off rats. He slipped back against the wall, falling into the dark, disappearing, as a dream might. But unlike a dream, he left his mark. When I went to the wall in the half-light and ran my hand over the stones, I found them hot to the touch in the place where he had waited, cast by the impatience that was evident in any man in love.

The following morning, as Yael and I walked through the field, she kept her eye on the dovecote where the shadow who had stalked her was kept. My walk was slower than hers, and I saw her impatience when she bade me to hurry.

“The doves can’t wait?” I asked.

She flushed and began to fuss with the baby she carried at her hip. “Dear heart,” she said, masking her eyes, rubbing the soft skin under Arieh’s chin.

“Is there a reason you’re so impatient?” I pressed her.

She looked up at me, hesitant. I could feel her lie forming before it was declared. “No hurry,” she answered, but her gaze said otherwise.