Abigail's Story by Ann Burton Page B

them.
    â€œLazy harlots.” Nabal kicked the one nearer him, and she howled. “Get up.”
    The woman crawled over her companion to stagger, clutching her belly, from the room. Nabal simply started kicking the other until she, too, stumbled out in drunken haste.
    â€œAn Edomite gave them to me,” my husband told me as he flopped in the middle of the mound and reclined. “I would sell them, but they have their talents. Remove that.”
    I reached for the wine jug.
    â€œNot that. That .” He gestured toward my khiton.
    Cetura had said there might be nakedness involved. I never disrobed, except when I went to the public baths, and that was done in the dimly lit bathing rooms with only my mother and other women about me. Now I would have to show Nabal what no one but perhaps my mother had seen.
    Slowly I lifted the side edge of my khiton and brought it over my head. Beneath it laid only the shift I wore as an undergarment. I felt a bit ashamed at its threadbare condition, but I kept it clean and mended.
    The sight of my shabby shift seemed to amuse my new husband. “That, too.”
    I felt the full measure of a maiden’s fear as I eased the shift off my shoulders and let it fall to my ankles. My face burned as if on fire, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
    Nabal looked at my pale, plump body, and shifted his gaze from my small breasts down to my round hips and back up again. “Unwind that braid.”
    I released my hair and drew the dark strands over my shoulders. Like other Hebrew maidens, I did not cut my hair, and unbound the curly ends nearly touched the floor.
    The smile left Nabal’s mouth, and he beckoned to me. “Come and lie with me, wife.”

CHAPTER
8
    I left for the hill country the next day, before dawn. The journey would take until nightfall, Nabal’s house steward told me, and I would be accompanied by four guards and an older serving woman. The house in the hills that belonged to Nabal had not been occupied for nearly a year, so provisions were sent with us.
    â€œYou will go without delay, Mistress,” the steward told me when I came out of the small chamber adjoining my husband’s. I was not given time to do anything more than pack my belongings before I was escorted out to the waiting wagon.
    â€œWho are these men?” I did not recognize the two men on horseback or the one driving the wagon, but they carried many weapons: spears, knives, and cudgels.
    â€œMaster Nabal’s guards. They will escort you to the herdsmen’s encampment and return ere you are installed there.”
    That would leave me with but a serving woman to put the house to rights before I summoned the herdsmen for the annual accounting—however one did that—and inspected the flocks. I did not dare demand anything; Nabal could easily divorce me for not fulfilling our marriage agreement.
    â€œI would know the name of my husband’s most trusted herdsman,” I said with some desperation.
    The steward gave me a blank look. “Master trusts no one, especially herdsmen, Mistress.”
    The serving woman, the one I had seen attending to Nabal’s seat the day before, made an impatient sound from where she sat on the wagon’s only bench seat.
    â€œWe have to go now, or we will not reach the encampment before darkness,” she said in her gloomy voice. “If the bears and wolves do not attack us during the dark hours, the marauders will.”
    I had not thought the hill country so dangerous. Suddenly I felt glad the guards were well armed. “Why would marauders attack us?” I asked as I climbed up and sat beside her.
    â€œFor the mule, the horses, and the food. If we survived, they would sell us to slavers.” The serving woman inspected me. “Have you never traveled through the hills?”
    â€œNo.” I had never traveled anywhere.
    â€œGood journey, Mistress,” the steward said as he prepared