The few times she had gone into a city, she had not liked it. The hearty stink of animal dung, the nauseating smells of human waste and rotting food, the acrid odors of tanning and dyeing. And the crowds—the jostling, the noise, people shouting and cursing or even cheerfully greeting each other without seeming to care that dozens of strangers could hear them bellow. Yet perhaps the hardest thing for her in town was the lack of a horizon. Walls everywhere, blocking your view—to Rebekah it was like perpetually being trapped in a canyon. She had been trained all her life to keep in mind where she could run, if danger threatened—bandits, a lion, a bear. True, lions and bears generally stayed out of villages, and the large towns kept a wall, but when the wall failed, when a town fell, what had been built as their protection became their trap, leaving the townspeople at the mercy of marauders with no hope of escaping into the open. Cowering in their houses, that’s what all the town people were doing, however bold a face they might wear in the street.

“If you love your husband,” said Deborah, “then you won’t care if it’s a tent or a house. That’s what they all say.”

“If I love him.”

“Why wouldn’t you, if he gives you babies?” asked Deborah.

“Not every husband is good,” said Rebekah. “It’s not just about babies. You’ve heard the stories the women tell.”

Tales of the kind of master who beat everyone, not just the servants, but his own children, his own wife. Who could stop such a man? Or the man who was insatiable, constantly bringing new women into the household and casting his seed about in strange beds and strange places, so that his wife could never be sure that there would not be dozens of would-be heirs ready to contest the right of her own children to inherit. And when a husband had a new favorite among his women, there were tales of wives persecuted, mocked, even driven from their homes as the husband who had sworn to care for her looked on indifferently.

“Your husband would never treat you badly,” said Deborah. “Uncle Bethuel would never let him.”

“Father won’t have any say about it, once I marry a man.”

Deborah laughed. “If Uncle Bethuel hears that your husband treats you wrong, how long do you think he’ll wait to come get you back?”

“How would he hear?” asked Rebekah.

Deborah thought about that. “I forgot. He’s deaf.” Then: “You could write to him?”

“And who would carry the letter?”

“I would.”

“And how would you do it if my evil husband forbade you?”

“I’d go anyway.”

“And what if he caught you and beat you?”

“Then as soon as he was through beating me, I’d go again.”