“Then I’ll do it,” said Rebekah. “Though I will not go into the marriage tent with you.”

Akyas laughed. “No, there are some things that a deaf man has to do for himself, without interpretation.”

“Why would you . . . why do you say that you love and trust me?”

“Because I do,” said Akyas. “And that’s all the explanation you’re going to get, because . . . well, because you’ve never met you, if you see what I mean, so you don’t know how easy it is for someone to love and trust you.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Rebekah. “Because Ethah and . . . ‘Mother’ . . . didn’t find it all that natural.”

Akyas laughed again. “Oh, you’re a delight. ‘Call me Mother’ indeed. But she . . . simply has to be intimate with everybody the moment she meets them. But of course that means she’s never really intimate with anybody, since everybody is at exactly the same level of intimacy, the stranger and the longtime friend and the family member, all the same. She’s not Ezbaal’s mother, you know. Or mine. She was simply Ezbaal’s father’s senior wife at the time he was murdered. His real mother died giving birth to him.”

“I had no idea.”

“Ezbaal is a loyal man. Once you have a place in his life, he’s loyal to you forever. Unless you betray him, of course, and then . . . well, he makes a marvelous friend. If he takes you under his protection, you are as safe as you can be in this world of wild beasts and marauding men.”

And on they talked, about Ezbaal, about husbands, about city life, about the places she’d seen, all kinds of things, until it was so late that they were both yawning, and not for the first time, and Akyas finally said, “My dear child, my dear young woman, my dear friend, your coming to me tonight was the kindest thing anyone could have done for me. You were the answer to my prayer, in fact.”

That made Rebekah a little uncomfortable, since of course Asherah didn’t exist and therefore couldn’t have answered anyone’s prayer. But . . . maybe God heard the prayers of those who believed in false gods, and counted their faith as if it were faith in him, until they learned better. “Well, you were not the answer to my prayer,” said Rebekah.

For a moment Akyas looked taken aback, so Rebekah hurried to finish her sentence. “You were the gift that God gave me without my even having to ask. Because he knew I needed you, even if I didn’t know it myself.”

A smile spread across Akyas’s face. “Oh, you have a silver tongue.”

“If I do, I must have got it from my mother, since Father’s as blunt as a camel’s snout.”