It wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask—after all, Ezbaal was now Rebekah’s uncle, and there was no reason to hide her face from him. So Rebekah was surprised at how reluctant she felt to unveil in front of everyone like this. Hadn’t she run around this camp all her life, unveiled, until the last couple of years? It wasn’t as if she loved having the thing over her face. But it felt almost like stripping herself naked in front of strangers, to reveal her face with everyone watching like this.

Yet she could not refuse, so up came her hands despite her reluctance, and in a moment she was handing the veil to Deborah, who quickly straightened Rebekah’s hair before she turned back to face the company.

There were low whistles and murmurs from Ezbaal’s company, topped at once by Ezbaal’s booming voice, shouting, “Bethuel, you fraud! This is the face you swathed like a leper? Look at her—between her face and the sun itself, who can say which shines with more beauty!”

Rebekah blushed at the extravagant compliment.

Akyas leaned down to her. “I had no idea he was going to embarrass you like that,” said Akyas. “But he’s not one to contain his feelings, and you are truly lovely in the light, my child. Ezbaal embarrasses you because he feels so keenly the loss of his chance to wed you.”

Ezbaal was not finished. “If all the worshipers of the god of Bethuel had daughters like this, all the other gods would soon be out of business!”

This was coming perilously close to blasphemy, but Laban dutifully wrote the words for Father, who smiled and said, “It was never my choice to veil her, my brother Ezbaal.”

“But it was definitely my choice to veil Akyas,” said Ezbaal. “For hers is the only beauty that can be fairly said to approach that of your daughter.”

“Hush now, Ezbaal,” said Akyas. “You will raise expectations that I can only disappoint.”

Rebekah hurriedly wrote those words for Father to see, even as Akyas reached up and removed her veil. She turned and gave it to “Mother,” then turned back, as Rebekah had done, to face the whole group. Rebekah, of course, caught these movements only out of the corner of her eye, until she had finished writing. And when she looked up, it was not at Akyas—whom she had already seen unveiled on two occasions—but at the onlookers, who were strangely silent.