The Sempster's Tale Read Online Free Page A

Christian. Where he had a wife. Where he might even have children. She didn’t know. He had never told her more, until his last night with her here, when they were lying in each other’s arms after love, taking pleasure simply in being near each other and knowing he would soon leave both her and England. Then he had talked about his… Shabbat. And she had lain quiet in his arms and listened. It was what he missed most in the months he spent seeming to be a Christian merchant, he said; and hearing the longing in his voice, Anne had drawn from him with soft questions everything she could about it, even to how to make challah. Her thought had been that if Shabbat was so dear to him that it was what he remembered most when he was away from… home, then she would give him Shabbat here, too—make it part of their memories together. It wasn’t Christian, but nothing about it had seemed something that would damn her soul for doing it. And after all it was something Christ must have done all of his life, so how
could
there be ill in it?
     
    Or so she had told herself until now—until this moment when, with candle in hand to light the Shabbat candles in their silver holders, she stopped and looked up at Daved beside her, hoping he would see only her uncertainty, not her fear.
     
    ‘You light them,“ he said encouragingly. ”Then I’ll say the blessing over them, since you cannot.“
     
    Her trust in him had brought her to this, and she would go on trusting him. She lit the candles, and Daved stretched out his arms, drew his hands over the flames and toward himself three times, then covered his face with his hands and began,
“Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam
…”
     
    Anne shuddered. His voice was gone strange on the sounds that must be words but were like no words she had ever heard. They were a strangeness she had not known was in him.
     
    He finished, lowered his hands, smiled at her, and was simply Daved again. “Now it’s begun,” he said, his voice his own. “And now I sing…”
     
    Anne stiffened, afraid of hearing more of those sounds coming from him.
     
    Daved saw and asked gently, “Or I do not?”
     
    She had meant this as a gift to him. If she failed to trust him… so much of what was between them depended on their trust of one another; and she smiled at him and whispered, “Go on.”
     
    Afterward she would be beyond bounds glad her trust had been stronger than her fear then. He faced the candles again, began to sing, his voice so soft it barely carried beyond the table, and while she listened her fear went from her. The words and even their sound were still strange—“…
Bo’achem le-shalom malackei ha-shalom malachei elyon…”
—but there was beauty in them, and when Daved put out a hand to her, she took it, and he went on singing while the evening’s soft summer shadows deepened around them, and she found herself wishing she could sing with him, there was such peace and longing in whatever the words were.
     
    He finished and looked at her. In the increasingly shadowed room, there was now only the candlelight by which to see each other, with Daved’s face half in shadow, half in warm candle-glow as he said quietly, “The song asks for God to bless this home with peace and, more deeply, that we find peace within ourselves, both on this Shabbat and afterwards.
Shalom aleichem.
May peace be upon you.”
     
    Faintly, trying to say it rightly, Anne echoed,
“Shalom aleichem.
My love.”
     
    He touched her cheek with his fingertips, and all her longing to have him returned in a rush. But he drew back a step and said, “The next part is to you, my
eishet chayil
—my woman of valor.”
     
    Anne moved her head in a slight nod, willing for him to go on, but he already was, still holding her hands, still gazing at her as he sang,
“Eishet chayil mi yimtza ve-rachok
…”
     
    Chapter 2
     
    The thick sunlight of the midsummer’s early afternoon poured warmly into the square