Abigail's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

mohar for my brother’s future wife.
    Gold was wholly beyond us.
    â€œFrom where did you get this gold?” A more horrifying thought occurred to me. “You did not steal it?”
    â€œI am no thief.” Rivai gave me a highly offended look. “Nefat took me over to Maon to a gaming house. The man playing, Nabal, was drunk and makingreckless plays. Nefat lent me enough to bet against him. I won the dice, and then the throw, and then I kept winning.” He leaned over, lowering his voice to an excited whisper. “By moonrise he had lost twelve maneh of gold to me, enough to buy a house in the west quarter and you a husband. None of us would have had to work for the rest of our lives.”
    I stopped listening so that I could calculate. Twelve maneh were equal to six hundred gold sheqels, or a whole bar of gold, more wealth than I or anyone in our quarter could expect to see in a lifetime. It was a veritable fortune: a family of twenty could live in luxury on but half such an amount for as many years.
    â€œYou should have seen me play,” my brother continued to boast. “Every throw was mine. Why, if I had—”
    â€œYou said you owe eight,” I reminded him.
    His shoulders slumped, and his face fell into a familiar, belligerent expression. “My luck turned, and that drunken fool began to win. I had to keep playing to recover what I had lost, didn’t I?”
    â€œSo you lost your winnings plus eight you did not have to this Nabal.” Who had likely not been drunk or a fool. “How could you do such a thing?”
    â€œI was tricked,” he insisted. “Nabal pressed me to drink. When my gold was gone, Nefat whined about the stake I owed him. I could not stop.”
    It was sounding more and more as if my brother had been swindled. “Is Nefat your friend, or Nabal’s?”
    â€œNefat was taken in, the same as I.” He scowled.“I know why the Maon switched the dice. Nabal’s losses made him fear my great luck.”
    â€œI am certain that it terrified him.” I rested my throbbing forehead against my palm. “We have not eight silver sheqels to our name, Brother. How do you mean to repay this man?”
    Rivai yawned. “I can borrow from friends.”
    â€œFriends like Tzalmon, who cannot afford to wed,” I suggested, “or Klurdi, who has nearly beggared his parents with his own drinking and gaming?”
    â€œNefat will lend it to me.” There was a new uncertainty in his eyes and voice. Perhaps my brother was only now realizing how few sensible friends he had. “Or someone else.”
    â€œLet us imagine no one can,” I said. “What then? Will this Nabal have you arrested?” He shook his head and looked away from me. New dread poured atop the cold knot in my chest. “Rivai, what will he do to you if you cannot pay? Tell me.”
    â€œMaon law gives Nabal leave to take the debt owed from my family from our go’el,” he muttered. “We have no kin to pay our debts, so it must come from Father.”
    We were not subject to Maon law unless we lived or worked in that town. However, Maon’s distractions kept many undesirables away from Carmel, and I suspected that our shofetim would not bar the town’s authorities from pursuing and prosecuting my brother, even from a suspected swindler.
    â€œOur parents cannot pay this anymore than you can.” No one in our quarter could.
    My brother’s mouth tightened. “Father could borrow from one of his friends.”
    â€œNo one has the means to loan him that much, and we have nothing of value to serve as collateral. The house is practically worthless. The wheel, perhaps, might bring some money, and the goats; only then we would have no pots to sell or milk to . . .” The memory of mad, burning eyes silenced me. Under Hebrew law, those who could not pay their debts were considered equal to thieves.