She closes her eyes, willing the sound of her beating heart to be muffled, better to hear the rustle of the grass. How delicate the sound? How long the stride? Man or woman? She steps backward, back against the trunk of the magnolia, but the tree is spindly, and though the branches hang low, it is a useless hiding place.

All she can rely upon is her silence, and in her mind, she tries to gather the vigor of her body and capture it in a net that she hangs from her wrist, so that her arms and legs are no different from the tree. Another owl, hooting. Nothing.

The noise grows closer.

Bilhah squints through the darkness. The figure is slight. A woman. She trots through the grass, uncertain, looking this way and that. A strand of her hair catches the moonlight. Silvery blonde.

She is… she is more afraid than Bilhah.

Bilhah steps out of her hiding place, as the figure runs towards her.

The woman stops, breathless, staring. “Here you are,” she whispers.

Katerina.

Bilhah reaches out for her hand. It trembles. “What are you doing here?”

Katerina shakes her head. She pants as she speaks. “This question belongs to me, Bilhah. This is the fourth night you have disappeared.”

“You know?”

“In the morning, your robes are wet with dew, your slippers stained. At night, you toss and turn and wait for us all to fall quiet, stiff and rigid. How could we not notice?” She stops and catches her breath. “But you are brave, to do that jump out of the window. It is high. How do you get back in?”

“The crevices between the bricks are deep. I slip my fingers inside and climb up like a ladder. I am not afraid, for if I fall, the grass beneath is soft. Come.” She pulls Katerina back under the shadow of the magnolia tree. “We are better protected here.”

They sit down, breathing in the perfumed air. Bilhah drops her head in her hands.

After a while, Katerina speaks. “Now, please explain to me why you are coming here.”

“I cannot sleep.”

“And why not? For months you have slept soundly.”

It is true. Other girls have woken with nightmares, or from sweet-sorrowful dreams of home. Bilhah has had the deep and dreamless sleep of one who has finally found safety.

But what to tell Katerina?

“You can trust me,” Katerina whispers.

“What do you mean?”

Katerina leans forward. “Why do you not trust me enough to share with me?”

Bilhah says nothing.

“And you did not tell us what happened when Hurrem Sultan summoned you. It is all connected, is it not?”

Bilhah nods, knowing that Katerina will not see her in the darkness.

“Bilhah.” Katerina catches onto her hand. “Why will you not speak?”

She is worried, Bilhah realizes. She cares.

“I… She arranged that I meet someone.”

“Someone?”

“A man.”

“When you went out wearing that green dress? And would not tell us why. And what happened?” Katerina’s voice is low but urgent. “What was he like?”

Why is it so hard to release the words? Nothing happened, after all. Nothing at all. But maybe something did.

“I did not… like him.”

“A harsh man? Cruel? Anyone who stays in the palace too long becomes cruel, especially if they come to the notice of Hurrem Sultan.”

“I think so. Yes.”

“And she wants what? That you marry him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Bilhah.” Katerina leans over and pulls Bilhah into an embrace.

Bilhah wills herself to soften, but it is too unfamiliar, too unsafe. She pulls away. “I cannot marry this man.”

Katerina hesitates. “Even though… you could then bring children into the world?”

“I would not dare. Unless I was the Almighty and knew I had the power to keep them safe.” She swallows. Trust her. Trust. She came after you into the night. “When I… I came here, I left a wedding dress draped over the wooden trunk in my bedroom at home.”

“It was a man you could not marry?”

What can she say? The only words that come sound foolish. “I saw him kicking the goats.”

“There must be some kind of Sufi quote: A man who kicks his goats will kick his children.”

“Or his wife.”

“Of course.”

“So, you ran.” Katerina pauses. “But you know—”

“What?”

“Many would say — I have heard them, it is not what I believe, but it is talked of — that if you marry this man, then you will have a home of your own. The palace provides generously to those in its employ, even when they do not live in the palace. You will have a sweet little house in Istanbul. Children. Fine garments.”

Bilhah clutches her fingers together. “So they endure…”

“Yes. To them, it is worth it.”

When she thinks of it, her whole being revolts. Something lodges in her throat, the back of her spine prickles.

“Bilhah? Do you have a choice in this?”

“If Hurrem Sultan wills it, then no. But—” Trust. Trust. Trust. “I have all my life found choices even when there was none. A way of escape. Or a friend. A servant. There was this old widow, Mazaltov, who would help me. The Jewish sages of the city. Even… this will sound strange, but even a memory that I found suddenly, waiting to comfort me. Show me a way out.”

How often had she thought back to the people who lined up to hear the child with ruach hakodesh. There was a look in their eyes, a crease in their foreheads as they inscribed her words into their memories. And all the time, she was just as blind and unknowing as they.

“I have always survived,” she tells Katerina.

Katerina clasps her hand. “Do not go out into the world alone. Go with the protection of the palace. It is the best type of protection in all the world.”

She searches Katerina’s eyes. “But how?”

“I do not know exactly. I do know that the palace sends people all over the world. Women, too. As scribes and buyers and seamstresses and on every type of business. You would not want to go to Spain or Portugal, but there is Italy, and just last week a group set out to Jerusalem to help plan the building of the wall. There were engineers and architects, but there will be more, and this time, there will be women among them.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“What do you think we do as we sew? Pray?”

The laughter that comes is a relief. “But what would I do there?”

“The same as you do here. Translate letters. Write reports. Keep an inventory of the correspondence.”

They fall silent. Bilhah takes a deep breath. There are choices after all. And suddenly, there is also fear. Leaving. A long sea-journey. Being alone, though she has always been alone. Afraid of what the future may bring, for if the Messiah is indeed coming, how will she bear the revelation without being shattered?

We can endure the tribulations, she thinks. We become strong and tough, flexible enough to bend without breaking and sinewy enough to return back to ourselves. It is when the kindness comes — when we are asked to trust and we know in our heads that we can, but our hearts still refuse — it is then that we shatter.

Katerina rises and puts out a hand to help Bilhah to her feet. “You cannot expect to escape this place, to run away like you ran away from your father. But to be sent as an emissary? Speak to Yasemin. She is your only hope.” She leans close. “Trust that she will help you.”

***

By early afternoon Eliyahu’s eyes are heavy with tiredness. He wants nothing more than to lie down on the cot in his bedroom and close his eyes for a few minutes, for now that he is up each night at chatzot, learning and praying until the dawn, sleep has become a rarity. But still, he pushes off his slumber, for this is the time not only when he will speak to the great lady Leonora, but when she will listen.

He waits, watching as she arrives and sits down, looks around with satisfaction at the tables filled with children slurping soup and clinking their spoons on the wooden tabletop. Then he sits down at the head of the table. He raises his voice over the dull thud of earthenware being stacked or set down.

“About the sheep,” he begins.

She looks up. “They have been sheared, I understand.”

Anger flares up inside him. It is not that they have been sheared. He has sheared them. And not only was it the task that he is accustomed to; it was arduous and long, for the sheep had become so overgrown that removing the fleece was difficult and the sheep were snappish and fretful —both with and without their fleece.

“Yes. The shearing has been completed. But the flock has not settled.”

She looks up and raises an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

He shrugs. “I do not know. I have no experience with this breed.”

That gleam returns to her eyes. “The best sheep in the world.”

He knows a moment of impatience. They may be the best sheep in the world but unless they are cared for properly, they will fade away. Their wool will become sparse and coarse, and their eyes will dull and they will have no lambs come spring, until all there is to do is to slaughter them and hope that the tough meat will at least flavor a Sabbath soup.

But why is he thinking of these disasters? Surely, the flock will soon settle and the wool factory will be up and all should be good. Summer will fade into autumn, they perhaps will shear them once more just after Rosh Hashanah, and the winter will set in. And slowly he will learn to live in this place without running away.

“They are skittish.”

The last few nights, he has even penned the lambs to give them some extra protection: a difficult task that begins two hours before sunset and involves much whistling and running with his shepherd’s stick. But the lambs, even in the middle of the day, are cold and lethargic, and the mothers are aggressive.

“The mothers, they are aggressive.”

“Aggressive? An aggressive sheep?” She claps her hands in glee. “Excellent. We need mothers who fight on behalf of their offspring. They know that they are in Jewish ownership, these sheep.”

She throws back her head and allows the laughter to peal out of her. Eliyahu sits, tense. It does not help that he is tired. Sleep has become a veil settled lightly over him that he can push aside at any moment. He watches, helpless, as Leonora calls over a kitchen worker and gives instructions on the best way to flavor meat that is tough.

One sheep can produce enough wool to make two blankets. But only if they are healthy and well, their eyes bright and their diet a mixture of grains and grazing.

There are 360 sheep. Not all of them are in the best health. Some even have cloudy eyes. Those 360 sheep will perhaps make 700 blankets. Not enough. Not even half of the 1,500 blankets she has promised the palace in Turkey.

And the sheep. The sheep refuse to settle.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 815)