“You are not a young woman, but you do not rest. You scheme and arrange and move people around like pieces on a chessboard, here only to do your bidding”

While the servants are stacking the crystalware and removing the tablecloths, Eliyahu lingers. Although it is late, this gnaws at him; he has been thinking it through for days. He sits quietly, until a cluster of women servants rise, and he glimpses the great lady among them.

Then he calls across the room. “Honorable lady?”

She turns.

“Honorable lady. If I am to travel to Jerusalem, who will care for the sheep?”

She laughs. “The sheep.”

“Yes. The sheep.”

“Anyone can take care of sheep.”

He shakes his head. “That is not true. There are six ewes sick. The malady may spread to the rest of the flock. I check each of them every morning. The brightness of their eyes, any liquid oozing from their mouths, the sturdiness of their legs. Some I feed by hand. I protect them from wolves, and I study the pasture, to make sure there are no wild grasses that may be poisonous.”

She nods and looks down at her hands, spread flat against the table. What is she pressing against?

He speaks quietly and with compassion. “You want the redemption to arrive? It comes from taking care of the sheep, not from building walls.”

She shakes her head. “No, that is not true.”

He drank a goblet of wine before, and it is freeing his tongue. “Is it not heavy for you to carry the great boulder of our exile on your own shoulders?”

She looks up.

“You are not a young woman, but you do not rest. You scheme and arrange and move people around like pieces on a chessboard, here only to do your bidding.”

“It is lighter than bearing my own guilt.” She speaks quietly, and maybe she does not say the words out loud at all, maybe he simply senses them.