He shook his head. “She does not claim so.”
“Was she a virgin?”
Ben-Jameen’s eyes widened. “Of course!”
I turned to Lukka. He shrugged slightly, “That is a matter of her word against the word of the accused.”
Ben-Jameen’s face went red. “Do you mean that you claim she was not?”
I held up both hands to stop the fight before it truly started. “There is no way to prove the point, one way or the other.” Then I asked, “What does she want of this man?”
“Marriage.”
“Does her father approve of this?”
“He demands it!”
I looked past them to the accused soldier, but his head was bowed so low I could not see his face. To Lukka, I asked, “Is the man willing to marry this woman?”
“Yes, he will marry her.”
I thought I saw the soldier twitch, as if a hot needle had been jabbed into his flesh.
“Then what is the problem?”
“To marry into our tribe,” Ben-Jameen said, “it is necessary to accept our religion.”
“And that he will not do,” said Lukka. “His god is Taru, the storm god, not some invisible spirit with no name.”
I thought Ben-Jameen would burst. He turned flame red from the roots of his scalp all the way down his neck. If he had carried a weapon he would have attacked Lukka on the spot, I am sure.
I took him by the shoulders and made him face me. “Different men worship different gods, my friend,” I said, as softly as I dared. “You know that.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. His face returned to something more like its normal color.
“Besides,” Lukka added, “to join their religion he would have to be circumcised, and that he will not do.”
“Is that necessary?” I asked Ben-Jameen.
He nodded.
I could hardly blame the man for refusing to allow himself to be circumcised. Yet he had picked the wrong woman to play with. She gave him sex and now expected her payment of marriage. The Israelites demanded that their women marry only men of their own faith, so he had to accept her religion. If he refused, we might well be overrun by her angry relatives who would slaughter us in the name of family honor and religious purity. Of course, we would take many of them to the grave with us, but it would end with all of us dead and Jericho still standing.
Almost, I wished that the Golden One was truly a wise and compassionate god who would descend upon us and bring the light of sweet reason to this thorny problem. Almost.
I looked Ben-Jameen in the eye and said, “My friend, it seems to me that if the man is willing to marry the young lady, that is sufficient. He did not go to her for religious revelation, but for love. You can’t expect him to change his religion.”
Before he could think of a reply, I added, “And, as you know, we have the sworn word of Joshua himself that once Jericho has fallen, we will be permitted to leave you and go on our way to Egypt. Is the young lady willing to accompany her husband to that land? Is her family willing to see her part from them?”
The youthful Israelite took a long time to consider his answer, frowning with thought as we all stood there, waiting for him to respond. He knew as well as I what was at stake here. Would he be willing to sacrifice this girl’s honor for the sake of conquering Jericho?
It was Helen who broke the silence.
She rose from her chair and walked slowly toward me, saying, “You men cause such troubles! The poor girl, I understand how she feels.”
Ben-Jameen stared at her. Helen wore a simple modest robe, but her golden hair and obvious beauty made even the simplest garments seem royal.
She came up beside me, and twisted the ring from her right index finger. It was a heavy circle of gold, set with a shining ruby.
“Give this to your kinswoman,” Helen said, “and tell her it is a gift of a queen. She must be content with it, for the man she loves cannot marry her.”
“But my lady…”
“Shush,” said Helen. “What kind of a husband would she have, if he did marry her? An unwilling man who would blame her for every drop of rain that falls upon him. A soldier who knows nothing but violence, and who would run away from her the first chance he gets. Or drag her back to Egypt, the land of her slavery. Tell her father that he should be happy to be rid of him. After Jericho falls and we have left, let him consider her a widow. This ring will help her to find a fitting husband from among her own people.”
“But her honor,” said Ben-Jameen.
“Nothing can replace that. Yet she gave it away willingly enough, did she not? She has made a grievous mistake. Don’t force her to compound it with an even greater one.”
Ben-Jameen held the ring in one hand. He looked at Helen, then turned to me. Scratching his head, he finally said, “I will bring this to her father, and see if he agrees with your wisdom, my lady.”
“He will,” Helen replied.
Ben-Jameen walked slowly out of my tent, passing the guarded soldier like a man lost so deeply in thought that he barely sees where he is heading. The men outside babbled and muttered and chattered as they all headed back toward the tents of their tribe.
I smiled at Helen. “Thank you. That was very thoughtful of you, very wise. And very generous.”
She made a haughty little smile back. “Any price is worth it if it speeds the day when we can leave this wretched place.”
Lukka agreed. Waving a hand to tell his soldiers to get back to their tents, he said to me, “Maybe now we can get back to the business of bringing down that damned wall.”
Chapter 31
JOSHUA’S “joyful noise unto the Lord” consisted of a marching band. He gathered together all the priests of his people in their most colorful robes and turbans, and had them march around the city’s walls, carrying a beautifully crafted gold-plated wooden chest on a pair of long poles, preceded by seven men blowing on ram’s horn trumpets and followed by more trumpets, drums, and cymbals.
The chest was a religious icon that Joshua called the ark of the covenant. I was never allowed to get close enough to see it in detail. In fact, Ben-Jameen insisted that merely to touch it would mean instant death. I wondered if it were some kind of equipment for communicating with the other realm in which the Golden One and his kind lived, but Ben-Jameen told me it contained two stone tablets bearing the laws given directly to Moses by their god.
I knew better than to argue religion, even with the youthful Ben-Jameen. The priests and their marching band made their joyful noise, circling the city walls all day long, fresh men coming up to replace tired ones as the day wore on.
Under cover of their music and chanting, we chipped away at the foundations of the main wall. Using Hittite iron spear points, we had broken through the two outer retaining walls, then tunneled fairly easily through the accumulated debris of thousands of years that made up Jericho’s hill. There was room now for our diggers to make the tunnel high enough for a man to stand in. When we hit the main wall’s foundations, Joshua started his priests in motion.
At first they marched some distance away from the wall, and the soldiers up on the parapets eyed them very suspiciously, waiting for some kind of surprise attack. But even by the end of the first day, more and more women and children were up on the walls, watching this strange and colorful procession.
For six days they marched and played their instruments and chanted while we scraped and scratched at the massive foundation of the wall. The citizens of Jericho lined the parapets now, waving and jeering. Now and then some child would throw something, but no missile of war was directed at the marchers. Perhaps the people of the city thought it unwise to fire upon priests, or unlucky to risk incurring the wrath of a god. Perhaps they thought that the Israelites were trying to drive them all mad with the constant music and chanting.