The Quality of Mercy. Faye Kellerman

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СКАЧАТЬ It made serving her meals easier.

      Rebecca threw open the door and the toothless woman looked up from her poster bed and smiled. She was reading, her emaciated body propped up with a half-dozen pillows.

      “I need some help,” Rebecca said, closing the door.

      “You disguise yourself again?” the hag croaked out. “You’re the Devil!”

      “Hurry, Grandmama. I must leave before that slimy worm de Andrada sees me.”

      The old woman put down the book, slowly swung her legs off the mattress, and rested her bandaged feet on the floor. Rebecca stood to help her, but her grandmother motioned her down with the palm of her hand.

      Her feeble movements were painful for Rebecca to watch—withered, spotted hands pushing up a frail body hanging from a bent spine, bony fingers reaching for her walking sticks. When the hag was finally upright—or as upright as she could be—she extended the sticks out and dragged her legs toward them. Her hands trembled horribly, but Rebecca knew there was yet so much the old woman could do with them. The young girl forced herself to act impatient and short-tempered with the hag. Anything less would seem as if she pitied her grandmama, and as sure as poison, pity would kill her.

      “Hurry up, you old sot,” she chided. “Father should have put you away years ago.”

      “Hush your foul mouth, Devil.”

      “Have I all day to watch a cripple walk?”

      “Whore.”

      Rebecca smiled.

      “Daughter of Jezebel,” the hag scolded.

      “Tell me about Jezebel,” said Rebecca.

      “Your learning of the scriptures is an abomination.” The old woman reached her and kissed her bearded cheek. Rebecca threw her arms around the skeletal frame.

      “You’ll break me in two,” Grandmama screamed.

      “I hope so.”

      The old woman pushed her away, bent down on the floor and opened the lid to a box. She pulled out swatches of rags, a twine of string, and a knife. Rebecca stripped naked from the waist up.

      “You’ve such lovely, large mounds, granddaughter,” the old woman said, wrapping the girl’s breasts in rags. “You’ll flatten them out if you keep this up.”

      “Would I could lop them off.”

      “Oh hush up.” After Grandmama encircled Rebecca’s chest with rags, she pulled the ends tightly from behind and secured them with string.

      “I can’t breathe,” Rebecca gasped.

      “Hush. You’ll grow used to it.”

      “It’s too tight.”

      Her grandmother responded by pulling the twine tighter.

      “I’m being crushed,” Rebecca pleaded.

      The old woman ignored her. “So you know nothing of Jezebel?”

      “I know something of her,” Rebecca said. “I greatly like hearing your versions of the stories.”

      “Not my versions!” the hag said, knocking Rebecca’s head.

      “Ow.”

      “These are stories as written by our prophets,” the old woman lectured. “Written for us with God’s guiding hand! Now, what do you know of Jezebel?”

      “She was enticing … and wicked.”

      “Aye, very wicked. She was the wife of the King of Israel—King Ahab. She turned him wicked as well.”

      “Wasn’t Jezebel a whore?”

      “Much worse, Becca. Jezebel was a murderess who used her womanly powers for evil—to lead the righteous to do evil. As she did with King Ahab.”

      “Yet she was successful in her design, Grandmama,” said Rebecca.

      “Why do you say that!”

      “Because her scheming gave her the title of Queen.”

      “And that is your definition of success?”

      “Not a bad definition, I should think.”

      “Ah Becca, it pleases you to rile me.” Grandmama tugged on the twine. Hard. “Aye, most of the time Jezebel was successful. But one man did not succumb to her designs. The prophet Elijah. He escaped her powers because he was strong in the mind and believed in God.”

      “Our God,” Rebecca clarified.

      “When I speak of God, I only speak of one God,” the old woman whispered. “The God of Moses—Adonai. Lo yeheya le’ha elohim a’herim al panai. ‘There shall be no other God before me.’ Jesu was an invention of a demented, embittered bastard named Saul. Because of Elijah’s faith in Adonai, his mind proved impenetrable to evil.”

      “Elijah was a very dour prophet.”

      “All the prophets were dour. They were forecasting doom. It would have been blasphemous to act otherwise. But Elijah did have one distinction. Do you remember what that was?”

      “No.”

      “God took Elijah whilst he was alive.”

      “Ah, the chariot of fire across the sky,” Rebecca said. “What a spectacle that would have been. Twould have bested any fireworks ever performed for the Queen.”

      The hag knocked Rebecca’s head again.

      Rebecca laughed. “What finally happened to Jezebel?”

      “You remember not?”

      “No.”

      “She was pushed out of a window and was devoured by mad dogs.”

      “God’s sointes, what a horrible death!”

      “She was evil.”

      “Even so, Grandmama.”

      “All that remained were the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands.”

      Rebecca laughed and her grandmother slapped her on the back. “It’s the truth, you heretic! Read your bible.”

      “I’ve lost my new English copy, and the Latin version has half the pages missing.”

      “I must get you a bible scripted in the old language,” Grandmama said. “I have one, but the pages are as yellow as saffron and turn to dust at a finger’s touch.” The hag paused. “Perhaps Uncle Solomon can find one in his country. How much of the Hebrew you read do you understand?”

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