Rebekah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card Page B

who came with Ezbaal. One of them, it was agreed, was almost certainly his mother, and as the afternoon wore on, the other two were rumored to include the mother of Ezbaal’s dead first wife, Ezbaal’s sisters, his aunts, his great-grandmother, or the high priestess of Asherah from any of several famous cities, who was coming along to test Rebekah’s purity and bless any marriage that might ensue. Of course the three women actually with Ezbaal could not be all these things; Rebekah could not think of why he would have brought them along at all.
     
    Rebekah was not one to wait for rumors, however. Soon after Ezbaal’s party had been seen and a messenger sent, who ran back with word that Ezbaal begged hospitality and that his company included fourteen men and three women, Rebekah took Laban aside and asked him who the women were and why they had come.
     
    “They’re here,” Laban said dryly, “to look behind the veil, you dolt.”
     
    Ah. Of course. Father would not display her to Ezbaal like a cow, but a man like Ezbaal would not marry a mere rumor or mystery. Rebekah’s face would have to be seen by someone that he trusted. And if it was a woman—or three women—willing to view her face in privacy, she could have no possible reason for objecting.
     
    She felt a thrill of fear at that. After all, just because a servant boy and her own father and brother had declared her to be pretty did not mean that she would be beautiful in the eyes of a man who had wandered half the world and seen all there was to see. She could imagine his mother or aunts or whatever-they-weres coming back to him and saying, “You might as well marry the veil, because you’ll be wanting to leave it on her through the whole marriage,” or, “She’s pretty enough, for a girl of the desert, but in a world where true beauty can be found, why should you settle for this?” And he would leave without asking for her hand in marriage, and then she could take off the veil, for no one would think her truly beautiful again. “She might have been beautiful as a girl, but womanhood did her no favors,” that’s what they’d say of her.
     
    And after all these years of vanity—for what was this business with the veil, she realized now, except the sheer vanity of thinking no man could look upon her face without being driven mad with love?—it was exactly what she deserved, to have mystery replaced with pity. And Father would be teased when he visited the towns, about how he always did better business when he kept his goods in a sack than when he put them on display. Perhaps they would have to strike the tents and move far away, to a land where the shame of Rebekah’s exposure would not have made them figures of ridicule.
     
    “You do still have a face under that thing, don’t you?” Laban asked, though of course he had seen her face many times. She did not wear the veil inside her father’s tent, because she knew it offended him and, at least with Father and Laban and the oldest, most trusted servants, there was no fear of her beauty—her reputed beauty—causing disturbance.
     
    “All but the nose,” she said. “It kept snagging on things and I finally cut it off.”
     
    “You’ll be all the prettier, I’m sure,” said Laban. “I understand they’re growing their women without noses in the cities of the coast. They don’t cook as well because they can’t smell the food, but it’s better for kissing. You don’t have to turn your head.”
     
    He was rewarded by being hit on the shoulder with a spoon, at which he retreated, laughing.
     
    Despite her fears, Rebekah couldn’t help getting caught up in the excitement in the camp. Though she thought of marriage only with dread, she also knew that it would come, sooner rather than later, and to have Ezbaal ask for her hand would be about as high an honor as she could aspire to. If he came with the offer of a bridegift instead of a demand for a dowry, that would be a sign of true