It was exactly as Musa wished. He had his way; he had his company; he had the blond man’s staff

‘Let’s see this holy man of yours,’ Shim said, glad for once that he was no longer the centre of attention. ‘Come, come.’ He cailed his fellow quarantiners to his side. The more they were, the safer he would be. They did not need persuading. Marta could not miss the possibility of further miracles. Aphas found the energy to stand and join the pilgrim group. A healer was his only hope. The badu followed them like a dog, always glad of expeditions. Would someone draw the demons out of him? They set off for the precipice in the middle of the day, when only mad men left their tents, to find the Galilean man, if it was him. He was the purpose of their quarantine, perhaps. He was the answer to their prayers. Like Musa, they would be restored.

Miri and the goats were left behind. They had no need for miracles. Miri was unwidowed by a miracle already. She had no wish to meet the healer face to face. She’d want to slap his cheek. She’d want, at least, to have the devil’s eggy breath returned to her husband’s mouth. She’d want to have the days rolled back like parchment on a scroll to times when Musa lay across his bed with a blackened tongue, blurting fanfares of distress. But Miri did not believe in Musa’s healer, anyway. He was as real to her as cattle with two tails.

She watched the five pilgrims disappear towards the crumbling decline of the scrub, their pace set by her husband’s flat, unsteady step. She could have wept. She could have taken Musa’s knife and scarred herself, as widows do. Instead she turned again towards the warring hanks of wool and the small world of her loom.

13

Miri normally preferred to weave in daylight outside the tent. The masters working in the towns would say that weavers who set their looms in open ground have first to find the landscape’s warp and weft, the shadow lines, the tracks, the spirit paths. The weaving and the landscape should concur or else the cloth would lose its shape. The wind, the water and the threads, the lines of scree, the strata of rock, the patterned strips of wool should run in unison and then the fabric would be true. The weaver and the ploughman should align. It’s not enough to know your yam. You have to know the land as well, they’d say.

But Miri simply liked the light of open ground. She liked the privacy. Most of ail, she liked the moment, early in the morning with the sky stil pale and unprepared, and no one else awake, when a piece of cloth was underway and she could step out, bare-footed, to inspect the new weave on the loom, its warp threads tightened by the cold and damp. She’d pick off any tiny snails that had climbed to feed on lardings in the wool. She’d twang the freshly wefted cloth to shed the dust or dew. If the weave was square and true and tense, the loom became a harp. The cloth would hum a single note to her. She could not wait to see what note the birth-mat would provide. First she had to find a place to peg the loom.

Miri would have liked somewhere a little distance from the tent where she would be left in peace, out of Musa’s reach, and out ofhearing. She’d already seen a flat place without too many rocks, on the leeward side of the tent. It would be safe and comfortable, once she had kicked away the stones and cleared the scrub weed. She would not bother with the landscape’s warp and weft. She’d traveiled enough to know she’d find no patterned unison in this tumultuous scrub. No weave could match such stringy wind or cluttered light or rock, and only someone from a town would think it could. She would concern herself with duller matters and set the loom where the soil was firm enough to hold the pegs, and where the sunlight came in from the left, so that her working arm did not cast shadows on the cloth. The yam, for her, was more important than the land. Yet, yes, she would allow the masters this — a weaving done in open air, informed by sunlight and then allowed to stretch and dampen overnight beneath the stars, was best. It would outlast a workshop weave which had not been toughened by the sun or tested by the wind and dew. A workshop weave was like a coddled child, pent up indoors all day. As soon as it encountered rain or heat or cold, it sagged and frayed.

As Miri walked towards her chosen patch of ground, carrying the base beams ofthe loom, she realized she could not peg them out away from the tent as she had wished. The site she’d chosen was the perfect place, except in one respect. There were six goats. The five females were untethered. There was no goatherd to prevent them wandering. There were no dogs. Or other wives. Miri could not leave her birth-mat unattended. In the night the nannies would join the snails in feeding on the weave. Goats thrive on cloth. They love the taste of it, the colours too. They love to dine on cloaks and blankets. They’d strip a sleeping goatherd naked if they could. They’d eat the devil’s hat.

At first she thought she’d try to stake the female goats alongside the billy. But she was pregnant. It was hot. The goats were spread out widely over the scrub, foraging for food. Chasing goats was work for boys. Besides, goats staked in dusty scrubland such as this would not feed well, and hungry goats did not produce good milk. She had no choice. She’d have to peg out her loom inside the tent and suffer Musa’s company.

She was not used to constricting her loom inside. She did not know the rituals or the rules. A loom, assembled in a tent, should always face the entrance squarely, she’d heard it said; the awnings should never be allowed to fall closed while the weavers were at work. You might as weil throw out the cloth, half done, if the awnings were closed by mistake. There were prayers to recite before the loom was warped, and other prayers for when the finished cloth was cut. Unfortunately Musa’s bed already faced the entrance to the tent. She would not want to weave within his reach.

So Miri loosened the pinning on the side wal of the tent between the hand pole and the leg pole. She rolled the goatweave back on to the roof and fastened it with leather ties and stones. She’d opened up a gap three paces wide which she could close against the wind and goats at night quite easily. It gave her access to the dark part of the tent, beyond the woven curtain which she’d made herself some months before. This was where she slept when Musa did not want her, and where the stores were kept. It smelt ofmildew, from the flour and the skins. She cleared a space, two paces wide, four paces long. A large birth-mat. She fetched the pieces of the loom which she and Marta had already stacked — too hopefuily — at the entrance to the tent.

Miri had her mother’s loom. She’d set it up so many times before, outside, and made so many lengths of cloth and in so many different camps — tent panels from goats’ hair, shrouds and cloaks, hair cloths and veils, mats and carpets, wooilen camel bands, dividing curtains, travel bags — that weaving was her kith and kin. There, in the tent, was the little rug she’d made in grey and red, in carefree days before her mother died and she’d become her father’s burden. There were the goat-hair panniers, the cotton flour bags she’d made in undyed yams. There was the blue-green curtain, in twined weft weave, that she had started when they’d camped in hills above the sea and her father had sent out word that she would go to any man that asked. Musa’s caravan had stopped and she’d been bartered for a decorated sword and a fleece-lined winter coat. ‘And you can take the loom,’ her father said. There was the black cotton dress she’d woven for the wedding day, with its cross-stitch embroidery in red and blue and its plaited woollen girdle and its cowrie shells. She’d spun the cotton and the wool herself Al her history was made of cloth. Now there would be a birthing-mat in purple and orange.