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in rivulets.
    Ignoring the pain of her daughter’s grip, Malka crooned to her with soft love, although she had just looked with dark anger at her son-in-law, Jacob ben Asser.
    The young woman could not have owned more than twenty summers on earth, but her features resembled those of an ancient crone, sharp-edged and hollow-cheeked. When she opened her eyes, terror glittered from them. Death’s touch was one all mortals know. Belia stood at the edge of a grave and knew the space would fit her well.
    “Sleep, my dove,” the mother said. “The pain shall pass. This is but any woman’s trial. Did I not bear you and your three brothers?” She shrugged. “And here I sit beside you, no worse for it all. You will soon forget this labor when the babe lies safely in your arms. That, I promise.” Smiling, she kissed her daughter’s cheek.
    Belia nodded weakly, her jaw briefly setting with determina- tion before her eyelids, once again, grew too heavy. The pain must have lessened. She fell into an uneasy sleep.
    Slipping away from her child’s loosening grasp, Malka rose and motioned for Jacob to step away from the large-bellied woman who was his suffering wife.
    They walked just outside the stall, more suited to housing a horse than three adults. One young servant leapt to her feet in
     
    anticipation of some request. Jacob shook his head and asked her to stand some distance away so he and his mother-in-law might speak in private.
    “She needs more than I can give her,” Malka said.
    “And you are all she has,” he replied in a broken whisper. From his eyes, tears rolled down his smooth-shaven cheeks like a flash-flood. He gestured discreetly at the servant. “That one is but a child.”
    “Tell me how I shall aid her in birth with these?” The mother stretched forth her hands. The fi were bent, some backwards and others sideways, the knuckles were huge, and the skin red. “I would kill her and the babe, even if I had the strength to pull the child into the world. She needs a midwife.”
    “Had we reached Norwich, we’d have had our choice of skilled women.” He pointed toward the opening in the unfinished wall. “Here we are surrounded by those who hate us.” He grimaced. “The innkeeper offered to send for a nun. A nun! One who would have baptized the child, stolen the babe before he could suck his own mother’s milk, and passed him to a Christian family to raise. How…” He buried his head in his hands.
    Malka turned away, her jaw set with anger, looking much as her daughter had before falling asleep.
    From inside the stall, Belia whimpered, and the mother now lost her resolve as well. Tears wound their way through the creases in her cheeks.
    Jacob put his arm around her shoulders. She rested her head on his.
    Quietly, the two wept.
    From outside the partially completed stable, a man’s voice suddenly roared. “Let the scales of the Devil’s blindness drop from your eyes. Listen to God’s Will. Hear His Son’s cry. Be not a stiff-necked people and embrace the truth! Accept baptism. Be saved from Hell!”
    The young servant cried out and braced herself against the wall, her widening eyes black with helpless terror.
    A cry of anguish escaping from his lips, Jacob leapt to his feet.
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    His mother-in-law tried to grab his robe, but her hand found only air. “Do not go out there!”
    Jacob looked down at her, fury turning his face as bright as fire. “No sooner do I rid us of one abuser than another takes his place. I will kill him!”
    She took a deep breath. “Stay calm,” she whispered. “We dare not fight back, except with reason and gentle courtesy.”
    “Those who scream such things at us own neither,” he hissed. Again the man outside shouted: “Cease your dance with the Devil and accept the cleansing of baptism. Your willful denial of His truth corrupts all you touch. How long do you think God and good Christian men will tolerate this before you are
    destroyed like