Free A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer Page A

slowly
out of the market back towards the compound, trying to avoid the stray dogs
that continually got under his feet. They barked and sometimes snapped at his
ankles: they did not know who he was.
    When the boy reached the edge of the village
he noticed the sun was already disappearing behind the highest hill, so he
quickened his pace, remembering his father’s words about being home before
dusk. As he walked down the stony path, those still on the way towards the
village kept a respectful distance, leaving him a clear vision as far as the
eye could see, which wasn’t all that far as he was carrying so much in his
arms. But one sight he did notice a little way ahead of him was a man with a
beard – a dirty, lazy habit his father had told him – wearing the ragged dress
that signified that he was of the tribe of Jacob, tugging a reluctant donkey
which in turn was carrying a very fat woman. The woman was, as their custom
demanded, covered from head to toe in black. The boy was about to order them
out of his path when the man left the donkey on the side of the road and went
into a house which from its sign, claimed to be an inn.
    Such a building in his own land would never
have passed the scrutiny of the local councillors as a place fit for paying
travellers to dwell in. But the boy realised that this particular week to find
even a mat to lay one’s head on might be considered a luxury. He watched the
bearded man reappear through the door with a forlorn look on his tired face.
There was clearly no room at the inn.
    The boy could have told him that before he
went in, and wondered what the man would do next, as it was the last dwelling
house on the road. Not that he was really in Tic First Mirarlc terested; they
could both sleep in the hills for all he cared. It was about all they looked
fit for. The man with the beard was telling the woman something and pointing
behind the inn, and without another word he led the donkey off in the direction
he had been indicating.
    The boy wondered what could possibly be at
the back of the inn and, his curiosity roused, followed them. As he came to the
corner of the building, he saw the man was coaxing the donkey through an open
door of what looked like a barn. The boy followed the strange trio and watched
them through the crack left by the open door. The barn was covered in dirty
straw and full of chickens, sheep and oxen, and smelled to the boy like the
sewers they built in the side streets back home. He began to feel sick. The man
was clearing away some of the worst of the straw from the centre of the barn,
trying to make a clean patch for them to rest on – a near hopeless task,
thought the boy. When the man had done as best he could he lifted the At woman
down from the donkey and placed her gently in the straw. Then he left her and
went over to a trough on the other side of the barn where one of the oxen was
drinking. He cupped his fingers together, put them in the trough and filling
his hands with water, returned to the fat woman.
    The boy was beginning to get bored and was
about to leave when the woman leaned forward to drink from the man’s hands.
    The shawl fell from her head and he saw her
face for the first time.
    He stood transfixed, staring at her.
    He had never seen anything more beautiful.
Unlike the common members of her tribe, the woman’s skin was translucent in
quality, and her eyes shone, but what most struck the boy was her manner and
presence. Never had he felt so much in awe, even remembering his one visit to
the Senate House to hear a declamation from Augustus Caesar.
    For a moment he remained mesmerised, but
then he knew what he must do. He walked through the open door towards the
woman, fell on his knees before her and offered the chicken. She smiled and he
gave her the pomegranates and she smiled again. He then dropped the rest of the
food in front of her, but she remained silent. The man with the beard was
returning with more water, and when he saw the young