Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers

Author:Salley Vickers [Vickers, Salley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101630792
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

5

I know it is easy to be wise after an event but even before Azarias disclosed what he knew I smelled danger—a hollow feeling below my ribs—as we made our way to the house of this relative Azarias had thrown at me. Everyone we asked seemed to know who he was. ‘Raguel?’ they said. ‘Surely we know Raguel. Go to the house with the tower by the ditch of bulrushes.’

And it was the case that here in Ecbatana were many buildings which zigzagged to the skies.

When we reached a house with such a tower Azarias insisted I go forward to meet my relatives though they had no foreknowledge of our arriving.

I went in and found a man sitting by the door of the courtyard and my heart gave a lurch when I saw him, a broad-shouldered man with just that same squint along his nose, which resembled my father’s look before he lost the use of his eyes.

The man gave a greeting—‘Much cheer to you, stranger!’—and he brought me into his house. He introduced me to Edna, the woman of the household who greeted me courteously, a woman with a flat friendly face, not at all like the face of my mother, Anna. My mother’s face, my father always said, was like the face of a roe deer.

But it was Edna who recognised me, so that I had no need to say who I was, for the moment she clapped eyes on me she said, ‘Raguel, how like he is to your kinsman of Nineveh, Tobit!’

‘That is very fit,’ I answered, ‘for Tobit of Nineveh is my father.’

Then Raguel sprang up and embraced me saying, ‘Blessings to you, lad, for you are the son of a good and noble father.’ And he ordered a ram of his flock to be killed to receive us.

I was pondering how to broach the question of their daughter but I need not have worried because at that moment a maidservant came down the stairs, wailing and wringing her hands. The girl Azarias had chosen for me to marry was threatening, it seemed, to throw herself from the window of the topmost tower.

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