CHAPTER 2: PALACE STREET
In the Lower City two days later, Yoninah and her daughter Bat-El were walking hand in hand along Palace Street. It was a fine day in early spring. The winter rains were behind them. The trees were just beginning to send out tentative buds.
This was their favorite day of the week. They would make this trip weekly. As a healer in the lower city, Yoninah had to buy fresh medicinal plants for her shop.
The two of them, mother and child, made a striking picture. Yoninah always dressed up for her shopping trips into the heart of the city. At age thirty-four, her hair was a lustrous black, curls caught up in a bronze hair ornament. She wore a tunic of fine Egyptian linen. She of course wore a veil on her face. All free women remained veiled. Only slaves and prostitutes went around with their faces unveiled.
Her daughter Bat-El at age ten was still too young to require a face covering on the street. Bat-El’s bright eyes shone with anticipation at the trip down Palace Street.
Palace Street led from the bridge over the river Ed Delbeh, along which the sailors and merchants come from the Harbor. Running through the lower city, with its modest two-story houses and shops, the street climbed towards the Temple Mount, where the Palace and Temples stood.
Palace Street was narrow, like all the streets in Ugarit, with stone and mud brick houses bounding it on either side. Contained within its narrow margins was a wealth of color and sound.
Wearing multicolored long skirts with bells on them, a slave girl ran past. Priestesses, modestly veiled, made their way back to the Temple Quarter.
Young sailors passed by, speaking a medley of tongues: Ugaritic, Akkadian, Mycenean. An occasional Hittite, with entirely alien sounds.,Dogs barked in the garbage. All these sounds added to the acoustic chaos of the street.
Yoninah and Bat-El’s progress up Palace Street halted when they came to a cluster of people in the road. They were gathered around a wildly gesticulating figure, a man with long gray hair and a disheveled appearance.
“Hear, hear! Lord Baal told me the city is doomed!” the man called to the crowd.
The man’s gray hair was wild, his beard long and untrimmed. He wore a tunic which looked none the better for wear. His torso was wiry with the gaunt appearance of someone who did not eat enough. Yoninah thought he probably fasted. A mechanism by which many of these self-proclaimed prophets achieved their visions.
“The city is doomed!” The prophet lifted his arms to the sky. “Lord Baal spoke to me. Warn the people, he told me. The blasts of war will be heard throughout the city. A great storm of enemy soldiers will appear at the gates. The city will burn!”
Yoninah and Bat-El were impressed with his grand hand gestures and the vividness of his vision. Others on the street laughed at him.
“You have lost your mind, old man!” one man shouted. The people went on their way. No one paid him much attention. The sun in a clear sky, the colors of spring flowers bright around them, the women in their flowing tunics, the young sailors with their boasts and jeers.
Yoninah thought the prophet was a gifted storyteller with a touch of madness, no doubt. She briefly remembered the birds settling out of the sky and the unnatural darkness the other. day. The memory gave her a brief sense of unease. She and Bat-El nonetheless continued their trip
along Palace Street. It was hard to give much credence to a prophecy of doom, not when the city was prosperous and their gates were well-guarded.
As they climbed the gentle incline of Palace Street, they approached the more prosperous houses near Temple Mount.
The Temple and its shops were located at the very highest point in the city. As they looked down, they could see the harbor below, with the waves of the Great Sea glistening in the sun. They could see three ships in the waters: their sails unfurled, catching the sea winds and heading away from the city.
On a quiet back street near the Temple, Yoninah and Bat-El found the vendor they sought. Carefully handing over the half-shekels in her purse and watching while the merchant weighed the silver pieces on his scales, Yoninah bought her requisite medicinal herbs: poppy seeds, cannabis flowers, valerian root, and mandrake root.
As Yoninah picked out the stock, she told her younger daughter what each herb treated. “Poppy seed for pain, cannabis for feeling nervous and jumpy, valerian root for sleep.” She did not tell her daughter about the uses for mandrake root. She did not want to explain an aphrodisiac to the child.
With their purchases in hand, mother and child made their way back down Palace Street. The day had been lovely, a respite from the winter rains and the summer heat which was yet to come. Nothing like a spring day in the city. Altogether a successful trip, Yoninah thought with satisfaction. Although she could have done without the mad prophet.
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