by Angela Hunt
“Potiphar’s men,” Tuya said, pride stirring in her breast as she watched the guard. “They are probably anxious for his return.”
Yosef’s hands tightened about her waist. “Are you?”
“No,” she answered, then turned to face him. “I mean, yes. He is a good master, but it has been so nice—”
“You don’t have to explain,” Yosef answered, smiling. “I, too, have found myself imagining what it would be like if the house, the horses, the fields, the servants—” his gaze focused on her lips “—were mine.”
The crowd around them surged and moved to follow the procession, but Yosef and Tuya stood as if rooted to the riverbank. “You could pretend until the master returns,” Tuya whispered. Gathering her slippery courage, she entwined her arms about his neck. “No one here will know, Yosef, that you are not the master and I am not…your wife.”
She knew he wanted her. They had worked and laughed and worried together for nearly two years, and their souls were as close as two could be without joining their bodies in the mystical union the gods had ordained for husbands and wives. She had labored to bring Yosef back from the edge of the underworld, and he had rescued her from unendurable loneliness and erased the sting of Sagira’s rejection. Why shouldn’t they enjoy each other? No one would care if two slaves did not wait for marriage; no one would bother two sub-citizens who found delight in each other…
“Ah, Tuya,” he whispered, gazing at her with something deeper than mere masculine interest.
Her heart shuddered expectantly. The crowd continued to jostle them and a passing company of merchants argued over the price of some trinket. “Come.” Yosef pulled her away. “This is not the place for us.”
A trembling thrill raced through her as Yosef linked her fingers with his and took her away from the crowd of revelers.
Yes. No. Yes. No. With every step Yosef’s heart turned from one conviction to the other. Why shouldn’t he take this girl who loved him? Over the months he had come to trust Tuya, and in the security of her steadfast devotion he had finally found the courage to confide the secrets of his past, his hopes, even his strange dreams. Surely the feeling between them was as strong as that which had existed between his father and Rahel! And Potiphar had practically promised to grant them permission to marry. It was not a question of if, but of when. So why not now, when the bloom of youth still graced them and the fragrance of love filled the air?
He had become a man of Egypt—he dressed like an Egyptian, spoke like an Egyptian, wrote the language of the Egyptians. The Egyptians would see nothing wrong with his taking Tuya into his arms and mingling his flesh with her own. Egypt had a dozen gods and rituals dedicated to the celebration of fertility, and the act he was considering would be a ritual of worship in the eyes of the pagan priests. The other slaves did not curb their passions. Sometimes, when darkness obscured faces, some of the men in the slaves’ quarters baited Yosef with doubts about his masculinity because he hadn’t already surrendered to Tuya’s considerable charm.
His body yearned to possess her. His heart slammed into his ribs every time he thought about pressing his lips to hers, and the sight of her shadow slipping over a wall was enough to send a wave of warmth along his pulses. He was nineteen years old, strong in limb and desire, and alone in a place where kings and slaves thoughtlessly devoted themselves to the pursuit of pleasure. Tuya was willing, he knew. Only her great love for him had preserved her patience.
The crowd buzzed around him, but his ears centered on the sound of the quiet puff of her eager footsteps in the dust. She had no doubts about his reason for seeking a private place—she was certain the time had come.
Had it? Yes. No. Perhaps.
Unbidden, Yaakov’s voice and image came to him on a wave of memory. His father spoke slowly, still staring at the mound of rocks where they had just buried Rahel. “For seven years I worked and waited for your mother without taking her into my tent. The years passed like hours, so great was my love for her.” Yaakov let out a short laugh touched with embarrassment. “Though her beauty drove me to kiss her the first time I saw her, I did not sleep with your mother until her father gave her to me in marriage. Remember this, my son—a patient man is better than a warrior. A man who controls his desires is stronger than one who rules a city.”
Yosef stopped in the middle of the street, knowing what his decision must be. “Oh, Tuya,” he whispered, turning to her. He caught his hands in her hair as shafts of restless energy coursed through his veins. What words could make her understand?
“Yosef,” she murmured, ignoring the passersby as she lifted her lips and flowed toward him.
“What are ye waitin’ for?” an aged crone called from the side of the street. Startled, Yosef looked up to see a toothless hag regarding him with bright eyes. “Kiss her, boy, and get on with it!”
Yosef flushed as a rush of warmth washed over him. He yanked Tuya forward, desperate to be free of the crowd.
The fierce sunlight cast deep shadows on the street, and Tuya willingly followed Yosef into the shadows of an acacia grove. Away from the teeming multitude along the river, the world seemed now to consist only of two. How fitting that he should lead her here, for trees were the confidantes of lovers…
“Tuya,” Yosef said again, and she turned to face him, offering her heart and her embrace.
“We cannot do this.” His hands tightened on her arms, but Tuya did not feel the pressure, so startled was she by the dart that had pierced her heart.
She shivered in the chill shock. “You do not want me?”
“This is wrong. You belong to Potiphar, and he has placed his trust in me. To do this would be a sin against God and a crime against my master.”
“Potiphar will not know! He is far away, perhaps dead.”
“God will know. I will know, and you will know that I have committed this wrong.”
Tuya stared at him, her mind reeling with his denial of their mutual desire. “Is it wrong to share love? You cannot tell me you do not want me.”
“I do want you,” he whispered in an aching, husky voice she scarcely recognized. “God knows how much. But I cannot sin against him. We will have to wait.”
Her heart sank with swift disappointment. “For how long, Yosef? Until tomorrow? Next year? When will this god of yours approve?” She narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps you are waiting for some Canaanite girl to enter the household.”
“No,” he whispered, dropping his hands from her arms. Without the warmth of his touch, she felt alone and vulnerable. “I love you with all my heart and soul,” he said, his eyes raking her face. “But here—” he tapped the space of flesh over his heart “—I know we need to wait.”
She choked at the sight of his hand on the place where she had so often pressed her ear to hear the reassuring beat of his pulse. In that instant, her capacity for understanding reached its limit and her emotions veered from frustration to fury. “You have mocked me with your talk of love!” she snapped, turning away.
His strong arm caught her and pulled her back. “I honor you too much to mock you. I honor you too much to commit this wrong. We will do what is right, and when our master returns, he will see that his faith in us was well-served.”
Tuya turned her face from his as she struggled to gather her thoughts. He did not truly love her. The trees, the gray and blue-green shadows of the grove reminded her of the garden where once, during another lifetime, she had offered her love to Sagira. That love, too, had been spurned.
“I have often thought,” she whispered, watching a slender finger of light that probed the foliage, “that I was not meant to find love. Love is not for slaves.”
“How can you say that?” Yosef lifted her chin with his fingers. A wounded look lay behind his dark eyes. “Love has found you, it has found us. But we will have to wait, and trust our master.”
She closed her eyes. “Our master will not know what we do today.”
“He might. If you have a child, Tuya—what wo
uld we do then?”
She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. The priestesses had potions and charms for women to use, but Yosef would not want to hear of those things.
“Trust the master,” Tuya echoed. She lifted her hand and gently ran her fingertips over the lovely face she could never deserve to call her own. “Perhaps you are right, Yosef. We must honor the master. We must not lose our heads.” She gathered her composure and gave him a brittle smile even though she longed to throw herself on the ground and weep in frustration. “We will wait for Potiphar, my Yosef.”
She had taken three steps toward the street when his words made her pause. “I love you, Tuya,” he called, his voice heavy with longing.
She was certain he spoke only out of kindness, but she could not be angry with him. Her wounded pride would heal, but not without the balm of friendship from the only person she dared trust.
“I love you, Yosef,” she answered, glancing over her shoulder. She held out her hand and breathed a sigh of relief when he took it and led her from the acacia grove.
Chapter Eleven
Potiphar bit back an oath when he learned that Narmer, the king’s obsequious courtier, had been named a standard bearer and placed in charge of two hundred fifty men. In addition to the elite guards Potiphar commanded, other troops were organized into various corps. At the head of one of those corps, Narmer now strutted like an ostrich.
Amenhotep II and his troops had been in the east for fourteen months. During their trek through the numerous buffer-states, Pharaoh’s warriors either put down rebellions or his courtiers visited the camps of kings to confirm existing peace treaties. For his help in subduing the warlike Hittites, the king of the Mitanni tribe, a plump polyp of a warrior, demanded and received assurance that one of his daughters would wed the next pharaoh of Egypt. Tribes from many kingdoms sent tributes to Pharaoh, and those who did not were engaged in battle and forcibly vanquished. Kings were captured and defeated men pressed into service as Pharaoh’s army covered the land like a swarm of locusts.
At last Pharaoh stood on the banks of the Euphrates where his father and grandfather had erected stelae to commemorate their victories. Amenhotep raised his own pillar to record his meritorious accomplishments. After the proper sacrifices, chants and prayers, the king ordered his army to return to Egypt.
The captive kings were bound and marched overland in front of the advancing army. When Pharaoh boarded the royal barge at the naval port of Peru-nefer, his warriors hung the captive chiefs upside down on the prow of Pharaoh’s boat to be displayed before the throngs of adoring, triumphant Egyptians. Potiphar knew the chiefs would eventually die at Pharaoh’s own hand as he beheaded them in a religious ceremony.
The army was finally on its way home. The late afternoon sun streaked the water crimson as Potiphar stood at the stern of the king’s boat. “Sweet breath of the Nile, lead me southward,” he whispered, absently staring at the line of boats following Pharaoh’s. Their oars flashed like the wings of dragonflies, churning up the river with furious motion. Along the side of the ship, living water sang the king’s praises; along the riverside, Pharaoh’s adoring people wept and fainted from unexpected joy. Their god, the divine pharaoh, had returned.
Potiphar concentrated on the rhythmic beat of the drums giving the rowers their stroke. He was too old to enjoy the adulation of the crowd; he had cut too many throats to relish blood sport. Foolish young men and idle kings were better suited for war. If this god-king had at last had his fill of it, perhaps the kingdom could rest in peace.
The blue-green ripples of water glistened as the barge cut through the summer Nile. Thinking of home, Potiphar clasped his hands behind his back and wondered if Paneah would prove worthy of the trust his master had placed in him.
At his first glimpse of the walls of his villa, Potiphar thought he’d come to the wrong estate. The tall, crumbling walls had been repaired and painted; sweet flowers grew outside the entrance gate. The gatekeeper, an older slave Potiphar had never seen, bowed and was about to discreetly ring a bell when Potiphar stopped him. “Please,” he said, his scarred hand falling on the other’s tanned one. “I would like to enter my house alone.”
The man nodded stiffly, his heavy cheeks falling in worried folds over his slave’s collar, and Potiphar moved past the gate onto the curving path. A new wall had been erected to separate the prison from the villa, and Potiphar noted with satisfaction that neither the sights, smells nor sounds of the prison would now intrude on the house. The guard at the prison gate saluted sharply at Potiphar’s approach, but Potiphar only nodded and turned his back on the somber structure. Paneah would not have wasted his efforts there. The prison undoubtedly remained as it had always been, a bitter, foul place for bitter, foul prisoners.
The house rose from the sunbaked ground like an oasis, its little temple gleaming like new silver in the savage sunlight. The crumbling statues of Anubis and Osiris had been removed, and nothing remained inside the chamber but a clean altar and a bowl of burning incense. Potiphar found that the spareness of the place pleased him. He had never pledged allegiance to any personal deity, so why should he play the hypocrite and pretend at piety in his own home?
Potiphar left the temple and continued toward the house. The sand beneath his sandals had been sprinkled with water to control the dust, and for the first time in his memory, he could not smell the stockyard. Through an opening in a wall ahead he could see women carrying baskets of grain, and beyond them, three tall, cone-shaped granaries to hold stores of grain and wheat. There had been but one granary when he left.
“I feel like a stranger visiting the house of a prince,” he said, then he laughed at the absurdity of his words. Briskly climbing the steps to the house, he saw that the doorway had been repainted, and his name outlined on the lintel in bold, black letters. A servant prostrated himself at Potiphar’s approach, so the master stepped over the slave’s body and waved the man away.
He swept through the north loggia and into his reception room, then stepped back, amazed at the sight that greeted him. This central hall, the heart of every nobleman’s residence, had been a hollow, vacant symbol of Potiphar’s empty, single-purpose life. Now the room glowed with vitality. The bare ceiling had been painted the soft blue of a morning sky and accented with gold wherever the ceiling joined its supporting pillars. The high windows in the softly painted walls stood open so air stirred in a sweet morning breeze. The four matching pillars had been covered in red paint bold enough to satisfy even Pharaoh’s elaborate tastes. Against one wall someone had built a low brick dais on which Potiphar would sit, and next to the dais a brazier glowed with burning charcoal to chase away the morning chill. On the other side of the room, a carved limestone slab waited for the dusty hands and feet of Potiphar’s guests. A pitcher of pure white marble stood ready to splash away the irritating desert sand.
Handsome panels of red and yellow moldings gleamed from above the doorways, and niches had been carved into the opposite walls to balance the openings in the room. At the northern end of the hall, a staircase led up to the roof. Peering through the opening, Potiphar could see that a light shelter had been built to provide shade from the sun.
When a pair of sandaled feet appeared on the staircase, Potiphar stepped behind a pillar and waited. A tall, imposing man came into view, a scroll in his hand and a frown on his face.
Potiphar stepped forward and pursed his lips. “Do I know you?”
The frown eased into a smile, then the man lowered himself to the floor. “Master! Welcome home. I am Paneah, your servant.”
“Can it be you?” Potiphar stooped and tapped the young man’s shoulder. “Lift your head, so I may see you better. I did not realize the desert sun had blinded me so completely.”
“There is nothing wrong with your eyes,” Paneah answered, lifting his face.
Potiphar crossed his arms and stared at the stranger before him. By all the gods, how a year had changed him! The awkwardness of adolescence had c
ompletely vanished from the lad’s limbs, leaving him slim but powerfully built. He had always been agreeable, but the man before him had been favored with a striking face, a broad pair of shoulders and an easy, open manner. His eyes snapped with intelligence, his smile glimmered with goodwill—unusual in a slave.
“I can only hope I have not changed as drastically,” Potiphar answered, finally finding his tongue. “I come home to find my house a different place, and my youthful steward a man.”
“You honored me by placing me in charge of your household,” Paneah said, standing. “I hope you have found everything to your liking.”
Potiphar raised a hand toward the ceiling, then let his arm fall to his side. “I can find nothing to dislike, Paneah, unless you have spent all your energy on this room and no others.”
“Never fear, master, all your affairs are in order,” Paneah said, laughing. “If you would like a tour of the villa—”
“Of course, lead and show me what you have done.” Potiphar thrust his hands behind his back. “I only hope you have not depleted my treasure room so completely I will have to sell you to feed my sheep.”
“Your treasures are intact and increased,” Paneah answered, leading the way from the reception room. “The cattle produced well this year. Every cow brought forth a calf. The sheep, too, were fertile, and the harvest of your lands has been so bountiful that I purchased additional slaves to bring in the harvest. I have trained them all in other jobs, too, so you will have no fear of waste during the winter months—”
“I do not fear anything, Paneah.” Potiphar clapped the slave’s back as he fell into step beside the young man. “With you in charge of my house, I shall not worry about anything but Pharaoh.”
One week after his return, Potiphar joined the other royal troops at the palace for Pharaoh’s awards ceremony. Feasting and rituals would take place throughout the day, beginning with the sacrifice of the enemy kings at dawn and concluding with the transportation of Pharaoh’s gods along the Nile at sunset.
