by Mesu Andrews
Tut winked at her. “I’ll return the general safely to Amenia if your new husband promises he’ll ride in my chariot for the hunt. I get to chase lions and wild oxen once a year, and I think Sebak can improve my luck. If I miss the beast with my arrow, perhaps Sebak can snare it with his bare hands.”
Sebak smiled and bowed. “Anything my king commands.” He gently touched the hollow of Anippe’s back, nudging her toward the door.
“Snare it with his bare hands?” The same hand so tenderly placed on her back? With each step, Anippe’s panic grew. She’d only just met her husband, and they expected her to leave Gurob forever to live in his Delta estate? That meant only a few days left at Gurob. Her family would accompany her to Avaris for a feast and then leave her alone. Alone—in the Delta—with Hebrews and goats and Ramessid soldiers who snared beasts with their bare hands?
“Wait!” Anippe fled back to the throne and clutched Tut’s feet. “Please, son of Horus, mighty of birth, good god and just ruler of the Two Lands, please let Ummi Amenia and Ankhe come with me to Avaris. Please don’t exile me to the Delta without my family.”
Tut’s fingers strummed the spirals of her wig, and she looked up to see his tender smile. “Would you feel better if I sent Ankhe with you?”
Relief washed over her like a wave. “Yes, brother, and Ummi too.”
His smile died, and he slid from his throne and lifted her to meet his gaze. In a whisper, he confided, “Amenia must return to the Gurob Harem. Horemheb needs her here to—” His words seemed to drown in whatever worries lay behind his eyes. “We must trust the general’s judgment on this.” He brushed her cheek and resumed his throne and his regal bearing. “Ankhe will remain in Avaris after the wedding festival as my sister’s handmaid.”
“What? My handmaid? No, she’s our—”
Tut’s expression—hard as granite—stopped her. He was the god-king again. “Ankhe refuses to act like royalty, Anippe, so she’ll live like peasantry. Perhaps a Ramessid taskmaster can teach her respect where others have failed.”
How could Anippe face Ankhe with the news? She’d promised to intercede with Tut about a marriage match, but she’d forgotten, and now it was too late. Consigned to servitude, Ankhe would feel betrayed once more. Anippe stood like a pillar, feeling guiltier than ever.
“Anippe, my treasure.” Abbi Horem appeared beside her. “The divine son of Horus has given you in marriage to the man I’ve chosen. Sebak is your husband now, your family. He’s a good man.” Abbi Horem led her back to Sebak and placed her hand in his again, and the big man’s fingers closed over it.
She refused to look up. How she wished for her bronze mirror so she could set her features in Tut’s empty stare. Resignation. Obligation.
Removing her hand from Sebak’s grasp, she smoothed her linen sheath, sliding both hands down the curves of her form. Finally, she lifted her gaze to meet her husband’s.
The warm brown eyes of a giant welcomed her. His lips, parted slightly, seemed poised to speak but fell instead into that same lazy smile she’d seen before. He wore the short, tightly-curled wig of a military officer, and around his neck hung the coveted Gold of Praise—the highest achievement in Pharaoh’s army. How had he distinguished himself? Tut must favor him to bestow such a gift.
Beneath that gold collar lay the muscled chest of a soldier. Bronze arms with leather bands tensed under a sheer linen shirt—the quality of cloth matching that of Gurob’s workshop. Might he have a sister in the harem?
Without permission, he tilted her chin up. “May I escort you now?” Mischief played in his tone, and for a moment she considered slapping him.
“What is my name, now that I’m your wife?” she asked instead.
He tilted his head, brow furrowed. “I will call you Anippe, but our servants will call you ‘Amira.’ ”
Another name. Without answering, she turned and hurried toward the doors. Like the waters of the Nile, I will swell and flood and rage. I am Anippe, Amira of Avaris.
4
[The Egyptians] made [the Israelites’] lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
—EXODUS 1:14
Mered stepped outside Avaris’s bustling linen workshop, inhaling the cool evening air. Harvest would begin in a few short weeks. He leaned against his favorite palm tree and watched a gentle night breeze stir the weeping willows down the hill by the Nile, promising relief after a brutal summer’s heat. There’d been no breeze, and the Nile’s flood had measured lower than he could ever remember.
“Get back to work, linen keeper.” The estate foreman appeared, slapping his cudgel into his palm. “You may dress like an Egyptian, but don’t forget you’re a slave.”
Mered stared at the weapon, his answer a whisper. “I must coordinate with the bakery and brewery for the wedding feast.” He hadn’t been beaten in years. The guards saved their physical brutality for the unskilled workers. The craftsmen received a different kind of torture. “Master Sebak ordered festival bread baked in clay molds of his patron god, Seth, and special recipes of beer.”
“Why would Master Sebak tell his chief linen keeper of these special wishes and not me? I’m his estate foreman.”
The foreman’s look was threatening—a jackal’s face with a long snout and close-set eyes. Why had he come to the linen shop tonight? Ramessids seldom interfered with Avaris’s best-selling commodity.
Mered chose his words carefully. “Master Sebak understands the estate foreman has more important matters to attend to than a wedding feast. He said I shouldn’t bother you with mundane details.” Mered held his breath while the foreman chewed on a papyrus stalk, rolling it from one side of his mouth to the other. Perhaps he looked more like a cow than a jackal.
“Go on, then. Get to the bakery and brewery, but this wedding feast better be perfect, Hebrew.” The foreman strolled away in the rising moonlight, and Mered released the breath he’d been holding.
He looked over his shoulder to be sure the foreman wouldn’t hear. “This wedding feast will be perfect,” he whispered, “but not because of your threats.” He would do it for Master Sebak.
Mered had grown up serving as apprentice to his father in Avaris’s linen shop, which was connected to the main villa by a tiled path. Young Sebak, tired of his studies, had often sought out Mered for sparring with wooden swords. When disease swept through both Avaris and the neighboring Qantir estate, killing nearly half the Ramessid dynasty, it was Mered who comforted young Master Sebak after his parents’ deaths.
The night breeze lifted Mered’s shoulder-length hair, refreshing him. He ran his hand along the jagged trunk of their favorite palm tree. He and Master Sebak had spent hours talking beneath this tree after Master Sebak’s parents died. They talked about everything that summer. Slavery. War. Women. Life—and death. And they still shared a close bond—as close as an Egyptian and Hebrew could have.
So it didn’t matter that Mered hadn’t been home for two days or that his body ached and his mind was muddled and begging sleep. Master Sebak’s wedding feast would be perfect because he was a good man who deserved to be happy.
Mered walked back into the linen shop and through the main villa to get to the estate’s bakery and brewery. After dark it wasn’t safe to prowl the grounds because of the jackals and hyenas. He’d weave through the garden and then through the villa’s kitchen instead.
The bakery and brewery slaves would still be hard at work. No doubt they hadn’t been home in two days either. Perhaps Mered would check the granaries while he was on the south side of the villa. His friend Hur was in charge of ratting and snake disposal. The villa cats kept the rats and vipers controlled well enough for Master Sebak, but he was a soldier, gone most of the time. With a new amira coming to live at the villa, perhaps Hur should do a thorough inspection.
The smell of freshly baked bread and fermenting mash told Mered the bakery and brewery were as busy
as his linen shop. He heard some sort of clay vessel crash to the tiled floor. Then came shouting, a thwack, and a scream. His stomach knotted. Ramessid guards hovered in the bakery and brewery, eager for samples, their constant presence a looming threat to the slaves. Nervous hands made slippery fingers, and Ramessid whips were ever ready to lash.
Mered rounded the corner to an all-too-familiar sight. A Hebrew woman cowered beneath the watchful eye of a Ramessid guard, trembling as she picked up the pieces of a broken bread mold. The baker lived a few doors down from Mered in the craftsmen’s village, but this woman lived with the other unskilled laborers on the plateau between Qantir and Avaris.
“Dead-man’s land” was what the unskilled Hebrews called the elevated fields and mud pits connecting the neighboring villas, where they barely survived in mud-brick long houses. Avaris and Qantir shared the slaves who lived on the plateau and divided equally the products of their labor.
A few Hebrews were deemed messengers between estates, beaten if they couldn’t transfer a scroll from Avaris to Qantir in the time required to serve and eat a meal. Many unskilled slaves worked fields of grain, vegetables, vineyards, and fruit trees. Others tended flocks and herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. When slaves were punished, they were sentenced to the mud pits. Day after day of mixing, molding, drying, and carrying the building blocks of Egypt. All of it occurred in the muddy, desperate world overlooking two pristine Egyptian villas.
The woman picking up the clay pieces was one of the fortunate unskilled slaves. Though she lived on the plateau, she was shuffled between the villas and gardens of Qantir and Avaris for menial tasks. The unlucky women worked their short earthly lives in dead-man’s land under the constant abuse of hungry, hot, and weary Ramessid guards. Since both Master Sebak and his uncle Pirameses, the master of Qantir, were soldiers and seldom in residence, lower ranking family members managed the slaves—men of lesser distinction and even lower character. They treated the Hebrews no better than they treated pack animals.
Mered turned away and decided to visit the brewery first.
The open corridor and cooler evening air provided welcome relief. Mered inhaled deeply, clearing his head. Life would be better when Master Sebak returned. His intolerance for slave abuse spread quickly when he thrashed a guard nearly to death last year after finding a Hebrew maid beaten and cowering in the garden. Ramessid guards, though never kind, were at least restrained while the master was in residence—but how long could it last? Would Egypt’s fiercest warrior sleep in a warm bed with his young wife while his men continued to fight the Hittites?
El-Shaddai, please give my master a nice, long respite. If not for his sake, for the sake of Your people, Israel.
Torches in their metal wall shafts lit the sandstone path as Mered passed the hive-shaped granaries. Wishing he’d brought a stick to stir the path in front of him, he kept vigilant watch for rats and vipers near the grain. He didn’t want to surprise a cobra tonight.
The scent of soured mash drew him. A few more steps, and he entered the bustling world of Avaris’s brewery. Unlike the bakery, which used petite clay bread molds, the brewery dealt in huge vats of crumbled bread, fermented at different stages, poured through giant sieves, and flavored in huge bowls with dates, nabk-berries, and pomegranates.
The chief brewer spied him as he entered the door. “Mered, come sip the latest batch.” A rotund man and happier than any Hebrew should be, the brewer almost certainly sipped the latest batch too often.
“Thank you, but no. I’ve come to make sure we’ll have a hundred large amphorae of Master Sebak’s favorite beer for the feast.”
“Of course. Of course.” The brewer wrapped one arm around Mered’s shoulders and rubbed his chin with the other hand. “Now, which is Master Sebak’s favorite beer?”
Dumbfounded, Mered opened his mouth, but no words came. How could the chief brewer forget the master’s favorite beer?
“Bahaha! I’m only playing, Mered.” The big man slapped his knees, thoroughly amused.
Two Ramessid guards slammed their clay cups on a low-lying table, sloshing the remains, and then hoisted themselves to a swaying stance. “Brewer, get back to work. Linen keeper, why are you distracting this man? He has very important work to do.” Slurring every word, the guards walked toward them in much the same approach as a slithering snake.
The brewer suddenly sobered and leaned close. “I’ll have a hundred amphorae of Master Sebak’s dark date beer for the feast. You worry too much, my friend. Go home to your pretty wife before these guards beat us for entertainment.”
He shoved Mered toward the door and let out a booming laugh. “The next batch of honey beer is ready for tasting. Would you two fine officers give your approval before I dare offer it to Master Sebak?”
Mered hurried out the door and down the hallway, past the granaries and bakery, without stopping for breath. He’d have to thank the chief brewer for that rescue when they saw each other in the craftsmen’s village.
The chief Hebrew overseers were housed with the skilled craftsmen in a special area of the estate. Six mud-brick long houses had been built north of the villa and down a slight hill, along the banks of the Nile. Ramessid guards seldom visited the craftsmen’s village—unless one of the skilled Hebrews needed discipline. The guards were forbidden to harm the craftsmen for fear that production of jewelry, beer, or linen might decrease. Instead, guards tortured skilled craftsmen through their families—making wives, children, or even parents pay for the craftsmen’s errors.
Mered was breathless by the time he returned to his linen shop, but crossing the threshold was like entering the safety of a womb. The steady rhythm of the weavers’ wefts and warps echoed his heartbeat. Unskilled laborers hummed in time, striking flax stalks with wooden mallets to separate the fibers.
His workmen had labored nonstop since Master Sebak’s surprise visit with General Horemheb. News of the wedding had revived them all with purpose and joy. Master Sebak was different from other Ramessids. Kinder. More just. His personal loss and pain made him more generous with slaves who endured hardship daily, and each one agreed that the master had endured life alone long enough.
Mered shouted above the rhythmic beat of busy hands. “Skilled craftsmen, go home for the night and get some rest. Unskilled, remain till morning. I’ll send a new group at dawn to relieve you.”
The designers, weavers, and bead workers halted their projects and congregated at the north door. “Mered, are you coming?”
A moment of decision. Should he stay to supervise or sleep a few hours? The brewer’s words echoed in his memory. “You worry too much, my friend.” His sleeping mat beckoned him, and the thought of his wife’s warm body urged him toward the door.
“Yes, I’m coming.”
His wife, Puah, had been gone the morning Master Sebak summoned Mered to the linen shop at dawn to announce his wedding plans. Puah kept strange hours now that she’d been assigned as assistant to the Ramessids’ chief midwife, Shiphrah.
Mered’s heart squeezed a little, wondering how the midwives felt about the king’s return for Sebak’s wedding. When Pharaoh Tut last visited the Delta with Queen Senpa, Shiphrah and Puah had been woken in the middle of the night to attend the queen’s premature birth pains. Puah had cried for days afterward, reliving the heartbreak of the stillborn baby girl. Did his wife know Queen Senpa was expecting a second child and would soon be returning for the wedding?
A group of thirty craftsmen left the north door of the linen shop. Those in front and back carried sticks and torches to ward off night beasts. Hoping to distract himself from the dangers of their journey, Mered squeezed a young weaver’s shoulder. “Are you almost finished with the amira’s wedding gown? I saw your progress. The design is exquisite.”
The weaver’s eyes were wide with fear, his back as rigid as the stick he held to ward off jackals. “It should be finished by the time the royal barque arrives, my lord.”
My lord. Mered hated when his broth
er Hebrews treated him like an Egyptian master. “You need not call me ‘my lord.’ I’m simply Mered.” He patted the weaver’s shoulder, hoping to infuse a measure of peace, but saw that his attempts were simply prolonging the young weaver’s discomfort.
Mered slowed his steps, allowing the weaver to join those with whom he felt more comfortable. The group ahead began shouting and waving their sticks and torches, giving wide berth to a small knot of hyenas feeding on a kill at the side of the path. The four scraggly hunters scattered as the humans approached, and Mered held his breath. Would they find animal or human prey ahead? The Ramessids had been known to throw a dead slave to the night beasts for a snack.
The craftsmen walked past an antelope’s remains, and Mered heard others sigh with the relief he felt. A familiar loneliness crept into his bones, making his weariness unbearable.
Please, El-Shaddai, let my Puah be home. With her, he could forget Egyptians and Hebrews and hyenas. He could simply leave his day behind and love her.
Four craftsmen, including Mered, split from the group and climbed a low rise to the first mud-brick long house. A narrow alley separated the first two long structures, the front doors of the first long house facing the back wall of the second row of long houses. The structures were a honeycomb of rooms, doorways, and walls. When one family needed more space, they knocked out a wall and added a doorway to another room. When an elderly couple no longer needed a place for children, a growing family accessed more of the structure.
Mered arrived at his door halfway down the long house and paused outside to remove his sandals. Dust coated his feet and ankles even after the short walk home. He could feel the grit between his teeth, in his hair and eyelashes. Harvest season would stir more dust, and just as it became absolutely agonizing, the life-giving inundation would flood the Nile, bringing muddy relief to their dusty world. But until the mud came, they lived, breathed, and ate dust.
Mered wiped his feet and legs. He blew the dust from his sandals and left them outside the door, donning the cloth slippers Puah required inside their home. A grin curved his lips. If El-Shaddai blessed them with children, she’d have to set aside her obsession with cleanliness.
