Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  This fish garb was definitely a fashion don’t; however, I had no choice. I put it on, slipped the mask over my head, then went out to wait for El’i, my chauffeur.

  The Pelesti were between growing seasons and had nothing to do. Therefore the serenim had created mass entertainment to keep the people happy. Today there were gladiator teams. That wasn’t the term they used, but my lexicon had shown enough pictures of matinee movie stars in short dresses and helmets that I’d gotten the idea.

  Rather than stay in the sheltered comfort of the Temple of Dagon, we sat outside, grouped around a central stage beneath the trees. As haDerkato I had a throne next to Takala and Yamir. The youngest son, Wadia, who was about fourteen years old, sat at my feet, passing grapes and olives back to me as though they were popcorn.

  Six men emerged from one side of the sandy pit, six from the other side. A priest, wearing his official fish robe, invoked the gods and goddesses to observe this challenge. Then he bowed away, and the teams attacked.

  Slicing, hacking, stabbing, and jabbing, they tried, with a passion, to kill each other. I clenched my teeth, letting my vision fuzz so that I didn’t actually see anything but also didn’t raise questions by cowering beneath my chair, which I would have very much liked to do.

  First blood brought a roar from the audience, compounding the intensity. Men and women spectators were equally involved. I didn’t doubt some bookie waited outside the gates for the tallies.

  By midafternoon the sand was bloody, everyone was dead, and we were headed home. I felt sick to my stomach; I’d just seen eleven men slaughter each other. What had happened to my soul? What had possessed me to stay?

  Fear. Fear of being alone, fear of being lonely. It was a scary, unknown world. By playing along, I survived. At least that was my rationalization.

  We mounted our sturdy carts and trundled back to the palace. I was ushered into the feast along with everyone else. Dinner was served, a mash of corn with patties of corn shaped into fish. We were halfway through when I heard a shout.

  “HaDerkato, for you!” Tamera declared.

  I looked up, horrified. The surviving gladiator beamed at me, holding a tray in his outstretched arms. A tray with the open, staring eyes, the scream-gaped mouth, and the severed neck of the final combatant. The man’s head was being delivered to me on a platter!

  Corn refilled my mouth; what could I do? Dear God, please help me!

  I looked away, into the gaze of the gladiator.

  His bronze-eyed gaze. Black hair fell over his broad shoulders. He gleamed with oils from his postslaughter bath. He was dressed in the pointed kilt of the Pelesti, the lower half of his face obscured by beard. I looked back into his luminescent eyes, my heart racing.

  Could it be? “Sea-Mistress,” the king Yamir said, “it is customary to reward the winner with a kiss.”

  The gladiator slid the tray with the head onto my table, next to my dinner. I raised my face, knowing that if it were Cheftu, if he had stepped into the body of this person, I would recognize his kiss.

  First the gladiator brushed my lips with his, then he seized me in a bear hug, pulling me across the table. He was rough, stabbing his tongue into my mouth repeatedly, crushing my shoulders, and pressing my lips so hard that I felt the impressions of his teeth. I saw stars from the pain of my shoulder.

  This was not Cheftu.

  The oaf released me and I fell back, stunned.

  The Pelesti cheered; they were a cheery sort. The gladiator grinned, revealing that the teeth he’d pressed against my mouth were the only four he had. I suppressed a shudder. My gaze fell on the tray, into the muddy gaze of the unfortunate man. I told myself it was all wax. Just a reproduction. Not real. Not real, Chloe.

  Wadia was examining the head, lifting its hair, looking in its ears, with the transchronological fascination that teenage boys have for the gruesome. The blood had left my cheeks. I felt horrible. Please don’t let me throw up, I pleaded with the universe. “Take it to Dagon,” I whispered. “Offer it to the sea,” I told Tamera.

  They loved the idea, so a group, dancing and singing, trooped off to the shore, the head held like a banner above them.

  They left the bloodstained tray for me. I gestured for Tamera. “Get rid of it,” I said. “I return to the temple.”

  “May the goddess bless your sleep.”

  May the goddess keep me from having nightmares, I thought as I climbed into the cart.

  I WOKE UP IN ANOTHER TOWN. Not a physical change in location, but the cheeriness and playfulness of the city had been replaced overnight with somber faces and battle readiness. Highlanders had been sighted, peering down from their mountainous strongholds. It was the first sign of spring, I was told.

  “They fear to meet us on the plains,” Wadia bragged later. We’d eaten dinner together; now we sat outside beneath the stars. More than anyone else, Wadia and I got along. He was a teenager; they were universal. “If they met with us on the plains, our chariots could beat them.”

  “They don’t have chariots?”

  “Lo, not even horses.”

  “How do they move about, then?” I asked, plucking a fig from the bowl. It was the season for figs, a welcome change from the corn-and-scallion diet.

  I got seafood only for breakfast.

  “They swarm like bees,” he said, his hands moving parallel to each other, imitating the swarm. “Then bzzzz, down from the forests of their god, swooping on our men! Bzzzz! They sting us again and again.”

  “But they don’t have horses?”

  “In the hills, it’s deadlier to have horses,” he explained to me slowly. “They get stuck, they can’t get good footing.

  They can’t move like bees. The highlanders don’t even have good weaponry.”

  “So why be fearful?” I asked as I sucked the seeds from my fig.

  He looked at me with an expression I recalled giving my parents when they were being too obtuse for words. “Bees can kill, even when they are little, even when their stingers are small, because they are fierce.”

  “Bees? Are fierce?”

  “Have you ever tried to take anything from a bee?” he asked me.

  No, I actually hadn’t. I tried to avoid bees. “So they swarm and sting you,” I said.

  “They also have a powerful god, so that they win battles, through divine intervention. Their god is mighty, he’s vicious.”

  “Then why don’t you, I don’t know, worship him instead? If he’s more powerful than Dagon?” Halfway through my statement I realized that what I was saying approximated blasphemy. I held my breath.

  “Their god only lets the highlanders worship him. He doesn’t want any other people.”

  A god who wasn’t interested in proselytizing? This was new.

  “So we try to stay away from their highlands, they keep out of our lowlands.” He looked away. His profile was like his brother’s, with a prominent nose. Unlike Yamir, though, he had a matching chin that already fit his face. He was a teen, but he had none of the awkwardness of youth. His voice was low. “They are so unspeakable, they are so much refuse, that they even burned our teraphim.”

  Here we go with the statuettes, I thought. I wonder if I could just make some from the local clay, save us all a lot of pain and suffering. “Their god doesn’t want you to worship him, so what kind of divine intervention did he use? What’s the point?”

  Wadia grinned. He loved telling stories. Though he was next in line for the throne, he had the spirit of a scholar. Or a stand-up comic. He began, “Lifnay …”

  My lexicon held up a card that said “ ‘Before’ or ‘Once upon a time.’ ”

  “… the lion who now roams the mountains was but a cub.”

  Why couldn’t anyone with a Middle Eastern street address ever speak directly? They would be mute if it weren’t for metaphors. I nodded for Wadia to continue.

  “There was another ruler, Labayu. He was the first king to unite the highlanders. He was really big,” Wadia said. “Even t
aller than you. He brought battle against us, agreeing to have a champion fight for the honor of the highlands, versus a champion for our honor.” He sucked the seeds from his fig, then continued.

  I tried to reconcile my idea of Lancelot jousting with the image of a man in a kilt.

  “It is an accepted way,” Wadia said. “If every time there was a war we sent out the entire army, then there would be no one to wed the women or plow the fields. The Pelesti would die out.” He shrugged, his thin shoulders jabbing through the wool of his cloak.

  That made sense. My biggest, baddest guy fights yours, and everyone else watches. Less muss, less fuss. But what did the rest of the soldiers do? “So what happened?” I asked.

  “We picked the largest of our men, the champion, a giant. Five times undefeated!” he said, holding up his hand. “Five times!”

  “Their champion was better?” “Ach! They sent a child! A little boy, no older than I am now! Smaller than me. It was embarrassing. Labayu wanted to ridicule us.”

  The hair on the back of my neck started to stiffen. A child and a giant?

  “He was not even a soldier, just a kid, a scrawny little runt at that!”

  “Maybe, maybe they had no one else better?” I offered, knowing that I was lying.

  Wadia gave me another of those looks. I think he’d learned them from his mother, the wide Takala-dagon. “Sending a child to fight our champion was a horrible insult. Not only to us, but to our families, to our god, and especially to the serenim.” He paused, a storyteller in the middle of his tale. “No one was angrier than the champion, though.” He lowered his voice. “Now the champion isn’t the tallest tree in the forest, anyway. He rages, he fumes. He breaks furniture, rips off the legs of a nearby cat, he’s so furious.”

  He ripped the legs off a cat? Was that a figure of speech? I grimaced.

  “He calls to the heavens, protesting this dishonor.” Wadia frowned. “We were trying to be honorable, pitting champion against champion. It’s fair.” He shook his head, picking at the stem of a fig. “Our honor is diminished by their behavior.” He sighed deeply. “Highlanders are a wild, uncivilized bunch.” He suddenly sounded so mature—but he should— he was going to be the next king. It was a weird paradigm.

  “Did your champion fight this boy, despite the dishonor?”

  Wadia sucked the last bit of fig juice from his fingertips. “It was over with one blow. One divine gust of their god’s breath and That One, that little boy, had felled our champion. It was a disgrace.”

  My fig suddenly had the flavor of a golf ball. I could barely find my voice. “Was, uh, Goliath your champion’s name?”

  He raised his head sharply. “Gol’i’at, ken. How did you know?”

  Omigod, omigod. I swallowed hard. Go-lee-at. “I’m a goddess, remember?”

  “That little boy slew our giant Gol’i’at, then he went on to fight for his ruler, Labayu. That One was dismissed from Labayu’s court, so for a while he was a mercenary for our brother seren, Akshish of Gath. When Labayu died in battle with Akshish and the other serenim, That One turned against us. Now he rules the highlands, but he is wily, untrustworthy.” Wadia leaned in. “He has no honor, he doesn’t respect the laws of the land, or the heavens. He slights the other gods and he tramples our people and traditions. He looks to the sea, to the cities we trade with, for conquest.” He leaned closer to me, his voice barely above a whisper. “He wants our smelting secrets.”

  My lexicon was working so fast, I was afraid it was going to short out. Pictures from Sunday school, of men in robes with beards and crowns: the older man Labayu I knew as Saul. The part of Gol’i’at was played by Goliath.

  “Why do you call him ‘That One’?” I asked, chewing my golf-ball fig.

  “My mother has forbidden his name to be spoken,” Wadia repeated. “But it’s Dadua.”

  The lexicon flashed another picture: the young, harp-playing teen with curling hair and slingshot was Dadua.

  David.

  I was afraid I was going to fall over. This was unbelievable! David and Goliath? Was everything in the Bible, the “Hebrew mythology” that I’d thought was only slightly more real than fairy tales, fact?

  “HaDerkato, are you well?”

  “I need a drink,” I muttered.

  Wadia commanded slaves to get me a drink. Yes, Pelesti wine, that might be strong enough. “So,” I said, coughing, trying to focus my mind, “That One is now the king of the highlanders?”

  In my mind the plaid kilts were now replaced with yarmulkes and the bagpipes with the ram’s horn. I now knew we were discussing … omigod … the children of Israel. I was in Israel. In Ashqelon. In Israel. In ancient times with Bible characters. In Israel. Jews. I didn’t know anything about the Jews. I was practically an honorary Muslim. Yet I was here, now? This was the Bible; what would happen if I screwed up?

  Where on earth was Cheftu? We had to get out of here!

  CHAPTER 3

  AKHETATEN WAS ON THE HORIZON by afternoon the next day. Cheftu didn’t recognize a thing about it; it wasn’t a city that had been known in Hatshepsut’s time, nor had he known it by this name in his own nineteenth-century journeys in Egypt. The sun was hot even though it was winter, but it was nothing like it would be in the summertime. He wiped the sweat from his smooth upper lip and squinted against Ra’s—the Aten’s—light.

  It was a flat, white city, with pockets of greenery cradled against the Nile, in a semicircular plain surrounded by cliffs. Sunlight radiated onto the wide, empty boulevards. The harbor was silent, a few ships were docked, but there was no activity, no bustling about.

  No people.

  Cheftu brushed the oracular stones with his fingertips. This was not how the seat of a prosperous—living—empire should look.

  Because Inundation had been so poor this year, the Nile hadn’t overflowed its banks, making the waterway farther from the city than usual. So they disembarked the ship for small rowboats. Amid swarms of mosquitoes they cut across the river to the docks. A few slovenly laborers were hoisting Wenaten’s many parcels into a light chariot pulled by an old nag.

  No delegation had arrived to greet the returning envoy. Save for the workers, no one was there at all.

  “Has Egypt been stripped of people as well as gods?” RaEm asked in an undertone.

  “I know not.” At least it would be easy to find Chloe, since there was no crowd.

  “Greetings of the Aten to you,” said one of the dockworkers. “Join He Who Reigns on High with Akhenaten, living glorious in the light of the Aten forever! in the Chamber of the Apex to the west side of the Hall of Foreign Tributes.” The words were rattled off, a formula repeated to every visitor, Cheftu guessed.

  “We are travel stained—,” Cheftu began.

  “It is no matter,” the dockworker interrupted. “All that matters to the Aten is your presence so that he may bless you with his light.”

  “I would like a bath first,” RaEm said. Pleasantly, for her. “The Aten loves his children as they are, especially returning from the corruption of foreign shores. Please join Akhenaten, living glorious in the light of the Aten forever! as he worships the maker of all Egypt.”

  “We are tired. We are hungry. We want to rest,” Wenaten said. He glanced at Cheftu and RaEm. “However, we know how vital it is to worship the Aten.”

  “My lord is wise,” the worker said. “Your belongings will meet you in the palace. The chariot is awaiting your journey to the Aten.” The man’s smile was polite but cold.

  Stinking of journey and hungry because the ship’s stores had been emptied two days ago, they climbed reluctantly into the chariot. It was a short journey down the empty, drought-stricken streets of Akhetaten.

  Trees withered in the soil, dust flew from the bare yards of new nobility’s homes. Not a soul, a child, a slave, or a foreigner, was on the street. No one, save themselves. The chariot drew even with an enormous building, which Cheftu thought looked like an elaborate fence. Voices, thousands stro
ng, rose from its interior.

  The dockworker escorted them to the very doors, allowing no pause in their steps. Cheftu’s discomfort grew. Another man, a priest carrying both sword and spear, ushered them through a long, bare hallway. The sound of voices grew louder.

  RaEm slipped her hand into the crook of Cheftu’s arm. He didn’t recoil because he too needed the comfort. What madness possessed Egypt? One could not bathe before attending the temple? Or, surprisingly enough, one attended the temple rather than worship in the intimacy of one’s home with family and a personal statue of the god? Egypt had never been a place of corporate worship before; indeed, no ancient culture was. Cheftu shook his head, exhausted, exasperated, and feeling off-kilter.

  Rather than disturb those who were in the throes of worship, the guard-priest explained, they would slip in unnoticed. He took them down a flight of stairs into darkness. “Go through that door and up the stairwell,” he said.

  Wenaten nodded, leading the way. The darkness was cool, refreshing. Above them the floors vibrated from the force of the recitation. Wenaten opened a door and they followed him up, stepping out into the temple.

  The heat was staggering, the warmth of the day compounded by the body heat of thousands of people. It stole their breath, sucked the life from them.

  The room was easily the size of the place des Vosges, Cheftu thought. Ten thousand people or more stood with their faces raised, eyes open, arms outstretched, swaying to the rhythm of the speaker. All around them people had fallen to the ground. They lay as they fell, arms akimbo. Cheftu noted that some of them had soiled themselves, but those standing ignored them; it was not an Egypt that Cheftu recognized.

  The man was evil, Cheftu thought instantly. Akhenaten was a fiend. Half of these people were going to go blind from staring into the sun. Another eighth had heat stroke. The rest seemed to be drugged, complacent. What kind of ruler did this to his people? Cheftu wondered, stifling his rage.