Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  By late afternoon Lakshish came into view. It was a city nestled beneath a higher slope, the surrounding hills terraced and planted with slumbering grapevines. The walls surrounding it were formidable. To the east I saw the tents of the encamped soldiers. Watchtowers stretched to the north, three visible to the naked eye.

  We slowed down. Our horses were tired from the trip. My bones seemed to ache, and I could still feel the rhythm of the journey in my skin. We waited for Takala. At the moment I looked away, she swooped out of nowhere. Unlike me, she was doing the driving. Her horses were lathered. She flew past us, heading down the hill to the army camp. The soldier driving me did not wait for instruction, but followed her.

  We arrived at the camp at dusk.

  There is something instantly recognizable about being on military alert, whether as a whatever-century Philistine or a twentieth-century American: that jazzed, edgy feeling is the same. The Pelesti soldiers looked like professionals. Everywhere I looked there were men in pointed and piped kilts, with bare faces and feathered helmets. Quite a few wore an upper-body armor that resembled leather and metal ribs. They carried long spears tipped with dark blades in addition to swords and round shields.

  As I watched them sparring, I rephrased my statement: They were professionals. Our horses were unbridled and led away, the chariots taken into line with the others. I watched with amazement as our light vehicle became an armored one, simply by soldiers fitting it with bronze greave-style scales.

  Yamir-dagon was easy to find. His feathered headdress was red and blue, his cloak red. Amid the brown, green, and gold kilts, he stuck out like a poppy in a cornfield. Takala pushed forward. I was astounded to see that she had donned both feathered headdress and a battle dress like the soldiers. As we passed through the camp the men bowed to her. Yamir embraced his mother, inclined his head to me, then gestured for us to follow him into his tent.

  I’d never seen action as an officer in the air force, but I’d been in plenty of meetings. This was obviously a council of war. I recognized the serenim and a few of the soldiers. Wadia, in a headdress and cloak just like his brother’s, winked at me. I sat down beside Takala.

  The general in charge outlined the plan.

  The highlanders were stalking around the city of Jebus. Therefore the Pelesti would sneak up behind them, trap them against the wooded foothills below the city, and slaughter them there. It was well-known that Dadua was too clever to send all his men to any one location, so the battle would not be definitive. However, the lesson would be taught and face would be regained after the burning of the teraphim.

  “Why do we not just steal their teraphim?” I asked. Any talk of going against Dadua sounded like suicide. After all, I’d heard the Bible stories. The knowledge made me feel sick. I wanted to get out of here, desperately.

  The council was appalled. Wadia told me that he would share that story later but that even their totem was deceitful. Never again would the Pelesti trust the honor of the highlanders, not after the way they had humiliated the champion Gol’i’at with magic. Not after the destruction their teraphim had wrought.

  My head was spinning. I’d always thought the Israelites, the highlanders, were the underdog. Wasn’t that how the Bible portrayed it?

  Yet to hear the Pelesti point of view, the highlanders were unprincipled ruffians. There was no standing army, just a group of Apiru wanderers who had been hired by Dadua, who fought with scythes and rakes if necessary. They ignored the accepted etiquette, they showed no mercy, and worst of all, they did not respect other gods.

  The things the First Methodist Church of Reglim, Texas, had never told me… .

  Since the totems of Dagon and Ba’al had been stolen and destroyed, I was, as the local goddess, attending the battle in the totem’s place. My job would be to stand on the hill and watch the engagement, asking for the intervention of Dagon—since they had chosen to fight near a stream for his powers—and Ba’al, the thrower of thunderbolts, should it be necessary. As a safeguard against the wily highlanders, the Pelesti would not go past a certain point in the valley because the chariots and horses could not maneuver in the hills with rocky ground and trees.

  Takala and I lodged in the same tent, which wasn’t much more than a goatskin awning over a few branches. It didn’t matter; between reuniting the night away with Cheftu and riding for hours in the chariot, I could have slept in the back-seat of a race car during the Indy 500. However, I was nervous that Cheftu wouldn’t show up. She placated me as I collapsed into sleep.

  I woke in the deepest blackness of night, the hair on my arms standing on end. I heard nothing else in the tent, not even Takala’s breathing.

  Then the words floated in, confusing me momentarily.

  I rose up, slipping out from under my blanket, going to the edge of camp, then beyond. Slightly above us, about forty feet away, the highlanders reveled. From my perspective the plateau served as a proscenium stage with natural acoustics.

  The music began, a wild thumping that set my blood racing. A huge bonfire burned behind them, the black figures dancing around it lit by orange and red and gold flame. It looked like All Hallows’ Eve.

  “We ask for so little,” Takala said from behind me, her voice soft for once. “Our land for our own. Dagon gave us ha Hamishah, why doesn’t he help us protect it?”

  When she said “Hamishah” the slide show zoomed back to show me the five cities the Pelesti considered their own: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashqelon, Ekron, and Qisilee.

  I said nothing, just looked up between the trees. Now standing before the bonfire, in silhouette, was a solitary figure, his hands raised over his head. His voice carried as though he had a Bose stereo system, the curve of the cliff acting as an amphitheater.

  “We meet our old allies”—the group of highlanders chuckled—“and our present enemies in battle tomorrow.” The sole figure paced the edge of the fire, his head bowed, every action casting shadows across the trees and plateau. Shadows of a giant man in prayer or deep thought. As he turned, the man within the shadow, a glitter of gold glinted on his brow.

  His soldiers were motionless humps of black in the gold-tinted light. “What do we say on this eve of battle?” he asked in the same language the Pelesti spoke. “What questions stream through our blood? What hidden grief will keep us from sleep tonight?”

  This scene was designed to send fear pulsing through the veins of the Pelesti. Even though I knew it, it worked. The men’s voices rose in one titanic response, as if the very valley were crying its answers. As though the heavens were on his side, we heard all around us, “May Shaday answer you in your distress! May el sh’Yacov protect you! May he send you help from the outposts and grant you support from Qiryat Yerim! May he remember the blood you have offered in sacrifice and accept your burnt offerings!”

  El was “god”; this I knew, from my mother the archaeologist and because I understood the language. Yacov was Jacob … as in Jacob and Esau. I didn’t recall the details of the story, but I knew Jacob was a big deal. The “sh” sound was the scariest. It meant that Shaday was the god of Jacob. This same god of Jacob was into blood sacrifices and burnt offerings.

  The one who demanded hal from herim.

  “Is that Dadua?” I asked Takala. “Ken. That One is Dadua. Ach, for the days That One was ours. How many seasons did he protect and feed us? How many seasons did we treat him as son, only to have him turn on us like a mongoose?”

  The highlanders continued with rote responses, seemingly offering assurances to the man now limned by fire. “May he give you the desire of your heart and make your strategies fruitful. We shout for joy at victory and lift our standards to honor Shady. May El grant your requests!”

  Then a lone voice, a different voice, shouted through the valley for all to hear. “The Immutable One saves his anointed; He answers he who was selected, from the high heavens, with the strength of his right hand.”

  The man by the fire spoke again. “Some trust foolishly in chariots and horses
. They believe that speed and armament can win the day. But we …” He paused. “But we, what do we believe in?”

  “We trust in the name of our God!”

  “The others, they are humbled!” he cried.

  The crowd groaned.

  “They drop to their knees—” Enacting his part, the man fell to his knees as though too weak to stand.

  The highlanders laughed. “They perish, they fall.” His words fell into quiet, an expectant silence. “We, chosen by el haShaday, we who march the length of Canaan, we rise and we stand!”

  Chaos! The men leapt to their feet, frenzied, dancing, singing, crying. An antiphonal chant overlaid the activity. “Shaday, save Dadua. Answer his calls! Shaday, save Dadua! Answer his calls! Shaday, save Dadua! Answer his calls!”

  I watched the man glowing with fire. Eyes closed, he too danced. Dervishes would envy his movements. Glancing around me, I saw the Pelesti soldiers, kilted, but unhelmeted, staring up at the plateau.

  Defeat was written in their faces already.

  Psychological warfare apparently was in use long before I realized.

  “His god gives him all he asks,” one of them commented. “Even should we win on the morrow, we cannot defend the Jebusi forever. He is making the valley his own.”

  “He could never capture Jebus,” someone else said. “We tried for decades and failed.”

  “I wish he would die,” Takala spat. “Then Pelesti mothers wouldn’t lose more sons. Yamir will fight That One until our hopes of children lie in their father’s blood.”

  Though I was listening, I was watching the men on the hill. All of a sudden they rushed toward the speaker and lifted him onto their shoulders. It looked like the winning side of a football game, until I heard their words, their cries, echoing across the valley, into the hearts of those who were now already beaten, already conquered, half-dead. “A blessing he has given! The blessing of the land and chesed!”

  The minute Cheftu showed up, we were hitting the road! I’d gotten what I came for; now it was time to go home. Whatever or whenever that was, at least it wasn’t here.

  “Thus they complete another tan’in,” the soldier closest to me said. He was older, his hair faded to gray, though his brows were still dark and bushy. “Before every battle they work themselves into a frenzy of blood.” The rest of his statement hung unsaid in the fire-scented air: they make themselves invincible through it.

  We returned, silent, to our beds. Before I closed my eyes I realized the highlanders had been successful on two counts. One, they had psyched out the enemy through this elaborate show; two, they had caused the entire camp to lose at least three hours of sleep, knowing that the remaining two hours until dawn would be filled with anxious thoughts.

  Tomorrow morning I was gone. My thoughts of going to stand on the hillside had melted in Dadua’s bonfire. Nothing good would come of this. We had to leave.

  Where was Cheftu?

  RAEMTURNED TO THE SIDE, allowing the artist to view her profile, though she knew he would add some of Akhenaten’s features to her face. Smenkhare, in truth, did not exist. Then again, neither did Ma’at. Both were reinterpreted through Akhenaten’s desires.

  The term and goddess that formerly referred to the balance of the universe now meant “candor” and “individualism.” Smenkhare, a bow-legged, dirt-skinned adolescent, had been buried, while the new Smenkhare arose: RaEm.

  “It is enough, my, uh, Smenkhare,” the artisan said, backing from the room. RaEm dismissed him with a wave.

  “Pharaoh’s daughter Meryaten requests an audience,” RaEm’s chamberlain said.

  “Which one is she?”

  “Ankhenespa’aten’s sister. The selfsame one who has visited you before, my, my Smenkhare.”

  RaEm wished someone would just guess at her gender and be done with it. Sometimes she doubted it herself. Was she woman or man? Did it matter? Either way she had Pharaoh’s heart and body, at least for today. “Anyone else? I have no wish to see Meryaten right now.”

  The chamberlain, a stuffy old man whose wig was always askew, coughed. “The queen mother, Tiye, your mother, requests you attend her.”

  It was silent for a moment. “I will see Meryaten.”

  The girl was admitted later, a fragile thing, with such bad eyesight that she couldn’t tell RaEm was really a female. Then again, in Akhenaten’s court, where even Pharaoh had both breasts and a phallus, no one could tell.

  “The great god Aten’s blessings on you this morning, cousin Smenkhare,” the wispy thing said, her melodious voice only a breath above a whisper. It was a wonder that such a vibrant man as Akhenaten had birthed such colorless worms as his daughters.

  “Likewise on you, Meryaten,” RaEm said, rising from her chair. “Would you care to perfume your mouth, cousin?”

  Meryaten glanced up, her big brown eyes blank. “Aye. That is very considerate of you, my lord.”

  RaEm smothered a smile, eyeing the chamberlain. “You are too delicate a lotus for less,” she said soothingly. With a glance, food was delivered to them. Watered wine, flaky pastries, and sickly fruit. RaEm would have thrown it out, save she knew it was the best the kitchen had to offer. The thought gave her pause.

  She sat beside a leopard-headed table, beckoning for a stool to be brought for Meryaten. The girl sat down, barely brushing against RaEm. Up close she was lovely in a dainty way. Her eyes were round, her chin pointed like her father’s. The short wig she wore emphasized how frail her neck was.

  How easy to snap, RaEm thought. She poured the girl some wine.

  “Have you seen your mother yet?” Meryaten asked softly.

  “Not yet,” RaEm said. She had been diligently avoiding Tiye while she worked on binding Akhenaten to her, body and soul. It was a wonder she could walk after the nights they spent together. Soon, however, the woman must be faced. Would she know?

  Per current fashion, RaEm, as Smenkhare, wore a shirt and a kilt, an androgynous wig, gold jewelry. The three weeks she’d spent in the desert, nearly dying to make her plan work, had made her even more boyishly thin. Her breasts were smaller, her hips not so womanly.

  She looked just like Akhenaten.

  Which was why he couldn’t resist her. He believed she was the mirror image of him, the male and female of the same soul, created to be in harmony with the Aten. No one else knew what to make of her, even how to address her.

  And this poor girl child at RaEm’s side wished to be her bride.

  More interestingly, RaEm was contemplating how to pull off such a fiction. She wanted to rule Egypt; alas, a woman would not be allowed to, not again. How could she persuade Akhenaten to let her be co-regent?

  “I … I am nearing my second year of womanhood,” Meryaten said shyly. “Father has mentioned marrying me. I …”

  If she didn’t speak faster, RaEm might well choke her. “All your sisters married your father,” she said.

  “They all died, too.”

  “What of Akhenespa’aten?”

  “She’s little, intended for Tuti.” Meryaten looked up, stricken. “Do you like her better?”

  RaEm caressed the girl’s face. “Of course not, she is a child. You are a lovely young woman.”

  Meryaten blushed, her brown eyes darting away. I was never this much a fool, RaEm thought. “I … I would very much like to have babies,” Meryaten said.

  That, my dumb lotus blossom, is exactly the problem. “Sons for the Aten?” RaEm asked, still stroking Meryaten’s hair.

  “Aye.” The girl looked up, staring straight into RaEm’s eyes. “You are so pretty, almost prettier than I am.” She smiled. “I, I also want sons for me. To hold them. I hope they will be pretty.”

  RaEm removed her hand. “Any children you have will be beautiful, Meryaten.”

  “I want yours.”

  RaEm stared, half impressed by the girl’s gumption, half repulsed. In that moment of silence, Meryaten leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Her mouth was soft, yielding, and RaEm re
sponded despite herself.

  When they separated, both were surprised at their ardor. “Will you speak to my father?” Meryaten asked, her small hand on RaEm’s thigh.

  RaEm’s eyes narrowed. She had misjudged this girl. These little morning visits had been planned as though they were on papyrus, with RaEm as the dupe. The hand moved higher. RaEm stood abruptly. “I will.”

  Meryaten jumped to her feet, once again staring at the ground. “May your day be blessed with the Aten,” she said, her cheeks ruddy, her hands trembling. She stood as high as RaEm’s breast, a child of barely thirteen Inundations.

  Who thought cousin Smenkhare was a boy of seventeen Inundations.

  Meryaten looked up again as RaEm sighed heavily. As Chloe’s people would say, What the hell. She kissed the girl again, thoroughly enjoying the control she had over the child. “Go to your gardens,” she said. “I will speak to your father tonight.”

  The door closed behind Meryaten, and RaEm threw herself on the couch. With a clap of her hands she summoned the chamberlain. “Inform Queen Mother Tiye that I will dine with her tonight. Then see if My Majesty Akhenaten is alone after dusk.”

  Aye, indeed. She would rule Egypt.

  PELESTI

  WIND WHIPPED AT US, as we stood on the rise’s edge looking onto the battlefield. My God, I was at a battlefield. I’d stood on Omaha, Utah, beaches; I’d walked through the Shenandoah Valley; hell, I’d even seen the plain of Troy—but never before with people.

  In armor.

  With weapons.

  I tugged at my piped and pointed battle dress, adjusted the feather headdress they’d given me. I looked like a giant statue, which I was supposed to, since I was the totem. Acid burned in my stomach. Cheftu had not arrived yet, or I would have gotten out of here. Just do this and he’ll be here this afternoon, I thought. Then we could both leave.

  Takala was seated on a chair, sipping wine in a semblance of calm. Wadia stood beside her, frowning. “She won’t let me go, Sea-Mistress,” he said, his voice slightly whiny. “Tell her I am a man, that I can serve Dagon this way.”