Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  Mayhap in Hatshepsut’s or even Rameses’ time—which was yet to pass, she had come to realize—but not now. “We must crown Tuti,” she said, returning to the original conversation.

  “He’s a child, not old enough to be with a woman. Besides,” he said petulantly, “Akhenespa’aten should be my wife!”

  “She is also your daughter, and the only woman who bears the king-right, still living.”

  “Aii, Meryaten,” he said beneath his breath. For a moment he was silent, then he rose up, his thick thighs streaked with the seed he would never let her body take. “I will get her with a king.”

  RaEm blinked as she tried to understand his words, to comprehend what he was saying.

  Pharaoh lifted his kilt from the floor. “If you tell me that a king must be crowned, then I will take Akhenespa’aten to my couch until she is pregnant.”

  Tears immediately rimmed RaEm’s eyes. “You are leaving me?” she asked, her voice thready.

  “You tell me this must be done for Ma’at,” he said. “I tell you that Ma’at is a dead god, that Ma’at has grown into being an understanding of candor. However, I concede your point that Egypt must realize this dynasty will continue. Since you”—he snickered—“failed in this duty, it is up to me. The next generation of Egyptians will have known nothing save the warming love of Aten. They must have a king of my blood to lead them.”

  RaEm’s hands were fisted so tightly that she felt the half-moons now carved into her palms. The bite of hurt was the only thing keeping her upright. “I love you,” she whispered, words she had never said and meant. Words that had previously been uttered solely for manipulation and power.

  She had no power now. “Please … please don’t do this. Don’t leave me.” The thought that she was begging was repulsive, but the idea of life without him was worse.

  Akhenaten’s look was cool, his rich voice flat. “Go to your copper mines. When you return, Akhenespa’aten will be expecting. I will take you again, then, should I desire it.”

  RaEm felt the blow, just as surely as she’d felt his hand on her flanks and buttocks, time and again. “As you wish, My Majesty,” she whispered.

  He crossed to her, his kilt rumpled, his belly sagging. Lines were etched in his face, carved on both sides of his womanly, mobile mouth. His shoulders sloped, his arms were thin, but she loved him. Every line of his body, she knew. Every way to tease him, tantalize him, but it hadn’t been enough. I’m doing this for Egypt—she wanted to shout it, to have her actions vindicated by the gods, to be explained to her lover. He bent to her, kissed her. “I also care for you,” he said. “Hurry back to me.”

  Then Pharaoh was gone.

  RaEm stared at the closed door, then called for slaves to bring her wine and the messenger. Wine first.

  “Majesty?” she heard a moment later from the doorway. Immediately she picked up the symbols of kingship, trading them for her cup of wine. She inclined her head, as there was no scribe or chamberlain to transmit her messages.

  “A spy from the copper mines in Sinai, My Majesty. Here to see you,” a slave said.

  It was beneath her to speak to this man, but she had no choice. “Bid him enter.”

  The slave backed from her presence. A moment later another man entered the room. He was darkly tanned, young, with a glitter in his eye that said he could be used. He prostrated himself, awaited her word.

  “Rise,” RaEm said softly.

  He did, sharp dark eyes looking out from either side of a beak of a nose. He’d just come from the barber, and he had nicks on his neck and chin. His kilt was fresh, if out of style. No jewelry, just a plain copper blade at his waist.

  “Speak.”

  “My Majesty, I was among those sent to inquire about gold.”

  “There is a new vein?”

  “Vein? Nay, nay, My Majesty. There is a ship sailing from Midian.”

  Was the man addled? “Ships often do.”

  “This ship sails from the mount of Horeb.”

  “What is that? How do you know this?”

  He glanced down. “My people were Apiru, My Majesty. Gold lies in Midian.”

  “A vein? An untapped source?” Who ruled Midian? Could they be bought or vanquished? “Speak!”

  “Aii … an untapped source, My Majesty.”

  “Speak!” she barked.

  “The Apiru buried much Egyptian gold in the mountains, My Majesty. The ship that sails is from Jebus in Canaan.” He must have sensed these names meant nothing to her. “The Apiru returned to their homeland, Canaan, during the reign of Thutmosis Osiris the Great. Now they seek their gold, to take it also.”

  “Where in Midian?” Where was Midian? “Can we beat them there? Better yet, can we let them get it, then take it from them?”

  He scratched his nose, then shrugged. “Aye, My Majesty. They have already dug it up. If a contingent of troops sails”—he ticked off numbers on his fingers—“within three days, we should be able to strip them of it before they return to Jebus.”

  “Make it so,” RaEm said, quoting Sky TV. She’d liked Jean-Luc Picard, he was shaven headed like an Egyptian. He’d ruled the entire starship Enterprise. A reasonable and a powerful man.

  That was the sole point of agreement between RaEm and Chloe’s sister, Camille.

  “Make ready the way. I will come with you,” she said. I will take Tuti, and we will both come with you, RaEm thought. We’ll leave Akhetaten, this city of rejection, and win the heart of the army by traveling with you.

  He bowed, then backed from the room.

  Thank you, HatHor, she breathed. For this I will build you a temple of gold. Just let me feed my people first. Don’t let me be alone.

  MIDIAN IT HAD BEEN SILENT with the slaves for days. They all walked in a reverential quiet through the slippery, sucking sand. Cheftu took up the rear now, to prevent stragglers. All were able-bodied, but none tried to flee. Beneath the cavernous sky even slavery seemed a comfort, a place to go, a way to belong.

  They halted at once, forming a wall of men. Cheftu pushed through the group, noting that they had been climbing a small brown hill, unnoticed amid the sand. He rounded a curve, then looked up.

  The mountain rose like a bulkhead from the desert floor. Twin peaks, charred black, were silhouetted against the blue sky. No people, no animals, just the mountain. Did they have any right to invade the space of God?

  The guides motioned them down the hill. The guides themselves would not go, they would not step over into the valley of the Amaleki or onto the Mountain of God. Cheftu took the asses, with their remaining provisions, thanked the guides, then started down the hill to Har Horeb—Moses’ mountain.

  As they crossed the plain, a few scraggly bushes and trees rising from the dry earth, the mountain grew larger. By dusk they were at its foot. It had been forty years since the last group of tribesmen had been here. Still, a few signs of their stay were clear. The encampments were visible, with rocky cairns designating how the tribes were to be positioned. The slaves, many of them tribesmen, set to recreating the camps. Cheftu walked the base of the mountain, looking around. Postings, sloppily etched in stone, declared that to touch the mountain was to die, while every twenty cubits or so was a smaller cairn, a boundary marker.

  Cheftu felt the blood leave his face when he saw the altar to the golden calf. There, carved in the side, was a crude rendering of the goddess HatHor being worshiped. Where would the gold be? he wondered. But a shout kept him from looking. The first division was arriving. Apparently Cheftu’s guides had directed them straight across the desert, not using the same path the tribesmen and Moses had used.

  Where had God eaten b’rith with the seventy?

  At night, after the first group had arrived, dined, and rested, N’tan stood before them. The mountain glowed blue, millions—or “bullions and bullions,” as Chloe would say— of stars filled the sky. The moon was small, casting little light on N’tan. He led the men in psalm after psalm, punctuating the night air with s
houts of “Sela!”

  Cheftu felt the cadence taking over, sweeping through his mind so that any action seemed normal. As a body the men followed N’tan, standing between each of the boundary stones. Cheftu felt as though he were outside his physical form, watching as forty men scrabbled in the dirt.

  He’d been digging for a while, clawing at the ground in his spot between the cairns, when he felt something. Fabric? All around him men were finding wrapped parcels buried in the sand. Grasping it with both hands, he pulled. The bulky object came out of the ground so suddenly that he fell backward, the thing on his chest.

  With shaking fingers Cheftu fumbled with the cloth, tearing at it with a lust he’d thought alien to him. It crumbled in his hand around a solid shape. In wonder he held the find up to the blue light of the mountain.

  An idol, a statue of pure gold, its face cut off.

  “ ‘Do not make cast idols,’ Shaday proclaimed,” N’tan said from behind him. “Does it look like one you have worshiped, slave?”

  Cheftu turned back to the sand. Essentially they were clearing a trench the original zekenim leaders had filled with the gold of the Egyptians.

  N’tan knelt beside him, spectral in the blue light of Horeb.

  Cheftu’s perfect, albeit slow, memory finally recognized him beneath the long hair, the beard, the youthfulness. “You are an Imhotep!”

  The hauteur vanished from the tzadik’s face. “And you are the Traveler, the nomad throughout my family’s lives.” His eyes were wide. “The Pelesti goddess, she is the other one?”

  Was it that Cheftu was influenced by the light, the mystery, and the miracle of this place, or was he hearing and understanding what N’tan, biblical N’tan, was saying? “You are an Imhotep?” he repeated.

  The answer was in the man’s bones, his eyes, the shape of his body. How many thousand years had it been? How many allegiances had the Imhoteps sworn? The court of Aztlan? The many courts of Egypt? “How is it you are a Jew?” Cheftu asked. N’tan’s confused expression told Cheftu that he’d spoken French. In fact, “Jew” probably wasn’t even a term yet. “You are of the tribes?”

  “You are a worshiper of the One God,” N’tan rejoined.

  A shout drew their attention, and Cheftu turned. Beneath the waning moon the pile of treasure was growing. Heaps of bracelets, statues, votives, candlesticks, incense burners, the glittering mass was being added to as the men moved through the sand.

  The wealth was dazzling, gleaming, spellbinding. The splendor of a pharaoh’s tomb could not be so rich. All this le bon Dieu had seen fit to gift the Israelites with. Talents and tons, gold and bronze, studded with turquoises, carnelian, jasper, jade. Ornaments of silver, figurines of ebony. The mountain of gold grew in the shadow of the mountain of God. The men were progressing further, hauling huge items, samovars and wheels—gold-plated wheels from Pharaoh’s fallen army—statues, breastplates, collars, armbands … Cheftu’s mind was going numb in the presence of such magnificence.

  “We will talk, you and I,” N’tan said, rising from his crouch. “I must get as much from these men tonight as I can. The ditch surrounds the mountain.” He held out his hand to Cheftu. “My name is Imhotep, from a long line of Imhoteps, though we are called Yofaset, a less Kemti name, as befits a member of the tribes.”

  Cheftu rose to his feet. “My names are many, but only one is the man I have become.” He bowed. “Cheftu sa’a Khamese of Egypt.”

  “Together we shall find a pharaoh’s treasure for a freeman’s king,” N’tan said.

  They knelt in the blue light and continued to dig.

  JEBUS

  I’?D BECOME A COMMON SIGHT around Jebus; in fact, I’d even learned to carry my jar on my shoulder—at least half-full. Once again I descended the steps, glancing at the guards but staying somewhat quiet, withdrawn. After all, wouldn’t that be how a woman in my position would really behave?

  They were there, the village women. A few nodded at me, though no one spoke. As a foreigner I was last in line, always. As I was lifting the bucket to drop it through that impossibly small hole that still spelled my death, I heard a sound behind me. Turning, I saw it was the same girl I’d seen the first day, the pregnant one.

  Her face was streaked, as though she’d been crying. Then again, the lighting in here fell under the category of “indirect,” so I could be wrong. After my four buckets’ worth of water, I was ready to leave. Shouldering my jar carefully, I turned around.

  She was crying. Her face was in her hands, and she was shaking silently. I glanced beyond to the guard. He was whittling, studiously ignoring us. Although it seemed inane, I leaned forward and whispered, “Hakol b’seder?” Is everything all right?

  Immediately her tears ceased. She looked up, seemingly startled that I had spoken to her. Or surprised to be caught weeping? “Ken, ken,” she said, nodding her head fervently, not meeting my gaze. Her hands moved protectively over her stomach. I stood there for a moment, then shrugged and wished her a good day.

  Halfway up the steps—which I loathed with a passion— I heard footsteps behind me. “Isha?” she called. “Isha?”

  Balancing myself and jar carefully, I turned around to face her. “My name is Waqi,” she said. “My husband is a merchant, away. Would you … care to share bread with me at zenith?”

  “How much water do you want?” I asked. By now I knew that Jebusi women had a cagey way of asking for my services, usually as a friendly overture.

  “Lo, lo. For company,” she said. “I will send a slave for water.”

  I blinked back tears. How long had it been since I had talked to someone who wanted to be with me, not just for what I could do for them? “Todah, I would like that.”

  “My house is off the square on Rehov Abda,” she said. “I will see you there.”

  As I walked up to the residence on Rehov Abda I saw that there was much I hadn’t understood. For one, Rehov Abda was the equivalent of Dallas’s Highland Park; wealthy, ritzy, and appearance oriented. Even the slaves had attitude. Second, Waqi’s merchant husband was none other than the bronze monger for most of the artisans. They were living high on the hog.

  What on earth did she want with me? My feeling of insecurity grew as I was shunted from the front door to the back door by a long-eyed Assyrian houseman. Once at the back door, I was made to sit in the courtyard and wait.

  Suddenly this reminded me of the part of advertising sales that I hated: the waiting. It had been about an hour with me lounging in the sun, wondering where Cheftu was, when I heard a shout from above me. “Isha!” It was the woman. She waved, then disappeared inside.

  Moments later the door was thrown open. “I did not know you were here!” she said, glancing at the sheepish Assyrian beside her. “Come, come, wash your feet, have a refreshment.”

  She seated me on a stool. As I was leaning over to unlace my sandal, she tch’ed. A slave dropped to her knees. She unlaced my sandals and gently bathed my feet while another slave offered me a cool drink, some form of yogurt, and a cloth for my face.

  I couldn’t wash my face or my disguise makeup would wipe off. I blotted a little, then watched the slave dry my feet. Waqi awaited me, the other slave said. Would I be so good as to follow her?

  Up the stairs we went, dark, narrow stairs in a dark, narrow house for all of its wealth. Rugs covered the floors and walls. Samovars, now empty, were on every landing. Lamps, both in stands and handheld, littered the place. We emerged on the roof, where a low table lay, surrounded by bright cushions.

  It reminded me of Dadua’s home.

  “Please,” Waqi said, “sit, eat.”

  In the sunlight I could see that she was young. Really, really young. Maybe fifteen? She was also unhappy; her eyes were swollen from so much crying. Rarely did she move her hands from their protective place over her belly. We ate lunch in near silence, steamed grain, vegetable patties, salads of cucumbers and onions in vinegar and spices, and wine.

  “You might want to water your wine,”
I suggested, “since you are—” I gestured toward her stomach. To my horror, her eyes filled with tears. “Hakol b’seder,” I rattled on quickly, “a little wine won’t be that bad for you, but too much, well, it’s not good for the baby, although I’m sure yours will be fine and all … I mean …” Shut up, Chloe.

  She was sobbing, silently. I threw down my bread, crossed to her, and took her in my arms, hugging her. The woman clamped on to me, crying as though her heart were breaking. “My people are from another place,” she said through her tears. “My father did not know what it would mean for me to be here. He didn’t know. He would never have agreed to the marriage… .” That started a whole new cycle of crying. Poor kid, I thought, stroking her hair.

  “I can’t believe the women endure this,” she said. “I try to think of how to avoid it, but I can’t. Where would I go? What would I do?”

  Questions started chasing themselves in my brain.

  She pulled back, wiping her face and trying to smile. “Would you like halva?” she said, offering dessert in a falsely bright hostess tone.

  You’re a slave, Chloe, I reminded myself. I moved to my side of the table again. Another slave showed up, presented us with the sesame-seed paste flavored with honey, and left again.

  “You live outside the city?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “It must be wearying to travel back and forth through the gate all the time.”

  It certainly is, especially when I’m interrogated every night on my progress by Yoav’s soldiers. “Ken.”

  “My husband will be gone for a few more weeks. I …” She fought for composure, “My time is soon. I have no family.”

  I nodded.

  “Would you care to move in with me? There is another room on the second floor. It is not luxurious, but it has a pallet, a nice breeze. You, of course, would be my guest, though if you still wanted to sell your services, I will understand.”

  I couldn’t believe she was offering me a room! “What of the guards?” I said.