Sunrise on the Mediterranean
Page 46
“New technology, yep,” she said, still speaking English. “For this deal, I would serve twice my original time as a reservist, minus what I’d already served as active duty. Eight years.” She groaned. “Don’t ask how RaEm affected that part of my life. You don’t want to know. In a way, I feel guilty. I mean, it is my name on those documents, my reputation. My poor father …”
It was complete darkness and cold. Winter was seeping into the stone. Chloe snuggled close to him, sharing her woolen cloak. “Do you think we will ever return to our home times?” she asked. “Do you think we are doomed to wander history? Well, not doomed like a bad thing… . ”
“Doomed can be a good thing?” he asked, teasing. “Destined, maybe.”
He twined a strand of her copper hair around his brown finger. “Would that be such a bad life, chérie?”
“No. Of course not. It would be thrilling, it would be exciting. Provided we survive it.”
“Is that not true for every day, in any time?” he asked. “Is anything ever certain?”
“But what about when we’re old? I mean, even Indiana Jones retired after a while.”
Cheftu sat up, cross-legged. “Who is this Indiana Jones? You mention him from time to time. Was he a mentor of yours?”
She giggled. “There are some gaps we will never bridge, chérie,” she said. In French. Cheftu felt his concern fading a little; she was feeling better.
“So Yoav did not know of your military experience?”
“Computer skills wouldn’t have helped him much,” she said wryly. “He knew that I’d had some training, though. I guess it was obvious.” English again.
“Then he chose you for that?”
“So if I wasn’t here, then maybe, what, Jerusalem wouldn’t have been invaded?” She laughed bitterly. “That can’t be true.”
“Maybe there was another plan. Maybe a thousand other plans, incorporating a thousand other souls,” he countered. “If you chose not to, there would be another. But you didn’t.”
“I’ve never said this to you before, but Cheftu, you are mad.”
“Because you are one woman?”
“I couldn’t be this important. I am a mere cog in the machine. I am a modern woman. This is an ancient time. I couldn’t be that vital!”
“You are probably right,” he agreed. It was madness. “So if not you, then someone else. You probably are right.”
“What if I’m wrong?” she asked, edgy.
He shifted, his hand on her neck, slowly rubbing the knots away. “God plucked you from your family to send you back to my time, Hatshepsut’s time, haii?”
Again she nodded. “From there he took you to Aztlan?”
“Ken.”
“Now, you are here. Already you have moved from being a grain-grinding slave to being a contemporary of Dadua’s wives. You have survived remeeting RaEm!”
“So have you,” she said with a laugh.
“We’ll get to me later,” Cheftu commented. “Think on this, beloved. Is not God big enough to keep you from error, should it be that all-encompassing?”
She was silent, her head bowed. “I believe in free will,” she finally said.
“You have free choice, daily,” Cheftu said. “But by your fear of error, by your desire to do what was right, you have chosen to be a tool of God.”
“So are we done, then? Do we just retire in David’s Jerusalem? Where rape is an acceptable way of getting engaged?” Her voice rose at the last, and he heard the disgust, the fear. “What if we have a little girl?”
His hand stilled on her shoulder. “Is that a possibility?” She shrugged. “Not this month.”
He tipped her face to his. “There is next month, and the month after that. I do not tire of loving you, chérie.”
Chloe took his hands in hers, scooting so they sat knee to knee, cross-legged like scribes. “When you look at me I know that the time gaps in our lives don’t matter, that our different centuries of origin don’t matter. If anyone has ever healed me or has known me, it is you.”
Cheftu was reading over the newest missive from Egypt delivered by the Egyptian messenger who didn’t want to stay with the Egyptians. Quite odd. According to this document, Pharaoh Tutankhaten now ruled. There was no mention of Akhenaten or the Aten at all. Did RaEm, as Smenkhare, know she had been usurped?
Wasn’t Tutankhaten the small boy in the Egyptian camp? More important, wasn’t he under RaEm’s wing? Cheftu was puzzling over this when he heard a discreet cough. He turned. “N’tan!”
“Chavsha,” the tzadik said. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the sounds of the Tsori building and the ever-present limestone dust.
The physician in Cheftu noted that the man didn’t look healthy. Though he had bravely borne the death of his wife, there was a sadness in his gaze that Cheftu feared would never go away. According to Chloe, women were lining up to see who would be his next bride, but N’tan didn’t even glance their way.
There were dark circles under the man’s eyes, and his hands were trembling. “Seat yourself, my friend,” Cheftu said. “Shall I call for wine? For an herbal?” He walked around his table, and seated himself opposite. “Tell me, what is the matter?”
N’tan plucked at his beard nervously. His gaze was reluctant to meet Cheftu’s. “I have erred greatly, I fear.”
“How is that?”
“The Temple, the House of God.”
Cheftu felt his breath catch. “Previously, I told Dadua that if it seemed right to him to build a temple, a house for Shaday, then he should. But I dream at night.” N’tan shuddered. “Such awful dreams. I do not remember them upon waking, but the message is clear.”
Cheftu nodded mutely. “Dadua is covered in blood. His purpose was to build a people, carve them from the very flesh of our neighbors.” Again N’tan shivered. “One of his sons will build the Temple, a man of peace, just as Dadua is a man of war.”
Again Cheftu nodded. “It is an uncertain thing to have the tzadik change his mind. Which is why I journey to you.”
“Me?”
“You carry with you magical stones.” N’tan looked away. “It is written by my forefathers, passed down through the Imhoteps. They tell you the right thing to do. Will you see if I should tell Dadua that he cannot build? Will you be certain for me?”
Cheftu slipped them from his waist, since there was no longer a need to keep them in other, more difficult to reach places. They warmed his hands, twitching when he brought them close together. “What do you ask?”
“Are my dreams real—lo,lo,” N’tan said, falling into silence. “Ask if my interpretation of the dreams is accurate.”
Cheftu asked, then threw the stones. It was a simple response, quick.
“K-e-n.”
“Is there more you would know?”
N’tan smiled weakly. “How angry Dadua will be?” he asked facetiously. Straightening his shoulders, he said, “I do not want to know that, not really. It makes no matter his response. My avocation is tzadik. This is the burden of it. Todah rabah, my friend.”
“Shalom, N’tan,” Cheftu said as the prophet closed the door.
Cheftu dropped to his knees, the words in his mind as clearly as if the Holy Writ were before him:
“Go and tell my servant David this is what the Lord says: You are not the one to build me a house to dwell in. I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their leaders whom I commanded to shepherd my people, ‘Why have you not built me a house?’
“Now then, tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock, to be ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you.
“Now I will make your name like the names of the greatest men of the earth
. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and I will plant them so that they can have a
home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also subdue all your enemies.
“I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you: When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your own son, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.”
Cheftu didn’t know why, or how, but those were the words of God that would pass down through the ages. David’s throne was to be established forever. He was God’s favorite, the incorporation of the divine nishmat ha hayyim, filled with the zeal of Shaday. For these things he was honored.
And through him, all earthlings were blessed. Cheftu’s forehead touched the floor as he whispered, “Sela.” Thunder rumbled outside. It was beginning to rain, again.
THE MUSHROOM, BATHSHEBA, hadn’t spoken. We were gathered around her, family as it were, of the bride. She stared listlessly into space. Shana and Hag’it had curled her hair, then made up her face with fragile pinks and smoky grays.
Avgay’el had loaned her a dress of red, for rejoicing. It was embroidered with silver and gold, with tiny seed pearls studded around the neck. A dowry headband with silver coins matched a necklace of silver coins.
She sat.
The atmosphere was forced, but what more could be done? It seemed barbaric to me, but this would be better for her than being a slave, right? After all, Bathsheba had to marry Uri’a, then, well, marry Dadua, because if not, then where would Solomon come from?
If there was no Solomon … I didn’t know.
Or was it as Cheftu suggested: there were really a thousand ways, a thousand other souls, and if it didn’t happen this way, then another avenue would be chosen? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept of alternative realities; it was too sci-fi.
By making one choice, did we step into another universe of choices? Were they all connected by filaments like a giant web? If I hadn’t been there in Jerusalem, would another woman have done it, and I been killed in the battle of Ashqelon instead?
Better I should stick to my assignment of hennaeing ’Sheva’s hands and feet. The women were dancing and drinking while I sat with the mushroom. She held her palms up to me.
“HaMelekh will see me,” she whispered. “Make me beautiful?”
The irony of that statement was almost beyond belief, but I picked up the brushes. She had never struck me as a woman of flowers; most of the henna designs I had seen used flowers.
Raindrops!
Her hands were long and thin; strange that I never noticed that before. They were perfect hands for a dancer, expressive and eloquent. After dipping the end of the henna stick, which was effectively my brush, I drew little raindrops, like tiny paisleys, in streams down her fingers. Then I surrounded them with dots. Now her palm.
“What do you like?” I asked her, my voice soft beneath the sound of women laughing.
“I like the raindrops,” she said.
“I did those.”
“I like leaves.”
Leaves would look too much like raindrops, I thought. “What else?”
“Stars.”
I looked at the palm of her hand. The lines in her hands seemed to split into two directions, one going toward her mound of Venus, the other toward the outer part of her hand. I followed the creases, then connected them. It was a triangle, in a rather Islamic, curved kind of way.
“Stars,” she repeated.
With the same angle and swoop, I put another triangle over the first. Then, just to fill it out, I drew raindrops flowing away from it. Her other hand was a repeat of the pattern. They looked like Jewish stars, but she was a good Jewish girl, so why not? When I finished we all toasted her once more, then stood as her guard to meet with Uri’a in one of the recently finished cedar chambers, since it was raining outside and cold. ’Sheva wasn’t trembling; in fact, she walked gracefully, proudly, her flowing platinum hair in stark contrast with her red gown.
The Klingon awaited her beneath the wedding canopy. Since he had already taken his ease with her, there was not much celebration. His family, if they were here, didn’t attend. Only N’tan, Dadua, and the harem women were present.
It was over quickly, then the feast. We all ate little, drank a lot, then Uri’a picked up his bride to carry her to his home. “Wait!” Dadua cried. “My right as king, gibori, is to kiss the bride!”
We laughed. Under normal circumstances this would be jolly. It seemed forced today. Yet I was grateful he had done this, because the mushroom wanted nothing else in her entire life except to have a kiss from the king and dance in the rain. Would history change? Had it? Uri’a set her down, and Dadua took her hands in his, looking into her face.
Was anyone else breathing fast? I couldn’t believe I was seeing this!
“Uri’a is a good man. Faithful to me. Be faithful to him.” ’Sheva gazed at him as though he hung the stars, the stars that she liked, just for her. “May Shaday bless you with many children,” Dadua said. “May those children rise to do good things for the tribes.” She tilted up her head, the better to be kissed. Instead Dadua kissed her one palm, then the other.
He frowned at my henna job, then kissed her right palm again. Uri’a picked her up, now boneless with disappointment, and carried her off.
Thunder shook the building. Avgay’el invited me to stay, wait for Cheftu to finish his day’s work, in the peace of the women’s quarters. I had fallen asleep when Avgay’el nudged me. Her voice was low. “Dadua wants to see you.”
I rinsed my face and walked with Shana to a smaller audience chamber. Yoav was there, frowning over a papyrus. Dadua hopped up when he saw me. “Would you care for wine, Klo-ee?”
“B’seder,” I said. “The temple, ach, well, Shaday does not want me to build it.”
Cheftu had mentioned that; it was completely in keeping with what we knew of the Bible.
“So, I wish to make a uniform that all the giborim will wear.”
The Egyptians’ and Pelestis’ professional appearance had gotten to him?
“Yoav,” he said, gesturing to the Rosh Tsor haHagana,
“has commissioned shields from your cousins, the Pelesti, in Ashdod.”
I nodded. “Perhaps you could speak to them, work us a deal?”
I nodded; I was getting better at bartering, and I would take Cheftu. Maybe I could even see Wadia?
Dadua stepped closer to me. I could smell his skin, he was so close. The mushroom would kill me to be here now. “I have sought for an emblem to symbolize Tziyon, our position here.” He raised his hands in frustration. “Nothing, nothing comes to me. Not even Hiram’s skilled and gifted designers can think of a thing.”
“Ken?”
“Then today, at that girl’s wedding, I see it!”
“See what?”
“The emblem! It is so clear,” Dadua cried. “Such a standard for Tziyon, for the united monarchy!”
I was holding my breath. “This! It is this!” He whipped out a piece of papyrus. There, with far less grace than the original, was my design from the mushroom’s hand. Without the swirls, the curves, the angles, it was simply one triangle.
With another over it, upside down. “It has three points, the sacred cities in the north on one, then three other points, the sacred cities of the south, on the other. They overlap in Tziyon!”
I stared at it. Two triangles that did indeed overlap. “This will be easy to do! We can put it everywhere!”
I like stars, the mushroom had said. So I made one. From two triangles. Then a man named David, who just started a country, saw it. Liked it. Decided to use it.
Could I put this on my résumé? “It will be the Shield of Shalem, for this city will be a city of peace, a city of Shaday. It’s perfect!”
CHAPTER 16
“IT PLEASES ME THAT YOU have joined in my feasting,” RaEm said, reclining.
Dadua, flanked by several soldiers, stood in her doorway. The tents of her people weren’t accustomed to the rains, so her soldiers had learned from the Tsori how to cut the trees. Now a wooden shelter covered her tent but darkened it. And nothing could keep out the cold. She shivered, but when haNasi’s gaze dropped to her hardened nipples RaEm sent a quick word of thanks to the gods of cold weather.
“Please, make yourself comfortable, adoni,” she invited, practicing this tongue that was so foreign. However, she’d had little else to do during the heat of summer. “Your soldiers can wait in the comfort of the next tent. My slaves will see that our needs are met.”
He had black eyes, not unlike Hiram’s, but his were almost too filled with soul. They seemed to point out all the lack in her own. He dismissed his men and joined her. In deference to his ways she had laid a low table surrounded by silken pillows. Incense burned in braziers throughout the room, giving off heat and scent. He lay down opposite the narrow gilded table from her, his body stretched out across from hers.
RaEm poured the wine and handed it to him. “To the unification of our peoples,” she said.
He held it to his lips, swallowed, but she knew he drank nothing. “Forgive me, adoni,” she said, taking the cup back from him. “We are both accustomed to the wiliness of court, are we not?” She drank, wondering how much of the powdered mandrake aphrodisiac was flowing into her veins. “You can know it is safe now.” She returned it.
It was a measure of face now; he had to drink lustily or he would be calling Pharaoh of Egypt a potential murderer. He downed the cup, and she heaved a sigh of relief. This would be easy; she should have more faith in herself. He just unnerved her with his steady breathing and his one, frowning god.