by Angela Hunt
“Of course.” Mandisa lifted a brow and turned toward Ani. “I am not accustomed to working in the kitchens. Halima is a kitchen slave. May I have her help to prepare the captive’s meals?” She looked back to the captain of the guard. “And is it permissible for me to take Halima with me when I visit this herdsman? I would fear for my safety if I ventured into his room alone.”
Tarik and Ani studied each other, then Ani folded his arms. “If it is to fulfill the master’s wish, you may use any slaves you please.”
“I see no harm taking the girl with you,” Tarik added. “But no one else is to visit him. Only we three, and the slave Halima if you need her. Of course, if you feel threatened at any time, you may call one of the guards to stand outside the door.”
Mandisa nodded. “Thank you.”
“Is there anything else?” Ani asked.
“No.” Tarik thrust his hands into his sword belt. “Let us hope the uncouth beast remains silent and does not disturb the household. I will beg the gods of Egypt to swiftly return his brothers so we may be rid of him.”
Chapter Seven
Y osef dismissed his guards at the gate of his villa and walked alone up the winding pathway through his courtyard. He felt hollow, lifeless, totally spent by the affairs of the day. The meeting with his brothers had drained him completely and his afternoon with the young Pharaoh left him feeling like a man twice his age. His back ached between his shoulder blades; he knew his face looked pale and pinched. More than once Amenhotep had asked what troubled his most trusted friend and counselor. Yosef only smiled and said that Pharaoh would understand once he had established a family of his own.
The hot night was so quiet that Yosef thought he could hear the lapping of wavelets on the shore of the Nile outside the walls of his estate. The sun had dropped behind the western Theban cliffs, joining the dead in the Valley of the Kings. Torches burned along the pathway, pushing at the gloom, and the noise of laughter echoed from the slaves’ chambers, warming the courtyard with sounds of life.
Yosef’s heart lifted. His brothers had come and gone, expanding and emptying his heart in the space of twenty-four hours, but Shim’on remained behind, breathing the same darkness, hearing the same heartwarming sounds. What was he thinking, the one they called the Destroyer?
Yosef followed a branch of the courtyard path to the small temple of his estate. Like the temples of other Theban villas, the elegant structure had been designed to hold images of the household’s gods, but his temple stood empty, without idols or trays of burning incense. Yosef had only allowed Ani to install two torches that burned through the night in case a visitor wanted to enter the temple and pray.
Yosef knew his servants thought it odd that their devout master did not worship a visible god, for everyone knew that Egypt grew gods as abundantly as the black, fertile land grew grain. When Tuthmosis IV elevated Yosef from prison to the palace, however, that Pharaoh proclaimed that the spirit of God rested upon the man who would henceforth be known as Zaphenath-paneah. After his divine proclamation, no one in Thebes, or all of Egypt, would dare doubt the significance of the vizier’s beliefs. Those who knew him understood that he worshipped the invisible and Almighty God known in the Canaanite tongue as El Shaddai. The Egyptians had another name for this most ancient deity: Neter, the Almighty God who was One.
The torches cast a dim light in the small temple, and Yosef leaned against the doorpost and studied the small chamber. In deference to the master’s chosen god, Ani had painted the wall above the empty altar with the picture sign for Neter, an ax-head fastened to a long wooden handle by thongs of leather.
A smile ruffled Yosef’s mouth as he studied the drawing. “The mightiest man in ancient days was he who had the best weapon and could wield it with the greatest effect,” he murmured, crossing his arms. “If your power, El Shaddai, were an ax, how well did I display it today?”
The still, small voice he had heard a dozen times before did not answer, and Yosef lowered his eyes. “I do not know if they will come again. And I do not know what I shall do with Shim’on if they do not.”
Wait.
A thrill shivered through his senses. His heart recognized the Voice, more a certainty than an audible sound, and Yosef closed his eyes. God had brought him to this place; God would keep him. And obviously God had not yet finished His work.
Humming, he turned and walked toward the house.
“My husband?”
Yosef stirred on his bed, struggling to find wakefulness through the embracing folds of sleep.
“My husband, Ani is here with his morning report. Shall I send him away?”
“No,” Yosef said, forcing his eyes to open. He sat up, throwing off the linen sheet that covered him, and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. Age had not lessened his strength, but it had increased his requirement for rest and recovery. But the pressing needs of a Pharaoh, a kingdom and an estate could not wait.
“Tell Ani to come in,” he said, focusing on Asenath for the first time. She hung shyly about the doorway, a vision of loveliness even at this hour of the morning. Youth and freshness still radiated from her oval face; she had grown from an attractive girl to a beautiful woman. When she smiled at him, he held out a hand, beckoning her closer. “Why do you linger in the doorway like a child?” he said, his voice gruff with sleep. “Come and kiss me, wife.”
She flew to him like a bird, wrapping her arms about his neck and covering his face with happy kisses. “I’ve missed you, beloved,” she said, the scent of her perfume warming his senses. “You were busy from sunrise to sundown yesterday. Your sons and I sorely missed you.”
“And I have missed you,” Yosef murmured. He smiled against her mouth and drew her into his arms, returning her kiss.
“My lord and master, live forever.” Ani’s voice, brimming with suppressed humor, interrupted their embrace.
Yosef lifted his lips from Asenath’s long enough to command the steward away. “For the space of a few moments, at least,” Yosef called, nuzzling his wife’s neck. “I would like to spend some time with the lady of the house.”
The old man chuckled and moved into the hall. “As you wish, my lord.”
“A few moments?” Asenath asked, a teasing note in her voice. She buried her face against his throat. “Why not longer?”
Yosef laughed as he stroked her cheek. “Because Pharaoh will demand to see me this morning. And before I go to him I must check on the captive in our house.”
“Pharaoh does not sneeze without asking your advice first,” Asenath answered, tweaking his ear. “And the prisoner is in Tarik’s custody. He will not escape or do harm.”
She kissed him with her eyes, and he met her lips with his own, tempted by the idea of a sweet rendezvous with his beloved wife. When a nagging thought intruded, however, he pulled his face away and regarded her with gentle reproach.
“How long has it been since your red moon flowed?”
Her lips shaped into a pretty pout. “I don’t know, husband. Mandisa keeps account of these things.”
“Asenath—tell me. Don’t be coy.”
Her lower lip edged forward. “I’m certain it’s all right, beloved.”
“How many days?”
She closed her eyes in a gesture of defeat. “One week. Ten days.”
He sighed, amazed at her careless attitude. Though the physicians had warned her that another pregnancy might cost her life, Asenath seemed not to care.
He brushed a gentle kiss across her forehead. “Not today, my love, it is too dangerous. I would not risk losing you for an hour of pleasure.”
Her hands tightened around his neck. Even now, her painted eyes teased and caressed him. If he could not escape the tumultuous feelings she aroused…
“Ani!” he called over her shoulder, pulling her hands from his neck. “I am ready to hear from you.”
Asenath stood and brushed wrinkles from her gown, unspoken pain glowing in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, my lo
ve. When the time of conception is past—”
“Of course,” she said, moving away. She threw a falsely bright smile toward him as she moved through the doorway. “Your steward is here, my lord.”
“Send him in.”
Yosef lowered his feet to the floor and buried his face in his hands, grateful that Ani would demand nothing of him so early in the morning.
Asenath kept her composure until she re-entered her chamber, then she sank to her bed and covered her face as the salty tears of despair splashed her fingertips. Life was not fair! Of all the women in Thebes, she should have been the most blessed, for everything Zaphenath-paneah touched thrived and blossomed under his care. His God had blessed him with beauty, wealth, power, wisdom and the adoration of the Egyptian nation, yet wagging tongues throughout the royal court were proclaiming that the vizier’s wife could no longer bear him children.
She loved Efrayim and Menashe dearly, but their lives had been won without a struggle; they fell from her womb as easily as she had learned to love her husband. A powerful man needed many sons, and Zaphenath-paneah should have had more than a dozen. Yet she could offer only two. Three times she had conceived children and failed to bring them into the world, and now, at twenty-three, the bloom of her youth was fading. Once she had asked her husband if he would be willing to sleep with Mandisa in order to gain more sons, but he shook his head and smiled at her in tender refusal. He kept insisting he was happy, and he took pains that she should not conceive again, yet Asenath did not believe that a man in his position could be satisfied with only two sons.
Rumors from the palace did not help her anxious state of mind. Tattling tongues and jealous palace rivals had often gossiped that Asenath’s beloved cherished a secret love for Queen Tuya, Pharaoh’s royal mother. Within the last week, Asenath heard that Zaphenath-paneah had once asked Queen Tuya to marry him. And only a few months ago, a rival to the throne had accused the vizier of fathering Pharaoh Amenhotep. Her beloved was cleared of the charge and his accusers sent into exile, but a shadow of doubt lingered in Asenath’s mind. Queen Tuya was breathtakingly lovely, even for a mature woman, and she and Zaphenath-paneah shared a past of which Asenath could never be a part.…
Her husband loved her, she knew he did. But they were fifteen years apart in age, and she often suspected that he thought of her as someone to please and pet, a child to spoil. She had been a mere girl when Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV presented her to the newly proclaimed vizier as a prize, and Zaphenath-paneah had guided her to womanhood and thrilled her with the power of his unseen and Almighty God. She had been a child, easily impressed, devoutly in love with her husband’s beauty and character, overwhelmed by his integrity and kindness.
During the years of plenty she had loved him with the ardent hero-worship of an adolescent. Now that she had reached maturity she yearned to love him as an equal, a partner. But what could she do to foster such love? He did not need her to manage the estate. Ani ably handled the house, the fields and the government of the vizier’s villa. The steward made certain that Efrayim and Menashe received instruction from the most capable tutors in the kingdom. Tarik controlled the guards and the force of men necessary to safeguard the vizier’s family. Mandisa saw to every personal need Asenath or her sons might have ever anticipated.
If she were to become more than her husband’s child-bride, she would have to prove herself worthy of him. She would have to provide something no one else could: sons.
She wiped her tears from her eyes, gathering her courage. Until now she had been willing to wait and hope that her husband’s desire for more children would override his insistence that she was not strong enough to endure another pregnancy. But her patient waiting had come to an end. She had stolen a look at his ten brothers; she had inwardly trembled after seeing his reaction to their reunion. Though he had tried to hide his feelings, his meeting with them had left him sorely shaken. His eyes had glinted with hope and fear and something else…a sense of completeness, an overriding joy at being reunited with his family.
She herself had been overwhelmed by the realization that a single man could have twelve powerful sons, any one of whom would stand out in a crowd. And her husband, the brightest of them all, had only two.
She clenched her jaw to kill the sob in her throat. She would have to do something. If Zaphenath-paneah would not sleep with her handmaid or take another wife, Asenath would bear him sons herself. And since her husband’s invisible God had been unable to give life to the children within her womb, she would return to the gods of her childhood.
Her father served as a high priest at On, known more familiarly as Heliopolis. Tomorrow she would arrange for a caravan; she would go home and consult her father about her situation. And while she sojourned at Heliopolis, the primeval birthplace of the earth, she would beg her father’s gods for another son.
Zaphenath-paneah would not like the idea of her journeying so far to worship another god…but what her husband did not know could not disturb him.
Chapter Eight
S him’on stirred on his bed as sounds of activity reached his ear. Cattle lowed in the stockyard; outside his chamber Egyptian slaves laughed and chattered as they went about their morning chores. Occasionally he heard the squeak of saddles and the shudder of horses, the magnificent animals he had only glimpsed from a distance. On this morning the scents of hot, dry earth mingled with the lusty odors of dust and livestock, and the mouthwatering aroma of baking bread wafted into his room from the kitchens.
How clever was this vizier, how fiendishly evil! While pretending to attend to Shim’on’s comfort, this maniac of ferocious genius had instead arranged for even sounds and smells to torture his captive. Of what comfort was a spacious, well-furnished room when the man inside yearned to be outdoors in the discipline of the sun? To hear horses and not examine them was agony; to smell baking bread and not taste it was an exquisite torture. He had been given a soft bed; he was used to sleeping in the sand with his head pillowed upon a rock. Four stout walls isolated him from the activity of the household; Shim’on was accustomed to the constant company of his brothers, his sons and his servants. Someone had left a breakfast of fruit and milk on a tray inside the door; he wanted goat meat and honey over rough brown bread.
How long could he endure such bedevilment? He could have borne the claustrophobia of the prison pit better than the soft succor of this brightly painted room.
Frustrated beyond endurance, he closed his eyes and screamed in fury.
Chapter Nine
“U se the green eye color today, Mandisa,” Asenath said the next morning, peering into her looking brass with a perturbed expression. “We are going to visit my father at Heliopolis. He mustn’t think that I look tired or aged.”
Mandisa managed a diplomatic laugh as she picked up the delicate alabaster kohl pot containing her mistress’s favorite color. “You are five years younger than me, my lady. If you are aged, then I am as old as Pharaoh’s beard.”
Asenath stared into the mirror, then burst out laughing. Though only twelve and unable to grow a beard himself, Amenhotep wore the royal beard of state on all official occasions. The long, narrow braided hairpiece, attached to the king’s chin by straps which hung over his ears, had been worn by a succession of pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled in her young son’s place for twenty-one years.
Mandisa smiled at the light of joy in her mistress’s eyes. After the death of her last baby, Asenath had been troubled and depressed for many months. She had done nothing but lie on her bed and moan that she had nothing to offer her husband. But on this morning, at least, Asenath seemed happy to put the past behind her.
“What will you wear, my lady?” Mandisa asked. She pulled the polished stone applicator from the narrow tube and gently stirred the iridescent mixture that would sparkle like the waters of the sunlit Nile on her mistress’s eyelids.
“I think,” Asenath answered, closing her eyes while Mandisa applied her cosmetics, “I shall wear th
e new beaded gown wrought for me last week. And the fringed wig with many layers. My father has an appreciative eye for the new fashions.”
“A good choice, my lady.” Mandisa lowered the alabaster container and picked up the black kohl pot to outline her lady’s eyes. As she stirred the applicator in the narrow tube, she wondered if she dared ask what had brought on this desire to visit the priest of Heliopolis. Mandisa could not remember Asenath ever venturing out to visit her father. The venerable priest had come to Thebes only three times: once to pay his respects upon Pharaoh’s coronation, and twice to congratulate his daughter after the birth of her sons.
“I know what you are thinking.” Asenath looked at Mandisa with a faint gleam of reproach in her eyes. “You may as well ask. You’ll worm the answers out of me sooner or later.”
Mandisa felt an unwelcome blush creep into her cheeks. “It does not matter why you want to visit your father, my lady. My only wish is to serve you.”
An easy smile played at the corners of her mistress’s mouth. “Then serve me well in this—whatever I may do in Heliopolis, you need not mention it to my husband.”
Mandisa bowed her head. “As you wish. But if you have need of anything, I am certain my lord the vizier would move heaven and earth to procure it for you.”
“What I need the vizier cannot procure for me,” Asenath said, picking up the looking brass again. “And I have tried to move heaven, but my prayers to the invisible God have availed nothing. I will speak to my father and sacrifice in his sacred temple. Then we shall see if my petitions are successful.”
Mandisa hurried through the hall of the villa toward the spacious kitchen. She had less than a quarter of an hour to say farewell to Adom, take the vizier’s captive his daily ration and meet her mistress in the courtyard to join the caravan to Heliopolis. For an instant she regretted her decision to serve the rugged Canaanite—she was a ladies’ maid, after all, and unaccustomed to the ways of brutish goat herders, even if they were the vizier’s half brothers. But Zaphenath-paneah had asked. And since the day he had found her abandoned, impoverished and desperate enough to sell herself and her son into slavery, she had not been able to refuse her gracious master anything.
