Pillar of Fire

by Judith Tarr

  She had never credited him with love of the Two Lands that he had ruled so poorly. And yet it seemed he had loved them. It was bred in him, she supposed.

  But then she had no cause to love Egypt, and she grieved for it. Kings and gods: they were a plague and a pestilence. Better for the world if neither of them had ever been.

  Moshe wept as the boat carried him down the river to Pi-Ramses. His daughter did not weep, nor did she speak. The Apiru were grimly silent.

  Only Nofret did not know what took them to Pi-Ramses. Nor would she ask. It was a kind of cowardice. The less she knew, the later she discovered it, the better for her heart’s peace.

  oOo

  Pi-Ramses—the house of Ramses, beloved of Amon, great in victory—was one of the king’s treasure-cities, a city of storehouses and granaries, treasuries and temples. It was a fortress already before the Apiru were shut up in it, a walled city set on the shore of a lake called the Sea of Reeds. A far eastern branch of the river of Egypt flowed past its walls. The road into Asia began there. There was the edge of Egypt, the last of the green land between the Delta and the desert.

  The city crouched like a stone lion amid the deep green of vineyards, their beauty untouched by the plagues that had destroyed the rest of Egypt. The sweetness of wine wafted from it. One could almost imagine that this was a city of peace; but there was a scent of cold stone beneath, and an iron harshness that was blood.

  Nofret would always remember Pi-Ramses so, not by sight but by the mingled scent of wine and blood. Old blood as well as new. The Shepherd Kings, those invaders whose name was forgotten, had ruled here. Now another race of shepherds, their distant kin perhaps, were held captive beneath the yoke of Egypt, bound in slavery, forced to build the king’s treasure-houses under the lash of his overseers.

  As greenly placid as the land seemed, the city had the same bleak lost look as the rest of Egypt. Egyptians, even armed guards, shied away from the Apiru. The Apiru huddled in their own quarter, crowded together with their sheep and goats, their children, their belongings.

  There were boats moored at the quay, but no one in them. People in the city had retreated to their houses. Guards stood stiff at their posts, but made no move to stop the strangers.

  Moshe entered the city almost quietly. There could be no concealing a whole embassy of Apiru, complete with donkeys and baggage, but no one came out to watch them. There was no greeting-party at the quay, either to welcome them or to drive them out.

  In the quarter of the Apiru, people were waiting. Frightened people, people so beaten down by years of servitude that they had forgotten how to stand straight. They walked bent, with their eyes fixed on their feet.

  But a remarkable number still held their heads high. Apiru pride: it put Egyptian royalty to shame. They came forward to the gate that barred their dwellings from those of Egyptians, and stood in a ragged rank between the strangers and the rest of their people. They might be on guard. They might be warding the strangers against their own people’s fear.

  Ephraim, who had come to Memphis from Pi-Ramses, had so far forgotten his shyness among the bold young men from Sinai that he stepped in front of Moshe himself, between the prophet and the people of the city, and said to the man foremost, “Shmuel, what are you doing? Let us in.”

  Shmuel appeared to be an elder of these people. He was perhaps no older than Nofret, but thin and grey, worn to the bone by hard labor. Unlike many of the others however he seemed the stronger for what he had endured. He stood upright, faced Moshe, and said clearly, “You may be all that rumor makes you. I know nothing but that your coming has made the Egyptians angry.”

  “They were angry before he came,” said Ephraim hotly. “Shmuel, let us in. The Lord is waiting.”

  Shmuel looked to be at least as stubborn as the king. Nofret wondered if the Apiru god would smite an Apiru for standing in the way of his prophet.

  She never did discover whether he would do such a thing. Before Shmuel could speak, Aharon advanced to Ephraim’s side. He had never failed to take advantage of his size and breadth where it would serve him: as much here as in the king’s court. His voice was soft, gentle, deep enough to rumble in the earth. “We come to set you free.”

  “What is freedom?” Shmuel demanded. “Starvation in the desert?”

  “By the Lord’s grace,” said Aharon, “no.”

  “The Lord will give us a land of our own,” a new voice said.

  Nofret started. Jehoshua was standing at Aharon’s shoulder. How had he grown so tall? He was growing into his grandfather’s voice, too, that beautiful rich timbre which made Aharon so powerful a herald for his prophet.

  Jehoshua was still young, still no more than a boy. He had a boy’s eagerness, half clumsy, half captivating. “We’ve been promised. When we come out of Egypt there will be a country for us, a land that will be ours. You’ll see. You’ll look on it with the rest of us and be glad.”

  “If any of us lives to see it,” said Shmuel.

  “We will live,” said Jehoshua. “The Egyptians—”

  “The Egyptians will know the Lord’s wrath.” Moshe had spoken at last, freed for once from his stammer. “Come to the gathering place, quickly. Time is short.”

  Diffident as Moshe could seem, light-voiced, hesitant, lacking the power of presence that was so distinct in Aharon, still he could lead men when he chose. Even reluctant Shmuel gave way before him.

  oOo

  They all gathered in the place that would hold them, the market-square now emptied of stalls. Goats and sheep were penned in the corners of it, but the center was open. The people poured into it until they filled it, a greater throng than Nofret could have expected. There were hundreds of them, of every age, from doddering ancient to babe at the breast. They were a great army, if anyone had had the will to muster them and train them for war.

  There was nothing warlike about them as they gathered in front of Moshe. They were slaves, cowed and trembling, too full of their own fears to listen to him. Aharon had to raise his voice to a battlefield bellow before they would stop babbling among themselves.

  Even then they could not all hear Moshe. Aharon spoke the words as he spoke them, transmuting their hesitance into firmness and strength.

  “The Lord is angry,” he said. “He sent me into Egypt to set you free, but the king of Egypt persists in holding you captive. His land is destroyed, his people cast into famine, but still he holds fast. His pride rules him. He will not give way.

  “And now the Lord has come to the end of his patience. Nine times he has shown his power. Nine times the king has turned his face away. But from this, children of Yisroel—from this, even the Great House of Egypt cannot escape.”

  He paused. The crowd was silent. A mere prophet could not still their chatter, but mention of their god quelled even the children.

  Moshe’s head bowed with the weight of the world. He spoke slowly now, measuring the words one by one. “The Lord has spoken. The children of Yisroel must obey every word as he has uttered it. Listen, my people. Listen and remember.”

  Aharon’s voice rose to fill the sky. Moshe’s was dim beneath it. Dimmer still, maybe, was the voice of the god of whom they were only heralds.

  “This shall be the first month of the first year,” they said. “The first day is past: that day when the Lord bade me stand before the king and convey the last of his warnings. When the tenth day comes, the Lord bids you seek for each household an unblemished lamb: a male, a yearling, no older, no younger. Take that lamb; feed it. Consecrate it. And on the fourth day thereafter, in the first fading of evening, let it be sacrificed before the people. Let each of you take a bundle of hyssop; dip it in the blood of the lamb, and spread it upon the doorposts and the lintel of each house in which dwells man or woman or child of the Apiru.

  “Then go within, my children, and eat of the lamb, roasted whole with all its limbs and organs, and no bone broken. Eat it with bitter herbs and with unleavened bread. Eat it standing, clad for trav
el, with your staffs in your hands; but take great care that none of you come forth till morning.

  “For at the stroke of midnight,” they said, echo within echo, “I shall pass over the land of Egypt. Every house that is sealed with the blood of the lamb, I shall not touch. But every other house, every stable, every barn and byre, shall know the stroke of my hand. Death shall smite them, my children, death of their firstborn, whether they be princes or slaves, lords in their palaces or beasts in the fields—aye, even to the king himself, for whose pride I have ordained this scourge upon the land and the people of Egypt.”

  If the silence had been deep before, now it was absolute. No one moved. No one breathed.

  Moshe lifted his head. Tears were running down his cheeks. “But you, my children,” he said—his god said—“I shall spare. When the morning comes, take the leavings of the lamb; burn them all, to the last of them. Then you shall be free; then you shall go forth from the place of your captivity.

  “Do this,” he said. “Do this, and remember it forever.”

  Sixty-Five

  “I wish I could believe that he wasn’t going to do it,” Nofret said. “I wish I could believe that he lacked the power.”

  She had gone with the rest of the embassy to the largest house in the slaves’ quarter, which happened to belong—ironically enough—to Shmuel the doubter. She was not greatly surprised to discover that he was Ephraim’s father. Strength of will and purpose seemed to run in that family. Its direction differed, that was all, and the manner of its expression.

  Shmuel might not be greatly happy, but he knew the requirements of courtesy. And he had heard the voice of his god. Even Nofret had done that, and she was a foreigner.

  His wife was a hospitable woman, less dour than her husband, undismayed to find herself guesting a small army of strangers. She, with her gaggle of yet-unmarried daughters, was glad of Nofret’s help, and of Miriam’s: a prophetess, she said, was a woman like any other, and well for her if she could bake bread for three dozen.

  It was to Miriam that Nofret spoke while the two of them mixed water into barley flour. They were not to leaven it, for this was the night when the god would pass over. If she strained she could hear the bleating of lambs where they were gathered together. At sunset the sacrifice would begin.

  Miriam glanced at her. “Will you be worshipping the Lord, then, since you believe in him?”

  “No,” said Nofret.

  “Do you fear for your firstborn?”

  Nofret surged up, but caught herself before she leaped. She sank down again, breathing deep. “My firstborn will sleep—if he can—behind a gate warded with blood. Your god demanded only that; not that everyone within be his devoted slave.”

  Miriam shrugged. She worked water and flour together, but carefully, lest in kneading it she cause it to rise. It was a peculiar prohibition, like the god who required it. It signified haste, Moshe had said; time shortened to nothing as the people fled out of Egypt.

  Bread unleavened and baked flat would have little enough savor. Roast lamb at least they would have, fragrant with herbs. Women had been out gathering them, in some fear of the Egyptians, but those who did not flee the Lord’s people were well enough disposed toward them. Some had been coming to offer gifts of gold and silver for the journey, precious vessels, jewels, a trove of treasures useless to a wandering people. Moshe had not forbidden them to take such booty—bribery, Nofret thought it, to win immunity from the god’s last curse. But only the blood of the lamb could do that, and no Egyptian could ransom himself so.

  A commotion brought her rather gratefully to the door. It was open on the street, to let in what air there was. People were running past, babbling incoherently. But she only needed a few words to know what had set them off.

  The king was in Pi-Ramses. He had come by swift boat like a courier, attended by the eldest of his daughters. An army marched behind him. They would be in the city in a day or two. Then no doubt the Apiru would be slaughtered.

  But not yet. There were not enough soldiers in the city to muster an attack against the Apiru. Johanan, anticipating trouble, had already gathered every man who could wield a weapon. The result was an army indeed, hundreds strong, standing guard by turn and turn.

  The number of their weapons was a matter of some surprise to Nofret, who knew how difficult it could be to arm a company of warriors. There must have been swords hidden in the clothing-presses or buried under the floors of houses; bows kept for hunting, with arrows made and fletched and put away for the time of need. Any man who lacked either had found himself a spear, taken from a soldier maybe, or preserved from long ago.

  Whether their god or their own swords defended them, they would suffer nothing that night from the king of Egypt. Nofret heard Aharon’s voice quieting those who had run in panic. Another great voice from another part of the quarter must be Johanan’s, or possibly Jehoshua’s: his had a piercing quality that the older men’s lacked, like a trumpet ringing far away.

  By the time the bread was made and taken to the oven that the women shared, the sun had sunk below the city’s walls. The sky was still bright but the streets were dim, night falling early among the houses of the Apiru. They had all gathered where Moshe had spoken to them of the god’s passing over, where priests had set up altars and begun the round of the sacrifice. As each man of the household presented the lamb for slaughter, a priest slit its throat and directed its blood into a bowl that was held by a son or daughter of the house. Then when the lamb died it was borne away to be skinned and roasted, its blood painted on the door for a ward against the god’s destruction.

  There was a strange, somber joy in that rite. The reek of blood and death, the holy stink of sacrifice, must have gagged the priests, who were little accustomed to such a plenitude of slaughter. The people sang the praises of their god, drowning out the lambs’ bleating. The god, it seemed, was not a practical deity. He had not thought to silence the victims who came later to the sacrifice and were dismayed by the sight and sound and scent of those that died before them.

  Aharon was among the priests of the sacrifice, and Johanan bloodied to the elbows. They finished after dark had fallen, cleansed themselves and their altars, prayed whatever prayers their god demanded, and returned to the house in which they were lodging.

  Nofret had gone back long ago, with the young men carrying the four lambs that they had reckoned for so many: Shmuel’s household, Aharon’s, Moshe’s, Johanan’s, with all the servants and the elders and the embassy. It was Miriam who had limned the door in blood, stretching high to mark the lintel. It was beautiful, bright scarlet; nor did it dry and darken as blood should properly do. Every door and lintel was so in that part of the city: framed in blood-red, unmistakable.

  When the priests returned, the tables were laid within, the feast prepared. The bread, hard dry rounds of it, was baked and ready, most laid aside for the journey, the rest on the table to be eaten on this night of all nights.

  All the lamps were lit, prodigal of oil, for they could not carry it all where they were going. The great room of the house was a haven of light. The dark was shut out. Here was the scent of lamb and herbs, the savor of unleavened bread, the murmur of prayer and praise to the Lord of Yisroel.

  There were no battles tonight. No one argued. No one cast doubt on what they did. Fear was banished with the dark.

  Somewhere between the lamb and the wine, someone began to sing. The wine was strong sweet wine of Pi-Ramses, heady and potent after the bitterness of captivity. They all drank deep of it, sending the cups round and then round again.

  They passed the night in wine and in song, safe behind their warded door. None spoke of the world without, or of death, or their god’s anger. They were safe. He protected them.

  oOo

  Nofret drank as much as anyone, but her head remained stubbornly clear. She had eaten enough to satisfy hunger, but no more. She was cold inside, a cold that did not warm for anything she did.

  She was as safe
here as anyone else. But her eyes kept returning to Jehoshua, as if he would stiffen suddenly and fall, destroyed because his mother would not worship one god above the rest. And Johanan—he too was the firstborn of his father. He too could die.

  They were not afraid. They sat side by side among the men, sharing a cup as often as not, so like to one another that her eyes stung with tears.

  oOo

  She left them on a pretext. The winejar would be empty soon, and wine, like oil, was awkward to carry far in the desert. But instead of seeking out the room where the wine was stored, she took a lamp and went up on the roof.

  This was mad. Moshe, or his god, had bidden all his people to keep safe within, not to dare the night air while his spirit of death passed over.

  It was cool for Egypt, almost cold. The stars were blazing bright. A vast quiet lay over the city. No light shone, not even in the governor’s palace, where tonight the king was lying sleepless. Perhaps he too held off the dark with wine and lamplight, music and song.

  Maybe the god had no power to do what he threatened. Maybe the king was here to set the Apiru free.

  Maybe Nofret was grasping at something, anything, to deny what she knew was true. Death walked the night in Egypt. Almost she felt the brush of its wings. Almost she heard the sound of its footfall, soft and yet immense.

  For a moment it seemed that the stars were blotted out, that the dark was absolute. She shuddered in her bones. But the death had not come for her. She was the sixth of her father’s children, the third of his daughters. If this had been Great Hatti—if any Hittite had been as great a fool as the king of Egypt—her brother Piyassili would have fallen down dead, but none of the rest.

  Maybe after all this was a merciful god. An unmerciful one would have killed every living thing in Egypt, from the least to the greatest: not simply one in each generation, the first to be born, the eldest and the first in inheritance.

  She felt rather than saw the one who came up behind her, knew him by the sound of his step and the warmth of his body even across the width of the roof. She whipped about. “Get below! It’s death for you here.”