Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge))

by Orson Scott Card

  Hagar ran to Sarai as soon as they were beyond the circle of soldiers. “Is there anything you need to bring with you?” Sarai asked her.

  “Nothing, Mistress,” said Hagar. “I own nothing, not even my own body.”

  “That’s true of all of us,” said Abram. “This is the servant you asked about?”

  “Hagar, this is my husband. Abram, this is my handmaiden. She knew my secret almost from the start, and did not betray me, even though she would have been well rewarded if she had.”

  “Welcome to my household,” said Abram. “We’ll get you decent clothing when we reach my tent. You can keep that gown to show your husband on your wedding night.” He walked ahead of them, leading the way to the river.

  Hagar leaned close to Sarai as they walked, so she could speak softly and still be heard. “I can never wear linens again?”

  “You can wear them all the time,” said Sarai. “Under your clothing.”

  “It’ll be like wearing a house,” said Hagar. She laughed at her own jest, but her hands trembled where they held Sarai’s arm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Sarai. “We all work hard, but life is good for everyone, servant and master.”

  “I have put my life in your hands,” said Hagar.

  “As I put mine in yours,” said Sarai.

  Abram commanded the pilot of the king’s own barge to take them down the river to where his herds were pastured and his household tents were pitched. The pilot obeyed him with only a glance at Pharaoh, who was visible in the distance, walking slowly to the House of Women.

  “Don’t worry,” said Sarai. “Pharaoh has much to do in the House of Women before he’ll need this boat again.”

  It was sunset when they reached shore, and only torchlight showed them the glad faces of their friends and servants when they reached the tents. Sarai was gratified to see that all was in order in the camp, everything in good repair and all at peace. Abram’s steward, Bethuel, had been ill, but had delegated everything to a young Damascene named Eliezer. Neither Sarai nor Abram knew him. It was an alarming thing, that Bethuel had reached outside Abram’s household to choose his second. What had he promised this Eliezer? Could he be trusted? Sarai was ready to be angry at Bethuel for such a dangerous decision.

  But Eliezer took the initiative. “Abram,” he said, “Bethuel first gave me hospitality in your name, but I insisted that I serve for my bread. He would not take me as a servant, but he did allow me to labor, and he found my work pleasing. I did not seek the trust that he gave me when he became ill, and I have no expectation of keeping such a position. I only ask that you confirm the hospitality your steward gave me in your name.”

  “I confirm you as my guest,” said Abram. “But we leave Egypt tomorrow.”

  “Abram,” said Eliezer again. Sarai wasn’t sure she liked the way he called Abram by his name, though as a guest, and not a servant, that was technically correct. The man was young—scarcely twenty, by her estimation—but he carried himself with assurance, like a master or a host, and not a servant. She wondered if there had been resentment or even conflict when an outsider was given authority over many who were older than he, or who had been born into service to Abram’s family.

  “Eliezer,” said Abram as mildly as if he had no such suspicions. Sarai was never quite sure whether Abram’s mildness represented great self-control or dangerous naivete.

  “I came to Egypt because the drought had devastated my father’s household. Our wealth died with our cattle. I valued my father’s honor more than his wealth, but he was ashamed of having lost my inheritance, and when he dismissed our servants he left me and commanded me not to follow after him. Whether he died in the desert or begs in the streets of Damascus or serves in another man’s house, I do not know because he does not want me to know. What knowledge I have I learned from my father. It is my whole inheritance, and I now offer it in your service. Take me into your household forever, and I will serve you well.”

  “Bethuel is my steward,” said Abram.

  “I will do whatever task you find me suited for,” said Eliezer.

  “And if I give you work to which you are not well suited?”

  “Then I will learn the work until I do it as well as you need or wish me to.”

  “It’s a solemn thing to give up your freedom to another man,” said Abram.

  “It is no more than you have done, Abram,” said Eliezer.

  Sarai gasped before she could stop herself. It was an outrageous thing to say. Abram was master of a house, a great lord of the desert, and no servant to any man.

  “I think my wife wishes to know in what sense you meant those words,” said Abram—again, showing no annoyance at either his words or her gasp.

  “You have given your life to God’s service, and God is your master in all things,” said Eliezer. “How then can I better serve God than to enter into obedience to his steward?”

  Now Sarai’s suspicions were fully aroused. If a man wished to deceive Abram he could choose no more devious path than to pretend to serve God. Did Abram see this? Or would he simply take Eliezer’s protestations of faith as if they must be true?

  “God is little spoken of these days, at least not with his true name. It is only Ba’al that I hear of now,” said Abram. “In Damascus as in any other city of Syria.”

  “Not everyone forgets that Ba’al was simply a term of respect for the true God. My name is the one my father gave me. He taught me of Father El, and he told me also of the priestly family in which at last a new prophet had arisen—Abram son of Terah. He rejoiced when the priest of Pharaoh was slain by the hand of the true and living God. I have known your name from my childhood.”

  If the man was a flatterer, he was better at it than any Sarai had seen in her father’s house, though that was partly because the best flatterers would not have wasted their talent on a king who had lost his city. Still, his words and manner were so simple that Sarai could not help but believe him, or at least wish to believe him.

  Abram took Eliezer’s hands. “You stand here as my guest, and I offer you guest-right on the journey back to Canaan. I will teach you what I know of God during the journey.”

  Eliezer shook his head. “I have no desire to be your guest, and I wish to learn about God, not just from your words, but from your life, and not just by hearing and watching, but by taking part in your works wherever and whenever you have need of me. Accept me as your servant, or I will not go with you.”

  “You know, of course, that only a child born in my house can inherit from me,” said Abram.

  So Abram was not naive. He knew that a man of his wealth who had no children could look like an opportunity to an enterprising young man. Abram’s people were not like the Egyptians, adopting adults as sons or daughters in order to circumvent the inheritance laws. Nothing of Abram’s would ever belong to Eliezer. A practical concern that had to be dealt with—though if Sarai were not barren, the question would never have come up.

  “I know the law,” said Eliezer. “I want, not to have what is yours, but to be yours.”

  “For a term of five years I take you,” said Abram.

  “An oath that ends is no oath at all. I do not wish to be your hireling.”

  “Let all here be my witnesses that I offered to take you with me as a guest and as a bondservant. It is at your insistence that I take you as a servant in my household, you and all the children who might be born to you.”

  Eliezer knelt before Abram and stretched out a hand. Abram raised his foot and stepped on Eliezer’s hand, symbolically taking him as if he had been captured in war. Then he reached down and raised Eliezer by the hand.

  “Eliezer,” said Abram.

  “Yes, master,” said Eliezer. Sarai was pleased to see that he used the term of respect as soon as he was officially Abram’s servant.

  “Please continue to help Bethuel as you have been doing. There will be time enough tomorrow for you and he to tell me all that I need to know. In due time I’l
l decide where you fit into this camp.”

  So quickly had they slipped from the sophisticated manners of Egypt to the more earthy ways of the herdkeeping household. Sehtepibre had taken solemn oaths to Pharaoh, but they did not keep him from plotting his master’s overthrow. Nothing that anyone said in Egypt meant what it seemed to mean. Everything was layered and disguised and distorted and, above all, expendable. But these words and actions of Abram’s and Eliezer’s would bind them both for life—Abram to provide a place and sustenance for Eliezer, and Eliezer to serve Abram in any way he might direct.

  There might be turmoil in Egypt, but in Abram’s household, there was Ma’at.

  The only sadness was that Sarai’s old servant Bitute had died months before. Her last words had been of Sarai, calling her “my good little girl, my best little child.” Sarai wept in gratitude for the love of the old woman that had been part of her life from the start, and in sorrow that she had not been with her when she died. But her body had been embalmed and they would take it with them and bury her in Canaan. “As I must be buried,” said Sarai. “I was born in exile, Abram, but when I die, bury me in the land God has given you. Not in Ur-of-the-North. I was born there, but it was never my home. I’m done with cities.”

  “If you die before me, which I doubt, I’ll bury you in Canaan,” said Abram. “But only if I have your promise that if I die first, you will see to it we lie beside each other. We had a year of our marriage stolen from us. From now on, even in death I’ll never be away from you for long.” He turned to the others who were gathered round. “You’ve done well, my friends. You’ve kept everything ready for travel. Tomorrow we set out for home.”

  That night, Abram slept in Sarai’s tent and held her close to him far into the night. They dozed and woke and dozed again, and in one of their wakings, she thought of something. “What about the book you wrote? Did you bring it with you?”

  “No,” he said. “Everything that’s in the book is in my memory.”

  “What if Sehtepibre wins the war? Won’t his people destroy your book?”

  “They will if they find it,” said Abram. “But where I’ve hidden it, I doubt it will be found for a century.”

  “Where did you hide it? Did you bury it?”

  “No. I rolled it up within the scroll of a very boring book of the exploits of a long-dead king. Someday someone will open it and copy it out because they’ll think it’s part of the royal archive. By then no one will remember my name. The scribe will simply copy what I wrote because that’s what scribes are paid to do.”

  “So you might as well not have written it at all.”

  “If God has a use for it, God will get it into the hands of those who need it. In due time.”

  “I need you,” said Sarai.

  “And after only a year, look whose hands I’m in.”

  “Only a year!”

  “Hush,” he said, and kissed her. “You’ll wake the camp.”

  They were both very quiet after that, and woke no one.

  Part V

  Division

  Chapter 13

  Qira tried not to be angry at Sarai. It was not the wife’s fault when the husband was selfish and cruel. But when she saw how Sarai made such a point of acting happy about living in a tent surrounded by the stink of animals, a life without grace or pleasure, well, it just made Qira too angry to hold her tongue sometimes. Sarai carried this business of wifely subservience much too far. Sometimes a wife had to let her husband know that she was unhappy. How else could he possibly realize how important it was for him to change?

  And it was all Abram’s fault, anyway. When he and Sarai came back from Egypt, they had so many cows and sheep and goats that their servants couldn’t tend them all. The obvious solution, as far as Qira could see, was to either sell the animals or turn them loose. If the beasts were too stupid to find food on their own they didn’t deserve to live. But when she said so, Lot actually sent her out of the room to fetch wine—like a servant!

  She left the room all right, and just kept on walking until she was at the home of her friend Jashi, who understood completely that there’s only so much humiliation a woman can bear. Qira had rather expected Lot to come looking for her, but he never did, and then it was so late at night that Qira had to impose on Jashi’s hospitality. Even the next morning, there wasn’t a sign that Lot was looking for her, so she finally went home as if nothing had happened. To her fury, Lot didn’t say anything about it, either. And then she realized that the servants were packing up all of Lot’s clothing and putting cloths over the furniture—in every room but hers.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “I’m closing the house,” he said. “Abram has given me half his herd.”

  “I fail to see how a gift can cause us to lose our house.”

  “We aren’t losing it. We’re just closing it up and leaving a caretaker while we join Abram and Sarai.”

  “Join them? Why don’t they join us? All they have is a few tents, and we have a fine house, with plenty of room for them.”

  “Oh. I thought you found the house too small.”

  “Too small? Well, indeed it is too small to make the impression that the daughter of a king should make in this city, but it is certainly not too small to offer hospitality to my sister and her husband. I’ll go and tell the servants to uncover the furniture.”

  “No you won’t,” said Lot cheerfully. “You’re coming with me to Abram’s camp.”

  This stunned her. He had never tried to boss her around before. But she was hardly going to start putting up with that now. If you let men push you at all, they thought they could do it as much as they wanted. So she put her foot down. “I do not go to camps,” she said. “I am a woman of the city. I told you that when we married.”

  “And I’m a man of the open sky,” said Lot. “We’ve had a good many years of useless city life. It’s time to spend a while doing something worthwhile.”

  It was unbelievable that he could treat her years of service to him as if they counted for nothing. “I have worked endlessly to improve your position in this city, to win you more influence, to—”

  “To get me invited to even more boring banquets with even more stupid and worthless people.”

  “You are talking about my friends! Who are, I might point out, your friends as well!”

  “They are not my friends,” said Lot, “and they are not your friends either. It’s only your royal birth and my wealth that win you entry into their homes. Otherwise they’d despise you. They certainly despise me.”

  “You are simply too sensitive. And my birth is who I am, so it is hardly inappropriate that my birth should entitle me to respect. We have been perfectly happy in Sodom for our entire marriage, and suddenly Abram comes home from Egypt stinking of goats and you want to leave everything I’ve built here—”

  “Qira, my dear, the decision is made. You’ll find that you enjoy spending time with Sarai and hearing from her about what women wear in Egypt.”

  In fact, that was an intriguing thought, but it wouldn’t do to let Lot see that. “Women can go about naked in Egypt for all I care,” said Qira.

  “We’re leaving in an hour,” said Lot. “If you want to bring anything with you, you can take what fits in two bags. You won’t need most of your clothing, since it’s not suitable for camp life. Sarai will have plenty of clothing to share with you. So I’ve already ordered your servants to pack most of your fine gowns away till we need them again.”

  He had actually given orders to her servants. This was intolerable. “I’m not going,” she said.

  “I won’t force you,” said Lot. “You are free to stay with any of your friends who’ll have you as a longterm guest. Write to me often.”

  “I will stay in this house,” said Qira.

  “This house will be closed,” said Lot. “No food will be brought here, no servants will serve here, and no guests will be admitted here. I fear you would die very quickly in such a ho
use. But Jashi is such a good friend that you could spend the night with her last night—see if she’ll have you for a year.”

  “I wouldn’t even ask such a thing.”

  “I leave in an hour. I certainly hope you’ll come with me.”

  Qira did not believe him. She went to her room and ordered her servants to stop putting things away. They were obviously very upset at receiving contradictory orders from her and Lot, and stood there fluttering their hands and looking miserable. Finally she took pity on them and allowed them to continue. “But we won’t be putting them into storage. They’ll simply be transferred to whatever house I live in next.”

  Relieved, the servants continued their packing. But Qira knew that when Lot saw that she was simply not going to leave, he would relent.