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

by Orson Scott Card

  She had not counted on the way that Abram’s return from Egypt had transformed her husband. She could just imagine their conversation after she left the room. Lot must have explained how important it was for her to live in the city, but Abram no doubt answered, “You’ve got to show a woman who’s in command! Be a man! Not like these weakling city men with their pretty clothes and their vanity! God will punish them for being so wicked!” With Abram everything was always about God. He was really quite tedious on the subject. “If she won’t go, you drag her! That’s what I do to Sarai, and if she doesn’t like it, I show her a stout stick!” Oh, Qira was sure he filled Lot with all sorts of false images of manliness and guilt about city life. These shepherds had the most foolish notions about what went on in the city. Even Lot persisted in his belief that the reason her friends had so few children was because their husbands were somehow sinning against God.

  Still, Lot was bound to see reason when he realized that she simply would not budge on this matter.

  Only he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even come to bid her good-bye. She heard him call out several times, as if she were a dog to be summoned by a shout. And then the house was still. After an hour or so, she decided to go in search of something to drink. She was shocked to find that he was so petty as to take her servants with him. The house was quite empty. There was not so much as a jug of wine or a rind of cheese. Nor could she even find where the bags of clothing and boxes of jewelry had been put. It never occurred to her that he would store them anywhere but in the house.

  So he was being stubborn. Trying to teach her a lesson. She’d see who learned a lesson first!

  She stayed that whole night without a bite to eat and nothing to drink, either. She thought of simply going to one of her friends’ houses, but then realized that she was wearing the same dress she had worn to Jashi’s yesterday, and besides, it was simply too humiliating—people must have seen Lot departing with all the servants, and they would ask questions. So she slept that night in the empty house, frightened half out of her wits at the noises of the city and of the empty house. She kept thinking she heard rats scrabbling around, or thieves trying to break in.

  In the morning, her mouth so dry she could not even swallow, her eyes sore from weeping, she went to the front door and opened it. And there, sitting on a stool right in the doorway, sat, not a servant of hers or of Lot’s, but that obnoxious Eliezer, a young Damascene servant that Abram had taken into his service in Egypt. Eliezer had apparently spent the night there, and no doubt made half the noises she had heard that so frightened her in the darkness!

  “If my lady would like to join her husband, I have two horses.”

  “What do I care how many horses you have?” she asked. “I’m not going out to the desert. Your master might be able to impose his will on my husband, but he’ll soon find that Lot’s love for me is greater than his enthrallment with Abram.”

  “My lady seems misinformed,” said Eliezer—the impudence, a servant speaking in such a way to a king’s daughter! “My master begged Lot to wait until he could persuade you. Lot declined to leave a servant to guide you. But Abram knew he would regret that, and so he sent me back with two horses.”

  He might have sent back a little food and wine for me while he was at it, thought Qira. But she did not deign to answer Abram’s slave, who was no doubt telling whatever lies would best serve Abram’s plot to destroy her life. She walked past him and out into the street.

  She fully intended to go to the house of a friend, but halfway there she was suddenly seized with doubt. Was Lot right? Did they only value her because of her royal birth and his wealth? Oh, it was vile of him to put such a wedge between her and her friends! Yet she remembered how they talked about Nabeleth when her husband simply disappeared one day and left her deeply in debt. She was quite ruined and fled the city before she could be sold into slavery by their creditors. There were all sorts of rumors, including the truly nasty story that she had killed him and buried his body in the garden, as if she would ever have done such manual labor as to dig a grave. But Qira knew that they would tell stories about her, too. And even though she was not faced with debt—Lot was very good about lending money to others, but never borrowed from anyone—the scandal would be unbearable.

  The reality was that wives were as much slaves to their husbands as any of the actual servants were. That’s the horrible injustice of the world, she told herself as she walked miserably through the city. A woman has no voice in what happens to her. Husbands just do whatever they want, and run roughshod over their wives, and women are supposed to bow down and thank them for the privilege of bearing their children and . . .

  The girls! Lot had taken the girls with him! Oh, that was intolerable. What lie was he telling them about why she wasn’t with them? Or was he telling the truth? “That’s what happens when a wife doesn’t obey her husband! She gets left alone in an empty house, without food or drink or protection of any kind. Remember that when you think you might ever disobey a single one of your husband’s brutal commandments!” Inculcating them with the doctrine that women exist only to please men!

  That’s why she had to go to the desert and join Lot, despite his heartless treatment of her—because if she did not, he would raise her girls to be absolute slaves to whatever husband he chose to sell them to. I will tell my girls I made this sacrifice only for them. I’ll tell them how I could hardly sleep for worrying about them all night. Let them see how their father made me suffer. He’ll be sorry he mistreated me this way when he sees how his daughters hate him. And it won’t even be a lie, because I really did lie awake all night, and I’m sure now it was because I was missing them so deeply. It’s not my fault that I had to have my bedroom at the opposite end of the house—they were forever waking up for the morning just when I was getting to bed after a party, and I couldn’t sleep with all the noise of the servants feeding them and Lot playing with them—he could never seem to understand that a truly civilized man of Sodom did not get down on the floor and play with his children, especially not his daughters. The only reason I didn’t notice they had been taken from me was because Lot’s noisy disregard for propriety forced me to sleep away from my precious girls. Just one more example of how my life has been distorted and my daughters have suffered because of my husband’s perversity and selfishness. Was there no respite for women in this world?

  It was nearly dark when she got back to the house. There was Eliezer, of course—Abram apparently valued relentlessness in his slaves. He had the gall to offer her wine straight from his own flagon, and if she had not been so bitterly thirsty after a whole night and day in the dust and heat, she would have flung it in his face for the insult of expecting her to touch with her lips the very vessel that a slave’s lips had touched. As it was, she held it above her lips and dribbled the wine into her mouth until she realized that any splashing drop might stain her dress. She forced herself then to put the goathide bottle to her mouth, and she only gagged twice. She did have the courage to refuse the bread and cheese he offered her with his bare and not terribly clean hands.

  He expected her to go with him to the stable where the horses were kept! When she expressed her intention to remain at the house until he brought the animals to her, the poor fool actually said, “But will you be safe here alone?”

  “I have been out all day in this city, and spent all night alone last night,” she said disdainfully. “A lady has nothing to fear in Sodom.”

  He got this odd smile on his face and said, “My lady is probably right.”

  Of course she was right. He left her and came back after an unconscionably long time—no doubt he stopped for dinner!—with two horses. It was obvious from the saddlery that she was expected to ride the beast astride. She had expected the two horses to bear her in a chair, but he, no doubt as part of Abram’s plan to humiliate her completely, considered himself equally entitled to ride! When he offered to help her mount, she at first refused—she was not about to let a slave hav
e an excuse to handle her body!—and it was only after she fell twice that she impatiently ordered him to get her into the saddle. He was very strong and liked showing off, practically tossing her like a doll.

  Qira had expected the ride to be only a few minutes—Lot was bound to be waiting for her just outside the city, ready to gloat over his victory. But no. When they passed through the city gate, there was no one to meet them. And they almost immediately left the road and headed east into open grassland without a path or track. It was so dark that she could not tell how he was able to discern where they were going.

  He laughed at her! “My lady,” he said, “the moon is full. The night is not dark, it’s very bright. And I don’t need to find a path. I know which star they were using as their guide.”

  Of course he did. Lot was always talking about how knowledgeable Abram was about the stars. But then, Lot thought Abram was the sun in the morning. You should have married him and left me to find a husband who actually knew how a princess should be treated!

  She could smell the camp before they reached it—indeed, it was the stench, not a star, that led them. And the snorting and snuffling of animals and the barking of dogs gave her all the proof she needed that she had truly left civilization behind her. Not that dogs didn’t bark in the city. But here there was no one to kick them to shut them up.

  “I’ll stay in my sister’s tent,” said Qira as the little village of tents became visible down in the hollow between two hills.

  Eliezer seemed not to hear her. Instead, he led her horse to the pen where other horses were nickering to greet them—which was considerably more courtesy than any humans were showing tonight. When he lifted her from her mount, her legs were so sore she almost fell over, but then decided not to, since it would only get her dress dirtier than it already was.

  Wordlessly a boy appeared and started brushing the horse, as if good grooming were more important to animals than sleep or food or drink.

  “Where is my sister’s tent?” she asked Eliezer.

  “My lady is to have her own tent, where her servants await her,” said Eliezer.

  “No, I will sleep in my sister’s tent,” said Qira. Was the man obtuse? Or merely disobedient? Either way, a beating would help him to hear instructions when they were first given. Naturally, Abram trained his servants to be insolent.

  “My lady,” said Eliezer softly, “you have not been invited to share the Lady Sarai’s tent. Nor have you been invited to enter any tent but the one where your servants await you.”

  “Is this what passes for hospitality here in this beast-ridden place?” she said with contempt.

  “Food and drink await you there,” said Eliezer.

  “So I was expected? And yet no one greets me?”

  “They could not know the hour you would decide to begin the journey, and so they could not know when you would arrive. But whether you arrive or not, the same work will need to be done tomorrow, and so they will sleep undisturbed.”

  “And if I choose to raise my voice and waken them?” asked Qira.

  Eliezer loomed over her then, lowering his face so he stared directly into her eyes. “My lady may do what she wishes.” But there was something in his face that frightened her. He was very large, and she was small. She hated him then, more than she had hated anyone in her life, more than she hated the Amorite usurpers who had deprived her father of his throne, more than she hated Abram.

  Qira did not like being frightened. It made her want to frighten him back. “What if I scream and say you were taking liberties with me?” she said, making sure she knew from her intonation that this was a serious threat.

  “I am known here,” said Eliezer, “and my lady would not be believed by anyone. But my lady may do as she wishes.”

  A servant with so much pride would never last a moment in any noble house on Sodom. But she was tired and hungry, and it wasn’t worth the bother of proving that her sister, at least, would believe her. “I am not your lady,” she said coldly.

  “Would my lady please follow me to her tent?” he said.

  Filled with rage, she followed him to a tent that was, she was sure, a seedy old thing that would stink of animals and where her servants would bump into each other dressing her in the morning. To her surprise, when he pulled aside a flap and she stepped into the tent, several lamps were burning, and one of her servants immediately gave a soft cry. “The Lady Qira is with us!”

  The other servants awoke immediately and fussed over her, helping her take off her filthy clothing and giving her wine and fruit and bread and finally covering her upon a bed of soft hides and blankets that was surprisingly soft. It was good to be surrounded by servants who knew how to treat a lady. Tomorrow Lot would pay for how he had aggrieved her, but tonight she would sleep the deepest sleep of her life.

  In the morning, though, Lot was nowhere to be found. Sarai was there, greeting her and fussing over her as if she had no idea how Qira had been forced into coming out to the desert. And when Qira asked where Lot was, Sarai seemed unaware of the deep injury that Lot had caused her. “Oh, he didn’t want to wake you before he went with Abram to divide the goats. Yesterday they got back well before dark, and the goats aren’t as far as the sheep were.”

  “Divide the goats?”

  “Didn’t you know? When we left Egypt, Pharaoh gave us a very large herd as a parting gift.”

  “Pharaoh?” asked Qira. “Pharaoh himself?”

  “Well, he didn’t actually drive the cattle, but he gave the order for the herds to be brought to us.”

  “You met Pharaoh?”

  “A few times,” said Sarai. “It was an awkward business.”

  “Since my husband has seen fit to force me out of my home and into the desert where he has abandoned me without a word,” said Qira, “I suppose I have nothing better to do than hear your tales about Egypt.” She yawned.

  “Oh, I’ll try to tell you what I remember,” said Sarai.

  It had taken all afternoon to get what Qira suspected was only a small fraction of the story, for Sarai was constantly being interrupted to solve stupid problems that Qira neither understood nor cared about. It quite offended her that Sarai had not cleared her schedule to make time for her own sister whom she had not seen in years. But she bore the insult with great patience, only mentioning it a few times during the afternoon.

  When Lot came home that night, he greeted her with a hug, which she did not return. Indeed, she said not a word to him, but he seemed not to notice. Well, when he came to her tent that night, he’d find out exactly how welcome he was.

  Only he did not come.

  And so it had gone for all these weeks. Lot spoke to her cheerfully during the day and never mentioned or even seemed to notice that she did not answer him or utter a single word in his presence. And at night, he made no effort to come to her. Nor did Sarai ever say a word about the coldness between Qira and Lot, and when Qira tried to talk about how badly Lot had treated her, Sarai would immediately think of something that required her immediate attention. It was the same when Qira spoke of men in general, not mentioning names. Poor Sarai was so intimidated by her husband that she couldn’t even allow herself to hear even the vaguest criticism of the man. Qira hoped she would never be so frightened of a man that she would refuse to listen to the truth.

  What disgusted her most, though, was the way Sarai fawned over Abram. Instead of having a life of her own and friends of her own, Sarai’s whole life was entirely centered on her husband. All she wanted to talk about was his work—either what he had done apart from her, or the portion of his work she had done for him while he was gone. She seemed to hang on every word he said, and of course he listened to her quite avidly, since she talked about nothing but him and his work! Sarai had obviously lost herself here, forgetting she was a daughter of a king. She was nothing but a glorified servant. A concubine. It broke Qira’s heart to see it. Especially because Sarai put such a brave face on it, laughing with a false merriment to mask the
pain she must surely be feeling inside. Unless her soul had been so deadened by Abram’s long domination that she didn’t even realize the pain she was in.

  Well, Qira was not about to try to save her from this abasement. She might have tried, if Sarai had not been such a busybody about Qira’s girls. It was the second day in camp that Qira happened to see the younger girls running like little hoydens, shouting their heads off and screaming with laughter when they caught some filthy little slave girl and all of them fell in a heap in the grass at the top of a hill.

  “Girls!” cried Qira. “Come down here right now!” Of course they were making so much noise that they didn’t hear her—she had to send a servant to fetch them.

  “Oh, let them play,” said Sarai. “I used to play like that when I was little. It did me no harm.”

  “No harm?” said Qira. It was such an absurd thing to say that Qira forgot courtesy for a moment. “You live like this and you don’t call it harm? I want my daughters to grow up with grace and culture, so they can marry a man who will provide them with a home.”

  Sarai got her stony face then—she had always had that look when she was angry but didn’t want to say anything. Qira laughed when she saw it. “Sarai, you used to make that same face when you were a baby. Nothing changes about you!”