Noah (12 page)

* * *

Ham wandered among the beasts, reveling in the sights and the smells, the snorts and the grunts and the bellows. As with the birds and the reptiles, once they were inside the Ark the mammals knew instinctively where to go, what to do. The procession of life that had converged on the clearing had been varied and wonderful, and although it had taken many hours for
the animals to arrive and make themselves at home, Ham had loved every second of it.

Later he would accompany his father, Shem, and Japheth as they made their rounds of the many mammalian decks, swinging braziers of the burning herb mixture in order to induce hibernation. For now, however, although many of the mammals were already sleeping, others blinked at him in placid, trusting contentment as he passed by.

Eventually he made his way to the Hearth, where his mother was serving up a meal. Ham accepted his bowl of vegetable stew and then went over to sit beside his father. He still hadn’t fully forgiven him for the humiliation he had suffered in front of Tubal-cain and his entourage, but the wonder of the mammals had served to draw the family together, to renew the bond between them. It was further vindication of his father’s heartfelt but unshakable beliefs, and confirmation that he was indeed doing the Creator’s work.

“Father,” Ham said tentatively, “the women with that king? Are they our wives to be? They must be, mustn’t they?”

Noah frowned. It was clear from his expression that he was troubled by the notion, that this was not how he had expected potential partners for his two younger sons to arrive.

It was only when Naameh looked at him and raised her eyebrows that he sighed and said, “I suppose they must.”

“How will you know which of them to choose?” Naameh asked.

“I don’t know,” Noah admitted. He took a mouthful of stew and chewed it thoughtfully. Only
when he had swallowed did he continue. “I will go to the camp. The Creator will show me who is innocent.”

Ham looked thrilled, but Naameh’s attention was drawn to Ila, who was sitting beside Shem, picking at her stew as if she wasn’t really hungry. Ila looked troubled, and she subconsciously stroked her stomach, her hand moving back and forth across the place where Naameh knew her scar to be.

* * *

Noah was in his workshop, preparing for his trip to Tubal-cain’s camp. He stood before the furnace where nails and tools were forged from ore mined by the Watchers. He was filling a small pack with supplies. Next to the furnace there was a large pile of tzohar, glowing with its own strange inner light. Taking a purse from his pocket, Noah selected several small lumps of it and stuffed them into the purse.

He was distracted, troubled. He had no idea what might happen when he arrived in Tubal-cain’s camp, but he hoped that the Creator would guide him. He had not forsaken Noah thus far, and Noah hoped that He would not abandon him now—especially not when they were so close to their goal.

Sensing a presence behind him, he turned. Ila was standing there, looking timid and uncertain.

“Should I come back later?” she said.

Noah smiled. He was always happy to see his adopted daughter. She was a gentle, intelligent, and levelheaded presence. In many ways she was his and Naameh’s daughter in all but blood.

“No,” he said, motioning her to sit on one of two stools in the workshop. “Please.”

She smiled and perched on the stool, but still she
looked troubled. “Do you think those men will attack us?” she asked.

Noah thought about reassuring her, but he was a pragmatic man and always leaned toward the truth, however hard it might be.

“I’m sure of it,” he said. “When the rains come, if not before.”

“And when will the rains come?”

“Soon,” Noah said confidently.

Ila was silent for a moment. Noah had the feeling that she had more on her mind than she was letting on, that she was dancing around the
real
issue that was concerning her.

“What do you think it will be like?” she asked eventually.

Noah tried to put it into words. “I have tried to imagine it, but to actually see it, all those deaths, whether just or not… It will be…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“The end of everything,” Ila whispered.

Noah shook his head vigorously. “No. The beginning. This is the beginning of everything. We must believe that.”

Ila’s face crumpled and she began to weep softly.

“My dear child. What is it?” Noah asked gently.

She shook her head, unable to answer.

Noah crossed to her, put his arms around her, kissed the top of her head.

“Men are often stubborn,” he said. “But whatever he has done, I know that Shem cares for you.”

Ila stiffened. She looked up at him in surprise, her cheeks wet with tears. In a clogged and wavering voice she said, “Did he speak with you?”

Noah shook his head gently. “I have eyes.”

Ila gave a great sigh and settled into his embrace. Noah could tell she was pondering, wondering how best to broach what was on her mind with the man she now regarded as her father.

Eventually she spoke.

“Shem needs a woman,” she said. “A
real
woman. He should have all the joys…” She broke off with a sob, then swallowed and said more decisively, “He should have a family. But I can’t give him any of that, can I?”

Noah didn’t respond.

“Can I?” she repeated more sharply.

This time she didn’t even give Noah time to reply. In a suddenly fierce and determined voice she said, “I won’t deny him any of those things, even if he wants me to. I won’t do it.” Her voice abruptly softened. “And besides, why would the Creator want a barren girl on his Ark?”

Noah contemplated the question. He couldn’t deny that it was a relevant one. Choosing his words carefully, he answered her.

“When we first took you in, I was afraid. I won’t deny that I thought you would be a burden. And I didn’t want to watch anyone else ruined by this terrible world. But I was wrong. You were a gift. Don’t ever forget how precious you are.”

She hugged him tight, grateful for his words, and he hugged her back. Her voice, though, muffled against his chest, was as determined as before.

“I know you’ll be going to the camp to find wives for Ham and Japheth, but they are not the only ones who will need them.” Her voice faltering only slightly, she said, “While you are there you should find one for Shem, too.”

N
oah crept soundlessly through the trees, his body swathed in a dark, hooded cloak. He had waited until full night before venturing forth, knowing that his familiarity with the forest would enable him to remain undetected. He crouched in a clump of bushes between two trees, watching in disgust as two of Tubal-cain’s soldiers, arguing drunkenly, set animal traps in the undergrowth. As soon as they had moved on, he slipped out of hiding, used sticks to set off the traps, and then crept silently away, his cloak wrapped around the lower half of his face so that only his eyes were showing.

The camp was not difficult to find. Noah merely followed the combination of distant firelight glimmering through the trees, and the faint clamor of raised and raucous voices. As he drew closer to his destination he encountered refugees, tramping wearily through the forest, all converging on the
camp like moths attracted to a flame. It was unlikely that any of them would have raised the alarm—or indeed recognized him—even if they had spotted him, but Noah, wary of his fellow men, nevertheless remained out of sight.

As he reached the outskirts of the camp and came across a greater profusion of cramped and temporary dwellings swelling up like clumps of poisonous mushrooms between the trees, it became more difficult to stay hidden, and soon he was moving as swiftly and unobtrusively as he could through the outer environs of a tented city.

Passing a dwelling that was constructed from sheets of what appeared to be dried animal hides crudely stitched together, then propped up and lashed into place by twine and branches, Noah saw a young girl, dirty and barefoot, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, dart out of its circular opening and into his path, fear on her face. With an animal-like roar, a bearded man in a filthy tunic burst from the tent and lunged at her as she tried to flee, grabbing her by the hair. She screamed as the man yanked her off her feet and dragged her back toward the tent. Noah itched to intervene, but he knew that what he was witnessing was merely a drop in the vast ocean of Man’s cruelty—an ocean that would soon be engulfed by one altogether more devastating—and that any interference on his part would prove ultimately pointless.

So, difficult as it was, he stood back and watched as the bearded man dragged the girl back into the tent and re-emerged moments later, still holding her by her hair with one hand, while his other circled the skinny arm of a terrified boy of perhaps fourteen
years of age. As the man stomped away from the tent, dragging the crying children behind him, a woman, clearly distressed, emerged and ran after him.

“No!” she screamed. “You won’t take them!”

The man swung around, causing the children to stumble and cry out in pain. “We have no choice.”

“But they’re my children! I’m their mother. You’re their
uncle
. It is our duty to protect them.”

“I can get a good price for them from Tubal-cain’s soldiers,” the man retorted. “I can get bread and meat. Without it we’ll starve.”

The woman shook her head, crying. “It’s too high a price to pay.”

The man, unmoved by her protests, kicked out at her as she tried to pry his fingers from around her son’s arm, causing her to reel back in pain and sprawl in the dirt.

“The boy will join Tubal-cain’s army. It is a good life. And the girl…” His lip curled. “…She will have her uses, too.”

“No,” the woman sobbed, holding out her hands, “please. You know what they’ll do to her.”

“At least she’ll survive,” the man said. “The boy, too, if he’s careful. If I don’t do this, we’ll
all
die.”

And with that he turned and stomped away, dragging the squealing children behind him and leaving the woman, his sister, sobbing in the dirt.

Noah was sickened. He would have liked nothing better than to bury a knife deep between the man’s shoulder blades. But he held back, and reminded himself that this incident was no more than an example of all that the Creator wanted to eradicate. Perhaps, he thought, the Creator was even showing it to him in order to test his resolve, his strength of
character, his ability to remain focused on the true and ultimate goal.

So instead of challenging the man, Noah followed him and his two charges, eager to assess the full extent of Tubal-cain’s operation. Trailing a dozen or so paces behind, through a winding series of passageways between tightly packed tents, shanties, and lean-tos, Noah was appalled at the level of squalor, poverty, and degradation that was revealed to him. The starving, desperate, filthy people were worse than rats and often twice as vicious, many of them watching him with beady, hostile eyes, many of them squatting shamelessly in their own filth.

He saw the bodies of the dead lying sprawled in the street, left where they had fallen, many naked because their clothes had been stolen, some bearing terrible wounds. He saw a young woman being attacked and raped by four men, her screams for mercy going unanswered. He saw men fighting, children being beaten, a couple rutting openly on the mud-churned ground, in full view of anyone who happened by.

They reached Tubal-cain’s compound, which was surrounded by a wire fence covered with wicked barbs, beyond which Noah could see the king’s warlords putting new recruits through their paces. By this time, he felt hollow with despair. But the many terrible sights that he had witnessed made him more positive than ever that the Creator was right, that mankind was wicked beyond redemption and should be swept from the world. Noah had no doubt that even the children, innocent victims though they seemed, had been seeded with corruption. Those seeds
would, in time, inevitably bloom and blacken their souls, poisoning them with the cruelty and hatred of their parents as their innocence shriveled and died.

A gap in the fence of the compound, guarded by soldiers, was being used as a trading post. Many families were milling around the soldiers, offering their sons and daughters in return for food and water. Though the people were desperate and starving, and many of the children, especially the girls, were crying and pleading, the soldiers laughed, treating it as a game. They hand-picked boys they thought might serve as soldiers in Tubal-cain’s army, handing out small portions of bread and meat to their parents in return. And they pawed and leered at the pretty girls, some as young as eleven or twelve, ignoring their cries of distress.

Noah watched from a distance, horrified by the callousness of both the parents and the soldiers. He watched terrified boys being hauled away to be turned into fodder for Tubal-cain’s army, and sobbing girls being shackled even as their parents gnawed gleefully on the small portions of bread and meat and fruit they had been offered in exchange for their children’s lives.

It was only as he saw another father, a tall, bewhiskered man, approaching with two pretty daughters, that Noah was reminded of his own reason for being here. He slipped his hand into his pocket and closed it around the purse containing the tzohar, readying himself to make a trade of his own.

Before he could do so, however, a commotion broke out near the gate, perhaps an argument over a trade or a scuffle for food. Noah heard screams and shouts, saw fists flying. He was jostled as the crowd behind him surged forward, encouraged by the raised
voices, the sudden eruption of violence. Some of the people around him seemed to become angry for no reason, yelling at the soldiers by the gate, then shoving and goading their immediate neighbors, as if challenging them to retaliate. Despite all of it, the soldiers were desperately struggling to maintain order.

Two men ahead of Noah broke into what appeared to be a spontaneous fight, punching and clawing at each other, and within seconds other people were joining in, drawn to the melee like flotsam being sucked into a whirlpool. It was alarming how the level of hostility and aggression seemed to rise exponentially, spreading through the crowd like an infection.