Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (16 page)

Sehtepibre must have risen before them—and properly so, since the expedition was his responsibility. He had docked their boat well upstream of the others, so that the noise of offloading did not waken them. Even now it was still not dawn—no light shone yet in the east. Sarai watched the last of the unloading with a practiced eye: dozens of men working in torchlight, yet almost silent in their order and vigorous obedience. Sehtepibre was not one of those fools who ruled through fear—none of these men cowered from him, and none malingered. They obeyed him willingly, because . . . why? Had he enlisted them willingly in his work? Was there some higher cause they shared? Or was it simply himself they served, for love of him, or admiration, or hope of his future?

The latter seemed more likely, though she did not put the first beyond him. Eshut was easy enough to understand—a person of some authority, jealously guarding it and contemptuous of those who were not of her own degree. But Sehtepibre was different. A clever man, that was obvious, but perhaps a subtle one as well. Where Eshut, by her very jealousy, revealed her fear that she might not keep her place, Sehtepibre seemed perfectly confident, as if he could not be removed, as if his authority came from himself alone, and not from Pharaoh after all.

Whom did he remind her of? Abram, of course. Only Abram’s serenity did not come from confidence in himself, but rather trust in God. He feared nothing because all that he was and all that he had belonged to God, and he believed that God would protect what he wanted protected. Was there a god that Sehtepibre trusted in that same way? Or was he the god of his own idolatry? It would be interesting to understand the man. And interesting indeed to see how long he lasted in the service of a Pharaoh who, for all that he seemed more interested in heaven than in earth, and more a student of the East than of Egypt, held the reigns of power. The priests obeyed him. The soldiers obeyed him. And if Pharaoh decided one day that Sehtepibre was no longer useful to him, Sehtepibre would be gone, and with him all his authority.

A man in such a place had to be something of a fool to be too confident. Yet Sehtepibre seemed not to be a fool.

A young officer came toward her boat, carrying a torch. To her surprise, it was Kay, the very one who had met them at the border. She greeted him by name, and he also greeted her. “Have you been reassigned from duty at the border?” she asked him.

“When I brought you here,” said Kay, “it was decided that I should remain.”

Interesting, thought Sarai. “A reward for your initiative?”

Kay shrugged. “The decision of my superiors.” But she could see that her words had made him both proud and nervous. He preened a little, but was also just a little furtive. He was still too young to be as subtle as Sehtepibre. She could read this boy. “I hope you’ll be traveling with us today.”

“I will,” said Kay. “This is a land of robbers. The Hsy come among us and we feed them, but still they slip away and become bandits in the hills. It is a shame that a stonecutting expedition should need military escort here in the heart of Egypt, so close to the Nile.” He caught himself being too heated. “Of course my Lady Milcah is not of the sort I referred to.”

“It never crossed my mind that you might think of me as Hsy,” said Sarai. “And I understand your concern. In all the land from the Euphrates to Sinai, it has become like that, farmers turn to wanderers and wanderers to bandits, all in a month or a week or even a single day. Civilization only lasts as long as the citizens trust that they will have food tomorrow.”

“But in Egypt, there is always food,” said Kay. “Why then do they turn to robbery?”

“Because the food is not theirs,” said Sarai. “It’s a gift, which can be withdrawn at any time. What will the Hsy do then?”

“But the gift has
not
been withdrawn, and therefore it is a shameful thing for the guest to rob the host.”

“With that I agree. The world turns upside down, when host-right and guest-right are so casually disregarded.”

He looked at her for a moment before replying. Did he guess the double meaning of her words?

“We call it Ma’at,” he said. “The good order of the land. When all is right, when all is as the gods ordain, then we live in Ma’at. But when Ma’at is lost, then no one can trust in the future until it is all set right again.”

“And that is the work of Pharaoh,” said Sarai.

Kay sniffed. “It should be,” he said. And then, perhaps realizing that his irony betrayed too much, he added, “And so Pharaoh does his best.”

Sarai was no fool, however. She had studied at her father’s feet, and heard his commentary on all that happened in Ur-of-the-North. Here was a young officer who believed that Ma’at was the most important work of Pharaoh. And what had caused the breakdown in Ma’at? The Hsy—the nomads from the East who had entered Egypt in such numbers. Pharaoh’s duty, then, was to control them, but instead Pharaoh was fascinated with the Fenekhu, seeking a wife from their number, spending his days learning religion from a man of Retenu who claimed to be a great priest. If there was dissatisfaction like this in the army, it meant that Pharaoh might not have all the authority he thought he had, for a king’s power lasts only as long as he is obeyed.

And the resentment of the Hsy is bound to center around Abram, Sarai realized. Yet it was Kay who brought us straight to the people who put us in the king’s presence. He passed us to Khnumhotpe, who separated us and made sure Abram went straight to Pharaoh’s presence and I went into the House of Women. And someone then rewarded Kay by keeping him close at hand. Or was it, instead of a reward, simply a matter of putting resentful young officers in command of soldiers near the king? Where they could see firsthand how Montuhotpe was enthralled to this desert prophet?

So why had Kay let slip his resentments to Sarai? If he truly saw her as the enemy, then he’d have no reason to speak to her at all. Instead he had, in effect, given her a warning. This was all too arcane and confusing for her. She would have to learn more in order to sort out how much of this was a plot, and how much mere chance, and who posed the greatest threat to her and Abram.

Just as the first light appeared in the east, Kay helped Sarai into his own chariot. They would ride next behind Sehtepibre. “You can’t have much fear of bandits, to put a woman in your chariot,” said Sarai.

Kay laughed. “Because we’re here at all, the bandits will leave us alone.”

“But then, if the bandits can be frightened by so small a number of troops, they can’t be much of a threat.”

“When Egypt has Ma’at,” said Kay, solemn again, “a lone man can travel from one end of the kingdom to another and none will harm him or cheat him.”

“Then there has never been a kingdom in the world that had this Ma’at. Because there are always thieves and cheaters.”

“In Retenu, perhaps,” said Kay. “But in Egypt, there used to be Ma’at.”

Such a fantasy, thought Sarai. She had heard people talking of the golden age of Ur-of-Sumeria, too, when the wealth of nations flowed to that city and there was no crime and all men were noble and all women virtuous. But her father had told her afterward that past times are always held to be a golden age, compared to now. Old men who say that once there was a golden age are liars, Father said, and young men who believe their tales are fools.

Kay was just such a fool. Who was the old man who had been lying to him?

It was slow going up the stonecutters’ road into the mountains. It was not steep, really—a steep road would never do for transporting stone—but it wound around and around, so that they seemed to make no progress.

The sun was well up from the horizon when Sehtepibre called a temporary halt. Before them was an old quarry which had not been used for some time. Several large blocks of damaged stone lay where they had been abandoned. And a half-dozen were in various stages of being cut away from the mountain.

Sehtepibre jumped lightly from his chariot and walked back to where Sarai stood in Kay’s chariot. He patted Kay’s lead horse as he approached, and returned Kay’s salute. “My Lady Milcah,” said Sehtepibre, “I thought you might like to see the quarry where we used to draw good stone.”

“What happened?” asked Sarai. “How can good stone fail?”

“The stone did not fail, Lady,” said Sehtepibre. “The water did. You can’t cut stone without an ample supply of water, and when the nearby spring went dry, they either had to haul water a long way or search for a quarry closer to the water they still had. So because of the failure of the spring, we had to leave the best stone behind.”

Sarai listened with interest, but she also wondered: Why is Sehtepibre himself telling me this? And why stop the whole expedition to tell it? Perhaps the men needed a rest—many of them had stepped aside to urinate beside the road—but Sehtepibre still lingered with her. “In the old days, all this mountain was thick with grass. You still find tufts of it, dried up like an old man’s hair, tucked into corners where the wind has not yet ripped it away.”

“Before the drought,” said Sarai.

“Oh, this is just the latest drought of many,” said Sehtepibre.

“My brother Abram says that all these little droughts are really part of one great long drought that has been uprooting kingdoms and turning pasture into desert for a century.”

“If your brother Abram says it, then how can I doubt?” said Sehtepibre. “If he were not wise, he would not have Pharaoh’s attention for hour after hour every day.”

The words were so innocent, on the surface at least. But they were said loudly enough for many soldiers besides Kay to hear. Pharaoh spends hours and hours listening to a Hsy, that was the message.

At that moment Kay saw something and spoke in urgent, hushed tones.

“A gazelle, my Lord Sehtepibre,” he said.

Sure enough, a lone gazelle—a female, and from the look of her, a pregnant one—was picking her way through the quarry. She showed no fear of the humans gathered there—she walked right toward them, among them, past them until she bounded awkwardly onto the most nearly finished of the blocks that had been abandoned in place. Once there, she stood on trembling legs, facing the sun.

“She is sent by Horus,” whispered Kay. “See how she worships the sun!” But it was a loud enough whisper that nearby soldiers heard him, and murmured their assent.

The gazelle braced herself, shuddered, and began to give birth. Sarai’s first instinct was to start directing the men on how to help, for she had been involved in many a birthing of calf, kid, lamb, or foal in the years since joining Abram’s household. But this wild creature would not want help anyway. So Sarai watched as the newborn was squeezed out onto the stone. All the while, the mother did not take her eyes from the sun.

The baby gazelle stirred as the mother finally turned to it and began to lick the mucus of birth from its small body. In doing so, it seemed to stop and stare right at the three of them—Sarai, Sehtepibre, and Kay.

Hagar by now was standing on the ground beside the chariot. She reached up and touched Sarai and whispered, “Perhaps your brother’s god sends a promise of fertility.”

Sarai laid a finger on Hagar’s lips. She knew Hagar meant no harm, but Kay had definitely heard, and Sehtepibre probably as well. Since it was not known that Sarai was married already, to speak of an omen of fertility could only mean that she expected to be married, and there could be no candidate for her husband-to-be but Montuhotpe himself. If Kay was part of a conspiracy, or later joined one, this would surely not bode well for Sarai’s future, to be seen as planning on a marriage to Pharaoh.

“It was not to me that God sent this creature to give birth,” said Sarai. “It is not my quarry and not my mission here.”

Kay whispered to her—again loudly enough that all the nearby soldiers and workmen could hear him,”Are you saying that this gazelle was sent to Sehtepibre, then?”

“I only know that it was not sent to me,” said Sarai. And, in a much softer voice, she added, “as easily might it be said to have come to you.”

“Come,” said Sehtepibre. “We’ve rested enough. I know not what the gods meant by sending us this omen, except that clearly it is not an ill one. Let us rejoice in that and go on!”

Sehtepibre’s speech surprised Sarai. Normally the duty of a steward would be to proclaim such an omen as a sign of heaven’s favor on the king, for having sent forth this expedition. If the gods of Egypt send an omen, it is sent to Pharaoh, and Sehtepibre should have said so. By specifically
not
saying so, he left room for much idle speculation.

Or perhaps not so idle.

“Mark this stone,” said Sehtepibre to the foreman of the stonecutters. “When the gazelle leaves here of her own accord, mark the stone as the place where Horus sent a gazelle to greet my expedition.”

“I will leave a man to do that, sir.”

My expedition.
There it was. Sehtepibre was claiming this omen as a sign given, not to Pharaoh, but to him. And not one person gasped at the sheer audacity of it. And in that moment, Sarai understood it all. It was Sehtepibre who had decided to rebel against Montuhotpe and take the double crown. By claiming this miracle for himself, as word of it spread so also would spread the other implied message—the gods had chosen to show favor to Sehtepibre at a time when all other omens, including the drought, seemed to show their disfavor toward Montuhotpe.