Sunrise on the Mediterranean (13 page)

My lexicon was working so fast, I was afraid it was going to short out. Pictures from Sunday school, of men in robes with
beards and crowns: the older man Labayu I knew as Saul. The part of Gol’i’at was played by Goliath.

“Why do you call him ‘That One’?” I asked, chewing my golf-ball fig.

“My mother has forbidden his name to be spoken,” Wadia repeated. “But it’s Dadua.”

The lexicon flashed another picture: the young, harp-playing teen with curling hair and slingshot was Dadua.

David.

I was afraid I was going to fall over. This was unbelievable! David and Goliath? Was everything in the Bible, the “Hebrew
mythology” that I’d thought was only slightly more real than fairy tales, fact?

“HaDerkato
, are you well?”

“I need a drink,” I muttered.

Wadia commanded slaves to get me a drink. Yes, Pelesti wine, that might be strong enough. “So,” I said, coughing, trying to
focus my mind, “That One is now the king of the highlanders?”

In my mind the plaid kilts were now replaced with yarmulkes and the bagpipes with the ram’s horn. I now knew we were discussing
… omigod … the children of Israel. I was in Israel. In Ashqelon. In Israel. In ancient times with Bible characters. In Israel.
Jews. I didn’t know anything about the Jews. I was practically an honorary Muslim. Yet I was here, now? This was the Bible;
what would happen if I screwed up?

Where on earth was Cheftu? We had to get out of here!

A
KHETATEN WAS ON THE HORIZON
by afternoon the next day. Cheftu didn’t recognize a thing about it; it wasn’t a city that had been known in Hatshepsut’s
time, nor had he known it by this name in his own nineteenth-century journeys in Egypt. The sun was hot even though it was
winter, but it was nothing like it would be in the summertime. He wiped the sweat from his smooth upper lip and squinted against
Ra’s—the Aten’s—light.

It was a flat, white city, with pockets of greenery cradled against the Nile, in a semicircular plain surrounded by cliffs.
Sunlight radiated onto the wide, empty boulevards. The harbor was silent, a few ships were docked, but there was no activity,
no bustling about.

No people.

Cheftu brushed the oracular stones with his fingertips. This was not how the seat of a prosperous—living—empire should look.

Because Inundation had been so poor this year, the Nile hadn’t overflowed its banks, making the waterway farther from the
city than usual. So they disembarked the ship for small rowboats. Amid swarms of mosquitoes they cut across the river to the
docks. A few slovenly laborers were hoisting Wenaten’s many parcels into a light chariot pulled by an old nag.

No delegation had arrived to greet the returning envoy. Save for the workers, no one was there at all.

“Has Egypt been stripped of people as well as gods?” RaEm asked in an undertone.

“I know not.” At least it would be easy to find Chloe, since there was no crowd.

“Greetings of the Aten to you,” said one of the dockworkers. “Join He Who Reigns on High with Akhenaten, living glorious in
the light of the Aten forever! in the Chamber of the Apex to the west side of the Hall of Foreign Tributes.” The words were
rattled off, a formula repeated to every visitor, Cheftu guessed.

“We are travel stained—,” Cheftu began.

“It is no matter,” the dockworker interrupted. “All that matters to the Aten is your presence so that he may bless you with
his light.”

“I would like a bath first,” RaEm said. Pleasantly, for her. “The Aten loves his children as they are, especially returning
from the corruption of foreign shores. Please join Akhenaten, living glorious in the light of the Aten forever! as he worships
the maker of all Egypt.”

“We are tired. We are hungry. We want to rest,” Wenaten said. He glanced at Cheftu and RaEm. “However, we know how vital it
is to worship the Aten.”

“My lord is wise,” the worker said. “Your belongings will meet you in the palace. The chariot is awaiting your journey to
the Aten.” The man’s smile was polite but cold.

Stinking of journey and hungry because the ship’s stores had been emptied two days ago, they climbed reluctantly into the
chariot. It was a short journey down the empty, drought-stricken streets of Akhetaten.

Trees withered in the soil, dust flew from the bare yards of new nobility’s homes. Not a soul, a child, a slave, or a foreigner,
was on the street. No one, save themselves. The chariot drew even with an enormous building, which Cheftu thought looked like
an elaborate fence. Voices, thousands strong, rose from its interior.

The dockworker escorted them to the very doors, allowing no pause in their steps. Cheftu’s discomfort grew. Another man, a
priest carrying both sword and spear, ushered them through a long, bare hallway. The sound of voices grew louder.

RaEm slipped her hand into the crook of Cheftu’s arm. He didn’t recoil because he too needed the comfort. What madness possessed
Egypt? One could not bathe before attending the temple? Or, surprisingly enough, one attended the temple rather than worship
in the intimacy of one’s home with family and a personal statue of the god? Egypt had never been a place of corporate worship
before; indeed, no ancient culture was. Cheftu shook his head, exhausted, exasperated, and feeling off-kilter.

Rather than disturb those who were in the throes of worship, the guard-priest explained, they would slip in unnoticed. He
took them down a flight of stairs into darkness. “Go through that door and up the stairwell,” he said.

Wenaten nodded, leading the way. The darkness was cool, refreshing. Above them the floors vibrated from the force of the recitation.
Wenaten opened a door and they followed him up, stepping out into the temple.

The heat was staggering, the warmth of the day compounded by the body heat of thousands of people. It stole their breath,
sucked the life from them.

The room was easily the size of the
place des Vosges
, Cheftu thought. Ten thousand people or more stood with their faces raised, eyes open, arms outstretched, swaying to the
rhythm of the speaker. All around them people had fallen to the ground. They lay as they fell, arms akimbo. Cheftu noted that
some of them had soiled themselves, but those standing ignored them; it was not an Egypt that Cheftu recognized.

The man was evil, Cheftu thought instantly. Akhenaten was a fiend. Half of these people were going to go blind from staring
into the sun. Another eighth had heat stroke. The rest seemed to be drugged, complacent. What kind of ruler did this to his
people? Cheftu wondered, stifling his rage.

Wenaten pushed forward through the crowd. The stink of sweat, human refuse, sour milk, and vomit coated them, tinged with
the heavy myrrh of Egyptian religion.

Once they found a place to stand comfortably, Cheftu peered through the crowd, wanting to glimpse the madman who so abused
his people’s welfare.

Reclining on a golden couch, wearing only a kilt and the blue crown of warriors, was Pharaoh. He was stoop shouldered, lantern
jawed, full lipped, potbellied, his skin burned black from the sun. As Cheftu watched, the king stirred, then sat up, as though
to enfold the light.

Cheftu suffered his second great shock.

The man had a voice like an angel! As misshapen as his body seemed to be, as perverse as his ideologies, his voice was perfection.
Commanding, strong, musical, the timbre was so exquisite, it was almost hard to discern the words.

When he did, Cheftu suffered his third and greatest shock: They were words he knew. They were words he’d read and copied time
and again.

“Praise the Aten, my
ka
within me. The Aten is a great god, clothed with splendor and majesty. He is wrapped in light like a garment, sitting beneath
the heavens as his tent. The beams of his house are on the waters in the sky. He rides in a chariot of clouds, lightning gives
him flight. The four winds serve as his messengers, fire is his servant.”

Cheftu looked around at the faithful, swaying to the sound of Akhenaten’s voice, and understood why they were here. There
was a charisma, a sense of depth, in the sound—even if the words were stolen.

“He set the columns of the earth into their foundations, unmovable. The Great Green was laid across it, waters raised above
the cliffs. With one word, the waters fled the soil, at the roar of your voice, the River ran from the plains into the valley,
to rest in fertility in the breast of the red and black lands.”

These words weren’t written for this place, where rain, lightning, and thunder were rare, almost nonexistent occurrences.
Neither was it written for a flat land with no mountains, no columns of the earth; nor was it written for a people whose sole
comprehension of a large body of water was a river, the Nile.

Change the words, the name of the god, Cheftu thought … and it is a psalm!

Pharaoh had stolen the Bible!
Mon Dieu!

R
A
E
M
HAD FELT LIQUID DESIRE
pool in her body the moment Akhenaten began to speak. As his words rolled over her, undeciphered and sensual, her legs grew
wet with her lust. He gestured with his hands, long fingers that she longed to have explore her. His body writhed on the couch
in the midst of his prayers, as though the sun’s rays were taking him as a man took a woman.

RaEm wanted him. Aye, he was Pharaoh. He had gotten girl children from his own girl children; he had no son. She had also
learned that, unlike many of his predecessors, he refused to bed someone who was not a relative, for the seed of the Sun could
not be cast on just any field.

RaEm had learned early that her beauty, whether it was in this body or another, had little to do with seduction. Men were
a learned skill, and much practice had made RaEm a magus.

Pharaoh thought he had eyes only for those in his own family. He hadn’t counted on her.

He was the son of the Sun. Hatshepsut had declared herself the child of Amun-Ra, but it had been a political move. Now, RaEm
knew Akhenaten truly was the offspring of the immortal orb. His voice was liquid fire, set to burn them all, awake them all.
Consume them all.

As she stared into the sun, her thoughts grew more feverish. Light merged with light, and she swayed to the lilt of his voice,
the throbbing penetration of it. She raised her hands in surrender, opening to him and the Aten, wanting to be one with them.
A little moan escaped her lips. Around her she heard another. Then another. Akhenaten’s voice rose, deeper, stronger, more
forceful. She no longer tried to smother her cries.

Unable to take the torture, she undid the clasp of her gown, felt the heat of the sun on her flat, naked breasts. Pinching
her nipples, she offered herself to the sun, standing braced in the light.

A hand cupped her from behind, slipped beneath her dress. In the press of people she didn’t know, she didn’t look. In her
mind it was Akhenaten, his long fingers on her, in her, his voice rippling across her back and neck, his tongue in her hair,
her ear. The thousands of people moved as one now, swaying, throbbing, sweating to the heated rhythm of Pharaoh’s prayers.

Hands above his head, bare to his god, enlivened by the sunlight on his body, Akhenaten thrashed through his prayers, begging
Aten for more mercy, asking for more wisdom, pleading for the pleasure of serving the sun. His final plea was a wild, low
groan, drowned in the ecstatic cries of his people.

RaEm’s thighs shook so strongly that she barely caught herself before hitting the ground. Around her people were falling to
the temple floor. She was exhausted, sweating, and completely sated, more so than ever before in her life.

Pharaoh lay like Osiris, still, arms crossing his chest, his erection reaching toward the sun. RaEm had never seen a more
beautiful sight. She needed to be with him, she needed to touch him, to have him touch her.

She needed to become his family; she needed to have this man.

She would.

RaEm walked home at dusk with Wenaten. He was strangely quiet; Cheftu was also silent. “Tell me more of Smenkhare?” RaEm asked.