Sunrise on the Mediterranean (33 page)

“If you eat any,” I said, “please, eat the ones that I haven’t destoned.”

She laughed and helped me up. I tried to rinse my hands, but date meat is stubborn. A few minutes later I was outside. Cheftu
stood in the sunshine, his gaze fixed somewhere to the south.

“Hi,” I said.

He turned to me, then touched my jaw, seizing my mouth in a tender kiss that turned my knees to water. Distantly I heard the
cheers of the kitchen slaves. “Come with me,” he said.

“Should I read a double entendre in that?” I asked, dazed, smiling.

He flashed a grin at me. “I hope so.”

I looked back. “Can I just leave?”

“Trust me,” he said, and took my hand, deliberately linking our fingers together. He was frowning slightly, intent. We walked
out of the palace, down the hill into the fields. I looked around me for the first time in weeks. I was outside during the
day, seeing more than a mud-brick palace and blue skies. “Will we get in trouble—?”

“
Non
,” he said.

Shrugging at his response, I followed along. We took a steep goat path down the hill, bypassing our vineyard and watch house,
going lower into the valley.

“Do you know that I love you?” he asked as we edged our way down a steep path. My hand was tight in his, the other one outstretched
to balance myself. It was amazing how tough the soles of my feet had become.

“I, uh, of course,” I said, hopping the last few feet. We were on level ground again, in an olive grove. The whisper of silver
green leaves was almost as soothing as the ocean. All around us, branches were adorned with red threads. More
b’kurim.
Spangled shadows fell across us.

He took my other hand in his, turning me to face him. “Your certainty is lacking,
chérie
,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew that he did, I just didn’t … feel it as much as I would have liked to.

“I brought you here, because I want you to know, as I will learn, if it is destiny for me to make this journey to Midian.”
He was speaking Egyptian again.

“How will you—” I began, then remembered the stones, the Urim and Thummim. “You still have them?”

He blushed, nodded. “I do.”

“Are you still keeping them in your, uh …” I gestured vaguely toward his kilt.

“That has been the safest location,” he said.

I knew as an Egyptian, especially as a physician, that the anus was a vitally important part of the body. Enemas were the
aspirin of ancient Egypt. I didn’t know if this were true with the Israelites; I didn’t really want to know. “You’ll understand
if I don’t toss them?” I said.

He smiled, then removed them from his waist sash. The Urim and Thummim: the oblong stones were engraved with rows of ancient
Hebrew characters. If you brought them close together, they danced. He held one in each hand, and suddenly I knew what they
were, what “magic” made them work.

“They’re magnets!” I said. “But of course they are,” he said. “Now watch, read the signs as I ask.” He stared into my eyes.
“You ask why we are here, beloved. Now maybe we will learn?

“Should I, Cheftu, go into the desert, to the mountain of God?” he asked slowly. He tossed them, and I watched as they interacted
with each other. The sunlight seemed to pick out a letter at a time, a letter that Cheftu read aloud.

Before my eyes the squiggles and scratches turned into letters I knew: “T-h-e w-i-l-l o-f Y-H-W-H w-i-l-l b-e d-o-ne.”

He frowned. “Does that mean you go or not?” I asked, staring at the stones. They lay on the ground, a foot or so apart, motionless.
“That seemed an awfully esoteric response.”

“It ofttimes is,” he said glumly. “May I try?” I said, reaching for the white one. “I thought you didn’t want to touch them?”

I ignored him as I picked up one, then the other. When I brought my hands together I felt them vibrating in my palms. Zips
of power went up and down my arms. It almost hurt. “Should I go?” I asked, throwing them.

“D-e-l-v-e i-n-t-o t-h-e w-a-t-e-r-s t-h-a-t g-u-i-d-e.”

“Maybe they are broken,” I said. “That makes no sense.”

“
Non
, you asked the wrong question,” he said. “It should be, ‘Should Cheftu go?’”

“Oops!” I asked the carefully worded question, and we got “T-h-e w-i-l-l o-f Y-H-W-H w-i-l-l b-e d-o-n-e,” again.

“
Ach
, well, they made no sense when they said you were with Dagon until I was in Ashqelon.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “They
said you weren’t safe, but when I arrived you were ruling the place.”

“That was probably when I was doing the tightrope,” I said, amazed by the stones despite myself.

Cheftu repeated the term slowly in English. “What is that?”

“Long story. You asked them about me?” I said, still partially amazed that this wonderful, handsome, witty, and good man loved
me.

“You beautiful
idiot
, but of course! However, then, five days later you were bargaining for all of our lives. They are accurate, just not in a
way we understand.”

“What happened to you?” I asked, “While you were with the slavers?”

He pressed his hands together, silent for a few minutes. “I will tell you once, then we will leave it here in this olive grove,
forever after,
nachon
?”

“B’seder.”

“They beat me,” he said tonelessly. “They beat me harder than the others. They starved me. They tried to violate me, but the,
uh, stones …”

My head was in my hands. I was embarrassed to know, sorry that I’d asked, that I’d demanded to know anything. Cheftu cleared
his throat. “After that, they left me alone.”

I said nothing for a while. “Why haven’t you wanted to practice medicine?”

“Aztlan.”

“Why?” We weren’t even looking at each other. “They all died, Chloe. No matter what we did, they died. Then I, the physician,
ach
, well, I end up extremely healthy.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Illness.” He sighed deeply. “I have lost my empathy.”

I was stunned. Cheftu was easily the most empathetic soul I’d ever known. Had he just burned out? I waited in silence. If
he wanted to say more, I would listen. However, I’d just learned a huge lesson about asking questions.

Cheftu sighed and sat back. “In Aztlan, no matter what we did, people died. So we searched for the reason why.” He looked
at his hands, turning them back and forth as though the answer might lie in their lines, in his cells. “When we learned the
reason, when we tried prevention because there was no cure, still they did nothing. No one listened. No one believed. Everyone
died. They died endlessly, needlessly.” He folded his hands and stared straight at me. “I find myself angry with them. They
chose to die, yet I am the one who carries their deaths on my shoulder.”

He flexed his jaw. “Then I thought of all the medications and cures and suggestions I’d made over the years, of how few people
actually followed my advice and were healed and—” He threw his hands up. “It seems pointless. I don’t care to continue working
my fingers and heart until they bleed when it means nothing.”

“So go to Midian,” I said jocularly. “See how you feel when you return.”

He shrugged.

I handed the stones back, then watched as he tucked each one into his sash, his body between them so they wouldn’t dance.
“When do you go?”

His gaze met mine. “Next week. After Shavu’ot.”

“Do we celebrate that?” I asked. Shana had said nothing beyond mentioning the preparations.

“They go to the city of Shek’im for it,” he said. “That is where their totem is. I believe we stay here, guard the fields.”

The awkwardness was back. Sitting cross-legged in this olive grove, I felt strangely alone. “Where are you?” I asked bluntly.

He blinked, a little surprised. “What do you mean?”

“You. You’re not here. Are you already at the Mountain of God?”

His gaze dropped. I was right. “Cheftu, you are going on this journey. You leave next week. These are terms I begin to understand,
to believe. However, while you are here, please be here.” I reached over and raised his face to mine. “Tell me of your excitement,
tell me what you think you will learn or the reason you want to go. Don’t shut me out. Don’t leave me even before you go.
Please.”

Spears of sunlight gilded him all over, catching lights in his black hair, accentuating the small scars on his skin. “How
are you going to experience this as an ‘uncircumcised’ Egyptian?” I asked. “They won’t let you on the mountain, they won’t
let you touch or do anything once they are there.” I squeezed his hand to cushion my words. “They are using you.”

“As I use them,” he said. “
B’seder
, you want my truths? You want to hear the whole of my heart?”

“Yes!” I said in English. “Yes, of course I do! How could you even doubt it?
Ach
!” I screeched in frustration.

“We are here, Chloe, with people whose fathers sat down face-to-face with God. They ate with him, they spoke with him. This
was no deity too powerful to be viewed except the back of his head. He was real, flesh and blood, sitting with them. Incarnated
before we ever know of an incarnation!”

His eyes were glowing, he was animated, he was beautiful. And I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“When
ha
Moshe asked for God’s name, he was told an unfathomable riddle. But Moshe had already given God his name, so he was in God’s
power.”

“Because he knew his name?”

“Names are powerful magic,
chérie.
To know someone’s name is to know about them. This is why people, especially royalty, have always had secret names.” He touched
the side of my face, running the backs of his fingers over my cheekbones. “When first you told me your name, Chloe, I knew
it was the truth of you.”

I frowned slightly as the wind rustled the trees and silvery green leaves rained down on us. “How is that?”

“In the Greek, and I told you this, your name means green and verdant. More than that, it means alive, growing, hopeful.”
He smiled at me, a slow smile that started in his eyes and moved to his mouth. “To me, you are these things. No matter what
happens, you grow beyond it. Never do you lose hope, never are you less than alive.”

My face was warm and my heart was in my throat. We stared at each other for a few more minutes, content. I didn’t remember
what we’d been discussing. “Kiss me,
chérie
,” he said.

We melded mouths in the sun-dappled shade, then bodies, then our souls. As we lay there, staring up at the blue sky, he said,
“I am a scholar, and a Catholic; that is why I want to go to this place. How much more is my life to see these things, to
experience them. Even if I do not touch the mountain. I have no desire to see God; I will see him when I die.”

“If you die,” I corrected.

“
Ach
, Chloe,” he said, turning to me, watching his brown hand on my white skin. “Our children are the only immortality I want,”
he whispered. “For myself, to be locked with you, living with you, is forever.” He kissed me, whispering against my lips,
“This is eternity to me.”

WASET

RAEM GLARED at the priest who dared to present himself, uninvited, before her. Two days ago Akhenaten had sent the news throughout
Egypt: His brother and son-in-law, Smenkhare, was co-regent with him in the light of the Aten forever. RaEm had not been free
to leave the audience chamber in Waset since then, for many of the nobles who had escaped Akhetaten suddenly presented themselves,
begging forgiveness.

And, thank the gods and goddesses, Meryaten believed herself to be pregnant, which also took Tiye’s hawkishness off RaEm.

“My name is Horetamun,” the priest said, bowing. “As high priest I have come to welcome you to the Temple of Amun-Ra, Lord
Smenkhare.”

This was the sticking point. Should Smenkhare officially welcome this priest or acknowledge his god, then Smenkhare stood
to lose every bit of power afforded to him by Pharaoh, living forever! If, however, Smenkhare didn’t dance to this flute song,
he might well find himself escorted from Waset in a hail of rotting vegetables.

RaEm’s head hurt. “Address me as Smenkhare, living forever!, Horet
aten
,” RaEm said. Already it was hot. The priest blinked insolently at her. The sun shone off his bald pate, dazzled on his white
kilt, glinted amber from the eyes in the leopard he wore around his shoulders. Slowly, almost more as an insult than in compliance,
he bowed his head.

Through her peripheral vision she saw that his bowing to her had an effect on the courtiers standing around. It was a good
thing that something had an effect on them; soon they would be starving, too, regardless of the pharaoh they supported or
the gods they worshiped.

There was nothing left, no stores left untapped. In her clenched fist was the papyrus response to the infuriated message she’d
sent to Akhenaten. Two weeks past a reasonable response time, she had heard back: “Aye, those stores were used at Amenhotep
Osiris’s last natal day celebration.”

Fortunately the men who had worked the field had wanted payment in stone, which Egypt was overrun with. Pity the masses could
not eat stone. She directed herself back to the priest. “My Majesty”—for some reason the thrill of saying those words wasn’t
as sharp as she’d thought it would be—“welcomes you to this court, though you worship an outlawed god whose name will be unmentioned.”