Sunrise on the Mediterranean (62 page)

“Because letters and words are holy?” someone shouted, though hesitantly, from the rear.

“
Ken.
So the stories are passed down, generation to generation, through remembering. Remembering exactly the words, memorizing
them letter by letter so that nothing ever changes. Letter by letter.” Raising his hands in the air, he intoned
“Bet, raysh alef, shin, yud, taf. Beresheth.”

In the beginning …
Were all these stories really handed down?

Once, in a philosophy class, the professor had lined us up, then whispered something in one person’s ear. We passed the phrase
from person to person, until we got to the end of the line. Then the last student announced what the verse was.

It hadn’t changed hugely, but it was definitely different. This, he said, was just an example of how nothing written by a
human can be infallible. Ever since then, I’d not believed in the Bible. I mean, it had been bunches of thousands of years.
If we could mess up a sentence in five minutes through fifteen students, then who knows what the Bible had said originally?

My mother and I had debated this very point when I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their phraseology was the same as the first,
oldest version of the Bible. My mother remarked on this, while I scoffed. Who knew? I said.

Needless to say, I was gnawing on my sandal now! If these first books were passed down letter for letter, there would be no
cultural connotation to put on it. There would be no subtle substitution of one word for another, for instance “hill” instead
of “mount,” that could result in a large difference.

So the stories would be—at least in the Hebrew version—I swallowed audibly, basically infallible.

N’tan stood still, solemn. For once he really did seem like a prophet of God. “We are to have no images of Shaday because
we are to hear his words, trust his character, rely on belief. Not in our eyes, not in the crafts of our hands. We are created
in his image.

“He is not to be created in ours.”

Raising his hands over the priests, wives, concubines, and
giborim
, N’tan intoned, “May
el ha
Shaday bless you and keep you. May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
Sela.”

We all said,
“Sela.”

R
A
E
M COVETED. SHIELDS
from Pelesti and Jebusi palaces adorned the walls. Incense holders, candles, lamps, all of gold and bronze, studded with
gems and inscribed with silver and lapis, were flung into the room. Jewelry, painstakingly crafted and delicate, heavy and
majestic, all of it was heaped into the chamber, in baskets. Jars of unguents, perfumes, powders, frankincense, myrrh, wrappers
of salt and spices, all of it was stacked haphazardly against the walls.

Hiram opened another room, a room of gold. This would save her people! This would save her throne! This could buy the loyalty
of those priests in Waset. RaEm didn’t trust herself to touch anything or she would steal it all. Better for Dadua to give
it to her. But it was Egyptian; it wouldn’t be stealing, it would be reclaiming. She saw yet another cartouche of Hatshepsut.
Had these tribes ransacked the royal guard? Armor, all of it gold, chariot plating, even weapons inlaid with carnelian and
jasper, turquoise and beryl, was Egyptian.

How was this possible?

“There are three more rooms,” Hiram said.

“How much is all of this?” RaEm asked. “How much?”

“How much is here?”

Hiram sighed, rubbing his face. “Close to one hundred thousand talents of gold, maybe a million of silver? I cannot imagine
how much bronze—there is so much it is not even kept here.”

They walked back into the first room. RaEm looked at the shields on the wall, the trophies that every mountain prince and
plains king took when they vanquished a city. There were at least sixty shields, all metal, most gold. Clews of gold and copper
wire and cabling coiled on the floor like sleeping snakes. Boxes and jars, trays and salvers, of gold, silver, and bronze
littered the floor.

It was not beauty; it was gluttonous wealth on a scale she’d never imagined. Here, in this tiny kingdom that no one had ever
heard of.

“Have you seen enough?” Hiram asked.

She’d seen that there was more than enough. All she had to do was get it to Egypt.

So all she had to do was … ?

“The Seat? What about it?”

“I know it is fashioned of heavy gold plate over acacia wood.”

Her wrist was in his hand as they walked through utter blackness back to the tree. “It is their most sacred possession?”

“It is.”

“It shoots lightning and brings plague?”

“It does.”

“I want it all.”

His fingers flexed around her wrist.

T
HE NEXT DAY RAINS BEGAN
to fall—the first rains of the season. Soft, gentle, almost like a shower instead of the pelting water I called rain. The
women in my kitchen ran from their tasks into the courtyard and danced. They swayed their bodies, spinning and twirling, their
faces raised skyward while they sang.

“Your love, Shaday, pours from the heavens, your
chesed
is proclaimed from the skies. Your uprightness is unmovable like the mighty mountains, your justice is unfathomable as the
Great Deep. You
, el ha
Shaday, preserve both man and beast. How priceless your unfailing
chesed!
”

I’d never been in a place so saturated with song. They grew more enthusiastic as the rains grew stronger, linking arms and
dancing in a circle. ’Sheva grabbed my arm, with the same focus and passion she had showed when discussing
haMelekh.
She pulled me into the group, slave and owner, tribeswoman and pagan, dancing, laughing—I didn’t even know why!

But I finally saw the beauty in ’Sheva. She was a dancer. When she moved, her awkwardness, her large teeth, and her bug eyes
faded away. She grew lissome, gilded. Her body seemed to have no bones, no joints. She seemed magical, otherworldly. Like
water, she moved, ripple after ripple of motion smoothing up and down her body.

Though she was a child, her hips knew seduction already.

I was not the only one who saw it; but ’Sheva herself didn’t recognize her gift, her talent, the power that she would have
over men one day, through her ability to dance.

Later, as I was watching water flow through the courtyard from the portico, pouring grain as she ground, ’Sheva confessed
she loved to dance in the downpour.

“Whenever it rains, it seems like the Almighty is sending little footprints of joy on the earth.”

I smothered my laughter—“footprints of joy”?—because she was serious. She actually looked happy.

“Sometimes I dance while I bathe, pouring the water over my head and pretending it’s rain.”

I nodded as I slowly added grain to the millstone.

C
HEFTU WASHED HIS BRUSHES
, pondering the day, the night. Suddenly he felt himself being watched. Slowly he turned, masking his fear and dismay.

“Greetings, scribe,” said the current Zakar Ba’al of Tsor; a former chieftain of Aztlan; the only man who had ever tried to
seduce Cheftu, who had attempted to kill Chloe, and who had changed Cheftu’s life forever because of his love.

“Dion.”

“It’s been a thousand years. Still cannot forgive me?” A thousand years? Cheftu tried to keep the shock from his face. The
elixir, then it worked? What could he ask, and what would give him away?

“Nothing to say?”

Cheftu licked dry lips. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

Dion smiled. “I build. This is what I do, what my people do.”

“The survivors of Aztlan?”

“
Ken
, though not the eruption you recall. There was a later one, maybe”—he pondered a moment—“four hundred years ago? There is,
sadly, nothing left save a smoking crescent shape.”

Mon Dieu!
That would have been the eruption during the time of the Exodus! The court magi were right.

“It astounds me that we have not crossed paths before. Where have you been?”

For Cheftu the past thousand years had not been measured in years, for he had slipped through them in an eye-blink. However,
to tell Dion of the time travel, the portals, the stones, these things would be to present temptation to a man who succumbed
each time. “I have been here and there,” he finally said.

“As have I. Not many people enjoy the life we do, Cheftu.” Dion’s gaze was intent. “I was convinced you had died, though no
wisewoman had ever been able to summon your shade. But there was no way for someone to vanish as completely. Not even rumor
of you remained.” He frowned, picked up one of Cheftu’s pens. “Yet you appear here, so I know you must have been around. One
cannot just appear and disappear from history, can one?”

That’s exactly what one can do, Cheftu thought. Exactly. “Why the disguise?” he asked.

Dion shrugged. “Hiram the king could not enjoy the simple life of a worker.”

“Why the aging?”

Dion stretched, unwinding the body of a man in his prime: broad shoulders, narrow waist, thick legs. “Hiram the builder has
lived for many years. Eternal youth, I have learned, causes two reactions in people. Either they cower in fear at the unknown
or they desire it so badly, they would kill to know how.”

“You have had these experiences?”

Dion nodded, then narrowed his gaze on Cheftu. “You speak as though we have not lived the same way. What secrets are you holding?”

Cheftu forced himself to not look away. “No more than you, Dion.”

The dark man reached forward and plucked a brush from Cheftu’s table. “I see you have found another green-eyed woman. Lovely
creature.”

He didn’t know Chloe was still alive. “She is,” Cheftu agreed calmly.

Dion stepped closer. “What magic do you work? It’s been a thousand years and still I want you. I don’t care what you have
done, how you have cast my aunt’s spirit from her body, or the demon you now let live there. I don’t care about the hundreds
of green-eyed women you have had. All I want is you. For a thousand years, all I’ve wanted is you.”

Cheftu stared into Dion’s eyes. He saw love in them, the selfsame love he saw in Chloe’s, so he knew Dion’s feelings were
true. He saw lust, passion, and doorways to things he could not imagine. Dion had been a friend, a trusted ally, a man he’d
respected and admired. At one point he would have given his life for this dark Greek.

Until Dion had played a god in Cheftu’s life.

In a moment of extreme terror and manipulation, he had given Cheftu an elixir purported to grant eternal life. It had returned
Cheftu from near death and had intervened again and again.

The slaves beat Cheftu harder because he healed faster. When he should have been dead on the island or in the desert, when
he should have gone blind from staring into the sun for three days, when he should have been murdered by the brigands who
beset them in the Arava, he was immune. The pain of abuse, the agony of wishing to die, the exquisiteness of torture, were
all his with no surcease. And in the back of his mind, every day, was the realization that Chloe did not have the elixir.

Childbirth could steal her away.

She could drown, fall, be felled with a weapon, choke on a bone, and he would be eternally alone. “Nay,” he told Dion. “My
answer hasn’t changed.”

“Try it, Cheftu. Just let me touch you, see if you feel anything. Let me taste you—”

“No.”

“I can help you,” he said. “Gold, power, prestige, anything you want.”

Cheftu stepped forward, his expression intent. Dion focused on his mouth. “Look into my eyes, Dion,” Cheftu said. “Hear these
truths from my lips.”

“It’s hard to concentrate when I want to kiss you.” Cheftu ground his teeth. “You would not understand the things I want.
You do not know my soul, regardless of what you think. Nor do you own me, any part of me, for what you have done.” He stepped
forward again, aggressive. Dion held his ground. Cheftu was sickened to realize this man was aroused. “My choice to deny you
is because I love my wife. Were she, Shaday forbid, to be taken from me tomorrow, my choice would be the same. I love her,
a woman whose body is rich and capable of life, whose mind is fertile and challenging, whose spirit invigorates and embraces
me.” He put his hand on Dion’s chest. “You. Do. Not.”