Jochebed, stay where you are.”
She stayed. It wasn’t often Mama spoke in that tone, but when she did, Jochebed immediately obeyed. Scanning the riverbank, she searched for the swishing tail of a crocodile—Mama’s and Lili’s greatest fear—or her nightmare, a writhing nest of snakes. Jochebed tilted her head, sniffing for the stench of rotting flesh, a warning that a crocodile was eating nearby. Nothing.
The ever-present gnats spun around her face as mud oozed over her toes and crawled up her ankles. Jochebed tightened her muscles, ready to flee. If there was danger, she would not leave without her mother, would not lose another parent to a river death.
Mama inched forward, almost crouching. What had alarmed her? Still clutching the reeds she’d gathered, her mother parted a stand of rushes and gasped. Bedde tensed.
“Lord, have mercy.”
“Mama?”
“Help me, Bedde. Leave the reeds and help me with this child.”
Jochebed moved beside her mother and stared at the girl tangled in the river grasses, her leg oddly bent, her swollen face covered with mud and gashes.
Her mother unwound her head scarf and laid it in the black mud. “Lift her shoulders and pull it underneath … now lift that leg. Careful.”
The child startled and moaned before her eyes rolled backward.
“Quickly, Bedde. We need to get her home. Lift.”
Until then, Jochebed had always thought their house was close to the river. Now it seemed farther than walking to the city of Pi-Ramses in midday heat.
Mama lowered the unconscious girl onto a mat on the packed dirt floor. She dipped a rag into a gourd of water and cleaned grit and dried blood from the child’s cuts.
“Bring the jars of oil and honey. They are on the top shelf. Can you reach them? Yes? I’ll need another bowl, too.”
Jochebed watched her mother make a paste of the oil and honey to dab on the girl’s open wounds. She sliced a garlic clove and rubbed it over the bruises.
“Bedde, I need two sticks—as straight as possible—each as long as your arm from wrist to elbow. Hurry.”
Jochebed winced as her mother straightened the broken leg. She set it with the stick splint, wrapped it in papyrus leaves, and plastered the leg with river mud. Under her mother’s directions, Jochebed sprinkled thyme leaves into a cup of water and set it to steep near the flickering embers. When the water darkened, Mama spooned the painkiller between the girl’s lips. There was nothing more they could do.
The child mumbled in her sleep. Jochebed frowned and then looked to her mother for an answer. Mama sighed and shook her head. “Egyptian. Her words are Egyptian.”
Jochebed stared at the girl. Poor thing. Even though she was Egyptian, she was so thin it hurt to look at her. The sight of her battered face and bruised neck made Jochebed gag.
The stranger opened her eyes. Mama spoke softly. Hearing her, Jochebed’s jaw dropped open. Mama spoke Egyptian? If Deborah or Sarah ever found out…
“Mama, how do you know—”
“Not now, Bedde.”
“But…”
The girl spoke, her words soft and musical.
“She said … this is the … her name is … Shiphrah. Her leg broke when she slipped in the mud.” Mama stroked the girl’s scarred cheekbone, and Jochebed saw a tear slide down her mother’s face. “I have wondered what…” Her mother wiped away the tear. “The Lord has placed her in our care. She is almost two years younger than you.”
“Why would He make us take care of an Egyptian after what Papa did? Haven’t we lost enough? And what is she doing on our part of the river?”
Mama shook her head as if she didn’t understand either, but as tears rolled down her mother’s cheek, Jochebed suspected her mother knew something she wasn’t sharing.
The angriness of Shiphrah’s bruises and cuts faded over the next weeks, and the tight lines around her mouth began to soften. Her face thinned as the swelling disappeared, and she slept less, sometimes saying a few words to Elisheba but mostly watching them weave and listening to Elisheba’s stories of an unseen God.
Unable to walk because of her broken leg, Shiphrah did not leave the house. Elisheba taught their guest how to weave plain mats and insisted Jochebed sit with Shiphrah. Soon the girls began to point and share their words. Smiles turned to giggles at each other’s attempt to speak a new language.
As they learned to speak together, Jochebed told of her betrothal to Amram and the strained relationship with her cousin Lili. Shiphrah listened or nodded in an understanding way but seldom shared her thoughts. Never did she refer to what happened before they found her. If asked, her face closed like a lotus at sunset.
Throughout the first weeks, the villagers treated Shiphrah with gruff suspicion. They prodded Elisheba with questions of how the stranger came to be in her house and if she would stay after her leg healed. They wondered why no one came looking for the girl. Deborah refused to say her name, calling her “that Egyptian” as if she were a dead animal. Sarah avoided coming to the house, pleasing Jochebed, but referred to Shiphrah as “half-breed,” annoying Elisheba.
Shiphrah pretended not to understand any Hebrew. She said nothing when the villagers poked their heads through the open doorway and asked where she lived. How could she explain she didn’t live anywhere? She didn’t belong anywhere. This was not her home. These were not her people.
She doubted her father had sent someone to look for her. Above all else, he valued his practicality. Bothering with her would be more trouble than it was worth. Perhaps his well-tended pride refused to allow him to search for her.
Did he miss her or ever care for her? Shiphrah didn’t think so. She did not waste time wishing it were so. It simply was not. If he wanted to find her, he could.
The village—a cluster of houses on the banks of the Nile—proved an impossible place to keep secrets. Everyone seemed to know an Egyptian stranger lived with Elisheba, and the news spread to people outside the village.
Leaders from nearby villages traveled to meet her, question her, and judge if she brought danger. It became a regular part of each day, someone coming to stare at her. Shiphrah dreaded the attention, dropping her head, refusing to answer their questions—enduring it in hopes of finding her aunt.
The day Puah found her, Mama Elisheba—as Shiphrah named her—had decided Shiphrah’s leg was healed enough to walk short distances leaning on a stick. She sent the girls outside to rest in the shade of the closest palm tree.
Shiphrah, leaning her head against the roughly woven bark and watching clouds through a filter of palm fringe, did not notice a woman approaching them.
“Shiphrah, look. Puah has returned to the village. Didn’t you say she is your mother’s sister?” asked Bedde.
Shiphrah did not care if she startled Bedde with a flurry of arms and legs and walking stick. Aunt Puah was the one Ati said wanted her. She struggled to her feet and stopped.
Maybe Ati misunderstood. Maybe Puah came to tell her to leave or to return to her father. If her own father and even Ati didn’t want her anymore, why would an aunt she did not know want her?
Shiphrah shrank back as the woman stepped closer and studied her face. The bruises had faded, and Shiphrah wished the scar on her face had healed and that she had been able to wash herself.
“Shiphrah?” the woman murmured. “You are my Shiphrah?”
Shiphrah blinked in response but could not think of a single word to say—Egyptian or Hebrew. Puah’s scar curved her lips into a lopsided smile. She spoke slowly, softly, and held out her hand. Shiphrah allowed her aunt’s fingertips to rest on her shoulder and nodded at Puah’s words. At last the two turned.
For the first time since Bedde had known her, Shiphrah’s smile reached her eyes. “It is my aunt. She say I look to be her sister, Jebah. I go now live with Puah.”
Jebah? Old Sarah said Jebah had asked too many questions and died.
“Lili, please talk to me,” begged Jochebed.
“I’m on my way to meet Sissy.”
“Please?”
“So now that Shiphrah is with Puah, you have time for me?”
“That’s not fair, Lili. You stopped speaking to me the day Amram and I were betrothed.”
Lili crossed her arms, canted her head, and stuck out her chin. “Talk.”
“I thought we were best friends, more than cousins, more like sisters.”
“So?”
“So, I miss you.”
“You’ll have Amram soon enough.”
“Yes, but that is still months away. He won’t even be here until our wedding, and Mama said you are marrying Joshua not long after that. You know Joshua has always adored you.”
Lili sniffed. “Of course Joshua adores me, but you still have Amram.”
“I don’t know why Amram agreed to marry me instead of insisting on you. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint him.”
“Probably.”
“Lili, you are so mean, just like Deborah! Fine, don’t be my friend. I wanted you to know I miss helping you with your sheep and us weaving together, that I wish we were still children and close to each other.” Jochebed did not fight the quiver in her voice. “Soon we will be wives and have children to raise and homes to tend. I didn’t want to lose this last bit of time we have together, but I guess it’s not important to you.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned to leave. “I’m not important to you.”
“Wait, Bedde! Now that Sissy, I mean Deborah, is married, I might have more time for you.”
Jochebed blinked back a tear. “Shiphrah wishes you were her friend, too. She said you are the prettiest girl in the village.”
“Really?”
“And prettier than Merit-Amun, the princess.”
“Shiphrah knows a real princess?”
“They used to sit on the river steps after music lessons at their temple.”
Lili shuddered. “Near the crocodiles?”
“She said the crocodiles know not to go there.”
In a few weeks, Shiphrah returned to visit, limping and still so thin Jochebed thought she could almost see through her. As she gained strength, she came to their village whenever she was not helping her aunt and learning midwifery.
With Shiphrah’s shaggy black hair hidden beneath a scarf, the three girls might have been sisters—their lives flowing together so effortlessly they seemed extensions of each other. Spoken to as one, scolded as one, directed as one, their names tangled into one, Lili-Bedde-Shiphrah.
“LiliBeddeShiphrah, watch where you step!”
“LiliBeddeShiphrah, have you seen my little Jacob?”
“I need this carried to the widow. LiliBeddeShiphrah, you girls can manage.”
Together they tended Lili’s sheep. Together they listened to the stories of the Hebrew God as they practiced their weaving skills. Together they shared both the splinters and shards of joy amid the wholeness of enslavement.
After weeks of work, Mama decided some of their attempts were worthy of trade and suggested the girls attend the Egyptian market of Pi-Ramses and barter for clay cooking pots.
It started as a day full of expectation. It marked a time Jochebed wished never existed—the beginning of change.
“I know we won’t be in the city very long.” Lili spoke with the confidence of a twelve-year-old.
“We won’t?”
“Our baskets will sell in a hurry because they are just like Aunt Elisheba’s.”
Jochebed grimaced. Mama’s weaving was the best. No other weavers did such fine work. “Lili, ours aren’t perfect like hers. The weave is not as tight.”
“We’ll place them so only the best parts show and no one can see our mistakes.”
“Well…”
“Trust me, Bedde. No one will notice if we don’t say anything.”
“But…”
“Let’s see … if we stack the mats in front of the bowl I made, no one will realize the bottom is not completely flat, and then we’ll stand Shiphrah’s basket on one end so that—”
“That’s not honest, Lili.”
“You are as fussy as an old woman. I know! We’ll make up songs about the different weaving patterns and then people would look at that instead of the mistakes.”
Jochebed shook her head. Lili huffed and pouted for a few steps and then began the latest story about her brother.
“Benjamin was so hard to wake up this morning, and when I finally got him up, he told Mama”—Lili changed her voice to sound like a five-year-old—“‘I’m not done sleeping, and I’m grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.’ Mama told him he was always grumpy in the morning, and he said, ‘I amn’t either!’”
Jochebed smiled. Benjamin’s “amn’t” instead of “I’m not” was never corrected because it was so funny.
Lili continued the Benjamin stories. “And last night he said, ‘If I count all the things I’m good at, it would take me all day and all night … but night is just a dark day, so it would take me two days.’”
Jochebed wished she had a little brother. Their house was quiet with just Mother and her.
When Amram returned, that might change. What would it be like with a man in the house? Squinting in the sun’s glare, she wondered what might have been if Papa had lived. Maybe he would have picked her up and called her precious. She might have brothers and sisters to talk and laugh with and help with chores, maybe Mother would laugh more.
The heat-washed sand swirled in waves so white they drained the sky of color; white sand, white light, white sky, a bright day sharpening shadows and blurring the edges of distant mountains. She breathed lightly, knowing the dry burn of dust.
Jochebed noticed Shiphrah had begun walking slightly apart from them. “Shiphrah, are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? Mama sent bread for us.”
“No.”
Lili sidled closer and wrinkled her forehead at Bedde. “Is Shiphrah getting sick?” she whispered.
Jochebed shrugged. “I don’t know. She was fine this morning.”
“If she is going to ruin my day, she should have stayed home, but I’m glad I didn’t. I love market days.” Lili skipped and twirled in a circle. “They are my favorite place to be, except with the sheep. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the sheep here with us? Next time I’ll bring a lamb. Everyone will want to pet him, and then they’ll see my baskets and buy them all. And then someday when I have a house full of grandchildren, I’ll tell them about how I sold all my baskets before anyone else.”
Jochebed listened to Lili’s chatter. Market day was not her favorite. She did not like being surrounded by strangers or jostled through bustling crowds. Maybe Shiphrah had not wanted to travel to Pi-Ramses either.
The market, a jumble of shouting merchants with their profusion of wares, displayed everything imaginable, from Cushite gold jewelry and fly-speckled baskets of food to slaughtered sheep hanging upside down and bolts of linen spread on woven mats. The indignant honks of disgruntled geese and braying pack donkeys layered with people yelling and gesturing made her head ache. Air peppered with spices and rotting fruit turned her stomach. Everything was covered with a thick dusty haze kicked up by human feet and animal hooves and paws.
Chaos puffed its noisy, smoky breath in her face. Jochebed dearly wished the day was over and she could go home. She pushed herself to take step after step farther into the turmoil when she would rather have run the other way or wedged herself into a crack in the wall. Already she longed for the quiet task of seeing a basket take shape.
They entered the town of Pi-Ramses and looped through the twisting alleys and narrow streets, following the cries of frightened animals to the market area. Lining each side of the street and spilling around the corners, tradesmen crouched under grass mats drooping across poles and hinting at shade.
Limp cloths covering the stalls hung in the stale air like dingy birds stretching their wings, waiting for a breeze to lift them above the clouds of dust and noisy confusion. Vendors clamored for attention to their wares, boasting of copper from Syria and bracelets of gold, their shouts muffling the pleas of beggars and the plaintive music of sistra and lyres.
The heavy sweetness of overripe melon and freshly killed fowl soured the air, layered with smells of warm bread and fresh animal dung. Under the lone tree, people waited in a loosely knit line to have one of the two barbers shave their heads and eyebrows.
As they merged with the streams of people, Bedde dragged her feet—it was impossible to walk three abreast anyway—and fell farther behind until she could barely see Lili and Shiphrah. Frustrated by the crowd, she felt tears blur her sight. Had her two best friends not noticed she was missing? Jochebed stumbled into a man who shoved her into the dirt.
“Filth.” The man, tall and thin except for his bulging stomach, turned to his companion. “Another one of those worthless Hebrews—Egypt’s pestilence—breeding like rabbits with the stench of sheep.”
Shame flooded Jochebed’s cheeks. She was not filthy, and didn’t everyone smell like sheep?
His friend nodded. “Rats overrunning Egypt. Pharaoh will soon see it for himself. This pharaoh is not like his father. He will take action against that shepherd horde. You’ll see.”
As the men walked away, Bedde scrambled to her feet. From the corner of her eye she saw Lili inch forward through the maze of people. Lili’s chatter reached out to surround Bedde, her familiar voice a comfort even as Lili scolded her for falling behind, explaining how they had come looking for her and returned just in time to hear the man’s words. Lili mumbled her indignation with the stomachy man as she gathered the scattered baskets.
“Why did he say such things to you?” Lili glared at the men.
Shiphrah approached slowly, eyeing the man as he strutted past the vendors. “Because he Egyptian and you worthless Hebrew.”
Jochebed stared at her, starting to shake, trying to grasp her words. The marketplace clamor faded until only the words worthless Hebrew rang in her ears. “Worthless Hebrew”—that was what the man had said. Why would Shiphrah ever say that to her? Did she mean it?
Stomach knotting, she glanced at Lili, hoping to have misunderstood, but Lili’s eyes were the size of the full moon and her mouth hung open, showing a tooth missing in the back.
They stood, the three of them, on an island of silence. Jochebed felt the easy comfort of friendship drift into oblivion, its familiar ways shifting like desert sand; their unquestioning acceptance of each other lost in a grain of time; words that could not be recalled; feelings that would not be forgotten.
Fat tears rolled over the curve of Lili’s face. Stone-faced, Shiphrah stared at them, her face cold—an alabaster sphinx—the scar on her cheekbone a cruel token of her earlier life.
Jochebed stepped back. She stepped back again.
And then she ran.
Darting through the press of sweaty bodies, ignoring Lili’s calls to stop, she ran. Her head pounded with each step as she raced along the path they had just traveled. Jochebed ran. She forgot the baskets and ran without looking back, ran without stopping, out of the city, along the river path, until she reached her sure place of safety—Mama’s arms.
There she told the story and, weeping, told it again, describing stomachman and trying to make sense of his scorn and Shiphrah’s words. Jochebed knew they were Hebrew and Shiphrah, half Egyptian. And she knew they were little more than slaves, though long ago a pharaoh had favored them, but it had never mattered before—not to the three of them.
“Mama, why did she say such a thing? How could she look at us so?”
With one hand cradling Bedde’s tear-swollen face, Mama wiped away the tears that spilled down her daughter’s face and cleaned the blood from her fall in the marketplace.
“Jochebed,” she began, using the formal name instead of the familiar Bedde, “if I could take your hurt to spare you, I would.” She closed her eyes, and Bedde guessed she was praying, asking the Lord for wisdom to answer.
She picked up the basket she had been weaving and began to work. Mama’s hands were never still. “Only the weaver knows what the basket will become. It is after it’s finished that others see the beauty and purpose. When you began to weave your first basket, you told me the spokes were ugly—that you didn’t want them to be in your basket, remember?”
Bedde sniffled. “I was afraid the spokes would ruin it.”
“Now you know that without the spokes, the basket cannot take shape. The part that at first seems ugliest is really the strength. The reeds you choose and the work you do before it looks like a basket determines how it will be used.”
Mama nestled the basket in her hand. “I do not pretend to understand the ugliness in life, but I believe our Lord uses it to shape good things for His people.”
“But Mama, Shiphrah looked at me as if she hated me.”
“Hate grows out of fear. The Egyptians fear us, and they fear our God. They know we are different and do not understand it. Jochebed, an Egyptian is not even allowed to eat with a Hebrew. They say we are unclean because we herd sheep.”
Her words circled in Bedde’s mind like little birds seeking a place to rest and finding none. Not understanding, she probed further. “But she is like my sister. How could she fear us? How could anyone fear us? They have the whips! We serve them!”
Her mother sighed as she twined the double strands through the spokes. “It will not always be this way. The Lord will send deliverance. As He led us into Egypt, so He will lead us out. Until that time, remember we are His chosen people.”
Chosen? Bedde did feel chosen—chosen for injustice and unreasonable hatred. If God truly planned to send deliverance, why was He waiting? Did He not know or not care?
Her mother must have seen the look of rebellion in Jochebed’s face. “Remember the story of Joseph and how we came to Egypt? The Lord’s ways are often hard to understand.”
Jochebed studied her scraped knees. She’d heard that before.
And yes, she remembered. The story of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery and lying to their father, Jacob, about his death was a story she’d heard from early childhood.
Before she’d seen Pharaoh slaughter the child, Jochebed had loved hearing the stories of God and even tried to believe them. She’d grown up on stories of how the Lord interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams through her great-uncle Joseph. Or was it her great-great-great-uncle? She shrugged. So many “greats” was confusing. Either way, God had given one of her very own uncles the plan to save Egypt during the famine. How many times had she heard that the Lord placed Joseph second in power only to Pharaoh?
Jochebed shrugged. “I could tell that story in my sleep, Mama.”
Even Lili’s five-year-old brother, Benjamin, who liked to remind people that he had the same name as Joseph’s favorite brother, could tell how the brothers journeyed south to Egypt for food during the great famine. Benjamin sometimes got confused about how Joseph tested his brothers to see if they had changed, but he never forgot the story of how God helped that first Joseph forgive them and move their entire family to live here in Goshen.
Yes, she remembered. The Lord’s stories were told over and over from birth until death.
“His ways are different from ours, Jochebed, but He has a plan. Trust Him.”
Then in a voice Bedde seldom heard, she murmured, “The man who pushed you … he was tall and thin except for a very large stomach?”
“You know him, Mama?”
The pause was so long, Bedde thought she would not answer. Mama paused in her weaving and began to shape the basket, pushing one side harder to round it more. Her hand shook slightly. Her lips squeezed shut as if reluctant to release her words into being.
“His name is Nege.”
It was several weeks before the cousins saw Shiphrah. Each day they argued over what to say or not say if the three of them were ever together again. If they mentioned market day, would Shiphrah apologize or repeat her words? Would Bedde turn and run or stay and argue? Would Lili pinch Shiphrah or start to cry?
As they worked in the fields, a speck of dirt blew into Jochebed’s eye and blurred her sight. She blinked, trying and failing to dislodge it. Unwilling to use her dirt-crusted fingernails to rub out the speck, she swiped her face against her shoulder.
Lili gasped. Jochebed, face still mashed into her shoulder, whirled around. “What?”
“Over there, watching us.”
Jochebed’s vision cleared. Sheltering her eyes from the sun’s glare, she searched in the direction Lili pointed. Shiphrah stood by the road on the far side of the field.
The girls looked at each other and then away. Jochebed felt her face burn and knew it was more than the sun’s merciless stare. Had she come to taunt them again? It was funny-sad, how Shiphrah and Deborah who avoided each other had become so much alike. Jochebed crossed her arms in self-defense and waited, daring Shiphrah to come nearer.
Shiphrah did not budge.
Beads of water trickled down her back. This was not working. Was Shiphrah going to come closer and say anything or stand there and spy on them? What should she do? Mama would…
Jochebed stepped forward. When Lili gave a long sigh, Bedde realized she’d been holding her breath, too. Weaving between the sprawling vegetables, she approached the Egyptian-Hebrew girl.
Jochebed stopped two arm lengths away. Shiphrah stood poised to run. Like sand sifting its way into food, caution tainted their relationship. What if…?
“Shiphrah…” She stopped. What was there to say?
“I work with you this day to the field?”
Jochebed wanted to shake her head and scream no, but her mother’s story of Noah and second chances flashed through her mind. “Y–Yes. Yes,” Bedde stammered. If she only wanted to work, it would be fine.
They were almost back to where Lili waited when a lizard darted in front of Jochebed. Startled, she jumped backward, knocking Shiphrah to the ground. The lizard turned, stuck out his tongue, and scurried away.
Jochebed slanted her eyes at Shiphrah and began to smile. Shiphrah grinned back as they untangled themselves. At Lili’s approach, they interrupted themselves trying to explain the lizard to her and the smiles turned to laughter and then to giggles.
As they returned to their work, Lili retold a Benjamin story while Jochebed and Shiphrah rolled their eyes at each other and pretended not to have heard it.
“I have story, too,” announced Shiphrah. “I to be midwife. Aunt Puah say my words are better and I am ready. She most important midwife and teach many.” She faltered. “I will not come to here so much. You say to Mama Elisheba I miss her God stories?”
Jochebed nodded. “She’ll tell the stories whenever you visit.”
Nege bowed before Ramses’s throne. He flattened himself low as only a snake could manage. Either he brought displeasing news or he wanted something, Ramses surmised.
“My lord god and ruler of the Two Lands, I am unworthy to be in your presence, unworthy to speak your name, unworthy and unwilling to bring these words to your holy ears. Forgive me, oh incarnate of Horus, all-seeing falcon god.”
Ramses stifled a yawn. “Stand and speak.”
Nege scrambled to his feet. “As a priest, I serve in your stead at the Temple of Amun, bless the holy name.”
“And?”
“Some time ago, forgive me for not telling you sooner, but I feared your wrath, oh god of Egypt and commander of the army, oh ruler of the world and master of all.”
“As well you should. Continue.”
Nege gulped. “Some time ago, in the Temple of Amun, your most royal daughter, Princess Merit-Amun—forgive this lowly servant for speaking her exalted name with my unworthy lips—was worshipping in the holy temple and discovered an intruder, one of the shepherd people, a Hebrew half-breed.”
Ramses’s eyes turned cold.
“The intruder attacked with a knife. Merit-Amun came to no harm; I threw my unworthy self in front of her to protect her, sire.”
“Was he apprehended?”
“Oh my pharaoh, did I not say the intruder was a girl?”
“No, you did not.”
“An oversight, exalted one. It was a girl, a Hebrew girl with a knife.”
“Is she in custody?”
“Great One, the Hebrew disappeared, like a bird taking flight during the dark hours.”
It is a dark hour. The falcon is flown. Memories—a battalion of warriors—assaulted Ramses, a siege of havoc and uncertainty.
Of fear.
It had been years since doubt first wound its tendrils through his mind. Ramses tensed as he recalled the urgency of that beckoning voice…
“The royal falcon calls for you. It is a dark hour. Hurry, Master, before it is too late, before the falcon flies.”
The death room was hot, choked with stale incense. His sister, Tia, stood beside their mother as Ramses knelt by his father’s side. Translucent skin stretched over the bones and hollows in Seti’s elegant face, his broad chest rising and falling with the effort of each thin breath.
“Father.”
Pharaoh Seti opened his watery eyes. “Heed Umi—prophecy.” Seti’s eyes closed. “I failed to warn…”
“A prophecy, Father?”
Ramses leaned forward and waited for Seti to continue. The raspy breath slowed, stilled. The priest’s next words told him he would never again hear his father’s voice in this life. “The falcon is flown to heaven, and his successor is arisen in his place.”
It was done. As Seti entered the death world of Osiris, Ramses became Pharaoh, the god Horus incarnate.
“The falcon is flown…”
The priest’s words echoed as the news was repeated throughout the room and into the halls.
“The falcon is flown…”
Ramses stood and willed away the unsteadiness of his legs. He was a god. A god had no fear. None. Ever.
He ignored the kernel of uncertainty taking root in his heart.
Never again could he turn to his father for guidance. The thought that his father failed was unnerving, unbelievable—no, it was impossible.
And who was Umi?
Ramses pulled his thoughts from his father’s death scene. Nege still hovered before him, wanting … what? What did the man want? A reward? Ramses scoffed, doubting the sweaty priest had protected Merit-Amun at all and certainly not with his thin, flabby self.
What did the man expect? He dredged through Nege’s words. This was the priest who so despised Hebrews. Three times he had mentioned the intruder was a Hebrew. Ah. Nege waited for a reaction and revenge.
Did this slippery priest know of the scroll and Umi’s prophecy about the shepherd people? Ramses remembered learning of the vision. It had been soon after his father’s death when palace informers discovered a slave who had served Umi.
The slave, stooped and wrinkled, the dross of Egypt, had trembled uncontrollably—whether from age or fear, Ramses neither knew nor cared. “My master, Umi, said the Hebrew god sent Umi a vision each night for a week.”
Ramses snorted and leaned against the back of his chair. “Priests often have visions.”
The slave choked out his words. “Yes, Great One, but this vision deeply disturbed Umi, and he journeyed to the Library of Ancients to study the scrolls.”
Ramses shifted his weight and motioned for the man to continue. “The scrolls referred to…?”
“The time of the foreign kings, the Hyksos, when a Hebrew slave arose to become vizier of Egypt, second only to the pharaoh himself.”
“Merely a rumor.”
“Great One, forgive my insolence, but it is written.” The man opened his mouth, closed it, and then, as if the words were wrenched out of him, continued, “It is also written that the Hebrew god of this vizier vowed to leave them in slavery for four hundred years, punish the nation they served, and give them the land of Canaan.”
“And this disturbed Umi because…?”
“The time approaches, Great One.”
“Ah.” Ramses tilted his head. “Before you bring me this scroll, tell me, what interpretation did Umi ascribe to his ridiculous dream?”
The slave faltered, crumpled to his knees, and touched his head to the ground before answering.
“The lion was the unseen god of the Hebrews.”
“And the foolish warrior?”
“Egypt.”
Ramses inhaled deeply to break free of the memory. He studied Nege. If the man knew of Umi, he would have used it to his advantage.
“Nege, I will call for you in the future. You have done a great service I will not forget.”
With a flick of his wrist, he dismissed the priest and motioned for the room to be emptied. The meeting with Nege had roused the malignant spirits who roamed the chambers of his mind intent on haunting him.
In the days following his father’s death, ominous thoughts had plagued him whether asleep or awake. Those dark times still came, dragging his thoughts underground to an impenetrable foreboding. He permitted no one near him during these times when his anger and frustration, and yes, his fear, descended like a horde of hunger-crazed vultures. No one should see a god in despair.
Ramses rubbed his thumb over the crease in his forehead. The darkness was returning. Again he slipped into the past.
Ramses had been furious almost from the beginning of his father’s death. The seventy days of embalming had ended, but his father’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings remained unfinished. It would be necessary to temporarily bury him in the mound of Osirieon.
The burial could not wait. Ramses felt the tension crawl up his neck to become a throbbing over his left eye. If his father’s ka returned and could not be reunited with the body, what would happen? Would the spirit being and physical being ever become one again?
Ramses glared at the noisome priests huddled in the throne room like cowering puppies. It was almost laughable how they fell over each other vowing Osirieon to be the holiest of all the burial cities and no obstacle existed for his father’s journey into eternity.
“My father’s reign of eleven years and two days is insufficient for a tomb’s construction?” He strove to conceal his rage as he listened to rambling excuses of inefficiency.
“Pharaoh, let us assure you that Seti chose the Valley of the Kings because it is the best bridge to the underworld. No one would contest the wisdom of his choice, but there are difficulties with the site. It’s true that we have encountered unexpected challenges—remember the heat? Nothing grows there even in the winter—but when it is complete, Great One, it will be hailed as the most beautiful tomb ever built.”
“Ah. Work remains to be done?” Ramses, a sure hunter, laid his snare.
“Much more work, my lord. It will be magnificent, decorations on every passage and in every chamber. We have included drawings of all of Seti’s favorite pastimes, and the ceiling is like the night sky, brilliant blue and covered with—”
“Splendid.” Did they think him so easily distracted? “It is unfinished because…?”
“More workers are needed.” The soft, pasty-faced priests nodded to each other in solemn agreement. “It requires skilled workmen to create a tomb worthy of such a great warrior as Seti.”
“More skilled workers can be provided.”
A collective sigh filled the room. “My lord, you are most gracious and understanding. You are a true god like your father, Seti. May your reign be forever, may your sons—”
Ramses lifted a single finger—signaling the guards, snapping shut the trap. “Escort these ‘skilled workers’ to the builders’ village of Deir el-Medina. When my father’s tomb is complete, I may consider returning them to temple posts.” He shrugged. “Or not.”
The guards removed the indignant priests. Ramses thought they looked more like a gaggle of squawking geese than holy men of the gods. He watched them leave. In minutes, everyone in the palace would know not to underestimate the new pharaoh.
Early the next morning—his father’s burial day—fear crept inward and refused to budge. After today there would be no hope of communication with his father. After today, all successes and failures would be his alone.
Ramses led the mourners from the palace to the west bank, the place of the sun’s daily death. Oxen pulled the royal sledge carrying Seti’s embalmed body in its wooden sarcophagus, followed by a second sledge with the canopic chest holding the alabaster jars containing his stomach, liver, intestines, and lungs. A third sledge held an army of shawabtis, slave statues that would come alive to serve Seti throughout eternity.
Beside the sledges, rows of priests walked, some burning incense, some shaking sistra as professional mourners cried and screamed their grief. Lining the roads, the women of Egypt wailed and tore out their hair in sorrow at Seti’s death.
They arrived at the mouth of the underground tunnel of Osirieon. Ramses stood without speaking as the coffin was solemnly removed from the cart. With strict protocol, it was placed upright to face southward in the correct position for the high priest and Ramses to perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony.
Ramses’s heart began to pound. This was his last hope. As the priest restored Seti’s senses, allowing him to eat and drink and giving him the ability to speak in the next life, there was a chance he would whisper a final message in this life.
Ramses stepped closer. There must be words remaining in his father’s mouth about this prophecy. Perhaps if he stood as closely as possible and listened intently enough, he could hear the words his father had left unsaid, the directive he needed to rule wisely.
The priest cut through the linen face bindings to open Seti’s mouth with a small iron knife before handing Ramses the Feather of Truth. Ramses suppressed a shudder. The feather was so light, and his father’s heart, all his deeds and reasonings, would be weighed against it. Did Seti’s heart balance with the feather? Had Seti been allowed to proceed into the afterlife? Did he still live?
At the priest’s signal, he stepped near and, leaning forward, touched his father’s mouth with his smallest finger. Placing the feather in the coffin, the new pharaoh strained to hear the words he needed.
Nothing.
Once in the wide hall, the wooden box framing Seti’s remains was lowered into the stone sarcophagus. The massive coffin had already been placed beneath a carved falcon spreading his wings protectively. Eight slaves groaned as they lifted the cover and slid it into place.
The chest of canopic jars was moved to stand near the wall inscribed with the Book of the Gates, the guidebook to the netherworld. Each symbol had been carved into the wall and painted green, symbolizing life and fertility. There was nothing more to do to enable the reunion of his father’s life force—his personality—with his soul, or to ensure a successful journey to the god Osiris.
Ramses clasped his hands behind his back and stared at his father’s tomb. Seti, once so strong and confident, lay silent, unwilling or unable to grant him what was so desperately needed. He left the hall and trudged up the steep tunnel.
Workmen closed the tomb with the seal of Nubis, the jackal. Nubis crouched, ready to spring if any dared disturb the forbidden entrance.
That had been years ago, yet now, alone in his gilded throne room, Ramses still fought the waves of terror. He had heard nothing that day. Fear had begun its conquest with the unsaid words and his father’s elusive warning. The gods refused his entreaties and sacrifices, scorning him, telling him nothing—if they knew.