Chapter 6

From the first, the palace officials did their best to separate Sarai from Abram. As they first came to the green and settled lands near the river, Kay suggested that Milcah and the other women and children might want to rest in the shade while Abram went ahead to meet with Sehtepibre, Pharaoh’s most trusted steward.

“My sister is as wise as any man,” said Abram, “and I will not be without her counsel.”

Kay did not press the point. But when they reached the river, where a servant from the palace awaited them with ten ships, again there was an attempt to separate them. Abram made it clear he would leave only the herders’ own families with them. “Milcah” would stay with her brother. “Does a man leave a precious jewel among cows and sheep?”

“But floating on the river makes women ill,” said Khnumhotpe, the servant from the palace. “At least let your sister’s boat travel more slowly, so she and her maidservants do not suffer, while the oarsmen make your boat leap ahead to take you to lord Pharaoh.”

“Those who have ridden on dromedaries will not be sickened by a bit of wobbling in a boat,” said Abram. “And I wish to see the greatness of the river with my sister, whose eyes are my own, as mine are hers.”

Abram’s statement might have been true, but Sarai had never actually ridden on a dromedary—only those who crossed the great stretches of pure sand far to the south of their rangeland ever needed those towering beasts. But to these city people, utterly without experience of the desert life, anything was possible.

On the lead boat, oarsmen poled them up the edges of the river while boats and rafts floated down the middle current. Abram and Sarai sat together, watching the farms of Egypt endlessly pass by them. “It could be the Euphrates,” she said. “But here, there isn’t a cubit of land that is not farmed or dwelt on. Where will your herds graze?”

“There must be grassland beyond the farms,” said Abram.

“No, lord Abram,” said Khnumhotpe. “The farms run to the desert edge. That’s what the drought has done to us. All the grasslands are buried in sand or burned away by the sun. Where the river’s flood puts mud, we farm; where it doesn’t, there is no life at all.”

“But I’ve seen many desert people living here,” said Abram. “From their clothing, at least, they seemed like those who once lived in Canaan or on the range. Where do their herds live?”

“Those who wish to keep their animals buy fodder. Others rent some scrap of surviving rangeland from great lords or from Pharaoh himself. Most, though, came to Egypt because their herds were gone.”

“How do they live, then?” asked Sarai.

“As servants, of course.” Khnumhotpe did not seem surprised that Sarai spoke up as if she were their conversational equal.

“They give up their freedom?” asked Sarai.

“Many were captured in war,” said Khnumhotpe. “Many others, though, sell their freedom for gruel and beer. We have it, they don’t. And they have nothing to buy it with except their labor. They survive, and Egypt has more servants than it knows what to do with.” Khnumhotpe chuckled, as if this surplus of slaves were amusing.

But Sarai had seen the Canaanites and Amorites, too, and very few of them seemed to be servants. Khnumhotpe was either lying, or he was himself ignorant of the life of the desert people. Which was quite possible. Hsy, the term he used for Canaanites and Amorites, Hittites and Sumerians and Libyans interchangeably, was not uttered with any special contempt—but the word meant “vile” or “shameful.” It was clear that Egyptians regarded even the great cities of the east as nothing compared to the majesty of Egypt.

Well, what city did not think itself the best of all possible places? The difference in Egypt was that it was not a series of cities vying with each other for supremacy. That issue had been settled long ago. Egypt was a single kingdom, and all who held office in any city did so at the pleasure of Pharaoh. People did not belong to a mere city, they belonged to a great nation whose king was a god who ruled from the far reaches of the high river to the coasts of the sea. So when an Egyptian spoke of foreigners as contemptible people, it was not just empty brag. Egypt was whole, and all other nations were in pieces.

“Egypt seems to find something for every man and woman to do,” said Sarai. “I’ve seen no idle hands . . . except our own.”

Khnumhotpe laughed at that, laughed without derision. He seemed genuinely to enjoy her company. But when Sarai glanced at Abram, she saw him roll his eyes. Apparently he did not take Khnumhotpe’s jovial disposition at face value. Sarai wondered if Abram was right. After all, they were no longer in the desert. They were with royal servants now, and that was something Sarai understood, having grown up in a house that, despite its poverty and lack of power, was nonetheless royal. Was it not possible that Abram was distrustful because he was on less familiar ground?

He had held his own in encounters with her father, Sarai remembered that, and Abram often did business in cities. Still, she had been raised in a king’s house, and it was to a king’s house they were going. She liked Khnumhotpe, and Khnumhotpe seemed to like her. Why was that a matter for suspicion? If Abram wanted to act the jealous husband, he might have declared her publicly to be his wife.

She smiled at Khnumhotpe. “Then again, we are the sort of people who work by thinking and speaking. So while our hands may do little labor at this moment, yet we are not at rest.”

Again she glanced at Abram, but now he was not looking at her at all. He was gazing out over the water, toward a large brightly painted building that opened onto a great sweep of steps leading down into the river. The boats were steering toward a jetty that flanked the stairs.

“So this is the king’s house,” she said to Khnumhotpe.

“One of them.”

“Will he see us, do you think?”

“Without question,” said Khnumhotpe. “He has a keen interest in your brother. His name is not unknown here.”

That set off a silent cry of alarm in Sarai’s heart. Khnumhotpe was a man who chose his words carefully. And he had carefully avoided saying whether Pharaoh’s “interest” in Abram was kindly or threatening. Yet Khnumhotpe gave no sign of any but the cheerfulest of attitudes. Perhaps Abram’s suspicions had been wiser than Sarai’s trust.

Khnumhotpe leapt to the jetty as soon as the boat drew near enough. He held out a hand as if to help Sarai, but while she was still gathering her skirts about her for the leap from bouncing boat to solid land, Abram bounded to the jetty with such force that, had she been in midstep, she would have plunged into the water. “Abram,” she said in consternation.

“I wanted to help my sister to shore myself,” Abram explained to Khnumhotpe.

In reply, Khnumhotpe clapped Abram on the shoulder. “Oh, no need of that! Milcah will be taken to the house of Pharaoh’s wives to be given a chance to rest and refresh herself in the company of women.”

Sure enough, the boat was drawing back from the jetty; it was already impossible for her to make the leap, and Sarai could not swim. Neither could Abram, though as he stood there on the dock, she could guess that he was furiously trying to decide just how hard swimming could be, since so many children of servants here by the Nile could do it. Khnumhotpe had outmaneuvered them. Abram had understood the Egyptian well enough to know not to trust him. But Khnumhotpe had understood Abram even better, well enough to manipulate him into allowing the separation he had so adamantly refused. And Sarai—clearly she had understood nothing at all.

“No, Abram, you go with Khnumhotpe,” Sarai called to him. “Pharaoh does not want to meet your sister covered with the dirt of travel.” She was warning him not to try to fight this right now. This was the moment of greatest danger. If they were going to kill him, they would do it now, the moment Sarai was out of sight. “Think nothing of me,” she insisted, her voice now echoing from the stone steps as she shouted over the growing expanse of water. “Let your thoughts be on your own imminent meeting with Suwertu’s master.” The name of the priest who had sought to kill him was the only warning she could give him. And she was now too far away to be able to see, from his face, whether he had understood.

O God of Abram, she prayed. Forgive my selfishness in resenting the deception thou didst urge upon us, and my vanity in thinking I was wise in the ways of a royal house. I will bear whatever burden thou placest upon me, but keep my husband safe. Let him live, O God, to have the children of thy promise to him. It matters not to me that I be the mother of those children, as long as Abram is their father.

But even as she prayed the words—and surely she meant them—another voice, one that could not find words, was crying out in anguish in the deep recesses of her mind. To think of another woman as the mother of Abram’s children was unbearable. Was this the vengeance of Asherah?

Yet with the part of her mind that she could control, she outshouted that wordless wish. Better that it be Asherah avenging a broken oath and reclaiming a lost servant than to have it be Pharaoh, avenging the death of Suwertu and claiming the life of an escaped sacrifice. God, hear the words I pray, not the unworthy, selfish cry of my inmost heart.

Part III