Chapter Twenty-One

Kissa

From the courtyard I glanced up and saw Shelamzion’s face at her window. So she had heard the news. Another son for John Hyrcanus.

I would not go upstairs to tell her, for I had seen Josu Attis enter the house. Shelamzion was studying, which would distract her from her preoccupation with betrothals and marriages. Later, if she felt agreeable, she might share what she had learned or let me read one of her scrolls.

I stopped in the courtyard and looked around, searching for some task I could perform while I waited for the tutor to leave. The master did not like to see idle slaves, and neither did his foreman. I could always fill water jars and leave them by the back door. Or I could fetch a few honey cakes from the kitchen and set them on Shelamzion’s bedside table. She always said that reading worked up an appetite.

I walked toward the kitchen but slowed my step when the front gates opened and a group of men entered, led by the master’s foreman. The four men behind him were bound together with chains and rope. They had the look of Egyptians. I watched, clenching my hand until my nails bit into my palm.

Dropping into a well of memory, I saw myself in a similar line of slaves, hungry, stumbling forward, staring numbly at my surroundings. Until the day I was tied to another girl and led away, Egypt had been my world, my home, yet now it seemed nothing more than a collection of hazy images that ebbed and flowed like the Nile.

My gaze ran over the four new slaves. The first three were adults, strong and in the prime of life, while the fourth man was bent and had grizzled short hair. I squinted to bring him into better focus—the man was old. Had he been sold into slavery as an old man, or had he spent his life in service to someone else? If the latter, he must have done something to greatly offend his master.

My attention shifted to his skeletal shoulders and arms, then . . . his chest. A single eye stared back at me, an elongated eye with a narrow brow and a black pupil. The all-seeing eye of Horus.

I breathed deep and felt a jolt of memory, an image from my past life. My father had worn the eye of Horus on his chest.

I ran toward the new slaves, my heart racing as I approached the older man. I peered into his face and struggled to speak, but I could barely remember any of the words I had used as a child. “You—” I stammered, pointing at him. “Where from?” My gestures and baby talk elicited no response. “Me,” I said, frantically tapping my own chest. “Kissa. I am Kissa.”

Again, no response. The man only glanced at me, then lowered his gaze and continued trudging behind the others.

Engulfed by a wave of weariness and despair, I stopped walking and let them go. I was behaving like a crazy person. What were the odds that an enslaved father would end up in the same house as his daughter? The eye of Horus was a common image in Egypt; thousands of men tattooed it on their chests. That man could not be my father. The slave was far too old, and surely my name would have elicited some spark of recognition if I had once been his daughter . . .

I took a deep breath and felt a dozen emotions collide, chief among them jealousy of my mistress. Her father was dead, but she knew what had happened to him and she knew he had loved her. He had not sold her into slavery and disappeared, leaving her to wonder about him for the rest of her life.

I wandered to a shaded corner behind the house, leaned against a stone wall, and went thoroughly to pieces.

After washing my face, I adopted the blank expression of a slave and went into the house. The murmur of voices from upstairs told me that Shelamzion was still studying with her tutor, so I cast about for some work to do.

I knew I had been wrong to be jealous of Shelamzion, for despite the differences in our station, we had much in common. We were both fatherless girls, both helpless to control our situations, and both indebted to the high priest. Now that we were approaching maturity, the five-year age difference mattered less with every passing day.

I thought I would see if I could serve my mistress by serving her mother. I found Sipporah sitting on the floor in her bedchamber, surrounded by mounds of fine linen. She was carefully pulling threads from an edge of raw fabric. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but she looked like she needed help.

I entered the room and bowed. “Can I be of assistance, mistress?”

She glanced at me, then shook her head. “Ketura needs a chiton,” she said. “John Hyrcanus is hosting important people at a banquet, and my daughter needs a new gown.”

“You mean Shelamzion,” I said, folding my hands. “I am sure she would appreciate a—”

“Not her,” Sipporah snapped, glaring at me. “Shelamzion has more than enough, while Ketura gets nothing! And she is the one who deserves more.”

I should have quietly backed out of the room. I should have left the woman to her solitary undertaking and said nothing. But for so many years I had watched the woman belittle, ignore, and demean my young mistress, and in that moment I forgot my station.

“What is wrong with you?” I said, hissing the words through clenched teeth. “Why can’t you see the value of the daughter who lives upstairs? She is a good girl, a clever girl, and the high priest adores her! More than that, he respects her, or are you so blind you cannot see it?”

Outside the house, a horse whickered, a child shouted, and water splashed in the fountain. Those sounds rushed to fill the astonished silence as Sipporah lowered the fabric and gaped at me like a woman who had just been knocked over by a charging ram.

I closed my eyes and prayed—to any god who would hear me—that she would not have me beaten.

“What did you say?” Her voice had gone soft with disbelief.

I adjusted my tone to sound more conciliatory. “Shelamzion is a good girl, a daughter you should be proud of. Yet you seem to ignore her at every opportunity.”

The woman’s hands began to tremble, and her eyes went damp with pain. “Shelamzion,” she whispered, not looking at me, “was a mistake.”

I stepped closer to better hear her. “What did you say?”

Sipporah’s expression changed, memory making her eyes hard and her mouth tight. “I will tell you,” she said firmly, “and then you will understand.”