13
The Terrors Begin

Moses and Aaron departed Goshen to return to the king. I arrived back at the palace in Memphis well ahead of them. I had time to go before Pharaoh and share what I had seen, and he listened with great interest as we walked through the gardens toward the training barracks. The king loved to train with his men as often as he could, and I was honored with the privilege of sparring with him on this day.

“So they are returning to me then?” he asked.

“Yes, my king.”

“And their elders are upset with them?” he asked me for the third time.

“Furious, my king. It would not surprise me if they meted out a death sentence to them upon their return to Goshen.”

Pharaoh nodded. That had been his intent all along.

“Their magic trick with the staff was the best they could do,” he said.

We reached the pit, where a ring of soldiers handed us our weapons. It was alongside a cool, green lagoon of the Nile surrounded by pillars, which were painted with the specific maneuvers of the infantry and the chariot. On one pillar were the paintings of figures engaged in hand-to-hand grappling, and it appeared as though that was the format we were to train on today.

The training master who stood next to the pillar fell to the sand and touched his forehead before Pharaoh when he was summoned.

“I see you have come across new movements,” the king said as he studied freshly painted figures on the column.

“Yes, your majesty,” the training master answered.

After stripping to only a loincloth, I took up my position in front of the king, bowed to him, and we began practicing the maneuvers under the eye of the training master. Soon our torsos were caked with sand as we threw one another around. I did not hold back; it could have been fatal for me. Thutmose was a great conqueror and only wanted the most realistic training that could be provided. He had killed many slaves simply by working on a new technique with his spear or bow that had been created.

We fought to seven draws, and it was clear to me the king was becoming frustrated that he was not mastering the maneuver quicker. He beckoned me forward for another round, and we locked legs, knee to knee, trying to throw each other into the neck hold we had been taught.

He managed to flip me onto my side, and I was about to reach up for his head when I caught sight of Moses and Aaron standing on the edge of the pit.

“Majesty,” I managed to gasp while pointing. When the king saw them, he tightened his grip on me, and I decided the best move for me at that time was to allow him to complete the throw. I put up enough resistance to make it appear to him that I had tried to maneuver out of it, but my body hit the sand in what had to be a satisfying thump for the king to hear.

He stood over me panting, his muscles glistening with sweat and dirty with sand, a grin on his face. He looked up at the Hebrews.

“You have returned to me, Moses. I was expecting you later.”

“We were brought before you as soon as we arrived, Pharaoh.”

The king reached out a hand for me and pulled me up.

“What have you come to demand this time? More food for your people?”

I could see Moses look at Aaron quickly before answering, as though to gain confidence. “The Lord our God says that you are to release the Hebrews and let us go into the desert to make sacrifices to him.”

Thutmose smiled and shook his head. He reached out for a linen towel that a slave had rushed forward to provide and wiped his face. I did the same.

“The staff was not sufficient? You return to humiliate yourselves and your god again?” He walked to the bank of the lagoon and dove in, rinsing himself.

Until this point I had mostly dismissed the trickster god of the Hebrews. He had no empire of men serving him, no monuments.

But when Pharaoh dipped into the Nile that day a second time, I had my first doubts, and the earliest sense that perhaps my world would be coming to an end. For when Pharaoh broke the surface of the Nile, as he came up for breath, a cascade of dark blood erupted in the water around him.

At first I thought there had been a crocodile that had snuck into the lagoon, somehow getting past the netting that had been strung to avoid its entering. I immediately called for the weapons masters, and we all plunged into the water desperate to reach the king.

But as we drew close, we saw the blood rush toward us as though it had been released from a spring in the earth, filling the entire lagoon. The air thickened with the stench of rotting death.

I managed to reach Pharaoh, who was standing absolutely still, watching the blood fill the lagoon all the way to the beach, then past the narrow entrance that led to the main body of the river.

Like a scarlet cloth being unfurled over a banquet table, the blood spread across the river, passing under barges, under fishermen who staggered back from pulling in their nets, all the way across to the far western bank, where the setting sun above the cliffs made it look even more sinister.

None of us could take a full breath, not only because of the stench in the air but because we were in shock.

I looked at the king, waiting for that familiar smile to break out, the expression of a hawk circling a mouse, but he could only clench his jaw and stare like the rest of us.

“Pharaoh!” Aaron thundered from the riverbank behind us. We turned to face him. “I am warning you. Do not put Yahweh to the test!”

Thutmose seemed to gather himself at this and whirled about on his priests, who were standing on the riverbank, looking every bit as confused and terrified as we were.

“What is this?” he called to them.

The magician priest Nembit knelt by the bank of the lagoon and dipped his fingers into the blood. He smelled them and examined them closely. “It is blood, great king.”

Pharaoh punched the surface of the lagoon in his anger. “I know that, you old fool!” He stumbled out of the lagoon to the bank, and I followed him. “Make it stop!”

“Great Egypt, we will consult the gods,” Nembit said, motioning the others to bow low with him and back away. As they turned to leave, I saw his eyes darting to each of them as if searching for answers.

The king raised his arms to the courtiers, who had come to watch his combat demonstration, which now seemed pitiful.

“Return to your homes,” he said, finally regaining some of his royal decorum. “I will go and sacrifice before the gods myself and restore the river.”

Everyone was so shocked by what had happened that it took them a moment to respond, but eventually they filed out of the lagoon, and it was only the king, myself, a few guards and slaves, and the two Hebrews left standing there.

The king walked up to them and appeared genuinely terrified, dripping from head to toe with blood. His kohl eyeliner was running down his face. He moved in close to Moses and stared hard into his eyes.

“You conjure tricks that shame me. I would order you tied down in the scorpion pit this very moment, but I wish to crush the name of your god in front of your people, so that their men will always be laborers and their women whores for my soldiers.”

Moses held his stare. For the first time, he spoke himself.

“Great king, the Lord will humble you before the nations of the earth, and he will defend his people. Whatever it takes.”

That night, at the temple of Nute, I watched the priests cleanse themselves in the golden baths and sacrifice three bulls to the goddess of the river. Their incantations and chants were guttural and heavy; occasionally one would stand up, sprinkle more blood across the altar, and then return to the group.

I got in a skiff and rowed across the blood river to the temple of Osiris, where those priests were sacrificing to their patron. Up and down the banks of the Nile, torchlight shone from every temple great and small, from the smallest dwarf god’s idol to the grandest corridors of Amon Ra. I wanted to see every one of them. Wanted to experience everything I could of the efforts that the king was making to thwart this foulness.

Remember, the river was one of our gods. As I rowed across it under an endlessly dark sky, the smell of putrefying flesh made me vomit over the side of the skiff until I had nothing left in my belly.

Hippopotamuses, crocodiles, pike, snakes, frogs, turtles, every living creature that swam in those waters had died and was floating on the surface. The furnace sun of the desert did the rest, speeding up the decaying process, causing intestines to bloat with gas and burst, spraying excrement and flesh across the fetid surface of the once-beautiful river.

There was no fresh water to be found in the land. Every vase, every cistern was full of rotting blood.

I had to pull hard on the oars to move the skiff through the blood. I looked at the sky as I rowed, trying to get my mind off what I was rowing through. Amon Ra would emerge on his fiery chariot in the east in a matter of hours, and if there was no relief from the gods by the end of the coming day, the young and the old would begin to die, with the healthy not long behind them.

No moon was out, only the dim stars of the late season. The Scorpion held his claws out across the heavens as he always did, passive and uncaring.

I made a sign against evil with my hand against my forehead and closed my eyes. “Great goddess,” I said quietly, “give us purity once more.”

As I finally approached the bank, my eye caught a glimpse of a small campfire not far away. Curious as to what sane man would be sleeping so near the river in its present state, I rowed my skiff in its direction.

As I drew near, I saw that it was Moses and Aaron sitting across the fire from each other. They were speaking quietly and occasionally taking drinks from two waterskins. I was amazed that their own water had not been contaminated.

I tried to hear what they were saying, but they were just out of my ears’ reach. Neither man appeared to be bothered by the smell. I detested them both, but I had to acknowledge that they were courageous, only the two of them in the middle of a land that hated them, surviving only because the king had chosen not to have them killed.

I learned from Moses many years later that, indeed, Yahweh had shielded their nostrils, and their food and water had remained pure.

The next morning I slept late since I had been out all night and I did not have a guard shift in the palace that day. I was in a deep dream as I lay on my pallet. I do not remember everything about the dream, but a creature I had never seen before was swallowing our entire Egypt in its great jaws, emptying the blood-filled Nile down its vast throat, and I was swimming against the rush of blood as hard as I could, crying out for salvation but seeing none. The stench was enough to suffocate me, and as I emerged it seemed only to intensify.

I awoke with my nostrils and throat clogged with the revolting smell of the river. The overnight sacrifices had not worked.

I slowly sat up, my throat parched. I tried to swallow, but it only caused a gag and a biting pain in the back of my throat.

I stumbled my way through the palace to where Pharaoh normally held his audiences, but he was not there. I searched for them for an hour, until finally I caught a glimpse across the gardens of a gathering of people at the riverbank.

There was a small temple on the palace grounds used for the fish sacrifices made weekly to ensure abundant catches, and it appeared as though the nobles and servants were gathered there. I approached quietly, since I had no reason to be there apart from my own curiosity.

The king was sitting on a small wood-and-ivory throne in his full regalia of face paint, robes, and the double crown. Around him, priests stood before various jars with their hands raised, uttering spells over the vases. I leaned in and asked a house servant what was happening.

“The priests have found water from the wells above the cliffs,” the servant answered quietly. “Everything below the desert in the valley is contaminated, but the wells above are still clear. They have brought water from those wells before the god-king to demonstrate that they, too, can turn the water to blood.”

I saw Moses and Aaron standing on the edge of the courtyard, watching this as well. Pharaoh sat straight up and did not move, impressing the power of the state upon all who viewed him.

With three loud clacks of their black staffs against the smooth courtyard paving stones, the same staffs that had been turned into serpents, the priests held still for a count. No one moved.

One of them moved forward and picked up the middle vase. He held it up before the king and then poured it out.

Blood.

Everyone cheered rapturously, chanting their praise to the god-king for solving the riddle of the demon Hebrews. I was elated as well and waited expectantly for them to change the blood back to water and so rid us of the rotting swamp that had become our river.

Pharaoh appeared to be waiting as well, for he raised his hand for silence from the crowd. Because this temple was just outside the palace grounds, hundreds of commoners and peasants had streamed in from the city upon hearing of what was happening.

Each of the priests apart from Nembit were still smirking to one another about their success in transfiguring the water to blood, but as the crowd quieted down, they appeared to grow uneasy.

“You may proceed with returning our beautiful Nile to its previous purity, and may the gods be blessed,” the king said.

Nembit knelt down before the king. Unadulterated hatred was on his face as he glanced at Moses. He bowed low.

“Divine Pharaoh,” he said, “we have made every offering known, but we do not know the mystery of blood back into water. The filthy Hebrew has conjured a trick we have not overcome yet.” His voice trembled, clearly aware that he could be executed on the spot.

Pharaoh glared at them from behind his white face paint. He stood, turned without a word, and walked down the backs of his slaves until he reached the corridor and disappeared into the palace.

Seven days the river was tainted. Seven evenings I lay down my head and prayed to the gods that water would flow again, and seven mornings I awoke to see that none was forthcoming. Disease started spreading from the putrefaction. We had to clear out the servants and slaves from the palace itself so as not to risk the lives of Pharaoh, his wives, or his children.

For seven nights I climbed the palace wall and looked out over Memphis. It was dark; no one stirred after the sun went down because they had no energy. Many had deserted the Nile Valley and were living above the cliffs. They had little shelter but they had water.

Some finally discovered that if they dug into the mud by the riverbank, there was water to be found there, and many thousands of holes were gouged out, and peasants stuffed their heads directly into the murky water, not caring that they were swallowing just as much silt as water.

Seven days of absolute suffering. The worst we could imagine.

But it would get worse. Far worse.

As the sun set on the seventh day, Moses raised his staff over the waters, and they returned to normal immediately. I did not see it happen, only sensed it when a fresh breeze from the east came in and cleared the air. We had become so accustomed to the stench by then that it was startling to smell sand and palm leaves instead of rotting fish and hippopotamus.

We were overjoyed. I ran down to the bank and dove in, marveling at how crisp and pure and cool it felt, taking great gulping drinks of the water until it made me so full I was sick.

I got in my skiff and saw that it, too, had even been cleaned of the blood from the river. I rowed happily late into the night, working the strength into my shoulders and back that had lain dormant during the suffering.

The stars were dazzling that night. It was as if the river’s curse had clouded the sky and dimmed them, but now the dry air had returned and they were on display. The Scorpion twinkled at me, uncaring.

“Hello, old friend!” I cried out to him. “You were not stopped by their god! You hunt the heavens still!”

Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh in the receiving hall. I watched from the shadows.

Pharaoh appeared physically well, as did the rest of his house, for he had servants to fetch him well water from the heights during the time that the river was foul. His mood appeared high, for the river flowed pure again.

“Why do you come before me now?” he demanded.

“We have told you,” Aaron answered the king. “Yahweh wants his people to be able to leave Egypt and to sacrifice in the desert.”

“I will do no such thing,” he said steadily. “The Hebrews are mine.”

Silence in the great hall. I felt a pang of dread in my soul. The expression on the face of Moses told me that something else was coming. That the river had not been the end of it; that their god might have more than one or two tricks in his powers.

Moses’s face was cast half in shadow from the torchlight, giving him a sinister appearance. He nodded at Aaron.

“This is what Yahweh says to you, O king: Let my people go to serve me in the desert. If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs upon you.”

Pharaoh tilted his head. “Did you say . . . frogs?”

Aaron did not answer.

“How strange,” the king said. He grinned. “I suppose I must be terrified at this, but I fear that I am not. Enough! Be gone from my presence.”

The priest who served as the Voice of Pharaoh seemed exasperated again at this breach of protocol in the court. Pharaoh speaking! The Divine Voice heard by common men! I knew what they were all thinking, for I was thinking it as well: Perhaps the gods were withholding their helping hand from the king because he had stooped to the level of the Hebrew filth and had actually been speaking to them.

Moses and Aaron turned their backs on the king and left.

I followed them from a distance. They walked through a crowd of Egyptian commoners, who jeered and taunted them. Occasionally a soldier would toss a stone in their direction to make them dodge it. People mocked them, though I noticed it was not as venomous as before. I think they were all starting to become afraid of the power of this unknown new god from the desert, who could turn their river into blood.

Eventually, Moses and Aaron made their way to their camp near the river. No other Hebrews were able to visit them. They were indeed a pitiful delegation to represent the vast numbers of their race.

I watched them pray a while, on their knees with their arms raised, their faces skyward. Their mutterings and groans went into the night in a mournful song of lament.