Y osef dismissed his guards at the gate of his villa and walked alone up the winding pathway through his courtyard. He felt hollow, lifeless, totally spent by the affairs of the day. The meeting with his brothers had drained him completely and his afternoon with the young Pharaoh left him feeling like a man twice his age. His back ached between his shoulder blades; he knew his face looked pale and pinched. More than once Amenhotep had asked what troubled his most trusted friend and counselor. Yosef only smiled and said that Pharaoh would understand once he had established a family of his own.
The hot night was so quiet that Yosef thought he could hear the lapping of wavelets on the shore of the Nile outside the walls of his estate. The sun had dropped behind the western Theban cliffs, joining the dead in the Valley of the Kings. Torches burned along the pathway, pushing at the gloom, and the noise of laughter echoed from the slaves’ chambers, warming the courtyard with sounds of life.
Yosef’s heart lifted. His brothers had come and gone, expanding and emptying his heart in the space of twenty-four hours, but Shim’on remained behind, breathing the same darkness, hearing the same heartwarming sounds. What was he thinking, the one they called the Destroyer?
Yosef followed a branch of the courtyard path to the small temple of his estate. Like the temples of other Theban villas, the elegant structure had been designed to hold images of the household’s gods, but his temple stood empty, without idols or trays of burning incense. Yosef had only allowed Ani to install two torches that burned through the night in case a visitor wanted to enter the temple and pray.
Yosef knew his servants thought it odd that their devout master did not worship a visible god, for everyone knew that Egypt grew gods as abundantly as the black, fertile land grew grain. When Tuthmosis IV elevated Yosef from prison to the palace, however, that Pharaoh proclaimed that the spirit of God rested upon the man who would henceforth be known as Zaphenath-paneah. After his divine proclamation, no one in Thebes, or all of Egypt, would dare doubt the significance of the vizier’s beliefs. Those who knew him understood that he worshipped the invisible and Almighty God known in the Canaanite tongue as El Shaddai. The Egyptians had another name for this most ancient deity: Neter, the Almighty God who was One.
The torches cast a dim light in the small temple, and Yosef leaned against the doorpost and studied the small chamber. In deference to the master’s chosen god, Ani had painted the wall above the empty altar with the picture sign for Neter, an ax-head fastened to a long wooden handle by thongs of leather.
A smile ruffled Yosef’s mouth as he studied the drawing. “The mightiest man in ancient days was he who had the best weapon and could wield it with the greatest effect,” he murmured, crossing his arms. “If your power, El Shaddai, were an ax, how well did I display it today?”
The still, small voice he had heard a dozen times before did not answer, and Yosef lowered his eyes. “I do not know if they will come again. And I do not know what I shall do with Shim’on if they do not.”
Wait.
A thrill shivered through his senses. His heart recognized the Voice, more a certainty than an audible sound, and Yosef closed his eyes. God had brought him to this place; God would keep him. And obviously God had not yet finished His work.
Humming, he turned and walked toward the house.
“My husband?”
Yosef stirred on his bed, struggling to find wakefulness through the embracing folds of sleep.
“My husband, Ani is here with his morning report. Shall I send him away?”
“No,” Yosef said, forcing his eyes to open. He sat up, throwing off the linen sheet that covered him, and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. Age had not lessened his strength, but it had increased his requirement for rest and recovery. But the pressing needs of a Pharaoh, a kingdom and an estate could not wait.
“Tell Ani to come in,” he said, focusing on Asenath for the first time. She hung shyly about the doorway, a vision of loveliness even at this hour of the morning. Youth and freshness still radiated from her oval face; she had grown from an attractive girl to a beautiful woman. When she smiled at him, he held out a hand, beckoning her closer. “Why do you linger in the doorway like a child?” he said, his voice gruff with sleep. “Come and kiss me, wife.”
She flew to him like a bird, wrapping her arms about his neck and covering his face with happy kisses. “I’ve missed you, beloved,” she said, the scent of her perfume warming his senses. “You were busy from sunrise to sundown yesterday. Your sons and I sorely missed you.”
“And I have missed you,” Yosef murmured. He smiled against her mouth and drew her into his arms, returning her kiss.
“My lord and master, live forever.” Ani’s voice, brimming with suppressed humor, interrupted their embrace.
Yosef lifted his lips from Asenath’s long enough to command the steward away. “For the space of a few moments, at least,” Yosef called, nuzzling his wife’s neck. “I would like to spend some time with the lady of the house.”
The old man chuckled and moved into the hall. “As you wish, my lord.”
“A few moments?” Asenath asked, a teasing note in her voice. She buried her face against his throat. “Why not longer?”
Yosef laughed as he stroked her cheek. “Because Pharaoh will demand to see me this morning. And before I go to him I must check on the captive in our house.”
“Pharaoh does not sneeze without asking your advice first,” Asenath answered, tweaking his ear. “And the prisoner is in Tarik’s custody. He will not escape or do harm.”
She kissed him with her eyes, and he met her lips with his own, tempted by the idea of a sweet rendezvous with his beloved wife. When a nagging thought intruded, however, he pulled his face away and regarded her with gentle reproach.
“How long has it been since your red moon flowed?”
Her lips shaped into a pretty pout. “I don’t know, husband. Mandisa keeps account of these things.”
“Asenath—tell me. Don’t be coy.”
Her lower lip edged forward. “I’m certain it’s all right, beloved.”
“How many days?”
She closed her eyes in a gesture of defeat. “One week. Ten days.”
He sighed, amazed at her careless attitude. Though the physicians had warned her that another pregnancy might cost her life, Asenath seemed not to care.
He brushed a gentle kiss across her forehead. “Not today, my love, it is too dangerous. I would not risk losing you for an hour of pleasure.”
Her hands tightened around his neck. Even now, her painted eyes teased and caressed him. If he could not escape the tumultuous feelings she aroused…
“Ani!” he called over her shoulder, pulling her hands from his neck. “I am ready to hear from you.”
Asenath stood and brushed wrinkles from her gown, unspoken pain glowing in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, my love. When the time of conception is past—”
“Of course,” she said, moving away. She threw a falsely bright smile toward him as she moved through the doorway. “Your steward is here, my lord.”
“Send him in.”
Yosef lowered his feet to the floor and buried his face in his hands, grateful that Ani would demand nothing of him so early in the morning.
Asenath kept her composure until she re-entered her chamber, then she sank to her bed and covered her face as the salty tears of despair splashed her fingertips. Life was not fair! Of all the women in Thebes, she should have been the most blessed, for everything Zaphenath-paneah touched thrived and blossomed under his care. His God had blessed him with beauty, wealth, power, wisdom and the adoration of the Egyptian nation, yet wagging tongues throughout the royal court were proclaiming that the vizier’s wife could no longer bear him children.
She loved Efrayim and Menashe dearly, but their lives had been won without a struggle; they fell from her womb as easily as she had learned to love her husband. A powerful man needed many sons, and Zaphenath-paneah should have had more than a dozen. Yet she could offer only two. Three times she had conceived children and failed to bring them into the world, and now, at twenty-three, the bloom of her youth was fading. Once she had asked her husband if he would be willing to sleep with Mandisa in order to gain more sons, but he shook his head and smiled at her in tender refusal. He kept insisting he was happy, and he took pains that she should not conceive again, yet Asenath did not believe that a man in his position could be satisfied with only two sons.
Rumors from the palace did not help her anxious state of mind. Tattling tongues and jealous palace rivals had often gossiped that Asenath’s beloved cherished a secret love for Queen Tuya, Pharaoh’s royal mother. Within the last week, Asenath heard that Zaphenath-paneah had once asked Queen Tuya to marry him. And only a few months ago, a rival to the throne had accused the vizier of fathering Pharaoh Amenhotep. Her beloved was cleared of the charge and his accusers sent into exile, but a shadow of doubt lingered in Asenath’s mind. Queen Tuya was breathtakingly lovely, even for a mature woman, and she and Zaphenath-paneah shared a past of which Asenath could never be a part.…
Her husband loved her, she knew he did. But they were fifteen years apart in age, and she often suspected that he thought of her as someone to please and pet, a child to spoil. She had been a mere girl when Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV presented her to the newly proclaimed vizier as a prize, and Zaphenath-paneah had guided her to womanhood and thrilled her with the power of his unseen and Almighty God. She had been a child, easily impressed, devoutly in love with her husband’s beauty and character, overwhelmed by his integrity and kindness.
During the years of plenty she had loved him with the ardent hero-worship of an adolescent. Now that she had reached maturity she yearned to love him as an equal, a partner. But what could she do to foster such love? He did not need her to manage the estate. Ani ably handled the house, the fields and the government of the vizier’s villa. The steward made certain that Efrayim and Menashe received instruction from the most capable tutors in the kingdom. Tarik controlled the guards and the force of men necessary to safeguard the vizier’s family. Mandisa saw to every personal need Asenath or her sons might have ever anticipated.
If she were to become more than her husband’s child-bride, she would have to prove herself worthy of him. She would have to provide something no one else could: sons.
She wiped her tears from her eyes, gathering her courage. Until now she had been willing to wait and hope that her husband’s desire for more children would override his insistence that she was not strong enough to endure another pregnancy. But her patient waiting had come to an end. She had stolen a look at his ten brothers; she had inwardly trembled after seeing his reaction to their reunion. Though he had tried to hide his feelings, his meeting with them had left him sorely shaken. His eyes had glinted with hope and fear and something else…a sense of completeness, an overriding joy at being reunited with his family.
She herself had been overwhelmed by the realization that a single man could have twelve powerful sons, any one of whom would stand out in a crowd. And her husband, the brightest of them all, had only two.
She clenched her jaw to kill the sob in her throat. She would have to do something. If Zaphenath-paneah would not sleep with her handmaid or take another wife, Asenath would bear him sons herself. And since her husband’s invisible God had been unable to give life to the children within her womb, she would return to the gods of her childhood.
Her father served as a high priest at On, known more familiarly as Heliopolis. Tomorrow she would arrange for a caravan; she would go home and consult her father about her situation. And while she sojourned at Heliopolis, the primeval birthplace of the earth, she would beg her father’s gods for another son.
Zaphenath-paneah would not like the idea of her journeying so far to worship another god…but what her husband did not know could not disturb him.