Dreamers (37 page)

rounded them. When he had dreamed of her two years before,

the vision left him feeling frustrated and helpless. Why had

God warned him of Tuya’s peril when Yosef could do nothing

for her but pray?

In that question he found his answer. And as he prayed, his

Angela Hunt

285

passion for her faded to a warm memory, replaced by a strong

concern for her well-being.

He sighed and closed his eyes, surrendering to the exhaus-

tion of a long day’s work. He had nearly willed himself to

sleep when noises from above brought him back to reality.

“Paneah! Rise at once!”

Yosef grimaced when he recognized Khamat’s nasal

whine. He was not eager to clean up after another drunken

soldier who couldn’t hold his beer.

He didn’t open his eyes. “Can’t it wait?” he called.

“Paneah! Pharaoh calls for you!”

That statement brought Yosef bolt upright. He lifted his

gaze to the rim of the pit where Khamat stood with a torch.

The jailer nudged the rope with his sandal. “Come up, my

hairy one, and ready yourself for a bath and a shave. You look

more like a monkey than a man, and if you wish to impress

the royal eye, you’d best hurry.”

“Pharaoh wishes to see me?” Yosef stood and grasped the

rope, then looked up at Khamat again. “This is not a jest?”

Khamat glanced over his shoulder, then squatted and

gestured for Yosef to hurry. “Master Potiphar waits in my

lodge at this moment to escort you to the palace. So hurry,

Paneah, before I land in the pit with you!”

Yosef braced his feet against the mud walls and began to

climb.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tuthmosis paced for over an hour in Tuya’s chamber, and

nothing she could say or do would calm him. “Please, my

husband,” she said finally, gesturing to the child who slept

with his head in her lap. “You will wake Yosef with that loud

stomping. Sit, calm yourself and have another cup of wine.

Bomani will return as soon as possible.”

“I must know the meaning of the dream before I sleep,”

Pharaoh said, clenching his hands behind his back. “I cannot

rest, Tuya, if the vision comes to me again. The dream’s im-

plications grew more frightening as priest after priest failed

to explain it. When I think of it my blood roars in my ears like

the howling of the Sphinx, and I cannot be calm.”

Tuya leaned back in her chair. With every step, her husband’s

jaw became firmer, his muscles tighter, his heart more eager

for a solution to the puzzle. He hungered for an answer, and if

Yosef failed to provide it, Pharaoh would not be happy. With

every moment that passed, the king became more certain of the

slave’s ability to provide an answer to his dilemma.

Silently, Tuya begged Yosef’s unseen god to provide the

interpretation.

Angela Hunt

287

Finally she heard the steady sound of approaching foot-

steps, then someone rapped on the door. Pharaoh stopped

pacing as his eyes lit with expectation. Bomani pushed the

door open without a word.

With the hesitancy of one whose eyes have been burned by

the sun, Tuya turned toward the doorway. The guards’ faces,

even Potiphar’s, blurred into irrelevance as Yosef stepped into

the room, his wrists and ankles bound in shackles.

A thunderbolt jagged through her. Yosef had been attrac-

tive when she last saw him, but the man who stood before her

now looked like a god.

The boy she had known as Yosef had vanished, replaced

by a stranger in the prime of manhood. In the golden torch-

light of her chamber, the prisoner’s skin glowed over tightly

defined muscles. He stood tall and impressive beside those

who imagined themselves his guards, and rough black hair fell

past his shoulders in a wild tangle. His face, cleanly shaved

and sculpted with angular lines, shone with an aloof strength.

Tuya steeled herself as she gazed into his eyes. The dark

orbs that had always made her heart beat faster now blazed

brighter than the light from the torches on her walls.

She hid a thick swallow in her throat and turned away,

wishing that Pharaoh had chosen to hold this interview in

Queen Mutemwiya’s chamber instead of this one. Only

sorrow could come from this encounter. If Yosef failed

Pharaoh, he would surely die, and her heart would never be

able to erase the memory of him standing in her room. If he

succeeded in this test, he would be rewarded. She would have

to smile at him, offer her congratulations and pretend that her

heart did not knock against her ribs with every breath.

Pharaoh did not even glance in her direction. He gazed in

delight on his wild-haired visitor, and for a moment Tuya

thought he would prostrate himself before the slave, so wide

288

Dreamers

were the eyes he focused on the Hebrew. “Thanks be to Horus,

you have arrived!”

Carefully maneuvering around the length of chain that

bound his ankles, Yosef bowed and pressed his forehead to the

floor. “May the king live forever,” he said, his rich voice reso-

nating throughout the room. “How may I serve you?”

Tuthmosis heard the voice through a daze of wonder.

Surely the gods had fashioned and created this man! In all the

temples of Egypt, there was not a priest like this, with tangled

hair, a broad chest and skin as golden as ripe wheat! The

priests who served the gods of Egypt were bald, flour-faced

creatures who spoke in hoarse rasps and bedecked themselves

with gold while proclaiming their poverty of spirit. Those

weak-minded fools had been helpless before the complexity

of his dream, but surely this man could unravel the enigma!

“Rise.” Tuthmosis jerked his hand in Potiphar’s direction.

“Help him up, and remove those bonds.” Stiffly, the captain

of the guard knelt at the prisoner’s feet and unfastened the

shackles around the man’s ankles.

Tuthmosis lifted his eyes to those of the stranger. “Your

name is—?” he asked, his brows slanting the question.

The slave nodded in simple dignity. “I am called Paneah.”

“‘He lives,’” Tuthmosis interpreted. A fitting name for this

one, and a good omen. But a king could not declare victory

prematurely.

“Paneah—” he turned toward the chair at Tuya’s side

“—last night my sleep was broken by disturbing dreams. No

one here can interpret them, but I have heard that you can

explain any dream you are told.” The prisoner’s gaze remained

fixed on him, and Tuthmosis hoped his excitement did not

burn as bright in his eyes as it did in his heart.

“It is not in me to interpret dreams, mighty Pharaoh,”

Angela Hunt

289

Paneah said, inclining his head. “God will give Pharaoh a fa-

vorable answer.”

Tuthmosis perched on the edge of his chair. After studying

the prisoner another moment, he rested his chin on two fingers

and recounted his nightmare: “My dream was this—I stood

on the bank of the Nile, and behold, seven cows, fat and sleek,

came up out of the water and grazed in the marsh grass. And

then seven other cows came up after them, poor and ugly and

gaunt, such as I have never seen for ugliness in all the land of

Egypt. And the lean and ugly cows ate up the first seven fat

cows. And yet when they had devoured them, I could not tell

that they had eaten, for they were as ugly and gaunt as before.”

A shudder shook him at the memory, and he paused to look

away. “Then I awoke,” he whispered, his eyes meeting Tuya’s.

“I remembered nothing but my fear, and my wife bid me

sleep again. But I dreamed again, and saw seven ears of corn,

full and good, come up on a single stalk. But then seven other

ears, withered, thin and scorched by the east wind, sprouted

up after them. And the thin ears swallowed the seven good

ears. And I awoke, and remembered all, and told these things

to the magicians, but no one could explain these things to me.”

Every man in the room held his breath while Tuthmosis

looked at the prisoner. Potiphar, the guards and even the

servants leaned forward in anticipation of the slave’s answer.

What would it be?

Paneah bowed his head as if searching inside himself, then

he lifted his chin and stared at Pharaoh with eyes that gave

nothing away. “Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same,” he

said. “God has told Pharaoh what he is about to do.”

Tuthmosis shook his head. “But which god speaks to me?”

“El Shaddai, the Almighty,” Paneah answered, and the

name rang a distant bell in Tuthmosis’s memory. Tuya had

spoken of this invisible god.

290

Dreamers

“The seven good cows are seven years,” Paneah explained.

“And the seven good ears are seven years. The dreams are one

and the same. And the seven lean and ugly cows that came up

after the others are seven years, and the seven thin ears

scorched by the east wind are seven years of famine.”

“Famine?” The fist of fear tightened in Tuthmosis’s belly.

If the people did not eat, the Divine Son must feed the earth…

“God has shown you what you must do,” Paneah repeated.

“Seven years of great abundance are coming in all the land of

Egypt. After seven years famine will come, famine so severe

that the abundance will be forgotten, and scarcity will ravage

the land. Now as for the repeating of the dream to Pharaoh

twice, it means the matter is determined by God, and he will

soon bring it to pass.”

“Famine,” Tuthmosis repeated, his mind reeling. “Of what

use are seven good years if famine will destroy us in the seven

bad years that follow?”

“God is merciful,” Paneah said. “Let Pharaoh look for a

man discerning and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.

Let Pharaoh take action to appoint overseers in charge of the

land, and let them exact a fifth of Egypt’s produce in the

seven years of abundance. Then let them store up the grain

for food in the cities under Pharaoh’s authority, and let them

guard it. And let the food become a reserve for the seven

years of famine, so the land of Egypt may not perish during

the time of hunger.”

Tuthmosis leaned on the arm of his chair. This Paneah had

no ulterior motive, for he had not asked for an audience with

the king. He had no contact with other nations who might wish

to rape Egypt and rob it of its produce, for he had been a

prisoner and cut off from the world. He had no reason to lie.

“El Shaddai revealed this to you?” Tuthmosis asked.

Paneah bowed. “He is the Almighty One, the god who

Angela Hunt

291

knows all things, the unseen god who cannot be represented

by the work of men’s hands.”

“I will think on these things,” Tuthmosis said, nodding.

“You, Paneah, will sleep in the palace tonight as my guest.

See to his comfort, Potiphar. You may all leave me now.”

The knot of servants and guards at the door bowed and

slipped from the room, taking Paneah with them. When they

had gone, Tuthmosis turned to his silent wife and gestured to

the space that still vibrated with the residue of the man’s

powerful presence. “Do you believe in him?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes watering as she stared across

the empty room. “I do.”

Tuthmosis left soon after Yosef had been led away. After

placing her son in his bed, Tuya paced in her chamber. How

could she sleep knowing that her old love breathed under the

same roof? In Potiphar’s house she could not sleep until she

had gathered a good-night kiss from him, but those kisses

belonged to another lifetime. Surely she was foolish to think

of them now.

How strange that Yosef’s appearance could put her hus-

band’s mind at ease and leave hers in turmoil. Tonight Tuthmo-

sis would sleep like a child, his worries wiped away by Yosef’s

assurance, but she would watch and wait and pray—for what?

There were so many things she wanted to tell him. She

wanted to confess her anger at the news that he had been

arrested for attacking Sagira, and her falseness in believing

him guilty. She wanted to explain the child in her arms, to

define her love for the young man who was her king and her

husband. She wanted to tell him she had prayed for his deliv-

erance from death, and she had recognized El Shaddai’s work

in preserving Yosef in prison.

His eyes had not once caught hers during the interview with

292

Dreamers

Pharaoh. There had been a time when she and Yosef could

read each other’s thoughts—if she looked into his eyes now,

would she understand all that had shaped him in the eight

years since they parted? Would he understand her precarious

position in the palace? Would he know she still dreamed of

meeting him in Potiphar’s garden?

Sighing in frustration, she paced the length of her chamber

until a warm current of air brought the promise of dawn

through the window.

Yosef found it hard to believe he was not dreaming when he