People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) (7 page)

16.

They returned to Lake Van for salt and more malachite, and each of the sons of Noah built a furnace and smelted copper. Copper was softer than bronze and didn’t hold an edge as long, so Ham quizzed Noah on the black nuggets he’d talked about before.

“
Tinstones,” Noah called them. “You often find them wherever specks of gold are washed into streams.”

Ham and Kush searched the streams feeding Lake Van, and they indeed found heavy dark nuggets of tin as well as specks of gold
. Ham took both and kept them in a special box. The tinstones he planned to mix one to nine with copper in order to make the alloy bronze. For the moment, he smelted copper and cast it into hoes, axes and daggers with bone handles.

“
Not as good as our Antediluvian bronze,” Ham told his boys, testing a sharpened dagger. “But at least we won’t be reduced to just using stone tools.”

During the interim of finding copper ore and tinstone, his clan had grown again, the youngest a newly born girl named Pandora
. The birth of the girl had set Rahab to worrying again about their oldest.

“
How soon until Kush is married?” Rahab asked as they strolled under the stars. A stand of trees towered nearby, while the family tent was hidden behind rolling terrain.

In the moonlight, Rahab resembled the youthful girl she’d been while nursing him back to health after his battle with Ymir.
Smiling, Ham took her in his arms.

“
Ruth says Deborah talks about Kush, how strong he is and how safe she would feel with the best fighter in the world. But then Deborah shows off a copper bracelet Gomer forged for her.”

“
Gomer never forged it,” Ham said. “I saw it the other day. Japheth must have made it and told Gomer to say he did it.”

“
I’m sure Gomer at least helped.”

Ham snorted
. “Japheth is trying to buy Deborah’s favor for his son. He can’t stand the thought of my boy beating his, just like I beat him in his room on the Ark long ago.”

“
Ham. This isn’t a competition between you and Japheth. This is about Kush’s future.”

Ham brushed hair out of
his wife’s eyes, deciding to worry about the coming marriage later. Why spoil a good night? He kissed his wife.

She tried to add another thought about Kush and Deborah, so he kissed her again, and then again, until finally she returned his ardor
. He led her to the stand of trees where he had secreted a blanket earlier. She looked so lovely in the moonlight, and he never had enough privacy in the tent.

“
Oh, Ham,” she said, as he laid her down.

He grinned, and once more
, he knew his wife.

In the morning
, he called Kush, and with the special box under his arm, father and son went to the Hamite furnace. Ham put the laboriously gathered gold specks and lumps into a crucible, melting the gold and pouring into a mold. It shone later, a gold ring and two golden earrings.

“
Gomer was given a good idea,” Ham said, “but like most things Japheth conceives, it wasn’t fully thought out.”

Kush furrowed his heavy brow, his thick fingers twitching, as if he longed to grab the gold ring and the earrings and dash off with them to Deborah.

“Are you listening to me?” Ham said.

Kush nodded.

Ham laid a black cloth over his open palm and then put the golden ring and the earrings on it. “Do you see how they shine?”

“
They’re like stolen rays of sunlight,” Kush said in a husky voice.

Ham arched his eyebrows at the poetic thought
. “Er… yes, that’s right. Notice, too, how the black cloth heightens their color, making them seem even better than they are. In such a way, you must whet a woman’s appetite.”

Kush regarded his father.

“What if you rushed off and gave these to Deborah?” Ham asked.

“
She’d throw her arms around me.”

“
Then what?”

Kush shifted his feet, shrugged.

“Exactly,” Ham said. “No guarantees. She might even marry Gomer later, and then the ring and the earrings would belong to his family.”

The idea cause
d Kush’s eyes to smolder.

“
Not a pretty thought, eh?”

Kush shook his head.

Ham laid the corners of the black cloth over the ring and earrings, before folding the cloth and putting it in his carrying pouch.

Kush looked into his father
’s face. “You’re not giving them to me so I can trump Gomer’s copper bracelet?”

Putting a hand on his son
’s beefy shoulder, Ham said, “You’re young, impetuous like I was at your age. While speaking with her, yearning for those arms around your neck and no doubt lusting for showering kisses, you’d most likely give her these things right away.”

Kush
’s head swayed back, and he wondered how his father had divined his intentions.

Ham laughed, patting
his shoulder. “I go to bargain with Shem, and incidentally to show these to Deborah. I’ll tell her this is a marriage ring and the earrings a wedding present. Let her yearn for these, my son. Let her lie at night and ache to wear such a fine ring and show off these earrings. Soon, her desires will be inflamed, especially such a plotter like her.”

“
Plotter?” Kush asked. “You’re insulting my future wife?”

“
A conniver then, one full of guile. In time, I think you’ll appreciate that in her as she helps you match wits against your cousins, even if now it’s a maddening thing. My point is this, though, in relation to the ring and earrings: Wanting is often more powerful than having.”

Kush nodded slowly
. Just as slowly, a smile crept upon his face. “That’s clever.”

“
Hmm. We’re not Japhethites, mind you. It’s simple common sense.” Ham clapped Kush on the shoulder. “Now, to your chores, my boy. I have to go and clean up if I’m to head to Shem’s today.”

17.

Deborah chose two weeks later. Her parents agreed. Thus, a wedding feast was planned for the following week. “But it isn’t over yet,” Ham told Rahab. “Japheth and Europa won’t let it rest. That’s my prediction.”

“
You’ve become obsessed with this, my husband.”

“
Have I?” Ham asked. “I suppose next you’ll tell me that I’m the one who went to Gomer and told him to hide clubs along the trail.”

“
Oh, you’re impossible. Just don’t go overboard with the feast. A modest outlay seems wisest this time around.”

“
What do you mean
this time
? This is the first wedding in the New World, and for our firstborn. Rahab, we must celebrate.”

Rahab rocked Pandora in her arms while feeding her.

“Noah will no doubt insist that he preside,” Ham said. Then he went back to pacing, deciding which sheep to butcher and how much of their stores to use up for the occasion.

He made the younger boys rake the yard and paint whitewash over the new stone fence, and with Menes
, he put up poles and stretched hide awnings over them. It could rain that day, but nothing must to spoil it.

He found Kush in the fields and gave him fatherly advice on treating a young wife
. “Remember that she’s weaker than you.” He took Kush’s hoe and thumped the stone blade into the dirt beside some lettuce. He hit harder each time, swinging and smashing weeds until the hoe broke. He straightened and pitched the broken tool out of the field.

“
What did you do that for?” Kush asked.

“
Do you care that I broke your hoe?” Ham asked.

The lad shrugged
. “I’ll get another one.”

“
Exactly,” Ham said. “A hoe is rough and ordinary. But this.” He pulled a woolen cloth from his carrying pouch and unfolded it to reveal an ivory figurine of Rahab that he had long ago carved in the Old World. “What would happen if someone broke this?”

“
You spanked me once as a child simply for touching it.”

“
This is priceless,” Ham said, “one of a kind.”

“
It’s a treasure,” admitted Kush.

“
Which is why I treat is so delicately.” Ham wrapped the wool around it and put it back in his pouch. “That’s how you treat a wife, my son. She’s one of a kind, priceless, your greatest treasure. Don’t use her like I used this hoe, but as I treat my figurine of your mother.”

Kush nodded.

After passing on a few more tidbits, Ham took his leave to inspect the flock and instruct Menes how to care for those beasts chosen for next week’s feast.

The days seemed to take forever, and finally Rahab drew him aside and begged him to relax, to let the children do their chores without hovering over them
. “I thought women cared more for weddings than men did,” she said.

Ham scowled and told her they do
. After that, he refrained from the times he wanted to tell Kush or Menes or Io how to do this or that. The frustration of keeping silent, however, became too much. So he took his bow and hounds, and he went hunting. He tracked a boar that had been tearing up his field, finding the beast half a day later as he cornered the huge pig.

It grunted as he hissed the first arrow into it
. Despite any fear of man, it charged. The hounds harried the beast as he kept firing arrows, and at the last moment, he leapt aside. By the barest fraction, he saved his leg from razor-sharp tusks. He panted, congratulating himself on his luck. Then he tracked the beast by its bloody marks and slew the boar a league later. He grinned. Here would be a perfect dish for the feast. So he cut branches, made a travois and harnessed the hounds to it, dragging the huge boar home.

The tusks he broke off, deciding to carve figurines of Kush and Deborah, as mementos of this glorious occasion.

The wedding day finally arrived. Noah and Gaea came first, dressed in splendid white linen garments. Then Shem, Ruth and their clan arrived. Ham shook hands all around, while his daughters filled cups and passed through the yard with platters of honey-filled pastries. Last, as he’d known it would be, Japheth and Europa arrived with a troop of surely boys but demure girls. Ham admitted to Rahab that the girls behaved very well, considering.

Ham spread mats, roasted the huge boar over an open pit and told them the hunting tale, even showing them the ripped breeches the tusks had torn.

Noah presided over the actual wedding, gave a solemn lecture on peace and watched approvingly as Kush produced the golden ring and slid it onto Deborah’s finger.

“
You may kiss the bride,” Noah intoned.

Kush did, to cheers and clapping.

Gomer stared at the ground throughout the proceedings, Japheth nudging him from time to time and whispering in his ear.

Soon
, everyone sat down to eat and Ham showered them with great hunks of pork, heaping helpings of peas and lentils and onions and overflowing cups of honey-sweetened water. He had Io play a harp brought over from the Old World, and then he rose to give the first toast.

He lifted his cup.

“Too bad it isn’t wine, eh brother?” Japheth shouted from his mat.

Silence fell over the crowd
. Europa poked her husband and shook her head.

Ham paled, scowled and then cleared his throat
. He tried to smile but failed. “To a glorious pair, Kush and Deborah, the first married couple of the New World. May your children grow to be strong and valiant, champions in arms but lovers of peace. May you survive every blow of adversity and every treacherous plot that others hatch against you.”

Japheth leaped to his feet
. “Treacherous plots, is it?” He dashed his cup to the ground. “I won’t stand for such slurs.”

“
Slurs!” shouted Ham. “Ha! What else can you call—”

“
Ham!” Rahab shouted, jumping beside him and tugging his arm.

He looked at her
, then at the crowd of silent spectators.

She hissed in his ear,
“It is Kush’s wedding, and these are our guests.”

Ham yearned to throw his cup at Japheth and charge him
. But he controlled his passion and nodded at Rahab. Then, he lifted his cup and said, “Who will drink this toast with me?”

Japheth shoved his wife
’s arm aside. “First take back your insult, brother.”

Ham studied his older brother for several seconds, and he noticed his father rising to his feet
. “I will not quarrel with you Japheth, not here at my son’s wedding. This is a happy occasion, and my toast is directed at them, not at you. Now, who will toast with me?”

“
He insulted us!” Japheth shouted.

“
You insult me at my wedding!” Kush shouted.

“
You can’t speak to my father like that,” Gomer said, leaping to his feet.

“
Silence!” The others looked at Noah. “This is monstrous. This is a wedding. Ham, my son, please, pick another toast, and you, Japheth, I demand that you act civilly.”

“
First he must apologize for ruining the wedding,” Ham said.

“
Bah,” Japheth said. “It’s always you who starts these things and always I who have to fix them. Either you take back your slur, or I’m leaving.”

“
I’ll not be bullied into taking anything back,” Ham growled.

Japheth paled, as if he seemed to realize what he
’d just said. He scanned the watching throng. With grave dignity, he lifted his chin, threw his cloak over his shoulder and waited a half-moment more. Then, he stalked from the wedding. Gomer looked like he would follow, but Europa spoke stern, quiet words in his ear, and he slumped back to his mat.

Ham watched his brother stride away
. He felt shame and triumph. Perhaps he should have taken back the last part of his toast. But to be backed down in front of everyone, by the brother who had slaughtered orns and lost the horses, perhaps on purpose… No! That had been asking too much.

“
I’ll ask once more,” Ham said. “Who toasts my son and my new daughter-in-law?”

Cups rose, people toasted, but the wedding had lost its savor
. And several of those present secretly vowed never to forget what had happened.