The Pharaoh's Daughter (14 page)

Had they forgotten she was General Horemheb's daughter? They would receive their monthly allowance of gold and grain and no more.

Days were endless without Sebak, and nights were torture. Already the sound of his laughter and the memory of his touch were fading. When the chief laundress attempted to wash her bed sheets, Anippe chased her out of the chamber with Sebak's dagger. One good scrubbing with natron, and her husband's musky, masculine scent would be lost forever. No. She would wrap herself in his sheets and shirts and memories until he returned to her.

A quick knock preceded the cedar door's opening. Ankhe entered without permission—again. She placed a fruit-laden tray on the low-lying table and poured two glasses of date beer—a sweet nectar that had rounded Ankhe's figure considerably. “I'm glad to see you're out of bed. Life does not end because one man goes to war. People are asking if you're with child.”

“What? Why would they ask such a thing?”

“Sebak may or may not have mentioned the possibility before he left. Regardless, wagging tongues like to paint pictures, and Avaris is a mural.”

“And what strokes are you adding with your brush, sister?”

“I tell them they'll find out soon enough.”

Anippe stomped back toward her bedchamber, shouting over her shoulder. “I suppose we'll all find out soon enough.”

“But you must stay out of that bed. If you're with child, you need the exercise. If you're not, let's go down to the Nile and enjoy these first days of inundation. The water has reached the first mark on the water gauge, deep enough to bathe.”

But Anippe didn't care about the Nile or water gauges. She had the bed in her sights, though the sun still hung low in the east, and she was ready for a nap.

A stain on the bed stopped her.

Ankhe, running to catch up, nearly knocked her over. “What? What's wrong?” She peered around Anippe's shoulder. “Well, I guess you're not with child after all.”

Anippe could only stare, thoughts conflicted, emotions raging. She wasn't pregnant—was that good or bad? It was good, definitely good. So why was she crying? She wiped a stray tear from her cheek and tried to stem the tide—to no avail.

Ankhe stood before her, hands planted on her hips. “I thought you'd be happy. All I've heard since the day after your wedding is ‘I don't want a baby. I'm terrified of birth.' ” She pointed to the blood-stained sheet. “The gods heard your prayer.”

“There's a difference between not wanting a baby and not wanting to give birth, Ankhe.” The truth was, the moment Anippe realized she might never have a baby, she wanted one all the more. “Didn't you see how excited Sebak was when he left, believing I might be carrying his heir?”

Ankhe's smile sent a chill down Anippe's spine. “Yes, and I wish I could be the one to tell him he has no heir—and he never will.”

“How can you hate him, Ankhe? He's been kind to you these past months.”

“I hate anyone who tries to take you from me, Anippe. You are mine.” Her expression grew dark. “You'll always be mine.” Without awaiting a reply, she walked toward the bed to strip the sheets.

Anippe swallowed the lump in her throat, unsure how to respond to a swift and unfamiliar fear. Something in Ankhe was changing, something gray becoming black. How could Anippe control Ankhe's dark moods—protect her but also keep her from hurting others? And how could Anippe tell Sebak he had no heir? She looked again at the blood-stained sheet, felt the ache of her empty arms.
Lady Hathor, goddess of love, how do I keep my husband's love and fill my longing for a child without bowing to Tawaret, the awful goddess of childbirth?

With arms full of dirty bed sheets, Ankhe crossed the room toward the Hathor chime to call for the estate laundress.

“Stop,” Anippe said. “We're not washing those sheets.” Confused, Ankhe dropped the sheets on the floor, ready to argue, but Anippe silenced her with a raised hand. “We'll tear the sheets into the rags I need this month, but mention it to no one. I'm staying in my chamber. Let the wagging tongues of Avaris keep wondering if their amira is with child.”

Mered had watched every station of the moon through the single window of their one-room home, trying to erase the images of dead infants floating in the Nile. Master Sebak had been gone a week, long enough for Ramessid guards to sweep through the unskilled camp, sending countless infants to their watery graves. Did they kill only males? Who would dare challenge the guards without Master Sebak here to protect them?

As if the images in his mind weren't terror enough, Mered had listened to their neighbor's three-month-old son howl incessantly through the night. Jochebed had given birth only days after King Tut's edict and had successfully hidden their son all these weeks. Thanks be to El-Shaddai, the hyenas and jackals had howled all night with him, masking his cries. But dawn's glow would send night beasts to their dens. How would Jochebed and her husband, Amram, hide their wailing child then?

“I think he's quieting down.” Puah reached for Mered's hand and drew it to her trembling lips in the predawn darkness. “Perhaps he's worn himself out and will sleep all day. I don't know how Jochebed can continue weaving baskets and keep the baby hidden. Miriam has been helpful, but with the inundation floods beginning, Miriam must help dig canals in the fields—”

The all-too-familiar screaming swelled, and Mered saw lamplight illumine a silhouette in the curtained doorway.

“Mered? Puah? Are you awake?” Jochebed's voice was a desperate whisper from the adjoining rooms.

Mered tugged Puah close. “We'd have to be dead to sleep through that.”

“Yes, Jochebed.” Puah shoved him and climbed off their mat to meet her friend at the doorway. “What do you think is troubling him?”

Mered sat up, evidently a sign to the rest of the family they could enter. Amram stumbled in, bleary-eyed. Daughter Miriam and little Aaron followed close behind him.

Content to let the women handle the baby, Mered left the sleeping mat and stirred the embers of the cook fire. “Who wants barley gruel?”

“Me. I'll help.” Miriam was five or six, the perfect little mother. She went
straight to Puah's sack of ground grain and measured out two clay cups for the pot. “Should I go to the river for fresh water?”

Mered chuckled at her eagerness. “Let's not visit the crocodiles yet. They don't go to sleep until the sun rises.”

She busied her little hands, seeming oblivious to her newest brother's piercing cries.

Mered added more dung chips to the fire, building the flame, before hanging the pot of water-soaked grain over the spit. The baby's screams intensified, raising the hairs on the back of Mered's neck. He whirled on the adults huddled behind him. “Can't anything be done for the boy?”

Poor Jochebed's face twisted, and a torrent of tears fell from her eyes. Puah set her fists at her hips and turned on Mered like a hungry jackal.

“Jochebed and Amram have kept this child hidden for three months without a peep from that baby boy. And you demand silence when he has one night—one night—of torturous pain?” Her fury moved him back three steps. “Look at him, Mered. Can't you see him pulling his little legs up? His belly hurts. Why don't
you
do something for the boy?” She turned on her heel and marched back to comfort the grieving mother.

Amram looked his direction with a sympathetic gaze that said, “
You'll learn, son.
”

“He's right. Mered's right.” Jochebed sat in their lone chair, her own tears anointing the crying child. “We can't keep him any longer. The Ramessids finished at the unskilled camp yesterday. They're sure to come here since Master Sebak lef—” She shook her head, unable to voice the truth they all knew.

Amram took the boy from his mother, his gnarled hands trembling as he cradled the child in the crook of his arm. Jochebed was Amram's second wife. He was well past the age of most fathers, but these were his first children.

Jochebed offered Amram the baby's little clay waste pot, always kept close at hand, but he refused it. Flustered, she sputtered and fussed. “Well, at least cover him with this piece of cloth, or he'll anoint you without warning.”

The boy screamed louder in the unfamiliar arms of his father. Amram, like most Hebrew men, left babies to be raised by their mothers.

“El-Shaddai has not left me alive this long that I should witness my son's
murder. Jochebed, get one of your baskets.” In his fifth decade, Amram knew his own mind, and he was one of the finest metal workers in the villa. The old man's hands were as steady on gold and silver as his heart was on El-Shaddai. When his wife stood gawking, he raised his bristly gray eyebrow. “Get a papyrus basket, wife—one with a lid.”

Confused, the others waited in silence, the baby's hoarse cries the only sound. Jochebed disappeared behind the dividing curtain into their adjoining rooms, and within moments returned with a sturdy papyrus basket—handles on each side and a lid.

She tentatively placed it on the table but stood between it and her husband. “What do you intend to do with our child, husband?”

Amram's eyes pooled with tears. Little Aaron and Miriam, seeming to sense the tension, clung to their father's legs. Amram lifted his face toward heaven and closed his eyes, sending tears streaming into his long gray beard. “When El-Shaddai saw that every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time, He said to Noah, ‘Build an ark coated with pitch, to sail on the floodwaters, and I will save you and your family with you.' ”

Mered felt a shiver skitter up his spine and heard Jochebed gasp.
Floodwaters.
The Nile began flooding the day Sebak left. Surely, Amram didn't intend to make an ark of that basket and …

Silence. Complete, throbbing silence. The babe was still for the first time in hours, eyes heavy with sleep in his father's arms. Jochebed buried her face in her hands and wept.

It had been four hundred years since God's presence had moved among the tribes of Israel, but in the single room of this mud-brick long house, El-Shaddai had spoken—by silencing a baby's cries.

Even the children recognized something special was about to happen. Miriam and Aaron stood with wide eyes, staring at their little brother.

“Will he build an ark like Noah?” Miriam whispered.

Amram tried to answer, but his cheeks quaked with barely controlled emotion. Puah muffled her sobs in Mered's chest as he looked into the children's innocent faces.

“No, Miriam,” Mered said. “This basket will be your little brother's ark. We must cover it with pitch so it will float, and the Nile will be the floodwaters that carry him to safety.”

He looked up at Amram and Jochebed, grasping at hope. “Maybe a traveling merchant will find him, or perhaps he'll sail all the way to a port on the Great Sea.” If God could stop a baby's cry, surely He could steer a pitch-coated basket.

Miriam's little brow furrowed, red lips in a pout. “Well, we'd better wait till the sun rises to put him in the river—make sure the crocodiles are sleeping.”

If the thought wasn't so terrifying, Mered might have applauded her quick wit. Crocodiles. Hippos. Sea snakes. These were only the animal dangers. What about the Nile currents? Ship traffic? And the most obvious hindrance—Ramessid lookouts stationed at estates and military fortresses along every shore.

Amram gathered Jochebed under his free arm, still holding his sleeping babe tenderly. Huddled together as a family for the last time, they talked quietly, planned, even laughed.

Mered's heart broke. He and Puah returned to their sleeping mat, sitting with their backs against the outer wall, the low light of dawn streaming through the window above them. Mered tucked his wife against his side and rested his cheek atop her head. “What will we do if our baby is a boy, my love?”

Puah remained silent for several heartbeats, but when she looked up, tears filled her eyes. “Perhaps our son, too, will float away in an ark to a faraway land and live a healthy, happy life.”

“Perhaps.” Mered pulled her close again, wishing he could believe it—praying their own child was a girl.