The Eleventh Brother

by Rachel S. Wilcox

  The brothers, struggling not to stare back, inclined their heads.

  “You are welcome to our home,” she said. Her welcome was quickly translated while the guests raised their eyes, gazing at their hostess—at her large, dark eyes, the splendor of her adornment, and the delicate beauty of her face. “I hope you will be comfortable here,” she told them.

  “We are very grateful for your hospitality,” Reuben replied, bowing slightly, and she smiled at the tall man with the gray hair and full beard. Then her gaze swept over the others, one by one—some taller, some broader, some not quite so tall or broad—before her eyes caught on one of the men standing closest to her, his hair not yet gray and his face not yet so weathered, and his eyes—

  His eyes—

  There, in that foreign, unfamiliar face, were her husband’s own dark eyes gazing evenly back at her, with her eldest son’s impish, intelligent smile.

  You look like my husband, she thought, and the effect was so breathtaking that, for a moment, she could neither speak nor look away. You look like my son.

  The two young boys stood between their parents. The older one looked back at the foreign tribesmen with a kind of hesitant fascination, but the younger child looked nervous and, at the first smile from one of the brothers, held up his hands for his mother. Smiling, she reached down and hefted him into her arms. He put his finger into his mouth, staring at the bearded men.

  “The vizier and his family wish you to join them for a banquet,” Amon announced, “so you can taste the hospitality of Kemet.”

  Judah looked at the vizier, then over toward Amon, then back at their host.

  “Am I to understand,” he asked, speaking carefully, “that our lord has no more suspicion of us?”

  “He is satisfied,” Amon confirmed, and Judah closed his eyes, lowering his head in a wash of relief. “Please,” he heard, “be seated,” and the vizier extended his hand toward the seating for the banquet. Gazing again around the ornate room, the brothers made their way toward the seats while the vizier crossed toward Amon, speaking in a low voice and pointing. Amon nodded and moved toward the brothers.

  “Here, please,” he ordered, approaching Reuben and gesturing to the first seat that formed the semicircle where the banquet would be held. “Here,” Amon continued, gesturing to Simeon to take his place beside Reuben, and he proceeded to seat the brothers at their places. As Judah sat down beside Levi, he was focused not on the room or the musicians or the décor but on Benjamin, as if still uncertain that there was truly no harm intended for him. But Benjamin was simply placed, last of all, at the end of the row, smiling.

  Still, Judah felt another slight shiver go scuttling over his skin. He’s put us in order, he thought. We’re sitting in our birth order.

  He looked toward Reuben, leaning forward to catch his brother’s attention. Reuben leaned forward as well, peering at his other brothers, then sat back with an equally perplexed expression. But the music was playing sweetly, and the servants were beginning to appear, bustling out with pitchers to refill the drinks, and the tension in the room was relaxing so pleasantly that Judah could not but feel that it would seem rather dour of him to be so insistent in his fears. He looked once more toward Benjamin, who seemed merry enough, watching the pageantry and receiving the gracious smiles of the servants as they offered him roast goose and stuffed figs. At last, Judah sat back.

  The vizier, whose family sat facing the foreigners, offered a seat first to his wife, then helped his sons nestle comfortably into their own chairs with arms and backs high enough to protect even the smaller one from toppling out, before sitting down himself, all the while observing the proceedings, Judah sensed, as closely as (or indeed, closer than) any of the brothers. Only once did Judah actually meet the man’s eyes for a flickering moment. But then Judah looked away, turning to Levi to comment about the gigantic leg of beef currently being borne into the room by its escort of servants.

  “Please,” the servant announced as the food was brought out, “eat.” Several of the brothers, chuckling now at their extraordinary good fortune, sat forward and began digging into the food the servants had set out on the low tables in front of them. Levi touched Judah’s arm and gestured down toward Benjamin who, looking a little embarrassed, had received a very generous helping of the feast indeed—his portion inescapably larger than any of the others. Catching his brother’s eye, Benjamin grinned. As if resigning himself to his position of favor, he lifted up a slice of beef and bit into the crisply fragrant meat. Judah looked down at his own serving of beef, a very fine serving, to be sure, but nowhere near so large as Benjamin’s.

  Levi was smirking. “Looks like the boy is the favorite even here.”

  But Judah felt another wave of the same creeping sense of unease, unable to dismiss the suspicion that some discreet strangeness remained afoot. The other brothers seemed jovial enough, of course, laughing and eating and commenting on the delectable dishes offered up. From all appearances, the danger really was past and the accusations finally resolved, all with an unexpectedly wonderful outcome—dining at the home of the vizier himself, sampling the wealth of Kemet in a time of famine. Benjamin was happily watching the musicians and making by far the least progress on the piles of bounties offered to him, despite his obvious best efforts. Servants were even offering small, perfumed cones of wax, indicating that the brothers should place the wax on their heads—the cones would melt in the heat over the course of the evening, releasing sweet fragrances. Amused and curious, several accepted.

  There’s no more danger here, Judah tried to tell himself. How long could a suspicious conscience continue to color everything he saw, seeing danger in brother and stranger alike? How long would he keep bracing himself for the catastrophe that never came?

  Benjamin is not Joseph.

  It was finally time, perhaps, to let the desert bury its own secrets and no longer think there was retribution or restitution to be made. Or maybe this was his restitution—taking Benjamin and Simeon home. He had not been able to take Joseph back to his father, but he could take Benjamin back, and Simeon with him, and food enough to sustain them all through the famine.

  Surely, now, it was enough.

  And even if he could not quite convince himself—even if he could not yet believe that the price had somehow been paid, that it was forgiveness that had set this bounty before them and that the eye of the desert was upon them no longer—there was simply nothing he could do. He couldn’t understand the series of events any more than he had when they all began.

  So he plucked up a fig from his platter and bit into the plump, sweet flesh.

  When Judah awoke the next morning, resting on a soft mat and draped in smooth linen sheets, he could not, for a moment, understand where he was. Pushing himself up, blinking in the new light, he looked around—yes, his brothers were all still there, surrounding him, their bodies rising and falling in a rippling sea of linens, and the gentle morning dawn was creeping in around the woven mats hung over the small windows of the room where they had spent the night. Benjamin was there, and Simeon was there, and they all were there, and safe—absolved of the accusations and loaded with grain for the return journey back to their father.

  Judah let out his breath, lying back down as he closed his eyes. For the first time since they had taken their initial journey into this cursed Divided Land, he could feel the stirrings of relief.

  Before long, the other brothers began to awaken, and soon the quiet of the dawn was replaced by the rustlings and laughter of preparations for their journey home. They dressed themselves once more in their heavy desert garments, shedding the briefly worn vestiges of their acceptance into the vizier’s private company. At the steward’s insistence, they bundled the handsomely made linen tunics to take with them, along with the new pair of sandals they had each been given.

  “I rather liked being one of them for a day,” Simeon said, pulling on his desert-worn sandals for the day’s travel. “I felt very handsome.”
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  “And scrubbed,” Asher grinned, rubbing his hand over his head. “I still have perfume in my hair.”

  “The camels will hardly recognize you,” Reuben chuckled.

  Judah slid his feet into his own sandals. “The vizier certainly seemed to show some favor toward you,” he told Benjamin. “He must not have thought you looked much like a spy after all.”

  Benjamin stuck out his tongue. “I’ve never eaten so much in my life.” He patted his stomach. “I feel like a fatted calf.”

  “You look like one,” Levi said, to the amused chuckles of the others. Benjamin chuckled with them.

  Reuben straightened up with a wink. “Time to head back out of civilization, brothers.”

  They were reunited with their camels on the road outside the walls of the vizier’s estate. The beasts were loaded down with tightly bound grain sacks, observing their masters with their usual dispassionate gaze. The vizier’s young assistant was waiting to bid them a final farewell, with the translator’s assistance.

  “I hope you will find everything necessary for your journey,” said Amon, inclining his head.

  “We owe both you and His Excellency our greatest thanks,” Reuben told him, pressing a hand to his chest. “We are deeply honored.”

  “The tjaty will be pleased,” Amon assured him. “Perhaps we will see you again in Kemet.”

  Then he stood watching, as the men tethered the last of their belongings onto the animals’ swaying backs. One by one, they guided the great beasts away from the villa, beginning the journey back out of Kemet and toward the Red Land, kicking up dust beneath the expansive blue sky.

  When they were gone, Amon turned and slipped back into the walled estate.

  Chapter 31

  Genesis 39:11–15

  She had awakened alone that morning, as she awakened most mornings. She lay in her bed, watching the light creep across the ceiling, listening to the scuffles and bumps of the household. It was a festival day—the festival of Min, god of the harvest and symbol of the fertility and vitality of the land and its People. Potiphar had risen early and left for the temple to take part in the festival worship with the other priests and court officials, many of whom were high government officials like himself. Later in the day, he and his wife would host a feast celebrating another year of bounteous harvests from their lands and, though no one would say it, another year of barrenness between them.

  How long, the servants would murmur, until the master took a second wife or a slave woman to perform the duty in which his wife had failed?

  And what other use for a woman, she thought darkly, could there be?

  She sat up slowly, the linen sheets sliding from around her body. She gazed toward the small window cut high in the wall, with its hopeful beams of sunlight creeping in around the woven covering, and wondered—as she had wondered in the weeks leading up to this singular day—just how she would get through it. Bringing her knees in toward her chest, she wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees, looking around the room she shared with the man she had been so eager to marry and with whom she had imagined the happiness and affection everyone else had imagined for them. Now it was a room she shared with a man who was weary of her tears, a man she hated for his perceived negligence of her happiness—and a man she just as deeply wanted to love her as she had once believed she would love him.

  But who was Potiphar, really? The child of a successful man, as she was—a son of privilege and promise, carrying a good name and the assurance of earthly comforts. They had barely known each other on their wedding day—or rather, what they had known was only as much as anyone else could see. She lowered her forehead against her knees. What had he seen? A girl who was beautiful enough, who was young and healthy, who would make a good wife and mother. But if she was neither of those things—neither a good wife nor a mother—what was left to her? It seemed hopeless to think of being her husband’s friend or confidant, if she could not fulfill her primary purpose in his life. When she had felt her growing power as a younger woman and laughed in the confidence that came of knowing she was beautiful, she had not imagined that the day would come when she would waken and find that this particular source of power, so praised and doted upon, was in fact no power at all—it was always beholden to another, an admirer, a lover, blanketing her in an illusion of security that could fall away in an instant and leave her naked and nothing.

  She slid her feet off the side of the bed, glancing down at the ground first to make sure there were no lurking desert scorpions in danger of being disturbed. Pulling her dark hair over one shoulder and running her fingers through the loose strands tangled by her night’s rest, she rose to her feet. At least the house would be quiet for the morning with her husband gone and most of the men attending festival celebrations. It was just as well—she was happy to think of spending the morning alone. Perhaps she could walk in the garden, or sit by the pool, or even come back to her own chamber and rest. After a full night’s fitful sleep, she still felt utterly weary. She had been snappish with the servants for the last few days and was certain no one would miss her if she kept to herself.

  The worst part, of course, was sensing that they understood—a pitying glance, a soft reply to an angry accusation.

  They felt sorry for her. She hated it.

  She dressed alone, not bothering to wear a wig. She walked with bare feet out of her room and across the corridor, moving toward another chamber, quiet and far away from the public part of the house. She brushed past the curtain into a small private space with notches cut into the walls for little statues of the gods, golden and gleaming, tiny miniatures representing the forces of creation. A small crumble of incense lay piled in one of the wall nooks. She struck a spark, closing her eyes, and sank down onto her knees as the sweet scent filled the space, carrying her prayer heavenward. She opened her palms, resting the backs of her hands on her knees and reaching out her fingers to the unseen presence of the gods.

  Today, perhaps, they would hear her.

  Today, perhaps, she would find mercy.

  Joseph’s footsteps echoed through the abandoned central courtyard of Potiphar’s villa. The house was quiet today in Potiphar’s absence. There was plenty to do to oversee the preparations for the feast that would be held later that night in commemoration of another successful harvest and in echo of the fertility celebrations held to acknowledge the prosperous growing season and beseech the gods for their continued bounty.

  But that morning his master’s mind had not been on the details of the festival or even the calculation of the wealth his land had brought him under Joseph’s careful stewardship. Instead, Joseph, who was usually up earlier than anyone else, had come upon Potiphar out in the garden, facing toward the newly risen sun with the sky soft and pink and the air cool in the day’s first breath. His master was wearing only a linen kilt, his head uncovered and his eyes unpainted, standing as tranquilly as if he had just risen out of the reflecting pool himself and Joseph had come upon him during the first morning of creation.

  When Potiphar saw his steward approaching, he smiled, and beckoned him closer.

  “You’ll go to the temple today?” Joseph asked.

  Potiphar nodded. “Tell me,” he said, as Joseph came to stand beside him, “does Abraham’s God have any such days?”

  Joseph looked up at the pinkening horizon. A burst of the chirping, bright-eyed song of the birds, who had also been awakened by the sun’s ascent, scattered through the air. He said quietly, “I suppose every day is his day.” He glanced back at his master. “Is there anything I can prepare for you?”

  Potiphar said nothing for a moment, still looking up at the sky. “Do you suppose,” he asked, “that your god would hear prayers in behalf of my wife?” Potiphar looked at his steward. “Every year at this time, she receives one more reminder that our gods haven’t taken much notice of her pleas for children. Perhaps your god might be willing to listen.”

  Joseph lowered his eyes.
“I’m sure he hears the pleas of anyone who speaks to him.”

  Potiphar nodded, then said softly, “She is suffering.” He paused. “I’m sure she’s spoken to you about it. She trusts you. I’m grateful she has found a friend in you.”

  Joseph said nothing.

  “Well.” Potiphar smiled again, but his smile was softer than it had been before. “Let’s go back to the house, shall we?”

  And so Joseph headed back to the house and oversaw his master’s preparations for his departure to the festival. Then he went to the kitchen and took inventory of the produce and confirmed that all the necessities were accounted for.

  Now, alone, Joseph took a deep breath, relieved in his own way for the quiet that the festival day would afford. It would be much easier to finish the final documentation and appropriation of the harvest without a full household to manage. Those who remained had their own duties to perform and wouldn’t need any bothering from him.

  And so he found himself walking alone through the villa’s empty open courtyard, listening to the singing of the birds and smelling the sweet scents of the flowers from the gardens. Pausing, he began to imagine the blossoms that could be used to decorate the interior of the courtyard for the evening’s banquet. They would bring in blue lotus blossoms, of course, as magnificent in scent as they were in appearance, with their petals bursting out like exploding stars. Should they add iris? Perhaps a scattering of iris, too . . .

  He was still standing, molding the empty courtyard in his mind, when he turned, startled out of his Edenic visions and back into the bare mud-brick reality, with the harsh daylight falling across the undecorated interior space. He feared the surprise on his face would offend the woman standing there even more than he already had.

  “My lady,” he said.

  She too seemed surprised, standing there, the two of them alone. “I was going outside,” she said at last, pointing toward the door behind him. He could see the sallowness in her skin and the shadows beneath her eyes.