by Angela Hunt
She threw herself on the couch and sobbed, too broken for words.
For a week she spent her days debating Yosef’s words and her nights praying by the small stone altar in her bedchamber. She had trusted the unseen god to aid Yosef and Taharka. She had seen his hand of blessing on both Potiphar’s and Pharaoh’s houses. But she had never asked El Shaddai to help her.
It was one thing to support a god with offerings and petitions, another to place one’s son in his hands. She had surrendered Yosef to Pharaoh, she had given her claim on his heart to Asenath, and all she had left was her son. And yet the vizier’s god would have her place even her son in the hands of the woman who might be her enemy.
She paced until she was blind with fatigue, then fell onto her bed and slept. In slumber she drifted through clouds and temples and over mountaintops until she stood on a place of stone. A pile of timber had been gathered there, and a dagger lay in her hand. On the wood, curled up like a puppy, Yosef slept.
The hard fist of fear clutched at her stomach as sharp stones cut her bare feet. She knew where she was—Avraham’s altar. But she could not offer what God asked of her.
A stentorian voice rumbled from a mass of clouds and echoed around the mountain:
,!I called for a famine on the land,
I broke the whole staff of bread.
I sent a man before Yisrael,
Yosef, who was sold as a slave.
They afflicted his feet with fetters,
He himself was laid in irons;
Until the time his word came to pass,
The word of the Lord refined him.
The king sent and released him,
The rulers of peoples, and set him free.
He made him lord of his house,
And ruler over all his possessions,
To imprison his princes at will,
That he might teach his elders wisdom.
Odd wind-borne sounds came to her, then the voice spoke again:
,!Tremble, and do not sin;
Meditate in your heart and be still.
Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And trust in the Lord.
Tuya stepped forward, clutching the dagger in her hand, and the form on the altar shifted. “I will trust Yosef to you,” she cried, her voice mingling with the wind and the crack of the weathered wood on the altar. “I have no other choice.” She lifted the blade and felt her heart break, then thrust it down into the blanket that had covered her son.
She felt no resistance. She pressed her hands to the scrap of wool and discovered that Yosef had vanished. Had he been spared…or carried to the other world?
Tuya spread her hands on the empty blanket and wept.
Tuya slipped into her best dress and wig, adorned herself in Pharaoh’s favorite jewelry, and set out for the throne room. Tuthmosis had not come to see her in days. It would be difficult to offer her suggestion before a formal audience, and perhaps dangerous when she had no way to gauge the royal temperament. If the king was in a bad mood…
But El Shaddai would know these things, and her son’s fate rested in his hands.
She found Pharaoh sitting on his throne, an assortment of maps and scrolls spread before him. Queen Mutemwiya sat beside him, a bored expression on her face. Beside her, the captain of the king’s guard studied the open maps with a critical eye. Several military generals stood before Tuthmosis; perhaps they were planning a military expedition.
Tuya squared her shoulders as she approached the throne. Today she would go into battle, too.
Tuthmosis saw her coming and held out a hand in greeting. “My lovely Tuya,” he said, giving her a disarming smile. “What brings you out of your bower?”
Tuya fell to her knees. “Only one thing, my husband and king. I have a boon to ask of you.”
“What is it?” Honest pleasure shone from his eyes, and he leaned forward. “You shall have it, even if it requires that I sell half the equipment in my tomb.”
“It is this.” Mindful of Mutemwiya’s cold glare, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Take our son, husband, and declare him to be the crown prince and your heir. I surrender him to you this day.”
Tuthmosis’s eyes flickered in surprise. “You would surrender your son?”
“So there will be no doubt of his right to reign, I surrender him to be betrothed to Queen Mutemwiya,” Tuya said, looking at the older woman. The queen’s eyes were shrewd little chips of bright quartz in a dark face, impossible to read.
For a moment Pharaoh seemed speechless, then he lowered his voice. “In truth, I had thought to do this thing later,” he said, his words for her ears alone. “I wanted our son to remain by your side for as long as possible.”
“He is ten, and nearly grown,” she answered, careful not to reveal Yosef’s warning. “It is time he began his princely training. Take him, my husband, with my love…and my unfaltering trust.”
Pharaoh gave her a frankly admiring smile and declared it would be done immediately. Tuya bowed in gratitude.
As she turned to leave, however, she caught a glimpse of Mutemwiya’s face. The queen’s sharp and surly features reminded Tuya of a watchful, hungry vulture.
The ceremony took place in the temple of Horus. Pharaoh and Queen Mutemwiya walked through the tall pillars of the temple with the young prince between them. As the child knelt before the altar, a temple priest proclaimed that the boy was the rightful heir of Pharaoh and the future husband of the Great Wife, Queen Mutemwiya.
“From this day forward,” the priest intoned, “let him be called Amenhotep, the third of that name, in the tradition of the pharaohs of the Two Kingdoms.”
From her place in the crowd, Sagira covered her lips with her hand and hiccupped, the sour taste of beer filling her mouth. Tuya’s child, the crown prince? Impossible to believe. Tuya was nothing but a slave whom the gods had indifferently blessed with beauty, and that beauty alone had put her in Pharaoh’s bed and begot her a child.
Sagira snickered. Pharaoh was doubly a fool. Not only had he embraced a slave, but he’d been foolish enough to marry an aging queen who could never give him a lawful son. “By the crust between Seth’s toenails,” Sagira snorted, not caring who heard, “that’s no prince. There’s more royal blood in my big toe than in that child.”
Several people retreated as if she were dispensing poison, but Sagira only shrugged. “Can’t bear the truth, can you?” she called, staggering. “I could tell you more, but you won’t get a word out of me!”
Bystanders rippled away and pretended to ignore her, but one man stepped forward and bowed. “Lady Sagira, isn’t it?” he asked, a smile on his darkly handsome face. “You may remember me. I helped arrange your marriage when your parents were alive. I am Narmer, the captain of the king’s guard.”
Sagira tipped her head back. The man did look familiar, and he was handsome, with a strong, dauntless air. “I am pleased to see you.” She nodded with what she hoped was regal grace. “And because you’ve been so gracious, I’ll forgive you for marrying me to Potiphar.”
He laughed, then glanced up at the temple altar as if he did not approve of the ceremony. “Foolishness, isn’t it?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I heard your comment. I was surprised to see that many people disagreed with you.”
“They ought to agree, for I know about these things,” she answered, arching a brow. “The one they call Queen Tuya was my slave, you know, both in Potiphar’s house and in the house of my father. And my mother was Amenhotep’s sister.”
“Ah.” Narmer bowed again. “I am more honored than ever, my lady. Mistress of a queen and Pharaoh’s cousin! Now if you only knew our king’s vizier—”
“Bah, I know him.” She spat the words. “Of course, you know he attacked me.”
“How could I have forgotten? My sympathies are with you, dear lady.”
“They are?” She blinked at him, her heart warming.
“Yes.” He gave her a suggestive smile. “And I would love to hea
r the entire story about this vizier and how he came to harm you.”
Sagira felt her heart skip. It had been so long since a sober man noticed her. Fuddled by longing, she allowed Narmer to take her arm and lead her from the temple.
“Well,” she said, feeling herself flow toward him as they walked, “Paneah was difficult from the beginning. In fact, Potiphar returned Tuya to Pharaoh’s harem because she and the steward were lovers. Many’s the night I found them in each other’s arms….”
Tuthmosis allowed the priests and singers to finish their ceremonial hymns as they sent him off to bed, but when they had gone, he sat up and stared at the wall. His mind was too full for sleep, the day had been too eventful.
What wisdom had inspired Tuya to surrender their son? He had seen her grief-stricken face peering from behind a portal of the temple, and his heart swelled with such tender love for her that he nearly paused in his walk down the aisle. But she hadn’t looked his way; she had eyes only for their son…
She had been right, as always. He should have begun to train his son months ago, for a prince had much to learn. If he hadn’t been so caught up in his work with Zaphenath-paneah, he might have found time for the boy, but sometimes he still thought of himself as a prince. Twenty-three was not so young an age, yet he often felt like a schoolboy pretending to play at king.
He lay down and folded his arms beneath his head. He could send for one of the harem girls, but he wanted to talk to Tuya. But she would be upset, for tonight Yosef slept for the first time in his own chambers. Tuthmosis couldn’t find the courage or the heart to face her red-rimmed eyes.
How he loved his first wife! He loved the loose wisps of hair that made half-moons on her slender neck and the sleepy-cat smile with which she greeted the morning. With every passing day she grew more precious and unique, and yet before her he often felt as awkward as an adolescent. She had mothered him, befriended him and borne him a son; now he yearned to make her love him.
None of the others loved him, and he didn’t particularly care. They were his wives for political or pleasurable reasons, and they understood their roles. Spoiled and selfish, they had been born and bred to be pampered. Mutemwiya would never have surrendered a child to another wife. The harem girls would have demanded to be made queens themselves before they’d have given up a soul that had sprung from their womb.
But though the sacrifice had caused her pain, Tuya had given her child into his care. She was always giving, never asking for anything, even when he begged her to name a gift he might find for her. He wanted to give her everything, yet all she had ever wanted was the son she surrendered today.
Filled with remembering, Tuthmosis stared at the ceiling. You have given me a child, the greatest gift a man can give a woman, she had told him on the day of Yosef’s birth. I ask for nothing more.
And yet he yearned for her to ask for more, to ask for him. She liked him, she petted him, she showed him affection. But she never spoke to him in the adoring tone she used with their son, and she never looked at him in the dreamy way she watched Zaphenath-paneah from across the room.
Lonely in the darkness, the divine pharaoh of the Two Kingdoms curled into a ball, protecting the place in his heart only Tuya had reached.
Narmer was filling two golden goblets with wine when Mutemwiya finally entered. “To life,” he said, lifting the cup as she stalked toward him. “To our success.”
She frowned. “How can you drink to that when Tuthmosis has just set a roadblock before us?”
Narmer pressed a goblet into her hand. “Because when the time has come for our divine pharaoh to be sacrificed to satisfy his starving people, this child and the vizier can be removed in one swipe of the tongue.”
She took the cup. “Explain.”
He smiled. “I have had a most interesting conversation with Potiphar’s drunken widow. It seems that Zaphenath-paneah and Pharaoh’s favorite wife were lovers when they lived in Potiphar’s house.”
Mutemwiya’s mouth curved with the faint beginnings of a smile.
“There is more,” Narmer said, tapping the side of his goblet to hers. “I think we can convince all Egypt that the crown prince is not Pharaoh’s son at all.”
“How? Tuya is doggedly, boringly faithful. Anyone who knows her—”
“The people do not know her,” Narmer replied, already tasting success. “And they will want to believe love found a way to unite our handsome vizier and our ravishing Tuya. And when the populace is convinced, the priests will never allow the son of slaves to assume the throne of a divine pharaoh.”
Mutemwiya swirled the wine in her cup. “But I am betrothed to the boy. When Tuthmosis dies, the throne will be his.”
“A ceremonial marriage that has never been consummated can easily be annulled,” Narmer answered, shrugging. “And children are frail things, easy to be rid of.”
A look of mad happiness gleamed in Mutemwiya’s eyes. “My Narmer,” she said, her smile as hard as marble. “Your war-zone ethics never cease to surprise me.”
“Enjoy your princely husband while you can,” he whispered, eyeing her over the rim of his cup. “For one day soon he will be nothing but the son of slaves.”
Amenhotep III
So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
Genesis 45:8
Chapter Thirty-Two
Pharaoh paused in his morning prayers and murmured a decidedly untraditional phrase under his breath: “And unto you, El Shaddai, I give praise, honor and obedience in gratitude for sending Zaphenath-paneah to Egypt.”
Through the first seven years of Zaphenath-paneah’s authority over the land of Egypt, the eternal cycle of inundation and irrigation, emergence and planting, drought and reaping had not varied. After the seventh year’s harvest, the emerald grass grayed in the heat of the desert sun and withered. As the year ended, the astronomer-priests searched the skies for Sirius, the brightest of all stars, whose appearance just ahead of the rising sun would signal the coming flood. When at last Sirius rose through a hint of thinner darkness in the east, the priests sent the traditional messengers to Pharaoh. The new year had begun, and the Nile would flood within forty-eight hours.
On this new year’s day the Nile-watchers at Elephantine checked and rechecked their measurements. The Nile rolled steadily northward, bright as a spill of magma, but the creeping floodwaters were barely above the level of the emergence. Hasty offerings were made at the temple of Hapi. Had the god fallen asleep? Had the limitless bounty of the river god’s pitchers finally come to an end?
The glassy surface of the heaving river scarcely rose at all. Lands that had lain fallow during the arid days of summer received only a trace of moisture when the river dams were cut open. As the winter passed, the ground lay as hard as stone beneath the planters’ feet, every sign of green burned away. Dust devils swept across dreary flats, and Egypt’s fabled black earth blew as dry and barren as the gray deserts to the east and west. Unable to find hay, wealthy landowners released their grass-greedy cattle into the desert. The hunting of wild rabbits and waterfowl, once a sport, became a serious endeavor.
By the time of spring and the emergence, the river had thinned like a starving child, and only an occasional dew watered the thirsty earth. Summer arrived with desiccating winds that cloaked every exposed object in dust. The wind sucked the moisture from animals and men alike, drying skin until it cracked and bled, parching mouths and nostrils until every living creature gasped for breath.
While heat, drought and famine came at the world like a mortal enemy, the people of Thebes retreated behind the walls of their homes and gave thanks to Zaphenath-paneah’s Almighty God, for news of the prophecy had reached even the lowest estate. As wind-blown sand scoured the fields, Zaphenath-paneah’s assistants opened the granaries throughout Egypt. Even those who had ignored rumors of the coming famine were able to buy enough grain and
corn to feed themselves and their families.
From the palace at Thebes, Pharaoh watched the sun burn the land to dust. Egypt had once been a land of severe contrasts: the verdure of the Nile Valley insinuated against the sterility of the desert, the dark gray waters of the inundation feeding the fertile green fields, the teeming life of the Nile abutting the desolate wasteland. Now the kingdom stretched before its king like a curling sheet of dingy parchment. Even though he knew the famine would last only seven years, it was often difficult to believe the land of Egypt would not be forever mottled and stained with death.
But the people would not starve. Tuthmosis shook his head, his mind whirling with grim thoughts of what might have been. If not for the unseen god who spoke to Zaphenath-paneah, the priests of Anubis would have come to his chamber with the cobra. How wise Zaphenath-paneah was! And how honorable, for he shed praise as easily as a duck sheds water. “It is God who works,” Zaphenath-paneah protested whenever Pharaoh attempted to commend his vizier. “The Almighty has seen fit to save us for his pleasure.”
As the first year of famine passed and the earth toughened beneath the sun’s heat, Pharaoh urged his vizier to tutor eleven-year-old Amenhotep. In recent months Tuthmosis had realized the importance of the agriculture he had always taken for granted, and Zaphenath-paneah certainly understood more about cultivation and husbandry than Tuthmosis could ever hope to know.
“The vizier fills the room with light and wisdom,” the king told Tuya one afternoon. “From him our son will receive straight talk and simple answers.”
She nodded, her eyes brightening, but she said nothing. They sat together on a narrow couch beside his private garden as the sun boat rowed toward the west. Though Tuthmosis’s head lay in her lap, she did not look at him.
Tuthmosis scratched his chin. Of late Tuya had often slumped into morose musings and neither his gifts nor his jokes lifted her sad countenance. Though she remained as beautiful and gentle as ever, some misfortune shadowed her. Tuthmosis often felt he held a wilting flower in his arms.