Miriam and Menelaus

by Jackie Rose

No more to be forever jouncing through nowhere in a wooden wagon, in the constant smell of oxen, donkeys, camels, goats and too many people…usually sick people, in my case. But rather to live in one of these sturdy shelters until I returned to an Argive palace…not as great as Pharaoh’s, to be sure, but one where I could sit happily at the feet of this great and gentle king.

  I shook my head to clear it of the conflicts. It was much simpler than anyone had seen. Miriam and Menelaus, a woman and a man, no longer young but both alone and now trapped between duty and destiny.

  It was all too much for me. Even as their voices rose beyond the log door, I fell back on the cushions and dreamed again.

  I had been called a prophetess. For the first time, I felt that it was true, because of the vision that came to me in this dream.

  It was a simple vision, as such things go. I saw only two scrolls open beside each other on a table before me. Peering down at them, I read in the first one, “You will proclaim liberty throughout the land and for all the inhabitants therein.” Just as I thought that no words could be more beautiful, I glanced at the other and read, “Sing, goddess, of the anger of Peleus’ son, Achilles.” While I did not understand this verse, I was stunned by their sheer magnificence.

  Then I saw another message appearing over both…”Miriam and Menelaus.” The two words shown so brightly, both of the books faded away beneath them. With fear growing to terror, I realized that both volumes had vanished forever beneath the weight of our linked names.

  * * * *

  Even if that vision had come true, I was sure another form of knowledge would have remained, for all to share…Hebrew and Argive and Egyptian, to benefit us all. This was the wisdom that Machaon was teaching me.

  It was as ugly as the writing had been beautiful…that craft of sewing torn flesh together as though it had been the pieces of a garment. Naturally, I could not use the Spartan ruler as my mannequin here, so I practiced on a lamb’s shoulder.

  My instructor was all for having me do it while the poor creature was still alive, just as my patients would be. But I saw too clearly the meaning of Moses’ law. Firmly, I told him that I must obey my brother’s rule, that beasts must be slaughtered with as little pain as possible. For once, I was obeying Moses gladly.

  “But this can help you save men’s lives…and women’s, too, when they are badly torn in childbirth,” the physician argued.

  “I cannot violate our law,” I retorted stubbornly. So he shrugged with a sigh and ordered the nearest man to cut the shoulder out of a carcass. “And one that has already been slaughtered for food, in keeping with your principals,” he assured me. I was glad to overlook his sneering tone.

  After a few moments, Machaon grudgingly admitted that this was much more practical than sacrificing yet another beast, since his army did not yet have cattle to spare. They would be captured soon enough, along with the women.

  I lowered my head as he said that, so that he would not see my guilt…because I envied those females…or at least the particular one who would fall to Menelaus’ lot.

  Fortunately, Machaon misread my feelings.

  “You need not pity them,” he assured me. “They will not be slaves as you were, but captives. We will not have them building pyramids, but healing our men.” What else they would be doing, he refrained from telling me, for fear of offending my maidenly modesty.

  After I had sewn up the shoulder, I naturally had to pour water over it. These Argives seemed to think that they could wash any illness away, I thought resentfully, although it seemed to me a superstitious waste of time.

  This time, Machaon succeeded in reading my thoughts.

  “The washing will do many things,” he said. “It may keep the wounds from festering and even protect you from suffering from the natural illnesses you treat.

  I must warn you though, that you will still probably catch some contagions from your patients. Then simple people will say that the gods cursed you with the disease as a punishment, perhaps for trying to thwart his will. Ignore them. Illnesses will spread whenever people live too close together. This is a natural thing, and your god will know you serve him.”

  While I still did not understand these words, they would…like so many of Machaon’s teachings…come back to help me when I needed them most.

  Chapter Three

  Long before that time had come, Menelaus returned me to the Hebrew camp. As we stood silently on either side of his chariot driver, clutching the wooden railings, he stared carefully down at the sand that rolled away beneath us.

  “Will your loot from Egypt support you until you find your own country?” he finally asked.

  Resenting his words for a moment, I then remembered that capturing booty was an honorable deed among the Argives…much more noble, no doubt, than providing a physician’s services to the looters.

  “For years, if we are careful,” I assured him, also looking down at the ground that carried me steadily away from the Argives. “With the water you have sold to us, we will last until we can buy more.”

  Staring straight down more steadily than ever, he said, “You would not have to be careful if you were with me. I know men who are as rich as I am, but none who are any richer. We could buy a fertile island with my fortune and leave them all behind us, starting with our two brothers.”

  It was a beautiful dream that I relished for a moment…until I suddenly remembered that other dream, of the two books vanishing.

  “What would we do there?” I asked.

  “What we wished.”

  “And what would our brothers do?”

  “Agamemnon and Moses are both intelligent men.” He shrugged. “I am sure they will think of something.”

  His brother had already done so, I thought wildly. Take me as your captive, take the choice from me, then neither of us can be blamed. But, no, that path had been closed to King Menelaus already…by his laws of hospitality and decency.

  Then I thought of the beautiful golden-haired Achilles. He follows no such laws, I thought. If he wanted a woman he would take her, sure that she wanted him even more, without even needing that crucial one night to convince her.

  With many women, he would be right. From what I had heard of the young Lyrnessian queen, I suspected that she would soon prove to be among them. They said that she listened eagerly to the bards who sang about his mighty deeds, and paid them to write even more verses. But I was not Briseis, any more than Menelaus was Achilles.

  Being Menelaus, he handed me back to my brother…who, being Moses, accepted me with thanks for the teaching his friend Machaon had given me, to help our entire nation. Menelaus, in turn, said that all of Argos was proud to have such a physician, with knowledge to share with such a worthy student.

  So they clasped each other’s arms in friendship. If Moses saw the way I gazed after the king’s departing chariot, he did not mention it.

  * * * *

  My brother had no objection to spending some of our precious gold reserves on fine herbs and even linen strips to equip the six wagons set aside for the physicians and midwives. He did wonder, though, why we had to use our precious water for all that washing of hands and wounds, which God had never mentioned to him.

  “God has surely sent this wisdom to their physicians,” I said. “Machaon showed me the proof, with wounds that had not festered.”

  When I told our healers that Moses had approved my plans, they naturally said that they agreed as well. It was still all I could do to make sure that they were following my instructions, when I showed up at all hours without warning.

  Half the time they explained that they were too tired for all of that hand washing, with too many babies to deliver and too many injuries to tend. They would do it all the same, I told them sharply, or I would make sure that Moses sent them to other, less rewarding tasks.

  I fear I often sounded like a slave-driver, since I had so much medical training to pass along and so little time to do it…when it was, literally, a question of life
and death. I am sure I seemed an entirely different person from the graceful creature who led the praise dance.

  Some of my fellow healers sought revenge by whispering that I had shown too much regard for the Argive physician…or, rather, for his countryman, Menelaus. I ignored these rumors and Caleb did the same…having learned on our wedding night that I came to him as a virgin.

  As for my medical skills, Caleb was glad to use them. He and Joshua were forming an army to defend us and fight for our country when the time came. They were glad to see me giving special training to the physicians who would be dealing with the wounds. Then he was relieved to see the midwives whom I had trained caring for our newborn son, Hur, and me.

  Chapter Four

  As we wandered through the desert, still searching for our own home, I heard of Menelaus in almost every place we passed. He had returned to his own kingdom with Helen and Briseis both.

  My husband Caleb mentioned this casually to me, saying that he wondered if he himself could have shown such mercy to a faithless wife. I told him just as calmly that I would never give him reason to find out.

  The next morning, he surprised me by asking if his red beard was as fine as the Argive king’s. I assured him that I had never made such a comparison but that his was as appealing as any I had seen.

  “And I believe you and Joshua will be greater warriors,” I told him, pausing to gaze at him as I swept out our wagon after watering the oxen who drew it. “I doubt it will take you ten years of fighting and a trick with a wooden horse to defeat your enemies.” That pleased him so much he led me to the sleeping mat where, for those few pleasant minutes, I forgot the Argive king.

  When we were finished and I was lying against his shoulder, he said, “Joshua and I are both grateful for all you are doing to help us. It may even be as important as our own training for war.”

  Even more, I thought, since I am saving lives rather than ending them. Aloud I only thanked him for his generous words, which I knew to be sincere.

  I had been just as honest, in saying that he and Joshua, together, might well prove greater warriors than Menelaus’ men. They were in leaner, fitter trim, too, from our constant travels and their military exercise.

  I saw no reason to mention that my thoughts still turned to the Argive king, or that he still came to me in my dreams.

  * * * *

  If he would never have willingly seen me marry an Argive, even the King of Sparta, Moses had no such qualms about mating any woman he chose, no matter what nation she came from. I told him so, when he announced his intention of wedding Sephora, the daughter of a sheik. My tone was bitter as I asked him why he might choose a foreigner when his sister could not. I must have spoken too loud because others heard.

  He answered more quietly that the Spartan king had never even asked for my hand in marriage, nor was he likely to do so. This left me even angrier, because it was true.

  More reasonably, my brother reminded me that Caleb had proven as fine a husband as he was a warrior, and I could not disagree.

  Still, the matter was not to be settled so simply.

  Soon after bearing our son, Hur, I returned to my work with the sick. I had been treating the victims of a disfiguring disease, and there were too many of them to let me wash my hands between them.

  Sure enough, my own skin soon showed the white splotches, leading the people to whisper that I had brought down God’s punishment by questioning my brother, His prophet. The other physicians agreed, resenting the authority I had held over them and, I admit it, the tactless way I had used it.

  Well, Machaon had warned me that simple people would see a natural plague as a god’s punishment. Indeed, I had heard of the same thing happening in his own Argive camp, where the men believed that a contagious illness had come from their own deities.

  So our people could say what they wished. It did not keep them from begging my services again, as soon as I had recovered and they themselves had fallen ill.

  Before that, I lay in isolation, to avoid spreading the sickness any further, just as Machaon had taught me to do. In that way, I drifted in and out of healing sleep, dreaming of Menelaus.

  In my dream, my hands again lifted up his heavy helmet and I raised my lips to his.

  “Come away with me, Miriam,” he was asking again. “We will go to some island and let Argives and Hebrews wander where they will.”

  “Yes, my lord, Menelaus,” I answered. “I have waited for you for so long.

  * * * *

  With Helen seated beside me and Briseis standing behind us…my queen and my cherished concubine…I still dreamed of Miriam.

  While I always saw her in the back of my mind, she was brought forcefully to the front again when we stopped in Egypt on the way home from Troy. There, Pharaoh explained in detail the strategy that was allowing the Hebrews to defeat his army.

  I watched the battle from my ship, then pulled Miriam out of the water just in time to keep her from swimming away with the other Hebrews in search of their Promised Land. We stood alone on the deck, because Helen, Briseis and all my 'sailors' had vanished, but somehow the vessel steered itself to a rich but solitary island…filled with birds, beasts, trees and flowers, but not one other human soul.

  Then Miriam began dancing again, for me only. What’s more, she did not wear her simple concealing robes now, but was garbed in glittering gold chains. Through them, I clearly saw her long, slim limbs writhing for my pleasure, as her small, firm bosom rose and fell beneath the ornaments.

  Awake, in my palace, I have other entertainment…the songs that are being written by both Hebrew and Argive poets, to celebrate our great deeds, in both Egypt and Troy. If I am any judge of such things, they are gifted authors all.

  They celebrate Miriam’s role, in leading the flight from Egypt, and my own part in winning my wife back from Troy. But they know nothing of our own story, when duty and destiny fought against the deepest desires of our hearts.

  About the Author

  Living in Northern Virginia, Jackie Rose indulges her passion for history by touring restored colonial homes. A resulting newspaper story on historical re-enactors led to a Virginia Press Association first prize. This was the first of five VPA prizes she earned during her ten years of feature writing for weekly community newspapers.

  Her husband shares her love for history, Walt Disney World and their son and new daughter in law. She was able to combine the first two passions at the Norwegian pavilion in Disney’s world showcase, where she enjoyed seeing the restored Viking ship and stave church, not to mention the smorgasbord. That visit helped inspire “I’m a Viking and I Protest” and, most recently, its sequel, “I’m a Senior and I’m Savage.” Both followed her best-selling series of sexy vampire spoofs, which started with “I’m Undead and I Vote.”