Pillar of Fire

by Judith Tarr

  The elders and the leaders of the people urged their charges on. Moshe stood silent as they passed, with Miriam behind him. They did not have the air of sorcerers maintaining a great working, but neither were they wholly in the world as others knew it. Moshe’s eyes were as full of the god as they had been while he was king in Akhetaten. Then he had been alone in his devotion. Now he spoke for his god before a whole people.

  His god not only spoke; he showed himself in signs and wonders. Most of those were turned against Egypt. Revenge, Nofret supposed, for its refusal to accept one god above the rest.

  She was more fortunate than Egypt. She was beloved of a man who worshipped the god, mother of his children. She still could not make herself worship this one god of them all. She was stubborn, she knew it very well. She had lived so, and so no doubt would she die.

  But not on this day that moved now swiftly into night. The people of Yisroel followed their guide, the towering fire that even she could see. Their armed men hung back until the last, till every tribe and clan had passed down the god’s road, walking dry-shod across the bottom of the sea.

  oOo

  When all the people were set on the road, their defenders followed. It was full dark now. Fear was a dim and distant thing, but still they strung their bows and kept their guard.

  With the coming of night, the cloud had begun to fade. As the last of them advanced between the waters, they saw behind them a glimmer of flames: campfires, Nofret thought at first, but campfires did not shift and waver. They were torches. The army of Egypt was mustered behind them. Perhaps it was afraid to venture that road between those walls; but it was fast gathering courage.

  She was the last to set foot on the road through the sea. It would have been Moshe, but Johanan had seized him bodily and all but carried him ahead of her. Johanan was moving swiftly, almost running. Nofret struggled to keep up. He had heard what she had: the bray of a war-trumpet.

  It was hard going. The road was dry, but it was sand, and deep. Within a few strides she was winded, but she quickened her pace as best she could. Behind her a horse neighed. “Onward!” a man’s voice bellowed in Egyptian. “Take them!”

  She slipped, scrambled, stumbled and almost fell. So many feet passing for so many hours had pocked and pitted the sand till it was all but impassable. She gasped—prayer, curse, she did not know—and pressed on.

  A strong arm caught her up. The touch of it was so familiar that she nearly fell, limp with relief. But Johanan was ahead of her, driving Moshe before him. The arm about her belonged to Jehoshua.

  Her body was caught in a black dream. As in a dream, it struggled forever and seemed to advance not at all. Her back was taut with dread of an Egyptian arrow.

  But none flew. The Egyptians’ great advantage was in their chariots, in swift horses and swift wheels. Horses that wallowed and struggled in the sand even as did she, and wheels that caught and mired.

  She would have laughed if she had had breath for it. The curses of the Egyptians were horrific, shouts and clashing of armor, cracking of whips as charioteers drove their teams forward against the suck and drag of the sand. She was faster on her staggering feet, because she was lighter, and had her son to bolster her.

  Much too soon the Egyptians woke to sense and abandoned the chariots, forging ahead on foot. None of them seemed to be an archer, or perhaps it was too dark for shooting. They had spears and swords: she saw the gleam of metal in the torchlight.

  All at once her feet left the ground altogether. Jehoshua was carrying her, grunting with effort but too stubborn to let her go. Johanan dragged Moshe just ahead, and one of the young men—Ephraim; she recognized the shock of wild hair that would never stay confined—had flung Miriam over his shoulder and was bounding like a stag through the sand.

  In the dark, lit by the fire ahead and the torches behind, they might have been on any road that ran beside a sea. The murmur of the waters above had grown louder; or maybe that was the roar of blood in Nofret’s ears. Was the road narrower? Had the walls drawn closer? She could not tell.

  Jehoshua surged upward suddenly, scrambling up a brief, sharp slope. Then at last he would let Nofret down, but dragging her still, running with renewed vigor. People were running ahead of them, crying out. Some were trying to turn back, ready weapons, fight the enemy that followed. But Johanan, and Moshe recovered from his stupor, drove them onward, Johanan with the flat of his sword, Moshe with his staff.

  Moshe halted so abruptly that Nofret nearly collided with him. The sweep of his arm sent her half-running, half-flying after the rest of the Apiru.

  Sheer weight of obstinacy brought her to a halt. And something else, something that had changed. The wind had died.

  She could see Moshe, she realized. He was a grey dim figure, but clear, with the staff upraised in his hand. Beyond him, shadowy in the dawn, was the cloven sea, and the road that had been laid bare by the waters’ parting. The whole army of Egypt was on it. Even as she stared, the vanguard set foot on the slope that slanted steeply up to the eastern shore.

  With a sound half like a sigh, half like the sea’s roar heard far away, the walls of water let go their strength and fell. They crashed like a great wave on the right hand and on the left, down and down upon the heads of the Egyptians. They stood like men who neither believed nor comprehended what had befallen them: mute and motionless, staring upward, helpless in the face of their death.

  The horses had more wit and sense than their masters. Some of the chariots had struggled in the rear, bearing the king and the loftier of his princes. As Nofret watched, the king’s pale-coated stallions surged up in the traces.

  She saw the charioteer struggling, fighting the fear-maddened beasts. They wheeled, half-falling, dragging the chariot. The king’s helmet fell from his head, baring the shaven skull. He had the reins in his own hands—the charioteer had been thrown from the chariot or the king had thrust him out. He lashed the team into a wallowing, stumbling run.

  Away from the sea that had come to claim its own. Toward the distant shore, the shelter of Egypt, the dry land that he had, like a fool, forsaken.

  The walls of water crashed together upon the army of Egypt. Men howled. Horses screamed. But louder than they, louder by far, was the roaring of water.

  Seventy

  The sun rose, serene and vastly remote. The sea’s surge had quieted. Of the army of Egypt there was nothing left, not even a scatter of stormwrack. The water had taken them all, weapons and armor, horses and chariots.

  All but one. One lifeless body washed up on the shore, rolling slack in the waves. Its helmet was gone, its gilded armor and its ornaments stripped from it, but there was no mistaking the face. The Great House of Egypt, the Lord of the Two Lands, lay dead at Moshe’s feet.

  The king who had died and lived in Sinai looked down at the king who had died and would live only in memory. He bent down even to his knees and wept. “We were enemies,” he said. “He defied my God. And yet we were kin. He knew—he too, he knew the weight of the crowns.”

  They laid Egypt’s king to such rest as they might, there on the shore of the sea, on the westward edge of Sinai. Egypt would come to claim him, Moshe said. Nofret did not doubt it. Gods had a way of looking after their own.

  For this brief time he was laid in a cairn of stones, wrapped in fine linen that had come from Egypt with the children of Yisroel, with such spices as they could spare.

  Moshe crowned the cairn with the helmet-crown that Nofret had seen fall from the king’s head before the waters drowned him—and maybe the sea had brought it, and maybe the god had set it in Moshe’s hand. She was no longer certain of anything but that she was alive, and every man and woman and child of those who had escaped from Egypt; but the army of Egypt was destroyed.

  oOo

  “Not all of it,” Johanan said in their tent, when at last they had marched far enough from the sea to camp in safety. “Not even the half or the third of it. This was a raiding party, a vengeance-expedition. The heir
wasn’t with them, did you notice? He’s safe in Memphis, I’ll wager, and ready to claim the throne that his father was fool enough to run away from.”

  “He’s like to come after us,” Nofret said, “once he knows that his father is dead.”

  “I think not,” said Johanan. “Seti struck me as a sensible man, from what I saw of him. He’ll be hard put to undo all the damage that the Lord did to his land and people. Best for them all if he forgets us.”

  “As Egyptians forget?” Nofret asked. “By forgetting our names and our very existence?”

  He shrugged. He was going out again, as weary as he was, because they could not leave the people unguarded. He put on a clean tunic, washed in the sea that had destroyed the Egyptians, and said, “They may forget us, but the Lord remembers.”

  She pulled on a robe herself, went to the tentflap, opened it and peered out. Their tent stood on the camp’s edge, looking out on the desert of Sinai. Although the sun had set, the sky was still full of light. It washed the stark land with blood and gold.

  Johanan knelt beside her. She leaned briefly against him, not to tempt him back to bed, but simply for the comfort of his presence.

  They could hear the people singing. The song had begun as they marched away from the sea, leaving the king in his cairn behind them. It had gone on without pause ever since.

  Without saying anything, without either asking the other’s leave, they followed the singing to its source. This camp was a great circle, its center left open so that the people might gather. A fire was built high in it, and there were dancers and singers and players on harp and timbrel.

  Moshe was among the singers. His voice was weak in song as in speech, but true, and when he sang he suffered no stammer. He had laid aside his staff and his dignity; he was laughing as he sang, praising his god.

  The strange unbeautiful man whom Nofret had first known was truly dead. This was the god’s great servant, messenger to a people who welcomed him and reckoned him one of them. Egypt was all gone from him, as he was gone from Egypt.

  He seemed to know no regret for what he had lost. But then he never had. He had gone willingly into Sinai. Now he had returned to it. His wife and sons were waiting for him, and the people whom he had made his own.

  Nofret’s throat tightened. She too had children whom she longed to see. As for what came after that—she had wandered all her life among these people. She would wander again and always, wherever their god took her. Even . . .

  She shut her mind’s eye to foresight. Time enough for that when they were set upon that road: when the nation that had come out of Egypt left the desert and advanced in conquest against the cities of Canaan.

  Now they were still a wandering people, new come from their captivity. Their joy tugged at her.

  And was she not glad? Her husband was beside her. Her son was among the dancers. Her younger children waited in the green valley to which this road would lead her. She had gone twice into Egypt, and twice she had escaped. There would be no third such journey. She was free now and forever from the gods and the bindings of the Two Lands.

  Johanan drew her toward the fire and the dancing. He was needed to stand guard, nor had he forgotten it, but duty could wait for yet a while.

  The dance that leaped and spun in the firelight was a men’s dance, a dance of the hunt and of war. Johanan was whirled irresistibly into it, leaving Nofret alone but not forlorn. She loved to watch him dance. He was beautiful always, but in the dance he was splendid.

  This night he danced the escape from the land of Egypt, the god’s great power and terror, and the people’s joy in their freedom. No one leaped higher than he, or spun with more grace.

  The women were frank in their praises. Nofret caught herself blushing like a girl, and she the mother of a grown son. She retreated with the rags of her dignity toward a bit of shadow and an eddy of quiet.

  There was someone in it, as she had half expected. What she had not expected was the smile that warmed Miriam’s face, brightening it even in the dimness.

  They sat side by side, companionable as they could sometimes be. Nofret was content in the silence. So, for a while, was Miriam.

  Then she said, “I feel so strange.”

  Nofret glanced at her. She looked much the same as ever. Lighter, maybe. Less somber.

  She looked as Moshe did. Free, and freed.

  Nofret said so. Miriam nodded. “That’s what it is. That is the name of it. Free. When the waters parted, my heart was torn asunder. When they crashed together, they made it all anew. Egypt is gone, Nofret. I can remember it, but the memory is dim, as if it came to me through deep water.”

  “That’s the god’s doing,” Nofret said.

  “Do you forgive him for it?”

  That was utterly like Miriam, to ask such a question. But there was no bitterness in it.

  Nofret shook her head. “There’s nothing to forgive. I see you well. I actually saw you smile. Can you do it again, do you think? Would it tax you sorely?”

  Miriam laughed. She stopped abruptly as if startled. “What in the world—”

  “You laughed,” Nofret said.

  Miriam frowned at her. “Yes, I laughed. I know what that is. But—”

  “But you didn’t expect to do it just then.” Nofret was smiling herself, and not because she could help it. “We may have to change your name,” she said. “From the bitter to the sweet. From—”

  “I would thank you,” said Miriam with the full measure of her old royal stiffness, “to leave my name alone. It suits me. I choose to keep it.”

  “As my lady wishes,” said Nofret, bowing her head.

  Miriam glared. Nofret laughed at her. Oh, she was altered indeed: her glare transmuted into astonishment, and thence into mirth. “But I am not your lady!” she said in the midst of it.

  “Old habits die hard,” Nofret said, unrepentant.

  “So do queens,” said Miriam. She leaped up, light as a girl. “Look, it’s time for the women’s dance. Come and dance with me.”

  Nofret dug in her heels. “I don’t dance.”

  “Tonight you will.” Miriam had her by the hand. And there was Johanan, flushed and sweat-streaming and more beautiful than ever, grinning at her and daring her to try.

  The singers had rested while the men danced. Now they raised their voices again, pure voices of women, deep voices of men.

  All ye peoples, clap your hands; shout to God with cries of gladness!

  The women spun in a skein, in the clapping of hands, the stamping of feet, the whirling of skirts and veils and braided hair.

  Miriam had snatched up a timbrel, beating on it as she danced, singing in her pure trained voice.

  Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously:

  The horse and rider he hath thrown into the sea.

  Into the sea, the women echoed her in their sweet descant.

  Nofret, who did not sing, or dance either, found that she was doing both. It was a fever in the blood, a white heat of gladness.

  Who is like to thee, O Lord, among the gods?

  She almost stopped then, almost argued with it—she, the foreigner, the Hittite woman, who would not worship this one god alone. But the dance was too strong, the music sunk too deep into her bones. She was a part of it whether she would or no: she and all of them. They were the god’s people. He had made them his own.

  Even she. She could do battle with it till she died, or she could surrender to it. Or—and at that she smiled a broad and fang-edged smile—she could dare the god to refuse her.

  “I won’t be yours,” she said to him as she whirled around the fire. “I’ll make you mine. Not your slave, my lord, but your free servant.”

  He did not strike her dead where she stood. Nor did he turn his people against her. He was too high for that. Or, perhaps, too much amused.

  The dance cast her out, dizzy and breathless, into her husband’s arms. “What,” she gasped, “still here?”

  “Still and alwa
ys,” said Johanan.

  There was her answer. Holding her up, grinning at her, tempting her to do something utterly improper in front of the whole nation of Yisroel.

  And why not?

  She whirled him about, set lips on his and pulled him down into the shadow beyond the firelight.

  Still the children of Yisroel sang as they had sung since the dawn and for all the day and night thereafter.

  Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?

  Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, terrible in praise, doing wonders?

  Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed:

  thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.

  Johanan echoed them softly, even as distracted as he was, ending the song, greeting the new dawn:

  The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.

  Nofret forbore to sigh. The god might have Johanan’s soul, and welcome to it. But she had his body and his heart. She was well content with her part of the bargain.

  Warm in his arms, tired beyond need of sleep, and ineffably happy, she watched the sun rise over the hills of Sinai.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There are few periods in Egyptian history more widely known than the Eighteenth Dynasty, and few pharaohs more familiar to the general public than the “rebel” Akhenaten and his successor Tutankhamon (they ruled, in sequence, from approximately 1358-1331 B.C.). Akhenaten’s reign even rates its own archaeological epoch, the Amarna Period—Amarna being the modern name of the site on which he built his city, Akhetaten, the Horizon of the Aten.

  Akhenaten himself has been a figure of endless fascination to modern readers and scholars. He has been called the first true individual, the first monotheist, the first honest monomaniac on the human record. Sigmund Freud in Moses and Monotheism went so far as to propose him as the mentor and teacher of Moses.