Before she’d seen Pharaoh slaughter the child, Jochebed had loved hearing the stories of God and even tried to believe them. She’d grown up on stories of how the Lord interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams through her great-uncle Joseph. Or was it her great-great-great-uncle? She shrugged. So many “greats” was confusing. Either way, God had given one of her very own uncles the plan to save Egypt during the famine. How many times had she heard that the Lord placed Joseph second in power only to Pharaoh?
Jochebed shrugged. “I could tell that story in my sleep, Mama.”
Even Lili’s five-year-old brother, Benjamin, who liked to remind people that he had the same name as Joseph’s favorite brother, could tell how the brothers journeyed south to Egypt for food during the great famine. Benjamin sometimes got confused about how Joseph tested his brothers to see if they had changed, but he never forgot the story of how God helped that first Joseph forgive them and move their entire family to live here in Goshen.
Yes, she remembered. The Lord’s stories were told over and over from birth until death.
“His ways are different from ours, Jochebed, but He has a plan. Trust Him.”
Then in a voice Bedde seldom heard, she murmured, “The man who pushed you … he was tall and thin except for a very large stomach?”
“You know him, Mama?”
The pause was so long, Bedde thought she would not answer. Mama paused in her weaving and began to shape the basket, pushing one side harder to round it more. Her hand shook slightly. Her lips squeezed shut as if reluctant to release her words into being.
“His name is Nege.”
It was several weeks before the cousins saw Shiphrah. Each day they argued over what to say or not say if the three of them were ever together again. If they mentioned market day, would Shiphrah apologize or repeat her words? Would Bedde turn and run or stay and argue? Would Lili pinch Shiphrah or start to cry?
As they worked in the fields, a speck of dirt blew into Jochebed’s eye and blurred her sight. She blinked, trying and failing to dislodge it. Unwilling to use her dirt-crusted fingernails to rub out the speck, she swiped her face against her shoulder.
Lili gasped. Jochebed, face still mashed into her shoulder, whirled around. “What?”
“Over there, watching us.”
Jochebed’s vision cleared. Sheltering her eyes from the sun’s glare, she searched in the direction Lili pointed. Shiphrah stood by the road on the far side of the field.
The girls looked at each other and then away. Jochebed felt her face burn and knew it was more than the sun’s merciless stare. Had she come to taunt them again? It was funny-sad, how Shiphrah and Deborah who avoided each other had become so much alike. Jochebed crossed her arms in self-defense and waited, daring Shiphrah to come nearer.
Shiphrah did not budge.
Beads of water trickled down her back. This was not working. Was Shiphrah going to come closer and say anything or stand there and spy on them? What should she do? Mama would…
Jochebed stepped forward. When Lili gave a long sigh, Bedde realized she’d been holding her breath, too. Weaving between the sprawling vegetables, she approached the Egyptian-Hebrew girl.
Jochebed stopped two arm lengths away. Shiphrah stood poised to run. Like sand sifting its way into food, caution tainted their relationship. What if…?
“Shiphrah…” She stopped. What was there to say?
“I work with you this day to the field?”
Jochebed wanted to shake her head and scream no, but her mother’s story of Noah and second chances flashed through her mind. “Y–Yes. Yes,” Bedde stammered. If she only wanted to work, it would be fine.
They were almost back to where Lili waited when a lizard darted in front of Jochebed. Startled, she jumped backward, knocking Shiphrah to the ground. The lizard turned, stuck out his tongue, and scurried away.
Jochebed slanted her eyes at Shiphrah and began to smile. Shiphrah grinned back as they untangled themselves. At Lili’s approach, they interrupted themselves trying to explain the lizard to her and the smiles turned to laughter and then to giggles.
As they returned to their work, Lili retold a Benjamin story while Jochebed and Shiphrah rolled their eyes at each other and pretended not to have heard it.
“I have story, too,” announced Shiphrah. “I to be midwife. Aunt Puah say my words are better and I am ready. She most important midwife and teach many.” She faltered. “I will not come to here so much. You say to Mama Elisheba I miss her God stories?”
Jochebed nodded. “She’ll tell the stories whenever you visit.”
Nege bowed before Ramses’s throne. He flattened himself low as only a snake could manage. Either he brought displeasing news or he wanted something, Ramses surmised.
“My lord god and ruler of the Two Lands, I am unworthy to be in your presence, unworthy to speak your name, unworthy and unwilling to bring these words to your holy ears. Forgive me, oh incarnate of Horus, all-seeing falcon god.”
Ramses stifled a yawn. “Stand and speak.”
Nege scrambled to his feet. “As a priest, I serve in your stead at the Temple of Amun, bless the holy name.”
“And?”
“Some time ago, forgive me for not telling you sooner, but I feared your wrath, oh god of Egypt and commander of the army, oh ruler of the world and master of all.”
“As well you should. Continue.”
Nege gulped. “Some time ago, in the Temple of Amun, your most royal daughter, Princess Merit-Amun—forgive this lowly servant for speaking her exalted name with my unworthy lips—was worshipping in the holy temple and discovered an intruder, one of the shepherd people, a Hebrew half-breed.”
Ramses’s eyes turned cold.
“The intruder attacked with a knife. Merit-Amun came to no harm; I threw my unworthy self in front of her to protect her, sire.”
“Was he apprehended?”
“Oh my pharaoh, did I not say the intruder was a girl?”
“No, you did not.”
“An oversight, exalted one. It was a girl, a Hebrew girl with a knife.”
“Is she in custody?”
“Great One, the Hebrew disappeared, like a bird taking flight during the dark hours.”
It is a dark hour. The falcon is flown. Memories—a battalion of warriors—assaulted Ramses, a siege of havoc and uncertainty.
Of fear.
It had been years since doubt first wound its tendrils through his mind. Ramses tensed as he recalled the urgency of that beckoning voice…
“The royal falcon calls for you. It is a dark hour. Hurry, Master, before it is too late, before the falcon flies.”
The death room was hot, choked with stale incense. His sister, Tia, stood beside their mother as Ramses knelt by his father’s side. Translucent skin stretched over the bones and hollows in Seti’s elegant face, his broad chest rising and falling with the effort of each thin breath.
“Father.”
Pharaoh Seti opened his watery eyes. “Heed Umi—prophecy.” Seti’s eyes closed. “I failed to warn…”
“A prophecy, Father?”
Ramses leaned forward and waited for Seti to continue. The raspy breath slowed, stilled. The priest’s next words told him he would never again hear his father’s voice in this life. “The falcon is flown to heaven, and his successor is arisen in his place.”
It was done. As Seti entered the death world of Osiris, Ramses became Pharaoh, the god Horus incarnate.
“The falcon is flown…”
The priest’s words echoed as the news was repeated throughout the room and into the halls.
“The falcon is flown…”
Ramses stood and willed away the unsteadiness of his legs. He was a god. A god had no fear. None. Ever.
He ignored the kernel of uncertainty taking root in his heart.
Never again could he turn to his father for guidance. The thought that his father failed was unnerving, unbelievable—no, it was impossible.
And who was Um
i?
Ramses pulled his thoughts from his father’s death scene. Nege still hovered before him, wanting … what? What did the man want? A reward? Ramses scoffed, doubting the sweaty priest had protected Merit-Amun at all and certainly not with his thin, flabby self.
What did the man expect? He dredged through Nege’s words. This was the priest who so despised Hebrews. Three times he had mentioned the intruder was a Hebrew. Ah. Nege waited for a reaction and revenge.
Did this slippery priest know of the scroll and Umi’s prophecy about the shepherd people? Ramses remembered learning of the vision. It had been soon after his father’s death when palace informers discovered a slave who had served Umi.
The slave, stooped and wrinkled, the dross of Egypt, had trembled uncontrollably—whether from age or fear, Ramses neither knew nor cared. “My master, Umi, said the Hebrew god sent Umi a vision each night for a week.”
Ramses snorted and leaned against the back of his chair. “Priests often have visions.”
The slave choked out his words. “Yes, Great One, but this vision deeply disturbed Umi, and he journeyed to the Library of Ancients to study the scrolls.”
Ramses shifted his weight and motioned for the man to continue. “The scrolls referred to…?”
“The time of the foreign kings, the Hyksos, when a Hebrew slave arose to become vizier of Egypt, second only to the pharaoh himself.”
“Merely a rumor.”
“Great One, forgive my insolence, but it is written.” The man opened his mouth, closed it, and then, as if the words were wrenched out of him, continued, “It is also written that the Hebrew god of this vizier vowed to leave them in slavery for four hundred years, punish the nation they served, and give them the land of Canaan.”
“And this disturbed Umi because…?”
“The time approaches, Great One.”
“Ah.” Ramses tilted his head. “Before you bring me this scroll, tell me, what interpretation did Umi ascribe to his ridiculous dream?”
The slave faltered, crumpled to his knees, and touched his head to the ground before answering.
“The lion was the unseen god of the Hebrews.”
“And the foolish warrior?”
“Egypt.”
Ramses inhaled deeply to break free of the memory. He studied Nege. If the man knew of Umi, he would have used it to his advantage.
“Nege, I will call for you in the future. You have done a great service I will not forget.”
With a flick of his wrist, he dismissed the priest and motioned for the room to be emptied. The meeting with Nege had roused the malignant spirits who roamed the chambers of his mind intent on haunting him.
In the days following his father’s death, ominous thoughts had plagued him whether asleep or awake. Those dark times still came, dragging his thoughts underground to an impenetrable foreboding. He permitted no one near him during these times when his anger and frustration, and yes, his fear, descended like a horde of hunger-crazed vultures. No one should see a god in despair.
Ramses rubbed his thumb over the crease in his forehead. The darkness was returning. Again he slipped into the past.
Ramses had been furious almost from the beginning of his father’s death. The seventy days of embalming had ended, but his father’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings remained unfinished. It would be necessary to temporarily bury him in the mound of Osirieon.
The burial could not wait. Ramses felt the tension crawl up his neck to become a throbbing over his left eye. If his father’s ka returned and could not be reunited with the body, what would happen? Would the spirit being and physical being ever become one again?
Ramses glared at the noisome priests huddled in the throne room like cowering puppies. It was almost laughable how they fell over each other vowing Osirieon to be the holiest of all the burial cities and no obstacle existed for his father’s journey into eternity.
“My father’s reign of eleven years and two days is insufficient for a tomb’s construction?” He strove to conceal his rage as he listened to rambling excuses of inefficiency.
“Pharaoh, let us assure you that Seti chose the Valley of the Kings because it is the best bridge to the underworld. No one would contest the wisdom of his choice, but there are difficulties with the site. It’s true that we have encountered unexpected challenges—remember the heat? Nothing grows there even in the winter—but when it is complete, Great One, it will be hailed as the most beautiful tomb ever built.”
“Ah. Work remains to be done?” Ramses, a sure hunter, laid his snare.
“Much more work, my lord. It will be magnificent, decorations on every passage and in every chamber. We have included drawings of all of Seti’s favorite pastimes, and the ceiling is like the night sky, brilliant blue and covered with—”
“Splendid.” Did they think him so easily distracted? “It is unfinished because…?”
“More workers are needed.” The soft, pasty-faced priests nodded to each other in solemn agreement. “It requires skilled workmen to create a tomb worthy of such a great warrior as Seti.”
“More skilled workers can be provided.”
A collective sigh filled the room. “My lord, you are most gracious and understanding. You are a true god like your father, Seti. May your reign be forever, may your sons—”
Ramses lifted a single finger—signaling the guards, snapping shut the trap. “Escort these ‘skilled workers’ to the builders’ village of Deir el-Medina. When my father’s tomb is complete, I may consider returning them to temple posts.” He shrugged. “Or not.”
The guards removed the indignant priests. Ramses thought they looked more like a gaggle of squawking geese than holy men of the gods. He watched them leave. In minutes, everyone in the palace would know not to underestimate the new pharaoh.
Early the next morning—his father’s burial day—fear crept inward and refused to budge. After today there would be no hope of communication with his father. After today, all successes and failures would be his alone.
Ramses led the mourners from the palace to the west bank, the place of the sun’s daily death. Oxen pulled the royal sledge carrying Seti’s embalmed body in its wooden sarcophagus, followed by a second sledge with the canopic chest holding the alabaster jars containing his stomach, liver, intestines, and lungs. A third sledge held an army of shawabtis, slave statues that would come alive to serve Seti throughout eternity.
Beside the sledges, rows of priests walked, some burning incense, some shaking sistra as professional mourners cried and screamed their grief. Lining the roads, the women of Egypt wailed and tore out their hair in sorrow at Seti’s death.
They arrived at the mouth of the underground tunnel of Osirieon. Ramses stood without speaking as the coffin was solemnly removed from the cart. With strict protocol, it was placed upright to face southward in the correct position for the high priest and Ramses to perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony.
Ramses’s heart began to pound. This was his last hope. As the priest restored Seti’s senses, allowing him to eat and drink and giving him the ability to speak in the next life, there was a chance he would whisper a final message in this life.
Ramses stepped closer. There must be words remaining in his father’s mouth about this prophecy. Perhaps if he stood as closely as possible and listened intently enough, he could hear the words his father had left unsaid, the directive he needed to rule wisely.
The priest cut through the linen face bindings to open Seti’s mouth with a small iron knife before handing Ramses the Feather of Truth. Ramses suppressed a shudder. The feather was so light, and his father’s heart, all his deeds and reasonings, would be weighed against it. Did Seti’s heart balance with the feather? Had Seti been allowed to proceed into the afterlife? Did he still live?
At the priest’s signal, he stepped near and, leaning forward, touched his father’s mouth with his smallest finger. Placing the feather in the coffin, the new pharaoh strained to hear the words he needed.
Once in the wide hall, the wooden box framing Seti’s remains was lowered into the stone sarcophagus. The massive coffin had already been placed beneath a carved falcon spreading his wings protectively. Eight slaves groaned as they lifted the cover and slid it into place.
The chest of canopic jars was moved to stand near the wall inscribed with the Book of the Gates, the guidebook to the netherworld. Each symbol had been carved into the wall and painted green, symbolizing life and fertility. There was nothing more to do to enable the reunion of his father’s life force—his personality—with his soul, or to ensure a successful journey to the god Osiris.
Ramses clasped his hands behind his back and stared at his father’s tomb. Seti, once so strong and confident, lay silent, unwilling or unable to grant him what was so desperately needed. He left the hall and trudged up the steep tunnel.
Workmen closed the tomb with the seal of Nubis, the jackal. Nubis crouched, ready to spring if any dared disturb the forbidden entrance.
That had been years ago, yet now, alone in his gilded throne room, Ramses still fought the waves of terror. He had heard nothing that day. Fear had begun its conquest with the unsaid words and his father’s elusive warning. The gods refused his entreaties and sacrifices, scorning him, telling him nothing—if they knew.
Chapter 5
Shiphrah beat the stains from the linen cloths, pretending it was Amram she was pummeling. She wished Amram ben Kohath had never been born, or at least had never returned to their village to marry Jochebed. His presence ruined everything.
If only she could find a way to make Amram leave, to stop the story she saw taking shape, to undo the damage he brought with him. Her arms began to ache, and she dropped them in her lap. She could not remove the stain any more than she could remove Amram. She hated feeling helpless.
Jochebed, sensible Jochebed, seemed to have forgotten how to complete the simplest task. She did not even finish her sentences. Several times Shiphrah had found her standing by the river holding an empty jar and gazing at it as if she’d never seen one before.
Slender Reeds: Jochebed’s Hope Page 7