Never mind that it seemed far from gentle to Sarai that the women were brought to him instead of him going to them. Pharaoh could not know that the cruelest thing he could have done to Sarai was to make her sit there by the pool and watch as these fertile women were brought in, one by one, to be petted by Pharaoh as he asked about their health and commiserated with them on their discomforts and promised them the favors that they asked of him. If he had such gentle ways with the women who bore him children, what ways did he have with the women who bore him none? Somehow she doubted that Pharaoh would have the same unconcern with her barrenness that Abram had always shown. Even if she wanted to marry Neb-Towi-Re, even if she were free to do so, she would not dare. Such a marriage would be a double fraud—for not only could she bear no children at all, but also, even if she could, they would not have the priest-right through her lineage. All she had to offer was the king-right of the ancient house of Ur. What Pharaoh wanted, or at least said he wanted, was Abram’s to give, not hers.
Though if Pharaoh knew who she really was, he might just as easily decide that the ancient king-right of Ur was good enough, and he would happily marry Abram’s widow.
O God, she prayed silently, over and over, as the women came in and went out, keep Abram safe, and me also, from the wrath of this Pharaoh, and from his love, both equally dangerous to us.
Part IV
Ma'at
Chapter 10
Pharaoh stayed the night in the House of Women, and the next night, and the next—but he did not see Sarai again. Nor did anyone else pay much attention to her, which she did not mind, except for the endless boredom of having nothing worthwhile to do.
Of course it was no secret why Pharaoh had visited there. Besides the wives and concubines who were with child, there were others who were not, and Pharaoh had come to alleviate their loneliness. Hagar was full of stories about Montuhotpe’s virility, but Sarai did not care to hear them. “He may not look like a god,” said Hagar, “but he—”
“Please,” said Sarai. “Enough.”
“A king—no, a god desires you, he is known for being able to put babies into any womb, and you don’t even want to hear about it?”
“I don’t,” said Sarai.
“You don’t believe he is a god.”
“In Pharaoh’s house, you expect me even to listen to such a thing?”
“You don’t believe his seed could grow in you.”
“I believe that my barrenness is caused by God.”
“So let a god take it away!”
Sarai shook her head. “Hagar, I don’t want to talk about this again.”
Miffed, Hagar continued dressing Sarai’s hair, but now was sullen and jerky in her movements.
“If you’re trying to hurt me by pulling my hair,” said Sarai, “you have succeeded a dozen times already.”
“I’m sorry, Mistress.”
“Hagar, do you really want to be my friend?”
“You know that I do, Mistress—am I not your true handmaid?”
“Find me something useful to do.”
Hagar laughed. “Useful? To whom? Pharaoh has something useful for you to do, but you won’t do it. What else can a woman do that’s of use?”
“All my life, whenever I wasn’t doing something else I had a distaff in my hand. Surely I may spin.”
“Have you ever spun linen?”
“No.”
“It’s not the same as wool.”
“So teach me.”
“And the weaving is different, too.”
“That I don’t need to learn.”
“Why not?”
“Because I will never weave linen in the Egyptian fashion.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can see through it as if it weren’t there.”
Hagar was baffled. “But don’t you like to intrigue your husband?”
“Eshut manages to intrigue every man in this house—that’s what such fine linens do. Modesty is right for a woman, not brazenly showing her breasts to everyone.”
Hagar looked down at her own bosom. “But I have nice breasts.”
“They are for your husband to see, and no one else.”
“Are you trying to hurt me, Mistress? For you have succeeded, six times sixty, with those words.”
Sarai was startled at the grief in Hagar’s voice. “What have I said?”
“I will never have a husband, Mistress! I am your handmaid!”
“But of course you will find a husband, when we return to Canaan, or wherever the Lord leads us when we get free of this place.”
“How can I be your handmaid then, with a husband?”
“At that time, you’ll cease to be my handmaid and I’ll find another.”
“You would send me away?”
“No, I would permit you to go away! What are you talking about?”
“I have been raised up to be handmaid to a princess of Ur, and you would turn me away and force me to be with a mere slave and bear slave children?”
“But you said it broke your heart that you would never marry, and I told you that you could!”
“No, it broke my heart that you thought so little of me that you would deny me the pleasure of showing my body while I’m still young and I can take pride in the way men look at me, and pleasure in the knowledge that they cannot have me. But I never want to leave your side, Mistress. There is no man who could tempt me to want to fall from this elevated station and go back to carrying night soil from the House of Women.”
Sarai blushed to realize how Eshut had insulted her. “You were the servant who emptied the chamber pots?”
“I was, Mistress. Didn’t you know that?”
“All I know is what I’m told, and no one told me.”
“I washed many times before I ever touched you, Mistress.”
“I’m sure you did. If there’s one thing they do in this house, it’s wash.”
Hagar was silent.
“Hagar,” said Sarai. “Find me something useful to do.”
Hagar stepped back and looked at Sarai, at first petulantly, but then slyly. “You could teach me curses from the temple of Asherah.”
“Hagar, there are no curses in the worship of Asherah! And if there were, I would not have learned them. And if I had, I would not teach them to you.”
Hagar shrugged. “I was going to offer to teach you some good curses in return. There’s one that can make a baby cry all night.” Hagar giggled. “Oh, that’s a nice one! That one makes them crazy!”
“I don’t understand you, Hagar,” said Sarai.
“Why should you?” said Hagar. “I obey. Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s never enough,” said Sarai. “What do you want? What do you dream of?”
“I dream terrible dreams, Mistress, of being taken into slavery, of losing my family. It makes me hate to sleep. Does that help you understand me?”
“Do you grieve all the time, then?”
“Grieve? I never grieve.”
“But I thought . . . when you think of being taken into slavery, that you . . .”
“It fills me with hate. And anger. I hold it in, because if I ever let it out, blood would flow all through this house, and they would torture me to death.”
If Hagar had said this with virulence, Sarai would have understood. It might have frightened her, but she would not have been surprised by that. Instead, though, Hagar said it coolly, with a touch of amusement.
“You’re joking?” asked Sarai.
“No, Mistress.”
“But you’re smiling.”
“I am holding my rage in a little pot, with the lid fastened tightly on. It never shows in my face.” Hagar turned around and pulled her gown over her head, showing her naked back to Sarai. There were scars from her thighs to her shoulders. Hundreds of them. “That is how I learned to keep my face from showing what I feel.”
“Just a little smile,” said Sarai, “to keep off the whips.”
“And th
e reeds. And the rods. And the open hand, and the fist, and the bare foot, and the shod foot, and the hands that push down into water, and the hands that push down steps, and the hands that push off roofs, and—”
“No, please,” said Sarai. “Surely you were never pushed off a roof!”
“I saw it done. To a boy who was impish but meant no harm. He walked crooked from then on, but the overseer made him run everywhere, knowing the pain it caused him, and knowing how he was ridiculed for his camelish walk. Emptying the chamber pots in the House of Women was a great improvement over working for that overseer.”
Sarai ducked her head to brush tears from her cheeks.
“My mistress has a tender heart,” said Hagar.
But there was something in her tone that made Sarai look sharply at her. “What did you mean?”
“I saw your tears of pity, and I praised you for them.”
“That was not praise,” said Sarai.
Hagar’s face wore that little smile. “If you thought I did not mean my words, then you may slap me, Mistress. I am yours.”
“Why are you trying to provoke me?”
“Mistress, I am trying desperately not to provoke you.”
“You were not praising me! You were mocking me, and I want to know why.”
“Mistress, if I knew what you were talking about, I’d answer you.”
“Did you think my tears were false?”
“I could see that they were real.”
“Is it wrong for me to feel pity?”
“Compared to a king’s daughter, all men and women are slaves.”
“Oh,” said Sarai. “So that’s it. You don’t believe that I can possibly understand suffering, is that it?”
“Mistress understands whatever she sets her mind to,” said Hagar. With that little smile.
“I will not quarrel with you,” said Sarai. “I have many faults, but punishing someone for misjudging me is not something I do. The longer you’re with me, the better you’ll know me. And someday you’ll realize that there is suffering in every life.”
Hagar said nothing. But wore that smile.
“Say it,” said Sarai. “I command you, and I will not punish you for it.”
“Mistress,” said Hagar, “if you take off your dress, what scars will I see?”
“I do not say that our suffering has been equal. But your suffering was yours, and mine is mine—so you know yours, and I know mine. The only way I can hope to understand yours is to think of my own fears or sadnesses, my own angers and resentments, and then magnify them as best I can. Imagining such suffering as you told of, such heartlessness, that brought tears to my eyes. I did not cry because I thought I had suffered as much. I cried because I had not suffered so much, and pitied those who did.”
“Mistress does not need to explain herself to me.”
Either Hagar was not capable of believing that Sarai could possibly understand suffering, or she was deliberately trying to provoke her. Either way, it was maddening, and Sarai put an end to the discussion. “I must have something to take my mind off Abram’s and my situation. Thinking of how much greater is the suffering of others does not help. I need work. Until I came here I helped manage a great household, and my hands were never idle. I must have work to do or go mad.”
“I will think on this, Mistress. But in the end, you will have no work unless Eshut gives it to you.”
“I don’t like Eshut.”
“Eshut is not likable,” said Hagar. “But she rules this house, and if you are maddened by inactivity, it is because she has chosen for you to feel that way.”
That had not occurred to Sarai. But of course it was true. The other women here were not inactive, doing nothing. Eshut was keeping Sarai utterly unoccupied on purpose.
“Why?” asked Sarai.
“Maybe she is waiting for you to come to her and ask.”
Was that all this is? Eshut’s desire to compel Sarai to humble herself before the mistress of this house? “Well of course I’ll ask. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
“Then I have done well to suggest it?” asked Hagar.
“Yes, child, you’ve done well,” said Sarai.
“Even when I . . . provoked you?”
“Did you provoke me?”
“You said I did.”
“I said it seemed that way. Or that’s what I meant to say. Hagar, do you want me to humble myself before you? Because I’m glad to say I’m sorry, if I misjudged you somehow. I’m not ashamed to admit mistakes, if I know I’ve made them. But at this moment, I can’t remember who said what in our conversation. It’s all mixed up together. I only know I meant no harm, and if I offended you, I’m sorry.”
Hagar stood there in silence—but wore no smile on her face.
“Please put your gown back on.”
Hagar silently pulled the linen over her head again, and tied the sash.
“We will get used to each other,” said Sarai.
Hagar nodded.
“Someday you may even trust me,” said Sarai.
Hagar nodded again.
“But for now, would you kindly go to Lady Eshut and ask her when I might come to see her?”
Hagar walked briskly to the door. If Sarai had not been watching her closely, she might not have noticed how Hagar’s hand flicked up to wipe something from her cheek. And then again, to wipe the other cheek.
So the saucy handmaid was not untouchable by kindness after all. If that was, in fact, what her tears implied.
Chapter 11
And what work,” said Eshut, “do you wish to do?” A cat preened on the bench beside her. Eshut ignored the cat—the animals were sacred to Egyptians, and no one interfered with them as they wandered about, doing what they wanted. Sarai, for her part, had no use for them, and she had noticed that when cats were near, her nose began to run, but Hagar had warned her never to be seen shooing them away.
“I’m experienced in many things,” said Sarai. “I can card and spin wool and weave it in my sleep.”
“We work in linen here, and flax is very different from wool.”
“I also managed a large household.”
“That,” said Eshut dryly, “is my job. I hope you do not plan to displace me.”
Displace her? What could possibly prompt her to suggest such an impossible thing? “I could be of help.”
“Knowing no one? Having no notion of what tasks are required, what flows in and goes out, or who does the jobs well and who badly? Nor are royal protocols second nature to you, as to the people trained to the service of this house. You would only get in the way, Lady Milcah.”
Of course this was not true. While Sarai did not know the particular people who did each task, she knew perfectly well what the work of a king’s house entailed, and she was quite sure she knew at least as much about protocol as Lady Eshut. But she could not explain this to Eshut without revealing that she was not Milcah at all, but Sarai, daughter of the exiled king of Ur-of-Sumeria.
“I can see that you are right.”
“And while I could have you trained in some lesser task, you must understand that it would shame Pharaoh for a visitor of your stature to be set to servants’ work.”
“My days are empty,” said Sarai.
“Among Pharaoh’s women are several from Retenu.” The Egyptian name for Canaan. “And others who are Fekhenu.” The polite word, Sarai was learning, for those more commonly called Hsy—people who tended flocks and herds. “Go and visit with them. Surely they would delight in news from home.”
“Am I here as entertainment, then, Lady Eshut?”
“I don’t know why you’re here,” said Eshut. “I did not bring you.”
“I am a woman of ability and experience,” said Sarai, “and I offer my service in whatever small ways I might be useful. With a little thought, you can find something for me to do that will not interfere with your work, but will, in some small way, ease your burden. Since I do not plan to stay, I will not
seek to accumulate power or influence.”
“If you’re right, and you do not stay, then the time I spend training you will be wasted, and I’ll have to put someone else to do your work the moment you leave. And if you’re wrong, and you do stay, you will doubtless be in a position where Pharaoh would not be happy to have you working under me.”
Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) Page 11