by Angela Hunt
“Jokim, listen to me,” Menashe commanded. “We are not going to die, not at the hands of these men.”
“The others died.” Jokim’s voice was now a husky whisper. “Why shouldn’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Menashe admitted. “I don’t understand any of this.” A cold lump grew in his stomach as he looked at Jokim, and he turned away, frustrated by the niggling guilt of his own inadequacy. When had he ever claimed to have all the answers?
“You said—” Jokim’s voice scraped terribly “—God sometimes calls us to suffer.”
Menashe said nothing. And so, while Hondo and his men ate and drank and occasionally splashed through the shallows to buffet or spit on their prisoners, the afternoon passed into history.
When the sky began to glow red in the west, forecasting the sunset, Hondo moved to the center of the camp and lifted his massive arms. “We are still missing five men,” he called, peering through the crowd as if the absent warriors might be hiding among the others. “We can only assume they have met with misfortune. So load the barge, for we will depart at sunset.”
Hanging by the rope that secured him to the mooring post, Menashe opened his swollen eyes. One warrior had punched his face at least a dozen times, and Menashe was certain another had broken several of his ribs. At one point during the afternoon a pair of men had used Jokim and Menashe as targets in an archery competition. Though arrows fell in a whistling cloud around the pair for the space of an hour, the wobbly Medjays had been drinking and could not hold their bows steady. One arrow grazed Menashe’s bare arm, leaving a nasty red streak, and Jokim took another arrow in the leg already lacerated by the spear. But they were still alive.
Menashe glanced over at Jokim. Blood from a wound in his forehead had transformed his face into a gruesome mask. He hung limply from the ropes that held him, weak from the slow seepage of blood from his wounds. Menashe frowned as he looked at the crimson-tinted water. The noise from the men on the beach had kept crocodiles at bay throughout the day, but the creatures were irresistibly drawn to blood, and they would grow more brazen once darkness fell. Menashe began to hope that Hondo would choose to take his captives’ heads back to Thebes. A quick beheading would be more endurable than being torn apart by battling crocodiles in a feeding frenzy.
Hondo’s warriors, seamen and slaves busied themselves with carrying provisions and weapons back aboard the ship. Their heavy footsteps thudded up and down the narrow gangplank, reverberating like the dull roar of thunder in Menashe’s weary consciousness.
His arms, pinched by the constant pressure of the rope around his wrists, had no feeling. He had the fuzzy impression he possessed only a head and chest; he was nothing but a trunk tied to a pole, and soon he would be only a head, stuffed inside a gift basket for Queen Tiy. Would she invite his father to the ceremony during which Hondo would present her with trophies taken from the traitors? Yes, a voice inside Menashe murmured, she would. She was a capable and charming queen, but something poisonous lay just beneath the pleasing, polished surface of her personality, something dangerous…
“Men of Egypt, gather around me,” Hondo called. Menashe lifted one battered eyelid. The light was fading fast, color bleeding out of the atmosphere. The sun hovered over the western horizon, a gigantic ball of fire, the last sunset he would ever see. He closed his eyes again and waited for the inevitable.
The gangplank thundered with footsteps, every soul emptied the ship, anxious to observe Hondo’s bloody entertainment. When at last the gangplank stood silent, Menashe heard the barbarian’s bold voice again. “Today you shall witness the justifiable end of traitors.” His words were punctuated by the soft swish of a weapon cutting through the darkening air. Against his will, Menashe’s eyelids lifted. Hondo stood at the edge of the river, surrounded by his men, a battle-ax in this hand.
Despite his emptiness, Menashe felt the rise of panic. He had nothing with which to resist, no weapons, no strength, no will. The horror of the previous night and the constant abuse of the day, combined with his anger and thirst, had completely depleted him. And as weak as he was, he knew Jokim was even weaker.
He had no strength in himself. None at all. And no hope. He had been called of God and he had tried to rally his people, but they had not been willing to join him. They had journeyed to the promised land and felt its wonderful goodness beneath their feet, but then had turned back for the luxury and empty comforts of Egypt.
But God knew he had been faithful. Menashe closed his eyes and found strength in knowing that.
A noisy splash told him Hondo had entered the water, ax in hand.
“Are the baskets ready?” the assassin called. Now Menashe heard the rhythmic slap of the weapon’s wooden handle against Hondo’s open palm.
“They are asleep! Wake them up!” one of the men jeered, and Hondo laughed. He drew near, so close that Menashe could smell the rancid sweat of his body. Water splashed in Menashe’s face.
He thrust out his tongue, hoping to ease his thirst by catching a drop or two, but still he kept his eyes closed. He was not certain his eyes could mask the emotions reeling in his heart, and he would not give Hondo the satisfaction of seeing his fear.
Another splash rained on his face, then his tormentor’s voice dropped in volume. “Open your eyes and give them what they want,” Hondo insisted, his hand splashing into the water a third time. “Or I shall cut off your companion’s arms, then his legs, and finally his head. You may keep your eyes closed, but you will still hear his screams!”
Open your eyes, and you will see my deliverance.
Menashe’s eyes flew open, not at Hondo’s threat, but at the urgency in the numinous voice that seemed to vibrate from the mountains, through the air, up from the water. The voice had been so strong, so clear, he was amazed no one else heard it.
Perhaps someone had. “Jokim?” he called, his eyes focusing on Hondo’s malignant face. The warrior pulled the ax back over his shoulder for the swing.
“I heard, Menashe!” A trace of laughter lined Jokim’s weary voice. The sound must have alarmed Hondo, for his eyes widened in midswing. One of his legs shot forward in the water, and he teetered off balance, then screamed and fell into the shallows.
The men on shore laughed, imagining that the fierce warrior had lost his balance, but Menashe knew better. The hair lifted on his arms and his heart thumped against his rib cage as the water at his feet churned and boiled. Hondo reappeared, his clenched hands empty, his face frozen in an expression of atavistic horror. “Sobek!” he cried, then another scream clawed in his throat as an unseen force yanked him beneath the surface again.
Menashe blinked in numb terror. Sobek was the Egyptian god represented as a crocodile. Did Hondo think he had seen the god, or had a croc snagged him?
The men on shore stood in stunned huddles, then one of them shouted and pointed to the water. “Crocodiles!” he yelled, his bony face twitching in a paroxysm of fear. Menashe swiveled his eyes to follow the man’s finger. Beyond the boat, from all directions, the unruffled surface of the quiet cove dimpled with the horny ridges of crocodile flesh. The river teemed with them; a man could have walked from one shore to the other on their backs without wetting his feet, and they moved steadily toward the men on the sand.
As the water around them blushed with Hondo’s blood, Jokim let out a scream that chilled Menashe to the marrow. Anyone who lived long in the Black Land knew the impossibility of escaping crocodiles caught up in the ecstasy of feeding. Energized by the sight of death in another guise, Menashe strained at his bonds while the men on shore ran for the narrow gangplank of the barge.
A sense of foreboding descended over Menashe with a shiver. He caught his breath as a particularly large beast emerged in the water a few feet away. He smelled the sour stench of wetness and rotted flesh caught between the creature’s ragged teeth. Warning spasms of alarm erupted within him and he turned his head away, unwilling to look death in the eye—
But the animal glided past h
im with a strong side-to-side movement. Menashe felt the displacement of water as the creature swam by; the mighty tail brushed the benumbed flesh of his leg and yet the creature seemed unaware of him. Menashe shivered through fleeting nausea, then turned to look at Jokim. Though coated with blood and as pale as death, he, too, had been spared. A pair of creatures hovered atop the water to Jokim’s right and a gigantic bull croc had thrust his pointed eyes up through the water at his left, but none of the animals had harmed him.
But this peculiarity had not been noticed by the panicked men on shore. Screaming and yelling, they hurtled toward the barge, overloading the gangplank until it teetered and tipped over, spilling at least twenty men into waist-deep water. A chilly dew formed on Menashe’s skin as the carnage began in earnest, but a merciful shadow thrown by the setting sun blocked his view of the terror in the water.
The barge shifted, agitated by the death struggles in the river, and the handful of men who had managed to get aboard quickly loosened the mooring ropes and applied themselves to the oars. Thus abandoned, the men remaining on shore ran for the hills as the vicious creatures lumbered out of the water after them. But the towering figure of Abnu appeared from behind a rocky crest, and behind him stood at least a dozen of his loyal warriors. Hondo’s frenzied comrades, bereft now of both weapons and sense, either ran pell-mell into the Nubians’ spears or threw themselves on the ground to beg for mercy.
We are saved. The thought struck Menashe in an instant of understanding, then everything went silent within him as he pitched forward in a faint.
“They must have anchored directly above a crocodile nesting area,” Abnu explained after freeing Menashe and Jokim. He and Menashe sat now by the fire, while Jokim shivered under a blanket someone had pulled from the sand. The giant clamped his jaw tight and stared at the now silent waters. “It is nesting season.”
“It was a miracle of God,” Menashe answered, holding his raw hands and wrists up to the warmth of the fire.
Abnu looked down at the ground and shook his head. “A natural mistake. They should have scouted the area.”
“They did. They’d been here for days. We did not see a single crocodile until the first one grabbed Hondo.” Menashe brought his knees to his chest, then folded his arms atop them and smiled at the giant. “If what happened here was not a miracle, then why weren’t Jokim and I eaten alive? We were bleeding, and we could not escape.”
Abnu pushed at a pile of dirt with his enormous foot. “Sometimes strange things happen. I have seen many things that do not make sense.”
Menashe fell silent. He was convinced God Shaddai had worked a miracle to preserve him and Jokim from the Egyptians, but why hadn’t God spared the others? And why had He allowed the massacre at the camp? Menashe understood why Abnu might have difficulty accepting the wisdom of God Shaddai. Menashe didn’t always understand it himself.
“I do not understand everything God allows.” He looked fully into the Nubian’s somber eyes. “But it is enough to know He has a purpose for me. I know it is His will that the children of Avraham return to Canaan. And I know He called me to lead them. But only a few would take the step with me. Most chose not to believe.” His eyes gravitated to the roaring fire. “Perhaps they never will align themselves to the will of God. But when they do, He will give them all He has promised.”
“Are you giving up?” Abnu frowned, and his expression sharpened. “That is not the way of a warrior. Tarik should have taught you better.”
“I’m not giving up,” Menashe answered, realizing that he could not. “But right now there are urgent things to consider. Jokim’s wounds are serious. He will need a physician, and he cannot travel to Thebes on foot.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Menashe paused. The danger had not passed. Tiy still wanted him dead and he was still a fugitive in Pharaoh’s eyes. Who could he trust? Not his father, and certainly not Efrayim. But perhaps there was one…
“You must go to my father’s house,” he told Abnu, “and ask at the gate for a slave called Jendayi. She is my father’s harpist, and she can be trusted. Tell her I will take Jokim to my father’s house at Tura, and she must send a trustworthy physician to me.”
“I myself will bring the physician back,” Abnu volunteered, his heavy brows rising.
“I hoped you would.” Menashe’s smile widened. He reached out and clapped the other man on the shoulder. “You are a gift from God, friend.”
The giant grinned back with no trace of his former animosity. “We shall see,” he said, unfolding his long legs.
“And why,” Tiy snapped, her patience evaporating, “would the river crocodiles attack you and not touch the Hebrews? Perhaps you did not see how your prisoners suffered. Perhaps their legs were eaten away.”
“No, my queen. They stood in the midst of the beasts as if they were invisible.” The protesting warrior pressed his hands to the floor of her chamber as if he’d been glued there. The trembling fool had been ushered to her quarters as soon as the royal barge had arrived back in Thebes, and she had already interviewed four other infiltrators who survived the skirmish with Menashe’s rebel army. All of them gave the same incredible account, and every man shook before her like a dry palm in a high wind.
She looked away from the senseless man and considered her options. If Menashe and his comrade still lived, as all five survivors seemed to believe, they would be hiding in some safe refuge. And the younger man had been injured, so he would not be fit for travel. Menashe would need help, food and supplies from someone he trusted…someone from Goshen or his father’s house. But if many Hebrews had died in the desert, Menashe would be about as welcome in Goshen as a plague of locusts.
“Get up, you fool,” she told the quaking man before her. “Go immediately to the villa of Zaphenath-paneah, and ask for Akil, the chironomist. Tell him I have sent you, and that I command him to be alert for one who will come to fetch help for the troublesome son.”
“If no one comes—”
“Someone will,” she hissed. “And when he does, tell Akil to follow him. You bring word to me, so I can send my warriors to aid him.” She waved him away. “Go at once. Your duty is not yet fulfilled.”
Gulping in obvious relief that she had not ordered his execution, the man nodded and slunk from the room like a shadow.
Tiy rested her chin on her manicured fingertips. She would never cease to be amazed at the incredible talents of Zaphenath-paneah and his sons. In bygone days the vizier had been able to charm the birds from the trees, and his sons obviously followed in their father’s footsteps. Zaphenath-paneah had always claimed his unique abilities came from his invisible and almighty god, but Tiy believed them to be the fruit of his intelligence, compassion and devastating handsomeness. Apparently his sons had inherited the same qualities, for Sitamun had been sincerely smitten by Efrayim, and Menashe obviously possessed his father’s aptitude for leading and motivating men.
A terrifying thought rose in her consciousness. What if Zaphenath-paneah’s special favor did come from his god? The Egyptians fondly credited their deities for all sorts of happy daily happenstances, but the survivors of the massacre on the river seemed convinced that they had witnessed a miracle in the midst of the crocodile attack. Could this invisible god wield that kind of force? And if He could and would, had He set His face against her?
Suddenly she yearned for Amenhotep’s company. He would not be able to offer advice or wisdom more valuable than her own, but it would be comforting to rest in his arms and feel the burdens of the throne lifted from her shoulders. But the sun would soon set on what had been another royal wedding day. Amenhotep would sleep tonight with his latest bride, a match Tiy herself had arranged. And though her heart contracted a little to think of that royal couple, petty heartaches had to be borne in silence.
Tiy was the Great Wife, the reigning queen and the power behind the throne. And more than any of her blue-blooded predecessors she understood what the title required.
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Chapter Twenty-Six
Though Jendayi could not see the exact moment when the sun slipped behind the western Theban mountains, she knew darkness had fallen by the way life in the vizier’s house subtly gentled. Voices lowered in the night, laughter softened. The stern-voiced guards seemed to relax, for she heard smothered laughter and the clink of weapons as they put their swords, shields and spears away. Only a quartet of guards remained on duty during the night, and these four manned posts outside the villa’s walls, away from the quiet hum of life within.
Once the vizier had been seen to his chamber and provided for, the sweet scents of lily oil streamed through the darkness as the women of the slave house anointed their arms and necks and went forth to entrance the men. Zaphenath-paneah was a more liberal and easygoing master than most—he allowed his slaves to marry, frequently granting them manumission as a wedding present. But no one, slave or free servant, could find a better master than Zaphenath-paneah, and only a few had ever left his service.
Of all locations in the house, Jendayi liked the garden best, but even it seemed different in the night. The ceaseless drone of insects became more melodic in the darkness, and the white lotus blossoms, which hid from the immodest brightness of daylight, generously opened their petals and perfumed the air. Occasionally Jendayi would hear a soft splash and imagine that some cricket or toad had leaped into the reflecting pool. The night sounds never unnerved her, for they belonged to the darkness, and darkness was as familiar as the strings of her harp. Daylight and dreams, she had discovered, brought things far more frightening than the night.
She had just settled down by the edge of the reflecting pool when Kesi came hurrying over the tiled pathway. “Come quickly, Jendayi,” the handmaid whispered, a tinge of anxiety in her voice. “Someone at the gate of the vizier’s house asks for you.”