Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  “No, my husband,” she said, her eyes bright.

  “I wonder if Jehovah is right. I wonder if the angel tricked us.” He applied pressure, squeezing her throat. “I hate being a pawn, Semiramis. I loathe being at the disposal of another. I am Nimrod. I am the Mighty Hunter. I choose my own fate. I decide for myself. Yet this miracle…”

  He let go of her throat and studied the horizon. The miracle frightened him. How did one war against that kind of power? There had to be a way. Somehow, he must strike off the shackles that others tried to forge and put on him, even if the other was Jehovah. He must be free! Free to live and do as he desired, not to be a slave. He laughed. He put a collar and leash on Azel, his cheetah. What he wouldn’t allow was anyone to put a collar and leash on him.

  “Now is the time when we must gather strength,” Semiramis said. “As the people toil at canal work, we must regroup.”

  “Eh?” Nimrod asked.

  “While the spring flood keeps the others busy, we must marshal all who are ours and find a way to stop Beor’s hideous influence.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We need our most cunning minds,” she said, “our deepest thinkers. Gilgamesh has always helped you in the past. Perhaps now is the time to bring him back. He has been gone long enough in the marsh. Why, even Ramses has finally returned, giving up on his sister. Only Gilgamesh remains there.”

  “Forget about Gilgamesh.”

  “Husband,” she said, clutching his arm. “I know you’re angry with him. And—”

  “No. Gilgamesh has been driven insane. This girl… What’s her name?”

  “Opis.”

  “Yes, her,” Nimrod said. “She is surely dead. Gilgamesh knows that, yet he refuses to return. Like some living ghost, he haunts the great southern marsh.” Nimrod shook his head. “Let him rot.”

  “Listen, my husband, please. You mustn’t let your anger color your judgment. We need Gilgamesh. He is your friend, your best friend.”

  “No. Uruk is my best friend.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Uruk is tireless in your service. He is a good man. But Gilgamesh has that rare gift of thinking. Now we need him more than ever.”

  Nimrod peered at her with suspicion.

  She bowed her head.

  “You seem very eager for Gilgamesh to return.”

  “Don’t you think that now is our most dangerous moment?” she asked. “That as you attempt the great prize, the most devious and deadly peril has arisen?”

  “It has,” he admitted.

  “That is why I counsel you as I do. There are no other reasons.”

  He studied her, before breathing deeply. “I’ve wondered on a way to restore the balance, to rid us of this Jehovah lunacy. Imagine, wandering in small groups over the face of the Earth, devoured one by one by the beasts. Mankind would perish. And if not, then what would be the point of existence? A dirty, miserable life, breaking our backs hoeing or trotting after sheep. What glories could be achieved? What heights of civilization could be scaled? None. Certainly none for us.”

  Nimrod shook his head. “Here, in this generation, if we unite, we can dare grand goals. We can raise a monument to the ages. Think of it, Semiramis. Our names will be etched in eternity as the builders of civilization, as the rulers of it, the patrons. Perhaps even as its…” He grinned, with the gleam of the future in his eyes. “We have all labored many years to achieve our goals. Now, in their simplicity, the people yearn to throw away their hard-won efforts. I want to save them from that. The way is risky and fraught with peril. It will be a thankless task. Yet we cannot let fear overcome our love. If the people are simple, we must be wiser still and take the hard yet reasonable course.”

  “What is that?”

  “I’ve thought long on this,” Nimrod said. “I’ve pondered for a way out of our dilemma until my head aches with fatigue. The needed task, as I said, is dirty and mean and perhaps even worse than that, it will be thankless. Yet which of us will shirk his duty if called on to save civilization? Perhaps I have been raised up for this very hour. I doubt if anyone else has the courage to see through this difficult task. If I could find some other means, I would.” He squinted. “People’s memories are short. They think on what they see. Out of sight is out of mind.” He pursed his lips. “Except, it seems, for you regarding Gilgamesh.”

  She kept silent.

  “In any case,” he said, “the miracle slaps them in the face everyday. They can do ought but discuss it and marvel anew on what occurred. Although it pains me to say so, there is only one way to insure against that.”

  “You cannot banish Rahab.”

  Anger twitched across his face. “Do you consider me a fool? Do you think I could dare such a decree, snapping my fingers so my Hunters grab her by the elbows and hustle her out of Babel? Oh, yes, I can see it now. Before everyone, I deny Rahab salt and bread and inform her that if she dares to step foot in Babel again, she will die.” He snorted. “You’re wise and far-seeing, Semiramis.”

  “Forgive me, husband. I thought—”

  “When I said it’s a thankless task, I meant that it can’t be done openly. Now to ask a man to slay a dangerous beast is to praise and to honor him, to imply that he has great skill and courage. What I suggest is low and despicable. The one who would volunteer for it we would spit upon and call a cur and a hyena. Yet perhaps for that very reason it takes even greater courage to do—if this evil deed is done for the noble reason of saving civilization. I know that most people could never consider it. It is why we lead. For the good of all, some, at times, must perish.” Nimrod peered at the horizon. “Neither I nor any cabal of elders would or could banish Rahab. No, Semiramis, what I suggest, reluctantly, is much more certain and permanent and therefore fraught with risk. Rahab must die and stay dead.”

  “No,” Semiramis said. “You can’t mean that. It’s horrible, wicked.”

  For a moment, Nimrod stared at his wife the way a wolf or leopard might stare at a hare. Then his features softened, and he stroked her cheek. “Dear wife, even you with your cunning recoil at the needed task. As I said, it’s low and despicable. I wish the deed on no man or woman. And yet…it is simply another reason why Bel must have chosen me over my father. As a hunter, I have learned to be remorseless. I have learned to ponder the choices, arrive at the decision and then carry it out.” Nimrod sighed. “The question, Semiramis, is do we let grandmother thwart everything we’ve worked for?”

  “As you say, I’m just a woman, no doubt too soft to think…to think of such a deed. There is craft and deep thought in this, and I know the idea horrifies you. Oh Nimrod, it’s too risky even for you.”

  “There is no other way.”

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Then she let go of him, stepping back, regarding him. “You know that my brother Minos is clever regarding these things. Perhaps you should relate these thoughts to him. He sees life though a poet’s eyes. He might see something that neither of us would have thought of, perhaps missed.”

  Nimrod scratched his chin as he glanced at the camp. Minos in his bright cloak and with his oiled curls strummed his harp as he sang to the maidens. They watched him in rapt delight, with shining eyes. The way he had run from the ambush in Japheth Land made many consider him a coward. Still, Minos had aided him at Festival and now trained the Singers, the maidens, with keen precision. Minos brimmed with ideas, perhaps too many. Nimrod nodded.

  Semiramis hailed her brother, and soon the three of them walked out of camp. Semiramis explained the problem and possible solution.

  Nimrod seemed to gaze at the clouds, but with his peripheral vision, he gauged Minos. The lad’s good looks made him seem clever. Nimrod knew the good looks also made him seem brave, and that was an illusion. Yet Minos pondered the information. If he was shocked by what he heard, he didn’t betray it.

  “If Rahab died that would surely help over time,” Minos said. “The problem is who among us has the hardness to dare such a feat? Not
I, certainly. And while, you, Nimrod, are the bravest of the brave, your good will and magnanimous nature preclude you from ordering such a wicked deed.”

  “This is your vaunted poet’s insight?” Nimrod asked. “I might as well have sat at Beor’s feet and listened to one of his sermons.”

  Minos dipped his head. “There is the problem. Shem raised Rahab, if she ever was dead. Yet Beor wanders through the streets stirring the people with his sermons. Surely, it surprises you as much as me to find that massive, usually brooding archer, to be so persuasive. Now what I think—”

  Nimrod grabbed Minos’s shoulder, making the poet wince. “What did you say?”

  Minos sputtered, trying to ease out from under Nimrod’s hand, but the grip was too powerful.

  Nimrod spoke with a fervid pitch. “You said: ‘If Rahab was really dead.’“

  “Eh?” Minos asked.

  Nimrod scowled, shaking the fine-boned poet.

  “Why, ah…” Minos licked his lips. “Did Noah ever raise the dead? No. And he’s the holiest man that ever lived. Surely, no one thinks that Shem is more holy or spiritually more powerful than Noah is. How then could Shem have raised the dead? It’s impossible.”

  “Shem didn’t do it,” Semiramis said. “Jehovah did it through him. That’s what Beor is saying.”

  “That’s not the point,” Minos said. “Who said she was dead?”

  Nimrod released the poet and became thoughtful.

  Minos rubbed his shoulder.

  “Nimrod presided over Rahab the day before the burning, or when the burning was to have taken place,” Semiramis said. “Nimrod praised her as one does the dead. Are you suggesting that Nimrod can’t tell who is dead and who isn’t?”

  “Not at all,” Minos said. “Nimrod, that day, did you examine the body?”

  Nimrod shrugged.

  “Well, it really doesn’t matter,” Minos said. “Who could blame Nimrod for thinking that Rahab was dead when Kush and even Ham pronounced her dead? The point is that maybe instead of being dead she was in a deep form of deathlike sleep. So then when Shem arrived, he certainly didn’t raise her from the dead but simply revived her.”

  “Hmm,” Semiramis said. “That has possibilities.” She turned to Nimrod. “Didn’t I say he was clever?”

  “The idea has merit,” Nimrod conceded.

  “It does,” Minos said, not bashful in the least. “But it still isn’t good enough for what you need. People will say that you’re jealous, that envy fills you against Beor and Shem. What you need is a clincher.”

  Nimrod studied Minos with the same intensity he had used on the gazelle.

  “I suggest you hurry and tell us your plan,” Semiramis said.

  Minos’s grin broadened. “The clincher is the destruction of the bearer of the news, the utter shattering of he who strides through our city on a peg leg spouting his lies.”

  “Ah,” Nimrod said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “One of us walks up to Beor and slays him. Oh, that’s very clever. Then the people turn and rend us apart for slaying a man of Jehovah. Minos, I commission you to the deed.”

  “That isn’t what I mean by destroy,” Minos said, undaunted. “My way is more refined, one that will destroy not only Beor but in the process kill his lying message.”

  “What is this method?” Semiramis asked.

  Minos proceeded to tell them.

  13.

  Somewhere in the darkness, a cricket chirped. On the roof and while on his sleeping mat, Beor rolled over, staring at the stars. He couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was because after all these years he was finally in Babel. He still found it hard to believe. He was here, thwarting Nimrod. He grinned. He was among his own again, the sons of Ham. He was respected as he had once been. And yet…that scoundrel Nimrod still had his wife.

  Beor closed his eyes. He remembered the good times, when he had first brought Semiramis back from Japheth Land and to the settlement in the Zagros Mountains. He’d had both his legs then and they had been man and wife. He looked up, finding the constellation Andromeda, the third decan of Pisces. Andromeda was a beautiful woman chained down by her wrists and ankles, unable to rise. He imagined Semiramis up in the stars, chained down by Nimrod, the wife-stealer.

  With a silent groan, he dropped his head back on the pillow.

  How he longed to look into her eyes, to drown in them. What had gone wrong between them? He bared his teeth. Nimrod is what had gone wrong. Despite his preaching, his real desire was to pick up an axe and split Nimrod’s skull, to feel the crunch of Nimrod’s bones.

  Beor sat up, shaking his head. What was wrong with him? He was doing Jehovah’s work. He had to stay pure.

  “I’m no different than I ever was,” he whispered. “I’m a fraud and a hypocrite.” He shuddered and lay back. He wanted to obey the divine injunctions. Yet he also wanted his wife.

  Beor rolled onto his side, with his eyes open. He must resist temptation. He mustn’t think about her or about slaying Nimrod. Noah counted on him. Shem had told him many deep things. There was a disaster waiting to happen. Events hung on a knife’s edge. He had been called to preach and explain this to the Hamites.

  “Remember,” Shem had told him during their journey to Babel, “in the end Jehovah’s will is never thwarted. So we can disperse on our own or Jehovah can drive us to it. But if through Divine wrath then it will cost humanity dearly.”

  Beor tried to dwell on that. Yet soon his thoughts drifted back to earlier today. He had been trying not to think about it as he lay on his mat, yet it was the reason he couldn’t sleep. He had seen Semiramis sauntering down a lane with a water jar on her head. She had walked—no one walked like his Semiramis. She had paused, turned, and found him staring. She smiled. The smile had torn at his heart. Once they had lain together as man and wife and she had smiled like that in the moonlight.

  As he lay on his mat under the stars, Beor shook his head, trying to drive away the image. Then he found himself standing. The others slept soundly. They were all old, Shem, Ham and Rahab. He slipped on a cloak and thrust a hatchet through his belt. He had to relieve his bladder. He had no other reason for going down.

  Quiet as a mouse, he moved to the stairs, soon stepping onto the street. Earlier, he had spoken to his former wife. Semiramis had laughed and looked into his eyes as she stood in the lane with a water jar on her head.

  Beor had noticed people glancing at them. He had grown uncomfortable. He was the preacher. He shouldn’t speak so long to a married woman.

  “Beor,” Semiramis had said, “I despise the way people are so quick to judge. It’s reprehensible, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “We’re old friends, you and I. Is it wrong for us to talk like this?”

  He shook his head.

  She put a hand on his wrist. “Those prying eyes, they give me the chills. Why not meet me tonight outside your house so we can talk without worries.”

  “What? No, I can’t.”

  Her smile had become like fire in his veins. “I’ll slip out my house tonight as the moon moves past Pisces. If you’re here, we can talk. Nimrod will be out checking the canals, and I heard him say he lays a trap at midnight for some elephant.”

  “Where Nimrod goes makes no difference.”

  “You’re right, for we plan nothing wrong.” She had squeezed his wrist and retreated, stopping, turning and smiling at him.

  Now Beor brushed his eyes with his sleeve. He stood beside the house, scanning the darkness. This was madness. Now was the moment to turn back, and he knew it. So he turned back for the stairs, and then his eyes widened.

  Semiramis fervently slipped down the lane, with a hood over her head.

  Go, Beor! his conscience screamed. Run!

  He didn’t run. He couldn’t run. He stood transfixed. He felt, for an instant, like an ox going to the slaughter. Then he was grinning, holding Semiramis’ hands.

  “Oh, Beor,” she whispered, smelling so lovely. “I’m glad y
ou waited. I’ve missed you so much and I wanted to talk to you tonight without others watching and whispering.”

  He was aware of her hands, how he held them. Yet he was the preacher. Normally he wouldn’t have dared touch her. But the truth was, because of his righteousness, he had the power to let go of her when he willed it. With his newfound moral resolve, he had the new ability. Thus, he could afford to do this for a little while.

  “Can you give me a small hug? I so need one today.” She grinned. “I have nothing naughty in mind. I know that as the preacher, you’re above that sort of thing.”

  He licked his lips. He shouldn’t hug her. Yet she needed one. A hug wasn’t evil. It was reassuring. Then she slid next to him. She hugged him, breathing on his neck. All at once, he realized this was a dream come true. He crushed her to him, even as guilt screamed in his head.

  “Semiramis,” he said, thickly.

  She looked up into his eyes, the hood around her making her seem vulnerable.

  A last moment of sanity caused Beor to let go.

  She didn’t let go. She pressed against him, letting him feel her.

  He kissed her. He kissed her lingeringly. Then in horror, he let go. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so sorry.”

  She rearranged the folds of her gown.

  Now was the instant to flee. But he didn’t. He had to explain. “I-I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s all right, Beor. We…we used to be married. I don’t blame you. I hope you don’t blame me.”

  “Oh, no, no, Semiramis,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. The fault was mine.”

  She shook her head, seeming to marvel. “That’s how I remember you, my dear, Beor. You’re so noble and upright. I was such a fool to leave you. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Of course, I forgive you. You must now forgive me, please, I beg you.”

  “Yes, Beor,” she said, smiling, holding out her hands. “I forgive you.”