Dreamers (31 page)

“I care not what this one does.”

And so Paneah, virtual master of the mightiest house in

Thebes, became the only slave of Khamat, chief jailer of the

king’s prison. Each morning Khamat lowered a rope into the

Hebrew’s cell and Paneah climbed forth to do his bidding. The

unruly warriors from Potiphar’s guard were excused from

emptying buckets of waste from the prison cells, for Paneah

cleaned them. He also carried fresh water and food from the

prison gate to each individual cell.

Pharaoh’s prison contained two different types of cells:

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dungeonlike pits to confine the lowest criminals, and stone

buildings to house noblemen’s servants and Egyptian citizens.

Paneah served the inmates of both. When he had finished

with his prison duties, he worked in Khamat’s stone lodge,

scrubbing floors, grinding corn or cleaning the stall that held

the jailer’s donkey. On slow afternoons when the sky glared

hot and blue, Khamat ordered the slave to stand behind him

and fan away pesky flies as the jailer napped in the sun. When

the sun-god’s Boat-of-Millions-of-Years finally finished its

journey across the sky, Khamat escorted the Hebrew back to

his cell and pulled up the rope.

The other prisoners, accustomed to giving Khamat a mea-

sure of surly respect, took pleasure in belittling the new per-

sonality that had entered their small world. This bearded and

bedraggled scarecrow, obviously a slave and apparently de-

serving of his fate, accepted the bitterness they spewed on him

without comment. When he knelt to slide baskets of food

beneath the iron bars, the prisoners in the walled cells spat on

him and cursed him for the food’s poor quality and limited

supply. Even the criminals in the pits scorned him, routinely

calling him vulgar names and deriding his manhood because

he had been reduced to serving them.

“Surely you are the son of a scared rabbit!” one man called

as Paneah pulled up his bucket. “Why else would you haul

filth for the men who imprison you? What sort of woman gave

birth to you?”

“One who wears bells on her skirt and sells her favors,” the

man in the next pit called. He made an obscene gesture in

Paneah’s direction. “I enjoyed her company the week before

I came to this place.”

No matter how crude or lewd the comments, Khamat

noticed that Paneah did not respond in word or deed. He

moved through a hailstorm of indignities and insults as though

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his thoughts were focused on another world, one in which

men did not surrender to the vilest inclinations of their

natures. While he worked, the slave neither glanced toward

nor made reference to the barred door leading to Potiphar’s

house…and freedom.

Paneah never offered his opinions unless asked, but once

Khamat asked for them, he discovered the slave possessed the

organizational skill of a military officer and the wit of a royal

courtier. Strength and honor supported the skills that were

wasted on menial labor, but Paneah did not once hint that his

situation should be reevaluated or improved. Khamat could find

no trace of ambition or ulterior motive in the slave’s conversa-

tion; nor did the man’s words ever contain less than total truth.

In time, Khamat neglected to carry his sword while Paneah

worked, then he put aside his whip. The slave’s silent en-

durance won the respect of the other prisoners; the ribald

taunting eventually ceased. Within a year, Khamat stopped

supervising Paneah altogether; within two years, he made it

a common practice to leave the long rope dangling in Paneah’s

cell. “Why should I get up early every morning to drop a rope

to you?” he asked his servant. “You would tell me if you were

planning to escape, wouldn’t you?”

Paneah looked up from the sandy floor and regarded the

chief jailer with a wistful smile. “God has a purpose for me

here,” he said, rubbing his hand over the crumbling stone

walls as if he felt some affection for the place. “I will not leave

until he opens the door for me.”

After his brief exchange with Paneah in the pit, Potiphar

did not venture into the prison again. The slave’s words ran-

kled in his brain, urging him to do something, but Potiphar

had no idea what he should do. Paneah had talked of his god,

but Potiphar had no use for gods, visible or invisible.

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Peace and Paneah had departed from Potiphar’s home on

the same night. The house that had once brought Potiphar

pleasure became a hellish place. Sagira, her charm and culti-

vated good looks destroyed by an overindulgence in food and

wine, flirted brazenly with every man who crossed the thresh-

old. More than once Potiphar had seen sheepish-looking

suitors, slaves and noblemen departing from her bedchamber

in the dark of night.

He regarded such things with indifference, silently wishing

that Pharaoh had ordered him to lose an arm rather than re-

ceive a bride. Ramla, the iron-willed priestess whom Potiphar

had endured for Sagira’s sake, had not returned to the villa.

Alone and forsaken, Sagira whined incessantly, returning

handmaid after handmaid to the slave market, unable to find

a single girl capable of serving as her companion.

Potiphar possessed all he had ever wanted: a fine house,

treasure in his coffers, a sterling reputation as a warrior and

friend of Pharaoh. The Gold of Praise hung about his neck,

prompting all who met him to kneel in reverent respect for

one who had been admired and honored by the king.

But his house, which had once been a haven of rest,

hummed with tension and distrust. After Paneah’s departure,

Sagira refused to have anything to do with running the house-

hold. Potiphar extracted stern but capable taskmasters from

his army and set them over his household, but the estate

limped along, barely making a profit, the backs of its slaves

bruised and broken by the whip.

No longer was singing heard in his house. The only laugh-

ter was drunken and coarse, and usually spilled from Sagira’s

bedchamber in the darkest hours of the night.

Potiphar retreated to the palace, preferring to spend his

time with the king. But Pharaoh had tired of military con-

quests and spent his days overseeing the craftsmen who were

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building his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Thoughts of

eternity pressed on the royal mind, and Amenhotep’s concern

did not lie with his armies, but with the stonecutters and

artisans who were fashioning the tools and treasures he would

take with him into the next world.

And yet Pharaoh was forty-two; the captain of his guard,

fifty-three. Potiphar knew he was closer to eternity than the

king, but he was not eager to prepare for it. How could the

future hold anything for a man who had no faith in it?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Two years later, in the grand central hall of Pharaoh’s

palace at Thebes, the entire royal family gathered to cele-

brate the gifts bestowed by a group of visiting foreigners.

Tuya sat on a chair beside Abayomi, her hand resting pro-

tectively on the gentle swell of her belly. The priestess of

Montu had declared that she would bear a son, and Tuya was

careful that the proper offerings be offered every day to

ensure her child’s safety. She had lost one love because she

neglected to placate the gods with proper sacrifices. She

would not lose another.

Abayomi, caught up in the music, clapped and occasion-

ally glanced in her direction. She smiled in approval, and he

turned again to the musicians, his confidence bolstered. At

thirteen, her husband was still much a boy. He had matured

enough to earn her respect and father a son, though one had

little to do with the other.

She had come to respect her young husband because the

prince was a student of life. Anxious to understand the world

around him, his insights into natural, divine and human law

were curiously creative. He often struggled to communicate his

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fanciful ideas to others, but Tuya, who had been mother, sister

and wife for four years, gave voice to his insights and feelings.

Neither his elder brother, the crown prince Webensennu,

nor his father the king understood Abayomi, for their thoughts

centered around military ideas of right and might, but Tuya

was quietly glad that Abayomi would rather ponder the way

of an ibis in the air than plunder an Asiatic village. Instead of

swords and shields, her husband’s chamber was crowded with

scrolls, art and animals, living and mummified. His name

meant ‘he brings joy,’ and after the grief of her former life,

Tuya had to admit her husband-child had brought a measure

of sunlight to her dark heart. She still dreamed of Yosef, but

not as often as she once had.

Pharaoh and Queen Merit-Amon sat across from a dark-

robed quartet of Syrian dignitaries, and Tuya found herself

studying the strangers’ faces. They wore short, pointed beards,

heavy robes and no jewelry. For a moment she thought she

gazed into a transforming mirror, for they were opposites of

the clean-shaven, bejeweled, lightly clothed Egyptians. Awed

by the ostentation of Pharaoh’s palace, the visitors spoke little

and looked much, their dark eyes darting up, down, right and

left. Of course they were impressed. Tuya had learned enough

to know no palace in the world could rival the beauty and

opulence of Pharaoh’s court. Thebes was the center of the

world, and the center of Thebes was this room. From it Pha-

raoh’s divine glory shone like radiant sunlight.

The crown prince sat at Pharaoh’s right hand with two of

his wives. Three years older than Abayomi, Webensennu

behaved as though he were Pharaoh already, nodding with

grave dignity at a pair of wrestlers who competed for his at-

tention while acrobatic dancers in sheer veils whirled before

the royal chairs. Though he still wore the prince’s single lock

of hair on his right temple, Webensennu gripped an ivory-

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handled flywhisk as though it were the flail or the crook, the

symbols of Pharaoh’s office.

The Master of the Banquet clapped his hands; the dancers

stopped, the wrestlers prostrated themselves before Pharaoh.

Without warning, a bevy of male slaves spun into the room,

each bearing a bowl of roasted meat or honey-glazed fruits.

The delicious aromas of goose, duck, teal and pigeon rose

from the steaming bowls, and Tuya thanked the gods that the

nausea of early pregnancy had passed. She now had the

appetite of a field slave at harvest time, and she intended to

enjoy this meal to the fullest.

Pharaoh’s family, his noble guests and the visiting Syrians

plucked food from the bowls while a group of women musi-

cians danced to their playing of the harp, lute and flute. As a

white-robed priestess of Amon-Re strummed the sacred

sistrum, Tuya leaned forward to inquire if her husband found

the meal pleasing.

The words never left her lips. A sudden shriek interrupted

the musicians and the women scattered as one of the king’s

food-tasters knocked a bowl to the floor and staggered for-

ward, his hands clutching at his throat. As the crowd gasped

in horror, the terrified slave tottered toward his god and king,

then collapsed as blood ran from his nose and mouth.

In an instant, Abayomi’s arm encircled her waist. “To your

chamber,” he said, pulling her from her chair as his eyes swept

the room. “Wait there. You will be safe, I swear it.”

Alone in her chamber, Tuya knelt before the stone statue

of Montu and numbly gazed at the figure. What power would

such a statue have against one who wanted to poison her

husband or her soon-coming son? Montu’s strong arm had

done nothing to aid Yosef, and only blind luck had saved

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Pharaoh’s life tonight. If the poison that struck the innocent

slave had worked more slowly, Pharaoh would be well on

his way to the underworld. Yet thousands of priests through-

out Egypt offered daily sacrifices to protect their king, the

divine one.

Which of the gods of Egypt could help her? She despised

Bastet, Sagira’s goddess, and Montu had failed her in the past.

Amon-Re was Pharaoh’s divine father, but though she would

not admit it aloud, she felt nothing but contempt for a god who

would allow death to come so close to the anointed king.

Yosef had spoken of and prayed to El Shaddai, the invisible

god in whom the world lived and moved and breathed, and

yet Yosef now passed his days in Pharaoh’s prison. Yet there

had been no announcement of a child born to Potiphar’s wife,

so perhaps Yosef had managed to escape the trap Sagira laid