Moses, Man of the Mountain (3 page)

“I see that I got you by the short hair when I told you I know what is going on about those boy babies. That is not the worst yet. My police have captured several of those midwives who have been waiting on your womenfolks in secret. They claimed that they wouldn’t talk, but when my men got through with them they talked and talked aplenty, from old Puah on down.”

Amram started violently and then hated himself for his weakness, but he couldn’t help himself. It looked like Pharaoh was looking straight at him. He could see the gleam in Pharaoh’s eyes as he went on. “So now I know all about those births behind rocks and in caves and such as that. And I know all about those babies hidden out in the woods and in holes dug under house walls. My soldiers will be around to call on
you, and when they come to call, they won’t miss nobody. I done told you.”

The Elders looked at one another and finally Hur spoke up. “Give us a chance, Great Pharaoh. We proved ourselves builders and generally constructive under the last regime. We love Egypt. It is the only home we know. Trust us and see if we are good citizens or not.”

“Why should I trust people without monuments and memories? It looks bad to me—a people who honor nobody. It is a sign that you forget your benefactors as soon as possible after the need is past.”

“We don’t build monuments, but we do have memories.”

“How is anyone to know that? Take for instance your great man Joseph. As long as you have been in Egypt you have not raised one stone to his memory.”

“Look at it another way. Perhaps we do not need stones to remind us. It could be that some folks need stones to remind them. It could be that memorial stones are signs of bad memories. We just don’t trust our memories to stones.”

Pharoah’s face darkened at this. He laughed in a harsh way.

“Well, anyway, you won’t need no stones to remind your children and your great-great-grandchildren of the punishment that Rameses put on you. You are going to work and work and work. You are going to weep and you are going to bleed and bleed until you have paid in a measure for your crimes against Egypt. I done told you now. Don’t give me no trouble unless you want to make me mad.”

The Elders shuffled out of the place somehow and started on home. “No rest, no property, no babies, no gods,” Amram gasped. “Why would anybody want to live? Why don’t we kill ourselves and be done with the thing?”

“Maybe we hope we’ll beat the game somehow without dying. That’s human, ain’t it?” somebody said and so they dragged themselves on home to tell what was said. They ground their souls between their teeth as they went but there was nothing to spit out. It was just a grinding and an aching.

Jochebed was asleep when Amram got home, so he
wouldn’t wake her to hear what he had to say. Tomorrow was time enough to start the weeping. So he stepped over the straw bed of his two older children and stretched out beside his wife till daylight. Then he told her.

She didn’t say anything and she didn’t stand up. She took the sleeping baby in her arms and sat there on the straw pallet staring down in its face. Amram squatted down before her and stared down at the baby too. Its little hands and feet and the helpless soft body was between the man and the woman and they huddled over it in silence for a long time. Then Amram said huskily, “Shall we grant it merciful escape, Jochebed?” and felt in her lap for her hand and pressed it. He could not bear to look at her eyes.

“No, Amram.”

“Those brutal soldiers, Jochebed, grin with pleasure when they hunt down one of our children like hounds after rabbits.”

“I don’t care, honey. If my child is murdered, old Pharaoh has got to do the murdering his own self. I ain’t going to allow him to make me do his murdering for him. If the gods want the life of my innocent boy, then they got to make a move and show me. I mean to hold out till they do. Let’s hide it on the river like some others I know.”

“All right, honey. I sure do want him to live and do well.”

Impulsively he caught the child up in his arms.

“To think that we have not had the joy of giving it a name, nor fondling it, nor circumcising it lest it cry out and be found.”

“It sure is sad. But you hurry on to work, Amram, before the soldiers come to hunt you up. It sure would hurt me to my heart to have to see ’em lay that salted lash on your back.”

“But what will you do about this big, fat son of ours?”

“Go on to work, Amram, and I will find some way. One of the children is always on guard.”

Amram hurried off and Jochebed called the children to her. “Go and cut me rushes from the marshes,” she told them. “Go and hurry back fast. I got to make a good basket. Get me the best rushes you can.”

The basket was scarcely started when Amram reached home after dark. Jochebed had given way to her despair more than once and crumpled on the straw beside her growing child. Twice he had cried so loud that Jochebed knew he could be heard all over the neighborhood and prayed that no prowling Egyptians were near.

So four people forgot hunger that night and sleep was not present in them. Four pairs of ears strained towards the night outside the house and four hearts fainted at every creeping sound as four pairs of fingers toiled over the basket until it was woven strong and tight and daubed and calked with pitch and mud.

“You think, Amram, if I took the baby before Pharaoh and begged him, he might get sorry for me and let me keep my child?”

“Get sorry for you? No. He plans harsher measures for us. The horn that is hooking us gets stiffer day by day. If you could only run away with him or hide him for a while!”

“There ain’t no other way then, but the river. All the roads is full of spies. Goshen is ringed with steel. Amram, do you think this basket will be safe?”

“I hope so, Jochebed. It is a real good basket, even if we was in a hurry. I don’t believe the water will get into it. Hand me the baby and let us see how he fits in it.”

Jochebed lined the basket lovingly with one of her garments and then with goose feathers before she laid the child inside. Then she knew the basket was ready, so it was the time for tears. There was nothing any more with which to busy her hands and brace her spirits. She beat her breasts and wept without restraint for several minutes. Amram bowed his head in silence. Aaron and Miriam sat in dumb terror watching their parents and occasionally smiting their breasts to show their sympathy of grief.

“We must put him on the river, Amram,” Jochebed said at last. “That is why I made the boat—the basket for him.”

“But why upon the river?”

“We ain’t never been nowhere, Amram, so we don’t know.
It could be other people besides those we know that live along the Nile. It may even run outside of Egypt. Maybe someone among them may find him and love him. Maybe even in Egypt there might be somebody with a heart.” She broke down into sobbing again. “Anyway, there ain’t nothing left for us to do. One thing I know Pharaoh can’t make out of me. He can’t take my son away from me and make me a murderer at the same time. That’s one thing I don’t aim to let him do.”

Amram looked at his wife’s face and was fed inwardly by her look. So the night of the morning found them with the basket moving stealthily down to the Nile. At the river, Amram withdrew with Aaron and Miriam to watch. Jochebed fed the child copiously from her breasts and put him back into the basket. Then the thought assailed her that perhaps her basket was not seaworthy after all. She took him out again and held him across her knees as she tried her woven boat upon the water. It floated dry and lightly upon the stream. She drew it back to her and placed her baby in it for the last time and covered it with the lid. The little bark was propelled out from the shore among the tall bulrushes and rested there with the Nile lapping it gently and lulling the child to sleep.

Jochebed squatted there watching until her husband sent Miriam to call her lest she be found there by some Egyptians. She rose stiffly after a while and closed her bosom slowly. She spoke to Miriam and told the girl to station herself beneath the clump of palms not too far away to see what happened to the child. She must go home and sprawl on the earthen floor with her fears. Then she spoke to the morning, and the Nile: “Nile, youse such a great big river and he is such a little bitty thing. Show him some mercy, please.”

A
ll the little stars crept back into heaven and the sun rose. Miriam, standing on the watch wall among the palms, calmed herself and sat down. Her eyes wandered from the particular spot among the bulrushes to bulrushes in general. Then she regarded the river and the activities on the river. Far up-stream, several fishing boats were out. A group was drawing water with oxen for the fields. Water birds swooping and diving, and occasionally feeding-fishes, flinging their bodies out of the water in the exultation of the kill. Then Miriam went to sleep.

She woke up with a guilty start and looked for the little ark on the river which contained her baby brother. It was not there. She looked all around her to see if anyone was watching her and feeling sure on that score, she crept down to the spot where the basket had been and parted the bulrushes. The child and his basket were gone, that was all. And she had not the least idea of where he had gone, nor how. What should she tell her parents? She began to cry.

But her tears did not flow long. Down-stream at some distance she saw a glorious sight. A large party of young women dressed in rich clothing was clustered on the bank. The morning sun struck against shining metal ornaments and drew Miriam away from her search for her brother and from her tired
and frightened self. She crept downstream, keeping as close to the shrubbery growing along the river as best she could.

Ten young women stood out in the stream holding up a long piece of cloth that shielded another young woman from public view, or almost shielded her. Two others washed and massaged her for several minutes while Miriam watched from her hiding place. It was a marvelous scene to her and she felt uplifted from gazing on it. This could be nobody else but the Princess Royal—only daughter of Pharaoh, newly widowed by the death of the Assyrian crown prince and returned to Egypt. Miriam noted her person, her trappings and her attendants and said to herself: “Royalty is a wonderful thing. It sure is a fine happening. It ought to be so that everybody that wanted to could be a queen. I wish I could get close enough to touch that princess. I wish I was one of those girls waiting on her, even.”

The Princess came up out of the river. The girls holding the screening cloth moved up with her on dry land and kept shielding her until she was rubbed down, oiled and dressed. There was chatting and laughter. The lift of a thin, sweet tone came to where she crouched in the bushes and the child Miriam stood up and craned her neck to see where it came from. And now she saw two black eunuchs squatting on their heels at a distance from the bathing party playing, one on a flute and the other on a stringed instrument. Some of the girls took positions and began to dance. The others went on folding garments, packing caskets with toilet articles and generally preparing to leave the bathing place. The dance ended and then the music. The Princess rose from the stool placed for her and was instantly surrounded by her party. One eunuch carried a sunshade over her head. Two girls waved ornate fans on long handles. Miriam’s heart beat fast as she realized that they were coming in her direction. Now she would be able to see them at close range.

But the party did not move off at once. Something in the water had attracted the attention of the Princess. She was directing someone in the party to it. One of the girls removed
her sandals and went down into the stream and came out with a dark, oval object. “Aha!” thought Miriam, “They had forgotten the casket in which is kept the things for washing the Princess. They will get a good scolding for that. But I wish they had left it so I could have seen what was in it. That would have been wonderful! I could have run after her and returned it to her and maybe she might have made me one of her ladies in waiting. Oh, a lady in waiting to the Princess! Nothing could be greater than that.”

The party moved off leisurely and came abreast of Miriam. They were not more than thirty feet from where she hid. She was so entranced that she stood up, the better to see, and one of the ladies saw her.

“It is a Hebrew!” she all but screamed. “What is she doing here? Catch her!”

“She is only a child,” the Princess said lightly. “She can do nothing harmful.”

“But she might be a spy,” one of the ladies pointed out.

“Yes, these Hebrews may be planning to assassinate you.”

The eunuchs drew their swords at this and looked threateningly at Miriam.

“Nonsense!” the Princess rejoined. “No one knew we were coming here today and no one—not even I—knows where we go tomorrow.”

“Still she should be questioned. Never can tell what these Hebrews might do to overthrow the government.”

“Governments are not overthrown by little girls,” the Princess retorted, and the party swept on its way towards the palace of Pharaoh.

Miriam stood blinking for a long time. She was completely beside herself with ecstasy. She had seen the daughter of Pharaoh. The daughter of Pharaoh had spoken to her. Well, anyhow she had spoken of her. All her life she was going to remember the gait of the Princess when she walked. She wondered if that movement was a special gift to royalty or if people like her could copy it. She certainly meant to try it before her playmates. “This is the way the Princess walks,” she would tell
them. “I know, because I saw her and she spoke to me.” She flew home as fast as her legs could move to tell what she had seen.

She burst into the house and found her mother stretched upon the floor facing the little cave where she had hidden the baby so often, and her mother was holding one of his little garments and weeping bitterly. Then Miriam remembered, not just that she had seen the Princess and heard her speak, but why she had been posted at that lonely place on the bank of the Nile at all. She recoiled from her mother’s face in panic.

“What happened to my child, Miriam?”

“Oh—er—” Miriam came back to herself from her dreams of the palace. “I—I don’t know, mama.”

“You don’t know?” Jochebed sprang to her feet in fury. “You don’t know when you were left there to find out? You stupid dunce! Why
don’t
you know? Didn’t you stay where I put you?”

“Yes. Yes, mama, but I—I went to sleep. I was so tired from last night that I couldn’t help it. I went to sleep after sun-up.”

Seeing her frenzied mother searching for something with which to strike her made Miriam come alive inside more thoroughly than she ever had done before in her life and suddenly an explanation flashed across her brain.

“You see, mama, while I was asleep, the basket with your baby in it floated down-stream and the Princess saw it and took him home to the palace with her.”

“The Princess? You mean Pharaoh’s daughter?”

“Yes, mama, she’s the very one. She was bathing herself in the river down below me and the basket with the baby in it floated down to where she was after she had finished her bath and was perfumed and anointed and dressed with a whole heap of pretty things in her hair. Then when she was ready to go she saw the baby and sent and took it with her. I met the party on the road and tried to ask ’em what they was doing with your child, but they took and drawed a sword on me and made like they was going to kill me.”

Jochebed wept bitterly. She felt her heart crowding her
throat. She felt like the whole of Egypt was crowded into her middle and still she felt empty of joy.

“Now I know my poor little baby will be killed,” she wailed and bowed herself again upon the floor. “The sea-buzzards will kill it just for fun.”

“No, mama, she was real nice. She walked like this and smiled at me. And when some of her servants threatened me she told them to leave me alone. She had music played when she found the child and took it to the palace like she was proud. I love the Princess, mama. I wish she would take me to the palace too.”

“Miriam, I ain’t to be fooled with today: is you telling me the truth, or is you trying to dodge a whipping for not minding the baby?”

“But, mama, I
did
see her send for the casket and take it home with her. One of her ladies in waiting carried it herself.”

“Oh, I am so sorry that I did not stay myself to watch! Maybe I won’t never know what become of my baby. Miriam, are you sure it was the same basket which we made to hold the baby?”

“Yes, ma’am. I could see them get it even from a distance. And the Princess had on red sandals and her toenails was red.”

“And how did she treat the baby?”

“She made them play music and they danced for her because she was so glad because she had found the child. I could see everything they did, mama. I wasn’t far from the Princess. She told ’em she loved the child a lot already.”

Jochebed stiffened her back and stood up suddenly. “I ain’t a bit surprised to hear the Princess loved him. He is a mighty pretty child, and smart as a whip for his age.” A glow began to gleam through her seamed face. “So my child is in the palace! I’ll go let the neighbors know.” She tied her best shawl over her head and got as far as the door and stopped. “No, I reckon I ought to tell my husband about our son getting to be a Prince of the house of Pharaoh before I tell the others.” She took off her shawl and turned back. “Get busy, Miriam, folks will be coming in to see us when they hear. The house
must look better than it’s looking now for big doings like this. We is kinfolks to the Pharaohs now.” She thrust the broom into Miriam’s hands and herself began to make up a batch of honey cookies.

Jochebed began to mix the dough. She took great care with it and all the time laboring Miriam for more detail.

“Miriam.”

“Yes, mama.”

“Come here to me. You didn’t tell me whether the baby cried or not when the Princess opened the basket.”

“No, ma’am. I did not hear him cry at all. And, mama, the Princess had a headdress of blue feathers that fell down over her shoulders in a real pretty way like this.” Miriam grabbed a shawl and draped it over her head and strutted about.

“What did she
say
, Miriam, when she saw him? Tell me her exact words.”

“She said, ‘What a beautiful child!’”

“Did she say that? She must be a real fine Princess sure enough.”

“Oh, she is. Maybe if I was to go and ask her, she might take me for a nurse to the baby.”

“Hush up talking foolish! Youse too young. She would need a woman with breast milk. I will go myself tomorrow to the palace and find out if they need anybody.”

Jochebed kneaded dough vigorously and bustled about. “Blow up the fire, Miriam. I want a bed of coals to bake these hot cakes.” She patted out the little honey cakes and put them on the fire. “Think I
will
run over to Rachel’s, Hur’s wife, and tell her about it. We have always been the best of friends and she would feel hurt if I kept anything secret from her like this. I’ll tell her it’s a secret and she won’t tell a soul. Mind you now, Miriam, don’t let them cakes burn.”

When Amram entered the door that night, very tired and sore from work, he greeted his wife with “What is this I hear about the daughter of Pharaoh adopting our son?”

“Oh, you done heard it already?” Jochebed asked with a pleased air.

“Who in Goshen ain’t heard? That is all the folks are talking about. Well, is it so?”

“Certainly, it is so.”

“How do you know? Did the palace say anything to you?”

“Why, no. Reckon they didn’t count us enough to tell us, us being Hebrews. But Miriam saw her bathing party at the river and saw them take the child.”

“Humph! Pharaoh’s killing every Hebrew boy child he can get his hands on and his daughter taking one home for a son. Ridiculous!”

“Oh, the Egyptians may not be as cruel as you make them out to be. Come here, Miriam, and tell your pa what you saw and what you heard.”

Miriam told again what she had told her mother and added, “And she wanted me to come to the palace to take care of the child for her.”

“See, Mr. Smarty!” Jochebed cried triumphantly. “Always hunting for something mean and low. You don’t even believe butter is greasy.”

“Oh, I’m willing enough to believe if you give me something to go on. I still want to ask Miriam some questions. For instance, if Miriam was
not
close enough to make out any special marks on the casket, how can she know it was the same one? Millions like that been made in Egypt. If Miriam didn’t hear the baby cry how could she tell
what
was in the basket? It might have been the toilet articles of the Princess or a hundred other things. And then again even if she had heard a baby cry unless she was close enough to see the baby, how does she know it was the same one? Couldn’t the party have brought a baby with them from the palace?”

Jochebed lost her good nature at that. Possibly he touched upon fears already hidden in her heart so she flew hot and turned upon Amram.

“Oh, you make me sick with your doubts and your suspicions! Always looking for a bug under every chip! Throwing cold water on everything! As if your own daughter couldn’t tell the truth! I suppose you would rather believe that a croco
dile come along while Miriam closed her eyes for a minute and et up our poor child.”

“It could have happened, you know.”

“Shut up!” Jochebed screamed. “You ain’t human! You ain’t got no feelings! First you wanted to kill the child yourself and—”

“No, Jochebed, I didn’t want to kill my boy. Pharaoh passed that law, not me. I just wanted to keep the soldiers from having the satisfaction of murdering it, that was all.”

“And when I wouldn’t let you, you, its papa, I stopped you from killing it, you want to believe now that the crocodiles et it up or either the soldiers found it after all and drowned it. Amram, youse as hard as a flint inside. I hate you.”

“Jochebed,” Amram said patiently, “I don’t want to rob you out of your hope. I dread to think myself. But don’t let us not raise up our hope to the throne of truth. Let us go ask at the palace tomorrow. Anyway, you had no business telling this thing all around until you had talked with me.”

They had to stop quarreling because people began dropping in. Soon the house was full of people gloating inwardly and chuckling out loud. “Ho, ho! Pharaoh hates Hebrews, does he? He passes a law to destroy all our sons and he gets a Hebrew child for a grandson. Ain’t that rich?”