Pillar of Fire Read online

  It was quite astonishing and quite perfectly hidden. From the summit of the ridge above it one could see the mountain of the god. From its heart, from the river that flowed even in summer, one saw nothing but greenness and peace.

  For all its appearance of innocence, it was well guarded. The slopes of its sides were sheer, the way in both narrow and steep. A chariot could not come down that track. A donkey could, and a long line of people on foot, and their surefooted herds.

  There were men on the heights, archers with strung bows, who called greetings to their kin, but none left his post. Nofret wondered how many more there were whom she did not see, concealed in the tumbled stones. Peace in this country was a fragile thing, and green grass and water more precious than gold.

  The chief of the elders of the valley was Zipporah’s father Reuel the priest. He welcomed the travelers with open gladness. They set up their tents downriver of the village, making a village of their own, doubling and trebling the numbers of those who inhabited the valley.

  This, Nofret understood, was the heart-home of the tribe. Those who wandered did so to spare the grazing in the valley, and to follow the paths of their god. They had gone to the mountain that they called Horeb, so that they might worship in the holy place. Their return would endure for the rest of that season; then they would go out again on the round of the year, as constant as the moon, and as bound by necessity.

  Those who wandered were not always the same. Sometimes former wanderers stayed and others went out: particularly the very old, the very young, the women with child. The priests went as their god called them, or stayed in this place that was blessed.

  They were strong, they believed, because they were both a settled people and a people who wandered where the wind and the god took them. If ever they built a city and lived bound to it, with a king over them, their strength would fail. They must have the freedom of the desert, and with it the peace of their hidden place—both equally, and both alike. If they chose one over the other, then that one in the end they would lose. Their god had decreed it, they said, in the morning of the world.

  oOo

  On the morning of Nofret’s wedding to Johanan ben Aharon, Ankhesenamon gained for herself a name among the Apiru. She had been sitting in front of her tent, alone as she always was. The children of the wanderers had learned not to circle round her and stare, but to the children of the valley she was still a new thing. It was beneath her dignity to dismiss them, but neither would she acknowledge them, nor answer their stream of questions.

  One of the elder children was more outspoken than most. “Mother says that you are bitter,” she said, “like wormwood. Why are you bitter? There’s no place sweeter than this.”

  “That’s what she is,” said one of the others. “The bitter one. Miriam. Is that your name, stranger-lady? Are you Miriam?”

  “I am—” Ankhesenamon shut her mouth. When she opened it again, it was to say in a faint, cold voice, “I am nothing and no one. You may call me what you please.”

  Miriam it was, then, and by evening everyone was calling her that. It was easier on the tongue than the name she had had in Egypt, and truer to the woman that she was: Miriam, the bitter one, the rebellious, who would not be resigned to her exile.

  She came to the wedding. Nofret was too startled to be pleased. No one had expected Ankhesenamon that was, Miriam as she had become, to take part in any joyous thing, especially the wedding of the servant whom she blamed for her exile.

  But she was there, dressed as somberly as she ever was. She had no other clothing, no jewels, nothing either bright or beautiful. If she was offered any such thing, Nofret was sure that she would refuse it.

  A touch made Nofret jump. Leah, behind her, had brought her back to the world of the living. She was the bride in her splendor, set up in front of the people. And there was the bridegroom under the canopy, beautiful in a new robe, waiting for her to come and be joined to him. The priest of the joining was white-bearded Reuel, and Moshe and Aharon behind him, prophet and priest-prince. They were all waiting, all the people with their black robes laid aside, bright as a field of flowers.

  She who had known the somber builders of tombs and the black-robed wanderers of the desert saw now what they were when they were contented and at peace. They looked on her with lively curiosity, though most of them had seen her already. None was hostile, foreigner though she was and thief as she might be thought of, who had taken the son of Aharon from the women of the people.

  Today at least they were glad of and for her. They sang and danced and clapped their hands. Their maidens danced before her, casting flowers at her feet. She walked slowly through the throng of them, self-conscious as she had never been when she was chief of the queen’s servants in Egypt. She had not been the focus of all eyes then, not she herself, apart from her lady and queen. It was terrifying.

  She fixed her eyes on Johanan. The sight of him made her strong. He seemed at ease, but then he would: this was his own place, his own people.

  When she came to him at the end of this procession that seemed endless, she too would belong to them. She would be Apiru. Adopted; accepted. Made one of them.

  Her heart tightened in her breast. She blinked hard. If she broke down and wept in her wedding procession, it would be the most dreadful of omens. She swallowed the tears although they gagged her, lifted her chin and firmed her stride and walked straight and strong to her husband’s side.

  “You could change your name, too,” he said. They were in their own tent in their own blessed solitude, with the wedding going on outside. It had a lazy drunken air to it, the last and most dedicated of the revelers still clinging to their revelry, while the rest slept where they had fallen, or else had retreated to their beds and their own wives and husbands.

  They were prisoners here, the two of them. They would not be allowed to go out till evening. It must be a full and perfect consummation, the women had told Nofret, for the good of the tribe and the pleasure of the god.

  They had made a very good beginning. He was resting from his exertions, propped on his elbow, smiling lazily at her. She reached to ruffle his beard. “Don’t I have enough name to go on with?” she asked him.

  “It’s not the one your father gave you.”

  “I’m not the child my father named,” she said.

  “Are you still the woman who was given an Egyptian name from a long list of them, handed out to her like a ration of barley?”

  “I chose to keep it,” she said.

  “Even now?”

  “Why?” She rose on her own elbow, face to face with him. “Does it so displease you to call me by it?”

  He seemed taken aback by her sharpness. “I only thought—”

  “It’s because it’s Egyptian, isn’t it? How you must hate Egypt! Would you come to hate me, because you have to use their language whenever you name me?”

  “No,” he said. “No, damn it. I thought you only took the name because you didn’t want Egypt to have your real one—your real soul.”

  “My real soul,” she said, “became that name long ago. Egypt won, you know. I never meant it to, but it did.”

  “You could change it. Egypt is far away. You’re Apiru now; you’re of our people.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m still the Hittite woman, the Egyptian queen’s slave.”

  “And the wife of Johanan ben Aharon.”

  “All of that,” she said. “Every one.”

  She knew why she loved him: he did not press her further. Much later, and when he patently had put it out of mind, she asked, “What would you have called me? If I’d wanted to be someone else?”

  He had to stop, shift his mind and body, answer, “I don’t know. I was asking you.”

  She hissed in exasperation. “You weren’t even going to give me a name?”

  “I thought you’d be sick of that: first your father, then whichever scribe or servant it was who wrote you into the list of royal servants. This tim
e I thought you’d want to name yourself.”

  “Names don’t work like that,” she said. “They come as the gods send them.”

  “The god has sent you none?”

  “The god has left me as I am. Nofret. The Hittite woman, the Egyptian slave.”

  “And my beloved.”

  “And your beloved,” she said.

  “My beautiful one. My bride.” His voice went sweet, like the beginning of a song. “I will go up to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.”

  They were all poets, these Apiru. Poets and dreamers and madmen. And beautiful, all beautiful. The wine she had drunk at the feast was long gone, but she was dizzy all over again. He had always been able to do that to her.

  “If I didn’t love you to distraction,” she said, “I think I could very easily hate you.”

  “What, for being so importunate?”

  “No,” she said. “For being so perfectly irresistible.”

  “Then that’s a hate we’ll have to share,” said Johanan.

  “A wife,” she said solemnly, “should share everything with her husband.”

  “Indeed,” said Johanan. “And she should obey him in everything.”

  “Oh, no,” Nofret said. “Share and share alike. Obedience for obedience.”

  “That’s not—”

  “That is my vow to you,” she said.

  “Are you marrying me all over again? With new words?”

  “Every day,” she said. “Every night. The same vows. The same conviction.”

  She had caught him; held him. He had been barely so intent when she spoke the words that the Apiru priests bade her speak, words very like these, but much more in them of yielding to her husband’s will. She would do that, yes. But when she had sworn it before the people, she had sworn in her heart, before the god, that Johanan would do it, too: that he would be to her as she was to him.

  Now she held her breath. If he had sworn no such vows in his own heart, nor wished to, then she did not know that she could remain his wife. It was late to think such a thing, too late as the Apiru would say, but she could not help herself. She had to think it.

  He was long in replying, so long that her eyes went dim and her lungs cried for air. Then at last he said, “Obedience for obedience. Love for love.”

  “The gods will witness it,” said Nofret.

  “One god,” said Johanan, “for them all.”

  She drew breath to differ, but chose instead to keep silence. Was that obedience, then? It was fair enough, she supposed. He had yielded to her, after all, in the changing of their vows.

  Fifty-Three

  Ankhesenamon that had been, Miriam as she was now, might have sunk to nothing among the Apiru, if it had not been for Leah. Nofret tried, but she could not be what she had been: forever the loyal servant, devoted to her lady. She was a married woman, welcomed among the women, accepted into their councils. She had her husband, the keeping of his household, and her own stubborn insistence that when she needed to wander afield she would, no matter what a proper woman did among these people. Then when the babies came, they were all-engrossing.

  For whole days and weeks at a time she managed to see no more of Miriam than a figure sitting alone by its tent on the edge of camp or village. She would urge herself guiltily then to visit, and sometimes she even did. But there was never anything to say. Miriam would not care for gossip: this baby born, that one sick and like to die, this woman marrying and that one cuckolding her husband, all the daily ordinariness of life among the common folk. Still less did she need to hear how Nofret doted on Johanan even when he was being a perfect idiot, or what prodigies his children were.

  For of course there were children. Nofret had come late to it, was nearer thirty than twenty when she began, but her body was strong. It was made for bearing babies.

  First came the son of their hearts, whom his father named Jehoshua. That was a great name, a name of power. “‘God is salvation,’ it means,” Johanan said. “And so he is. Our son will be one of those who prove it.”

  Nofret foresaw no such thing. Her sight was as clear as

  it had ever been, but it had narrowed. She saw her husband, her children, even a glimpse of her children’s children. But no more. She needed to see no more, in this time and place.

  She muttered of arrogance and presumption, but she liked the sound of her firstborn’s name. It did suit him, when she thought about it. When she turned it on her tongue, she knew no shiver of fear, merely a sense of rightness. So he was Jehoshua, and he was given the name before the people, and taken into the tribe as one who would grow to be a man among the Apiru.

  When Jehoshua was weaned, three years almost to the day since the wedding in the valley, the twins were born, a boy and a girl. Nofret named them, since Johanan had named the eldest. She thought of Hittite names, and of Egyptian ones, but these were too distinctly Apiru children. She called her daughter Anna, because it was both simple and beautiful, and her son Ishak, because even as a young child he was always laughing.

  Miriam was there for each of the births. She did not come into the light or offer assistance to the midwives, but she came, and Nofret knew. Each time she left before Nofret could call to her, after the babies were born but before they had been taken out to their father.

  She never spoke. She did not say anything when later Nofret visited her, though she had sent gifts: a blanket that she must have woven herself, a gourd that rattled, a little man made out of wood, with legs that bent and arms that could be raised and lowered. Small things, but useful, and valued for that.

  It was Leah who drew Miriam out of the self into which she had retreated. Leah had her son and her grandsons and now her great-grandchildren, but her office and her dignity set her apart. She would seek out Miriam, or summon her—and for a wonder Miriam would accept the summons.

  They were often together. When the elders met in council, Leah as prophetess met with them, and Miriam sat mute behind her, eyes lowered, hands folded in her lap. There were no queenly posturings, no flashes of arrogance. Whether by Leah’s teaching or her own lateborn wisdom, Miriam had learned to keep at least the semblance of humility before the Apiru.

  It was a comfort to Nofret to know that they were both looked after, each by the other. Bitter Miriam seemed to have grown, if not resigned, then less openly resentful of her lot. She did not smile that Nofret ever saw, but then she never had, except when she was queen and beloved of Tutankhamon.

  All that she seemed to have forgotten, or buried deep. Her beauty had faded not at all—if anything it was more piercing than ever with neither paint nor wig to mask it. Time only fined it, made it shine clearer.

  No man dared to offer for her, nor would she have accepted him if he had. She was as remote from the yearnings of the body as living thing could be. Dead, that part of her, and withered. Her beauty was as pure and terrible as a sword, and no more humanly warm.

  Among another people she might have been worshipped as a goddess. Here she was accepted calmly as the god’s child. Her own father seemed happily earthbound beside her, with his sweet-faced plain wife and his much-loved sons. But it was he who wandered in the desert, following his god’s call, and he who went up on the holy mountain and spoke to his god. Sometimes Aharon went with him, and on occasion Johanan. Most often he went alone. Never with Miriam. She kept to the camp or the village, and to Leah’s side.

  oOo

  They were camped by the mountain of the god, one unusually wet spring. That year it rained almost every day, and even the most barren hills were touched with tentative green. Jehoshua was old enough to carry on a quite cogent conversation, if somewhat slanted toward his enthusiasm of the hour, which just then was the bow that his father had made for him. The twins were almost ready to be weaned. Ishak, grinning, had just bitten his mother and been slapped smartly for it. Anna, actually the more outrageous of the two, showed signs of fury that she had not thought of it first.

  Nofret had banis
hed them to the tent where they would nap under the eye of the old dog Tirzah’s eldest pup, now well along in years herself. Tirzah the younger had raised many a litter and was heavy with the latest, most likely her last. She knew well how to look after a pair of human pups.

  Nofret lingered outside in the relative quiet, rubbing her throbbing breast. At this hour of the day all the women were busy with children or with washing. The men were out with the herds or up on the mountain. Johanan had gone hunting, taking Jehoshua with him, the son riding with enormous pride on his father’s shoulders.

  She smiled at the memory. That was a strong line, the line of Levi the priest. All its men looked remarkably alike, even as babies: big, broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed. Ishak was the same. Anna, bless the luck, had inherited beauty from somewhere, maybe from Leah. And she had her mother’s hair, which pleased Johanan to no end.

  They were a handsome family. Sturdy, too. She shaped a sign for protection, in case something of ill-will was listening. The Apiru god seemed to have no objection to happiness among his people, but other powers were not so generous.

  She sighed, stretched, luxuriating in the movement. She was not getting any younger, but by good fortune she had kept her teeth, all but the one that the midwives called the child-toll, lost while she carried the twins. Her waist was thickened, her breasts no longer high and firm; but she had never been a lissome beauty, nor did her big broad Hittite bones look well without a decent padding of flesh.

  Her husband professed himself satisfied. She felt as strong as ever. It was amazing how robust a woman could be, chasing after lively offspring and hefting them two at a time, and carrying water in heavy jars to and from well and river, and beating the washing on the stones, and doing all the things that a woman did where even the rich labored beside their servants.

  She had a girl who came for part of the day to look after the children and do what needed doing: a younger daughter of a family excessively blessed with daughters. Their mother had been trying to urge a second on Nofret, even a third, but she did not see the use in that. If she had had a house in a village, yes, certainly, but not in a tent of the wandering Apiru. Nor was she about to give up her wandering. She liked it; she thrived on it. Her children were growing up sturdy and strong, if somewhat obstreperous.