I turned, intending to walk back to Shechem. But my mothers lifted me off my feet, and I was too weak to resist. They stripped off my blankets and robes, black and stiff with the blood of Shalem. They washed me and anointed me with oil and brushed my hair. They put food to my lips, but I would not eat. They laid me down on a blanket, but I did not sleep. For the rest of that day, no one dared speak to me, and I had nothing to say.
When night fell again, I listened to my brothers’ return and heard the sound of their booty: weeping women, wailing children, bleating animals, carts creaking under the weight of stolen goods. Simon and Levi shouted hoarse orders. Jacob’s voice was nowhere to be heard.
I should have been defeated by grief. I should have been exhausted past seeing. But hatred had stiffened my spine. The journey up the mountain, bound like a sacrifice, had jolted me into a rage that fed upon itself as I lay on the blanket, rigid and alert. The sound of my brothers’ voices lifted me off of my bed and I walked out to face them.
Fire shot from my eyes. I might have burned them all to a cinder with a word, a breath, a glance. “Jacob,” I cried with the voice of a wounded animal. “Jacob,” I howled, summoning him by name, as though I were the father and he the wayward child.
Jacob emerged from his tent, trembling. Later he claimed that he had no knowledge of what had been done in his name. He blamed Simon and Levi and turned his back on them. But I saw full understanding in his clouded eyes as he stood before me. I saw his guilt before he had time to deny it.
“Jacob, your sons have done murder,” I said, in a voice I did not recognize as my own. “You have lied and connived, and your sons have murdered righteous men, striking them down in weakness of your own invention. You have despoiled the bodies of the dead and plundered their burying places, so their shadows will haunt you forever. You and your sons have raised up a generation of widows and orphans who will never forgive you.
“Jacob,” I said, in a voice that echoed like thunder, “Jacob,” I hissed, in the voice of the serpent who sheds life and still lives, “Jacob,” I howled, and the moon vanished.
“Jacob shall never know peace again. He will lose what he treasures and repudiate those he should embrace. He will never again find rest, and his prayers will not find the favor of his father’s god.
“Jacob knows my words are true. Look at me, for I wear the blood of the righteous men of Shechem, Their blood stains your hands and your head, and you will never be clean again.
“You are unclean and you are cursed,” I said, spitting into the face of the man who had been my father. Then I turned my back upon him, and he was dead to rne.
I cursed them all. With the smell of my husband’s blood still in my nostrils, I named them each and called forth the power of every god and every goddess, every demon and every torment, to destroy and devour them: the sons of my mother Leah, and the son of my mother Rachel, and the sons of my mother Zilpah, and the son of my mother Bilhah. The blood of Shalem was embedded beneath my fingernails, and there was no pity in my heart for any of them.
“The sons of Jacob are vipers,” I said to my cowering brothers. “They are putrid as the worms that feed on carrion. The sons of Jacob will each suffer in his turn, and turn the suffering upon their father.”
The silence was absolute and solid as a wall when I turned away from them. Barefoot, wearing nothing but a shift, I walked away from my brothers and my father and everything that had been home. I walked away from love as well, never again to see my reflection in my mothers’ eyes. But I could not live among them.
I walked into a moonless night, bloodying my feet and battering my knees on the path to the valley, but never stopped until I arrived at the gates of Shechem. I kept a vision before me.
I would bury my husband and be buried with him. I would find his body and wrap him in linen, take the knife that had stolen his life and open my wrists with it so we could sleep together in the dust. We would pass eternity in the quiet, sad, gray world of the dead, eating dust, looking through eyes made of dust upon the false world of men.
I had no other thought. I was alone and empty. I was a grave looking to be filled with the peace of death. I walked until I found myself before the great gate of Shechem, on my knees, unable to move.
If Reuben had found me and carried me back, my life would have ended. I might have walked and wept for many years more, half mad, finishing my days in the doorway of a lesser brother’s third wife. But my life would have been finished.
If Reuben had found me, Simon and Levi would surely have killed my baby, leaving it out in the night for the jackals to tear apart. They might have sold me into slavery along with Joseph, ripping my tongue out first, to stop me from cursing their eyes, skin, bones, scrotums. I would never be appeased by their pain and suffering, no matter how ghastly.
Nor would I have been mollified when Jacob cowered and took a new name, Isra’El, so that the people would not remember him as the butcher of Shechem. He fled from the name Jacob, which became another word for “liar,” so that “You serve the god of Jacob” was one of the worst insults one man could hurl at another in that land for many generations. Had I been there to see it, I might have smiled when his gift with animals deserted him and even his dogs ran from his side. He deserved no less than the agony of learning that Joseph had been torn by wild beasts.
Had Reuben found me at the gates of Shechem, I would have been there to give Rachel the burial she deserved. Rachel died on the highway, where Jacob had gone to flee the wrath of the valley, which set out to avenge the destruction of Hamor and the peace of Shechem. Rachel perished in agony, giving birth to Jacob’s last son. “Son of woe,” she named the little boy who cost her a river of black blood. But the name Rachel chose for her son was too much of an accusation, so Jacob defied the wish of his dying wife and pretended that Ben-Oni was Benjamin.
Jacob’s fear chased him away from Rachel’s poor drained body, which he buried hastily and without ceremony at the side of the road, with nothing but a few pebbles to remember the great love of his life. Perhaps I would have stayed there at Rachel’s grave with Inna, who planted herself in that spot and gathered beautiful stones to make an altar to the memory of her only daughter. Inna taught the women of the valley to speak the name of Rachel and tie red cords around her pillar, promising that, in return, their wombs would bear only living fruit, and ensuring that my aunt’s name would always live in the mouths of women.
If Reuben had found me, I would have watched my curse wrap itself around his neck, unleashing a lifetime of unspent passion and unspoken declarations of love for Bilhah and of hers for him. When that dam broke, they went breathlessly into each other’s arms, embracing in the fields, under the stars, and even inside Bilhah’s own tent. They were the truest lovers, the very image of the Queen of the Sea and her Lord-Brother, made for each other yet doomed for it.
When Jacob came upon them, he disinherited the most deserving of his sons and sent him to a distant pasture, where he could not protect Joseph. Jacob struck Bilhah across the face, breaking her teeth. After that, she began to disappear. The sweet one, the little mother, became smaller and thinner, more silent, more watchful. She did not cook anymore but only spun, and her string was finer than any woman had ever spun, as fine as a spider’s web.
Then one day, she was gone. Her clothes lay upon her blanket and her few rings were found where her hands might have lain. No footprints led into the distance. She vanished, and Jacob never spoke her name again.
Zilpah died of fever the night that Jacob smashed the last of Rachel’s household gods under a sacred tree. He had come across the little frog goddess—the one that had unlocked the wombs of generations of women—and he took an ax to the ancient idol. He urinated on the crushed stone, cursing it as the cause of all his misfortune. Seeing this, Zilpah ripped at her hair and screamed into the sky. She begged for death and spit upon the memory of the mother who left her. She lay on the ground and put handfuls of dirt into her mouth. Three men were
needed to tie her down to keep her from doing herself harm. It was an awful death, and as they prepared her for the grave, her body broke into pieces like a brittle old clay lamp.
I am glad I did not see that. I am grateful I was not there as Leah lost the use of her hands, and then her arms, nor to see her on the morning she awoke in her own filth, unable to stand. She would have begged me, as she begged her unfeeling daughters-in-law, to give her poison, and I would have done it. I would have taken pity and cooked the deadly drink and killed her and buried her. Better that than to die mortified.
Had Reuben carried me back to the tents of the men who had turned me into the instrument of Shalem’s death, I would have done murder in my heart every day. I would have tasted bile and bitterness in my dreams. I would have been a blot upon the earth.
But the gods had other plans for me. Reuben came too late. The sun shone above the walls of the city when he arrived at the eastern gate, and by then other arms had carried me away.
PART THREE
EGYPT
CHAPTER ONE
I LAY SENSELESS in the arms of Nehesi, Re-nefer’s steward and guard. He carried me to the palace, which swarmed with flies drawn to the blood of fathers and sons. My demon brothers had lifted their knives even against Ashnan’s baby, and his poor mother bled to death defending him—her arm severed trying to block the ax’s blade.
Of all the men in that house, only Nehesi survived. When the screams began, he ran to the king’s chambers in time to protect Re-nefer against Levi and one of his men. The queen had lifted a knife against Levi when Nehesi arrived. He wounded my brother in the thigh and killed his henchman outright. He wrested the blade from the queen to keep her from burying it in her own heart.
Nehesi brought me to Re-nefer, who sat in the dirt of the courtyard, her head against the wall, dust in her hair, fingernails caked with blood. It was years before I understood why she did not leave me to die, why the murder of her loved ones did not fill her with rage against me, who caused it all. But Re-nefer blamed only herself for the death of her husband and son, because she had wished for our marriage and made sacrifices to ensure our union. She had sent Shalem to seek me in the market and arranged for us to fall into each other’s arms unhindered. She took the guilt upon herself and never put it aside.
The other reason for Re-nefer’s compassion toward me was even stronger than remorse. She had hope of a grandchild—someone to build her tomb and redeem the waste of her life, someone to live for. Which is why, in the moments before she fled Canaan, Re-nefer roused herself and sent Nehesi out into the wailing town to seek me. Her servant obeyed in silence, but with dread. He knew the queen better than anyone—better than her serving women, better than her husband surely. Nehesi had come to Shechem with Re-nefer when she first arrived, a frightened young bride. And when he found me, he wondered whether he should add to his mistress’s grief by carrying still more sorrow into her presence. I lay in his arms like a corpse, and when I did stir, it was to scream and scratch at my throat until I drew blood. They had to tie my hands and bind my mouth so that we could slip out of the city undetected in the dark of that night.
Re-nefer and Nehesi unearthed jars filled with gold and silver and stole away, with me, to the port at Joppa, where they hired a Minoan boat for the journey to Egypt. During the journey, there was a terrible storm that tore the sails and nearly overturned the ship. The sailors who heard me screaming and sobbing thought I was possessed by a demon who roiled the waters against them. Only Nehesi’s sword kept them from laying hands on me and tossing me into the waves.
I knew none of this as I lay in the darkness, swaddled, sweating, trying to follow my husband. Perhaps I was too young to die of grief, or maybe I was too well cared for to perish in sorrow. Re-nefer never left me. She kept my lips moist and spoke to me in the soothing, all-forgiving tone that mothers take with fretful babies.
She found cause to hope. A new moon arrived while I lay in my own darkness and no blood stained the blankets beneath my legs. My belly was soft and my breasts burned and my breath smelled of barley. After a few days, my sleep became less fevered. I gulped at the broths that Re-nefer fed me and squeezed her fingers in mute gratitude.
On the day of our landing, my mother-in-law came to me, placed her fingers firmly on my lips, and spoke with an urgency that had nothing to do with my health. “We return to the land of my mother and father,” she said. “Hear what I say and obey.
“I will call you daughter in front of my brother and his wife,” she said. “I will tell them that you served in my household and that my son took you, a virgin, with my consent. I will say that you helped me to escape from the barbarians. You will become my daughter-in-law, and I will be your mistress. You will bear your son on my knees, and he will be a prince of Egypt.”
Her eyes found mine and demanded understanding. She was kind and I loved her, and yet something seemed wrong. I could not name my fear as she spoke. Later I realized that my new mother had not named her son, my husband, saying nothing of his murder, nor of my brothers and their deception. We never wept or mourned over Shalem, nor did she tell me where my beloved was buried. The horror was to remain unspoken, my grief sealed behind my lips. We never again spoke of our shared history, and I was bound to the emptiness of the story she told.
When I set foot in Egypt, I was pregnant and widowed. I wore the white linen of an Egyptian, and although I was no longer a maiden, I went with uncovered head like the other women of the land. I carried a small basket for Re-nefer, but I brought nothing of my own. I had not so much as a scrap of wool woven by my own mothers, nor even the consolation of memory.
There were many wonders to see on the journey to the great city of the south which was home to Re-nefer’s brother. We passed cities and pyramids, birds and hunters, palms and flowers, sandy wastes and cliffs, but I saw nothing of these. My eyes stayed mostly upon the river itself, and I stared into the water, trailing a hand into the darkness, which was, by turn, brown, green, black, gray, and once, as we passed a tannery, the color of blood.
That night, I woke clutching my neck, drowning in blood, screaming for Shalern, for help, for my mother, in a nightmare that would visit me again and again. First, I felt the weight of Shalem against my back, a wonderful heaviness that comforted me completely. But then came an unnatural heat onto my chest and hands and then I discovered my mouth was full of Shalem’s blood, my nose clogged with the dusty smell of life ebbing out of him. My eyes were thick with blood and I struggled to open them. I screamed without drawing breath, though I heard no sound. Still I kept screaming, in hope that my heart and stomach would rise out of me in the scream and I could die, too.
On the fourth night of this dream, just as the blood began to swallow me and my mouth opened to seek death, I was shocked to my senses by searing pain that left me gasping. I sat up to find Nehesi above me, the flat edge of his broad sword laid against the soles of my feet, where he had struck me. “No more of this,” he hissed. “Re-nefer cannot bear it.”
He left me, my hair on end, struggling to catch my breath. And from that night, I woke myself as soon as I felt warmth oozing onto my breasts. Panting and sweating, I lay on my back and tried not to fall asleep again. I came to dread the sunset the way some men dread death.
By day, the sun bleached away my fears. In the morning, before the heat bore down, Re-nefer sat with me and Nehesi and recounted cheerful stories from her childhood. We saw a duck, and she recalled hunting expeditions with her father and brothers, the eldest of whom was to be our refuge. As a little girl she had been entrusted with the throwing sticks, handing them to the hunters, anticipating their needs. When we passed a great house, Re-nefer described her father’s home in Memphis, and the many gardens and pools in its great courtyard.
Her father had been a scribe for the priests of Re, and life had been pleasant for his family.
Re-nefer recalled every servant and slave who had waited upon her as a child. She spoke of her own mother, Nebettany, w
hom she remembered as lovely but distant—always at her kohl pots, happiest when the servants poured pot after pot of scented water over her back in her beautiful bath. But Nebettany died in childbirth when Re-nefer still wore the forelock of a little girl.
My mother-in-law retraced her days with charming tales and stories from her infancy until the very week that she left Egypt to be married. The preparations were elaborate, and a great dowry was assembled. Re-nefer could recall the very quantities of linen in her chests, the jewels on her fingers and neck, the bargemen who carried her up to the sea.
I leaned forward, hoping to learn some detail about life in Shechem, to hear the story of Shalem’s birth or a tale from his boyhood. But she stopped just at the point she arrived in her husband’s palace; a blank stare replaced her gaiety. She said nothing of Canaan, nor of her husband, nor of the babies she bore him. She did not speak the name of Hamor even once, and it was as though Shalem had never been born, nor loved me, nor bled to death in my arms.
Re-nefer’s silence throbbed with pain, but when I reached out to touch her hand, she resumed a cheerful smile and turned away to chatter about the beauty of palm trees or her brother’s great position as chief scribe and overseer to the priests of Re. I returned my gaze to the water and kept my eyes there until we arrived at Thebes.
The great city was dazzling in the setting sun. To the west, purple cliffs held a green valley dotted with brightly painted temples, hung with pennants of green and gold. On the east bank, there were great houses as well as temples and whitewashed warrens of smaller buildings, all slowing shades of rose and gold as the sun began its retreat behind the western bluffs. I saw white tents on the rooftops, and wondered if a separate race of people lived above the city-dwellers.