rounded them. When he had dreamed of her two years before,
the vision left him feeling frustrated and helpless. Why had
God warned him of Tuya’s peril when Yosef could do nothing
for her but pray?
In that question he found his answer. And as he prayed, his
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passion for her faded to a warm memory, replaced by a strong
concern for her well-being.
He sighed and closed his eyes, surrendering to the exhaus-
tion of a long day’s work. He had nearly willed himself to
sleep when noises from above brought him back to reality.
“Paneah! Rise at once!”
Yosef grimaced when he recognized Khamat’s nasal
whine. He was not eager to clean up after another drunken
soldier who couldn’t hold his beer.
He didn’t open his eyes. “Can’t it wait?” he called.
“Paneah! Pharaoh calls for you!”
That statement brought Yosef bolt upright. He lifted his
gaze to the rim of the pit where Khamat stood with a torch.
The jailer nudged the rope with his sandal. “Come up, my
hairy one, and ready yourself for a bath and a shave. You look
more like a monkey than a man, and if you wish to impress
the royal eye, you’d best hurry.”
“Pharaoh wishes to see me?” Yosef stood and grasped the
rope, then looked up at Khamat again. “This is not a jest?”
Khamat glanced over his shoulder, then squatted and
gestured for Yosef to hurry. “Master Potiphar waits in my
lodge at this moment to escort you to the palace. So hurry,
Paneah, before I land in the pit with you!”
Yosef braced his feet against the mud walls and began to
climb.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tuthmosis paced for over an hour in Tuya’s chamber, and
nothing she could say or do would calm him. “Please, my
husband,” she said finally, gesturing to the child who slept
with his head in her lap. “You will wake Yosef with that loud
stomping. Sit, calm yourself and have another cup of wine.
Bomani will return as soon as possible.”
“I must know the meaning of the dream before I sleep,”
Pharaoh said, clenching his hands behind his back. “I cannot
rest, Tuya, if the vision comes to me again. The dream’s im-
plications grew more frightening as priest after priest failed
to explain it. When I think of it my blood roars in my ears like
the howling of the Sphinx, and I cannot be calm.”
Tuya leaned back in her chair. With every step, her husband’s
jaw became firmer, his muscles tighter, his heart more eager
for a solution to the puzzle. He hungered for an answer, and if
Yosef failed to provide it, Pharaoh would not be happy. With
every moment that passed, the king became more certain of the
slave’s ability to provide an answer to his dilemma.
Silently, Tuya begged Yosef’s unseen god to provide the
interpretation.
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Finally she heard the steady sound of approaching foot-
steps, then someone rapped on the door. Pharaoh stopped
pacing as his eyes lit with expectation. Bomani pushed the
door open without a word.
With the hesitancy of one whose eyes have been burned by
the sun, Tuya turned toward the doorway. The guards’ faces,
even Potiphar’s, blurred into irrelevance as Yosef stepped into
the room, his wrists and ankles bound in shackles.
A thunderbolt jagged through her. Yosef had been attrac-
tive when she last saw him, but the man who stood before her
now looked like a god.
The boy she had known as Yosef had vanished, replaced
by a stranger in the prime of manhood. In the golden torch-
light of her chamber, the prisoner’s skin glowed over tightly
defined muscles. He stood tall and impressive beside those
who imagined themselves his guards, and rough black hair fell
past his shoulders in a wild tangle. His face, cleanly shaved
and sculpted with angular lines, shone with an aloof strength.
Tuya steeled herself as she gazed into his eyes. The dark
orbs that had always made her heart beat faster now blazed
brighter than the light from the torches on her walls.
She hid a thick swallow in her throat and turned away,
wishing that Pharaoh had chosen to hold this interview in
Queen Mutemwiya’s chamber instead of this one. Only
sorrow could come from this encounter. If Yosef failed
Pharaoh, he would surely die, and her heart would never be
able to erase the memory of him standing in her room. If he
succeeded in this test, he would be rewarded. She would have
to smile at him, offer her congratulations and pretend that her
heart did not knock against her ribs with every breath.
Pharaoh did not even glance in her direction. He gazed in
delight on his wild-haired visitor, and for a moment Tuya
thought he would prostrate himself before the slave, so wide
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were the eyes he focused on the Hebrew. “Thanks be to Horus,
you have arrived!”
Carefully maneuvering around the length of chain that
bound his ankles, Yosef bowed and pressed his forehead to the
floor. “May the king live forever,” he said, his rich voice reso-
nating throughout the room. “How may I serve you?”
Tuthmosis heard the voice through a daze of wonder.
Surely the gods had fashioned and created this man! In all the
temples of Egypt, there was not a priest like this, with tangled
hair, a broad chest and skin as golden as ripe wheat! The
priests who served the gods of Egypt were bald, flour-faced
creatures who spoke in hoarse rasps and bedecked themselves
with gold while proclaiming their poverty of spirit. Those
weak-minded fools had been helpless before the complexity
of his dream, but surely this man could unravel the enigma!
“Rise.” Tuthmosis jerked his hand in Potiphar’s direction.
“Help him up, and remove those bonds.” Stiffly, the captain
of the guard knelt at the prisoner’s feet and unfastened the
shackles around the man’s ankles.
Tuthmosis lifted his eyes to those of the stranger. “Your
name is—?” he asked, his brows slanting the question.
The slave nodded in simple dignity. “I am called Paneah.”
“‘He lives,’” Tuthmosis interpreted. A fitting name for this
one, and a good omen. But a king could not declare victory
prematurely.
“Paneah—” he turned toward the chair at Tuya’s side
“—last night my sleep was broken by disturbing dreams. No
one here can interpret them, but I have heard that you can
explain any dream you are told.” The prisoner’s gaze remained
fixed on him, and Tuthmosis hoped his excitement did not
burn as bright in his eyes as it did in his heart.
“It is not in me to interpret dreams, mighty Pharaoh,”
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Paneah said, inclining his head. “God will give Pharaoh a fa-
vorable answer.”
Tuthmosis perched on the edge of his chair. After studying
the prisoner another moment, he rested his chin on two fingers
and recounted his nightmare: “My dream was this—I stood
on the bank of the Nile, and behold, seven cows, fat and sleek,
came up out of the water and grazed in the marsh grass. And
then seven other cows came up after them, poor and ugly and
gaunt, such as I have never seen for ugliness in all the land of
Egypt. And the lean and ugly cows ate up the first seven fat
cows. And yet when they had devoured them, I could not tell
that they had eaten, for they were as ugly and gaunt as before.”
A shudder shook him at the memory, and he paused to look
away. “Then I awoke,” he whispered, his eyes meeting Tuya’s.
“I remembered nothing but my fear, and my wife bid me
sleep again. But I dreamed again, and saw seven ears of corn,
full and good, come up on a single stalk. But then seven other
ears, withered, thin and scorched by the east wind, sprouted
up after them. And the thin ears swallowed the seven good
ears. And I awoke, and remembered all, and told these things
to the magicians, but no one could explain these things to me.”
Every man in the room held his breath while Tuthmosis
looked at the prisoner. Potiphar, the guards and even the
servants leaned forward in anticipation of the slave’s answer.
What would it be?
Paneah bowed his head as if searching inside himself, then
he lifted his chin and stared at Pharaoh with eyes that gave
nothing away. “Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same,” he
said. “God has told Pharaoh what he is about to do.”
Tuthmosis shook his head. “But which god speaks to me?”
“El Shaddai, the Almighty,” Paneah answered, and the
name rang a distant bell in Tuthmosis’s memory. Tuya had
spoken of this invisible god.
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“The seven good cows are seven years,” Paneah explained.
“And the seven good ears are seven years. The dreams are one
and the same. And the seven lean and ugly cows that came up
after the others are seven years, and the seven thin ears
scorched by the east wind are seven years of famine.”
“Famine?” The fist of fear tightened in Tuthmosis’s belly.
If the people did not eat, the Divine Son must feed the earth…
“God has shown you what you must do,” Paneah repeated.
“Seven years of great abundance are coming in all the land of
Egypt. After seven years famine will come, famine so severe
that the abundance will be forgotten, and scarcity will ravage
the land. Now as for the repeating of the dream to Pharaoh
twice, it means the matter is determined by God, and he will
soon bring it to pass.”
“Famine,” Tuthmosis repeated, his mind reeling. “Of what
use are seven good years if famine will destroy us in the seven
bad years that follow?”
“God is merciful,” Paneah said. “Let Pharaoh look for a
man discerning and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.
Let Pharaoh take action to appoint overseers in charge of the
land, and let them exact a fifth of Egypt’s produce in the
seven years of abundance. Then let them store up the grain
for food in the cities under Pharaoh’s authority, and let them
guard it. And let the food become a reserve for the seven
years of famine, so the land of Egypt may not perish during
the time of hunger.”
Tuthmosis leaned on the arm of his chair. This Paneah had
no ulterior motive, for he had not asked for an audience with
the king. He had no contact with other nations who might wish
to rape Egypt and rob it of its produce, for he had been a
prisoner and cut off from the world. He had no reason to lie.
“El Shaddai revealed this to you?” Tuthmosis asked.
Paneah bowed. “He is the Almighty One, the god who
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knows all things, the unseen god who cannot be represented
by the work of men’s hands.”
“I will think on these things,” Tuthmosis said, nodding.
“You, Paneah, will sleep in the palace tonight as my guest.
See to his comfort, Potiphar. You may all leave me now.”
The knot of servants and guards at the door bowed and
slipped from the room, taking Paneah with them. When they
had gone, Tuthmosis turned to his silent wife and gestured to
the space that still vibrated with the residue of the man’s
powerful presence. “Do you believe in him?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes watering as she stared across
the empty room. “I do.”
Tuthmosis left soon after Yosef had been led away. After
placing her son in his bed, Tuya paced in her chamber. How
could she sleep knowing that her old love breathed under the
same roof? In Potiphar’s house she could not sleep until she
had gathered a good-night kiss from him, but those kisses
belonged to another lifetime. Surely she was foolish to think
of them now.
How strange that Yosef’s appearance could put her hus-
band’s mind at ease and leave hers in turmoil. Tonight Tuthmo-
sis would sleep like a child, his worries wiped away by Yosef’s
assurance, but she would watch and wait and pray—for what?
There were so many things she wanted to tell him. She
wanted to confess her anger at the news that he had been
arrested for attacking Sagira, and her falseness in believing
him guilty. She wanted to explain the child in her arms, to
define her love for the young man who was her king and her
husband. She wanted to tell him she had prayed for his deliv-
erance from death, and she had recognized El Shaddai’s work
in preserving Yosef in prison.
His eyes had not once caught hers during the interview with
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Pharaoh. There had been a time when she and Yosef could
read each other’s thoughts—if she looked into his eyes now,
would she understand all that had shaped him in the eight
years since they parted? Would he understand her precarious
position in the palace? Would he know she still dreamed of
meeting him in Potiphar’s garden?
Sighing in frustration, she paced the length of her chamber
until a warm current of air brought the promise of dawn
through the window.
Yosef found it hard to believe he was not dreaming when he