Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (12 page)

“My husband’s future is in your hands.”

“As my future is in yours,” said Hagar.

So it would be a bargain. “How can I hold your future?”

“When you leave here and go home to the east, take me with you.”

“But you belong to Pharaoh.”

“I do not ask you to steal me,” said Hagar. “He’ll ask you what gift you want to take with you. I beg you, ask for me.”

“But I live in the desert, where life is hard and we lack for water, for almost everything.”

“What do I care? I own nothing, not even my body. I have spent my childhood wishing I could die. But if I lived as your servant, my captivity would be bearable.”

Sarai tried to figure out why Hagar might feel this way. And then gave up, for there was never a way to know why others felt as they felt or did what they did. “As long as you want, you will always have a place at my side.”

“But you must ask for me, as a gift.”

“I will ask,” said Sarai. “When the time is right. I won’t leave without asking, as long as you don’t—”

“Don’t what? This is not a bargain, not a trade. I will never tell your secrets.”

Sarai blushed at having been caught in such a false judgment. “It’s the same with me,” she said. “Even if someone else guesses my secret as you did, I’ll ask for you as my handmaiden. But on the day when the desert life is so hard that you wish you were still a slave in Egypt, remember that this was your own choice.”

They clasped hands. Sarai wondered as she gazed into the eyes of this bold Arab girl: Might this child be a part of God’s plan?

Or was Sarai merely part of Hagar’s plan?

Chapter 9

For a woman who was used to being deeply involved in all the concerns of a large household, the sheer inactivity of Pharaoh’s house was mind-numbing. No one came to her to make decisions. She could not even see any real work being done close by. Hagar helped her bathe that first day, teaching her the use of bathing tools that she had never seen before, and then it took two hours to do up her hair to Hagar’s satisfaction. There were more hours spent searching for Egyptian clothes that Sarai was willing to wear, until at last she insisted that her own clothing be brought from the camp. Hagar looked at even her lightest frock in distaste, but when Sarai wore it she didn’t feel naked as she did in the Egyptian linens. She ate supper, she went to bed, she tried to sleep, and for hours she drifted back and forth between fretting about Abram and dreaming about him.

Then, the next morning, Hagar was ready to start it all over again.

“Bathe
again?
”

“Every day,” said Hagar.

“But I’ve gone nowhere, done nothing since I bathed yesterday. I’ve done no
work.
”

Hagar looked faintly ill. “You expect to move through Pharaoh’s house
unwashed?
What if
he
sees you?”

“I won’t do it. It would take hours to do my hair again.”

“Not so long a time as yesterday, Mistress. I’ve done your hair once, and now I understand it better.”

“There’s nothing to understand. I’ll bathe again when there’s some reason to. Water is precious!”

“Begging your pardon, Mistress, but here it’s not.”

“That’s still no reason to waste it!”

“You might as well use the water, Mistress. If you don’t, it either dries up in the heat of the day or it flows back into the Nile.”

“Forget the bath, and tell me where I’m to go.”

“Go?”

“The work of the house,” Sarai said. “I’m good with a needle, I’m excellent at cakes, sweet or hearty, and if I’m not up to the standards of the house I can always work the distaff.”

Hagar looked baffled. “You’re not a servant, Mistress. You’re a guest.”

“I should hope that I may still do something useful. What I don’t know, I’ll learn.”

“But . . . there
is
no work in this house. Except handmaid’s work—and whose hair would
you
put up? Mine?”

In the days since then, Sarai had come to see that Hagar was right. When Sarai pitched in at any task, horrified servants backed away in fear, complaining that she’d get them beaten if anyone caught her doing their work. At last she found herself pacing her room like a lion in a pit. “What do the women of the house
do
all day?” she demanded.

“They visit each other, which you could certainly do.”

“I don’t know any of them.”

“You can be introduced.”

“I would have to lie to them.”

“You have to lie to everyone.”

“Each time I tell it, it becomes less convincing.”

“If you won’t visit, and you can’t work, I suppose you’ll have to lie on your bed and sleep.”

“I’ve lain there long enough without sleeping,” said Sarai. “I’ll at least walk somewhere.”

“I thought you were a captive.”

“As long as they have Abram separated from me, I dare not go far. But I can walk by the river.”

Which is what she was doing when a horn was sounded from the roof of the house. Sarai turned to face upriver, back toward the house, to see if there was some raid on the flocks by marauders or a lion. Of course there was no such thing. The horn had sounded in greeting—a barge was coming down the river, a throne in the center of it, and on the throne a splendid-looking man wearing the double crown of Egypt. It was Pharaoh.

“They’ll be looking for you, Mistress.”

“Why?” said Sarai. “I’m sure Pharaoh will keep them busy enough.”

Hagar smiled knowingly. “I’m sure Pharaoh is here to keep
you
busy.”

“Enough of that, I beg you.”

“Why do you deny the very reason for a woman’s life?”

“The reason for a woman’s life,” said Sarai, “is the same as the reason for a man’s—so that she might have joy.”

“Then most people have no reason to live,” said Hagar.

“Most people try to find joy where joy is not to be found,” said Sarai, thinking of her sister. Though Qira no doubt thought she
was
joyful. If you believe you have joy, Sarai wondered, then how can you be wrong? Certainly many people managed to be miserable in the midst of a life that others envied, and their misery was real enough. Didn’t most of the household think she was a woman who should be happy, having every luxury they knew of, and the love of her husband? Why did she allow the one great lack of her life to blind her to the many great bounties?

As Hagar had predicted, a runner soon came to seek her—came straight toward her, without hesitation, which proved, if she had needed proof, that someone was always watching where she went. “If Great Lady Mistress will return to meet the god,” said the girl.

“I told you,” said Hagar.

With sick dread Sarai went to meet the man who held her life, and her husband’s life, in his hands.

The regalia of the Pharaoh gave an overwhelming impression, but the man beneath the double crown did not. Sarai tried to be fair—what man could measure up to the majesty surrounding the king of Egypt?—but then realized that she knew dozens of men, including her husband and her father, whose personal dignity would easily match the costume and the pomp. As to Pharaoh being a god, no man could equal such a claim, and in Sarai’s opinion calling a man a god did not elevate the man, it only diminished the idea of godhood. If this weak-chinned, flaccid, narrow-faced, cheery-looking fellow was a god, then why were gods worth worshiping?

But Sarai could not blame this man for the pretensions surrounding Pharaoh. He had inherited all of it, the stories and the costumes and the ludicrous claims. When Pharaoh was strong, with military might and political skill, no one would dare to question his claim to divinity. But this man . . . Sarai could see at once the contempt that powerful men in Egypt would feel for him. As long as it was in their interest to keep the office of Pharaoh strong, then they would tolerate a weak man on the throne. And, of course, it was quite possible that Pharaoh’s physical appearance was deceiving. He might be an extremely clever man.

For that matter, though, he might be merely a figurehead, occupying the office while others wielded the power. Sarai thought back to Sehtipibre, the man who, according to Eshut, managed the kingdom of Egypt for Pharaoh, while Eshut herself managed his household. Two loyal stewards in such offices would naturally confer with each other. But it might just as easily be the case that they conspired with each other to keep the reins of power in their own hands.

Suddenly the life of a pastoral household seemed very simple and clean to Sarai, while here, where the palace was kept free of dirt, nothing was simple and there might be many a dirty secret hiding in plain sight. She felt sorry for Pharaoh. He had once been a little child in a king’s house, as she had been. The formalities of royalty came easily enough to one who grew up with them. But because her own father was without power, Sarai did not have to grow up suspicious of everyone and unsure whether anything said to her was true. She had learned much about political maneuvering from her father, with his tales of past political struggles in Ur-of-Sumeria and his analysis of the politics of Ur-of-the-North. But the worst that she ever saw for herself was the idle flattery that is the cheap coin spent by everyone who speaks to a king, even one who is in exile. Since her father had no power, no one was trying to steal it; since he was already off his throne, no one was trying to topple him from it. Pharaoh, though—from boyhood on, whom had he ever been able to trust?

Well, he certainly can’t trust
me,
thought Sarai. I come to him with lies on my lips from the start, and whether he himself directed that I be separated from Abram or that was the plotting of his underlings, the fact remained that everything she said to him would be calculated to keep Abram safe and this king out of her bedchamber.

The first step in her deception was, of course, to flatter him, and so she greeted him, not as the daughter of another monarch, for that she could never admit to being, but as the daughter of a noble house. To her knees, then, but no farther, her eyes cast down, but her forehead never coming near the stone steps by the water. Hagar, of course, was bowed like a broken reed, fairly pressing herself into the stone. But that’s what it meant to be a slave. You were lower than everyone.

“This is the sister of my good friend Abram! Arise, Lady Milcah, and walk with me into the house of my wives!”

Good friend Abram.
The words gave Sarai hope. Not that they couldn’t be said by a king planning to murder Abram—but the fact that he bothered to say them at all suggested that he was still trying to win whatever it was he wanted by flattery and persuasion rather than by force or threat.

“I am grateful to the mighty Pharaoh Montuhotpe for his kindness in bringing me into his own house, where I have been so well treated that it takes half the sting from being separated from my dear brother Abram.”

“Only half?” said Pharaoh, with a wink. So he knew that she and Abram were being kept apart, and understood that she did not like it. “I suppose it was too much to hope that the graceful life in Pharaoh’s house would make you forget your brother completely.”

“Would Pharaoh deign to offer hospitality to a guest who could so easily forget her own brother?”

There it was—her challenge. She called herself a guest and asserted that Pharaoh was offering her hospitality. It was a claim to the privileges and rights of a guest. Not that such rules could not be broken, but to break them would be a crime before the gods, and would do Pharaoh’s reputation harm.

He smiled more broadly and cheerfully. “Must we think of ourselves as host and guest? I would so much rather think of you as kin.”

An ambiguous answer. A marriage proposal? An evasion of guest-right?

“I am glad if the ruler of Egypt has come to think of my brother as his kin. Am I to think of mighty Pharaoh as my father? Or my brother?” And there was her answer: She was not going to play flirtatious games. If he wanted to claim kinship, he was welcome to do so—but not as her husband.

“I think of Abram as my brother,” said Pharaoh. “But Lady Milcah, I am unsure yet how I might think of her.”

“As your guest, first,” said Milcah, “for that is how I arrived in your house, as a lonely traveler separated from her family and friends.”

“But how can that be?” said Pharaoh. “Have you not been visited by your people?”

“I have had no visitors, nor even a servant from my brother’s household.”

Pharaoh glanced at Hagar, who was tagging along behind them. “Is this not your handmaid?”

“She is a servant of Pharaoh’s own house, assigned to me by the Lady Eshut, to my great pleasure.”

“Well, let’s solve that problem right now. I give her to you. She
is
your handmaid now. So you do have someone from your household with you—and not from your brother’s household, either. She is your own.”