Sunrise on the Mediterranean (69 page)

Silence

“You forget yourself,
isha.
My mother is Apiru.”

“No one could forget it. Not after today’s display! Where is your dignity? Your pride! What a shame that the throne of Yuda
has become such a farce.”

Within the room, no one made eye contact with anyone. It was too late to start conversing again; on the other hand, it was
too humiliating to listen to this.

“Your slaves saw your nudity!” she cried. “You are the king! No one is supposed to see even your face, yet you show your penis!
My father would be shamed! The house of Labayu would be shamed!”

“There is no house of Labayu,” Dadua said, his words fast, furious, and very, very loud. “I danced before my God, in the way
my God formed me. He chose me over your father, over your brothers, over your entire house of Labayu! I rule as king.
HaNasi
of Tziyon,
haMelekh
of the tribes, is me!”

If anything, Dadua was getting angrier.

“Before my God, I will celebrate as my heart dictates. There is no room for dignity before God; yet I would be more undignified.
There is no room for pride before Shaday; still I would become more humiliated. Though you see nothing to admire in a ruler
who follows his heart, those slave girls you so disparage will remember the majesty of Shaday, for they realized my nakedness
was for him, not them.”

Again, silence.

A long silence.

“Begone from my sight, Mik’el. You will never know a man again.”

The curtain swept open; we stared at Dadua, he stared at us. Mik’el stood in the shadows behind him. “In the company of this
people,” he said, “Mik’el bat Labayu is put away. I show
chesed
to her by not invoking her death.” He turned to her. “Never enter Tziyon again.”

She stepped forward, proud and beautiful. “I would rather be alone than with a king who does not know what it means to be
royal.”

I couldn’t help it; I winced. Was she that stupid? Or did she really have a death wish? Dadua looked at her as though he wanted
to kill her.

“For the sake of Yohan, whom I loved, I will only put you away.
Gibori!”
he shouted.

Yoav and Abishi rushed to him. Dadua jerked his head her direction, so they stepped to her sides and took hold of her wrists.
Mik’el pulled away; then, instead of walking out the back, she walked through the group with elegant, measured steps. She
was every inch a princess.

We were dumbfounded.

A few minutes passed. What should we do? Even N’tan was silent. Dadua finally picked up his instrument, strummed his
kinor
, and began to sing.

“Praise awaits Shaday within the gates of Tziyon, to you we will fulfill our vows. O you who hear prayers, you will

draw all men to yourself. We will seek you out. When we were overwhelmed by the enormity of our transgressions, you forgave
us, started us anew.

“Blessed are your chosen ones. Blessed are those who live in your courtyards. We are filled with the good things from your
house, we benefit from serving at your holy Tent. You answer our requests with mighty deeds, showing righteousness, O God
who saves us.

“You are the hope from the land’s end to the Uttermost Sea. You formed mountains by your power, you are armed with strength.
You stilled the roaring angry waves, you overrule the turmoil of nations. Those who live far away have heard of your deeds
and respect you. Wherever morning dawns and evening fades, people sing to you.

“You have enriched the land, stocked the waters. Your
chesed
flows like a stream to your people, to feed us as with grain. You have ordained the fruitfulness of all things. You drench
us, level us, soften us as the land, with the water of your words.

“You bless growth and production. You crown the year with bounty, the market carts overflow with your abundance, the grasslands
of the desert are unending; you clothe the hills with gladness. The meadows are alive with flocks, the valleys are filled
with grain. The land shouts and sings with your presence.”

We all said,
“Sela.”

R
A
E
M LED THEM THROUGH
the night, the pouring rain. Their armor was covered in mud; not a gleam of metal, not a spark of shine, was visible. She
arrived at the tree and opened it. Hiram’s tricks were not as clever as he thought.

Then down, into the abyss and blackness. Only now she had a lamp. Before, Zakar Ba’al thought to confuse her with backtracking,
leaving her no visible checkpoints. However, she had felt the softness of the dirt beneath her feet. Every step was an arrow.
Now, holding up the lamp, she could easily follow the steps of dozen of workers into the city.

It was a shorter journey when it wasn’t intended to confuse.

They passed beneath the dining chamber, the distant strains of Dadua’s
kinor
audible. Then through the narrower rooms into the treasure room. “Listen to me,” she said to the men. “Take only what I tell
you. Nothing more. Not one thing that I do not instruct you to take. Everything is for a purpose, a power that only I know.
Understood?”

“Aye, My Majesty,” they said softly.

She looked over them, wondering which one would succumb to temptation, which one would not leave the chamber. “There are shields,
both gold and silver. Take all of them. Also, there are coils of wire and cables of gold, copper, and bronze. Take those,
too.”

They nodded, and RaEm opened the door. Though the soldiers must have been dazzled, they were disciplined. They took the shields
from the wall, the coils and cables off the floor. RaEm gestured and they left, each man carrying two shields, the coils looped
over their shoulders.

She saw him; he was young, nervous. “Halt,” RaEm said. He did, his dark eyes going wide with fear. “I instructed you to take
nothing, save what I commanded.”

“My Majesty! I didn’t! I didn’t!” he protested.

The other men watched. They had never liked him, she’d seen that in their manner. “Now you dare tell me falsehoods?”

“My Majesty—” He threw himself on his face, blubbering. “I swear by Ma’at, by the horns of HatHor—”

“Now you insult me by swearing by gods who do not live!”

He lay at her feet, quaking. “I did nothing, My Majesty,” he said. “I swear, I swear!” But his voice was softer. He knew he
was damned.

“Get up.”

He shuddered for a moment longer, then she extended a hand to him. A strange expression came over his face as he rose to his
feet. He opened his palm to see a golden earring, one of the earrings that had been casually laid beside the coil of wire
he had picked up. His gaze met RaEm’s. He knew, now he understood. In that moment every ounce of childlike trust faded from
his eyes.

What was the phrase from Chloe’s world? Life was a bitch?

“You die for Egypt,” RaEm said, plunging her blade into his body. He didn’t look away from her. His gaze was focused on hers,
not allowing her to look away, either. His blood pumped over her hands, hot, splashed on her clothing, her face, but she couldn’t
turn from him.

“I would have taken both,” he gasped. “Stupid to steal only one.”

She removed her blade, wiped it on his kilt, and faced the men. “Do you trust me?”

They didn’t trust her, but they were suddenly afraid of her.

“Will you follow me?”

They nodded quickly. “Then come, we have much work to do.”

I
HAD JUST DROPPED OFF
to sleep—again—after making love to Cheftu when someone battered our door. Cheftu and I were sleeping chest to breast, our
legs twined together, and we both jumped. “What the hell … ,” I muttered sleepily.

“I will see to it,
chérie,”
he said, getting up and padding away. The person at the door kept banging and banging. I hid my head under a pillow, dozing
again. Until I heard something I never thought to hear: Cheftu shouting, “Holy shit!”

I was up, dressed, and at the door in seconds. Cheftu looked at me. “Soldiers surround the Tabernacle!”

“What?”

Thunder crashed outside. N’tan, soaking with rain, was wild-eyed. “That Egyptian has taken the Tabernacle hostage!”

“Smenkhare?”

“
Ken!
It is an outrage to Shaday, to hospitality, to everything!”

“There is nothing about this, not in anything I’ve ever read, or even heard, about the Bible,” Cheftu said to N’tan I looked
at the offspring of Imhoteps I and II. “Would you like wine?” I asked, showing my own demented heritage of southern hospitality.
I poured three cups. N’tan told us that after losing two messengers he’d sent to the Tabernacle, he had gone in search of
them. That was when he saw the soldiers.

Egyptian soldiers. “What of the priests? The people who were there?”

N’tan shrugged. “There weren’t so many. The seasons, feasting, and sacrificing are concluded. A few stay, rotating their service
through the rest of the winter.” He chewed on the end of a side curl. “In fact, many of the implements in the Tabernacle have
been stored in the lower city.”

“What remains?”

“Merely the outer curtains and the Seat.”

Cheftu shuddered, muttering something under his breath about a tool of destruction. “What were the soldiers doing?”

“Dismantling the Tent.”

“Were they touching the Seat?”

“Why do you ask?” I said. “Because one woman, standing sixteen cubits away from the Ark, almost died of the plague.”

“The bubonic plague is in the Ark?” I asked, stunned in English.

N’tan was watching us both, lost in the language. “Fleas,
chérie.
I do not know how, but fleas.”

“Are you sure?”

Cheftu jabbed a finger toward N’tan, switching back to Hebrew. “They get the priests sick so they can work around the Seat
without illness. It carries the plague.” He turned to N’tan and asked him to tell me what was received from the Pelesti when
the Seat was returned.

“Golden objects,
g’vret.
Tumors.”

“Statues of buboes,” Cheftu said in English. “And golden totems of rats,” N’tan said in Hebrew.

I drained the rest of my cup in one swallow. “So what’s the worry?”

Cheftu stood up, rubbing his face, speaking rapidly. “A slight jarring of the Ark, opening it not big enough for my finger,
almost killed the king’s wife. Only because the rest of us were, how do you say? immune, we were safe.”

I got to my feet. “But if it were opened more—”

“The plague could obliterate the Jewish people.”

Was it possible that RaEm could cause the destruction of the Jews? The plague brought on the Dark Ages in Europe. Could it
bring on a dark age here? Instead of the glory of Solomon, the darkness of RaEm ruling?

Thunder deafened us for a moment.

It sounded like so much Gothic fiction, but then who would have guessed I’d ground grain with Solomon’s mother, or that I’d
introduced the Star of David to David, or that Cheftu was the scribe of some Bible stories?

We ran through the rain.

Beneath the black lowered skies, the driving rain, and the bitter wind, Dadua stood. Lightning flashed in the distance, and
men and women joined the group, coming from every corner of the city. Water pouring off his nose, slicking hair black onto
his skull, Dadua spoke to his
giborim
and us.

“No one will take my city, my Temple Mount, or the Seat of my God. Sound the
shofar;
summon the citizens to the Temple Mount. Egypt wants a confrontation, Egypt shall have one.” He turned to Yoav. “Did you
not tell me that the Egyptian boy is the new pharaoh? Get him.”

“I have him already,” Dion, as Hiram, said, hurrying toward us. “I offer my services,
adon.”

Thunder, lightning. I squeezed Cheftu’s arm again. Dadua looked at those assembled. “We go to tell Egypt, yet again, to let
Shaday’s people go!”

W
E WALKED CLUMPED TOGETHER
, so I whispered to Cheftu in English and hoped that he understood me. “How do you figure the fleas?”