He was right, though. Without even knowing what she was going to say, he was right. Moses had no need to know of these prophecies now, especially if he were the fulfilment of them. What he needed was to learn to pray and hear the answer of God in his heart. There would be time enough for him to learn about the prophecies after they had all been fulfilled. For the prophecies weren’t clear, and it would only confuse matters if Moses spent all his time trying to decode the nameless book instead of turning his heart to the Lord. She could not help thinking, though, that someday he would open the nameless book and recognize himself in the man of prophecy.

  And this man is to be my husband.

  No! She tried to strangle that thought before it even entered her mind. It would only set her up for disappointment, to think that way. Moses’ wife would be a queen, if not of Egypt, then of some great kingdom. The best she could hope for was to be treated as a friend. But a wife? She could honor him and help him, and serve God by doing both. But she had better not let herself love him, for it was Moses that God had great plans for, not Zeforah, not the eldest of the seven girls of a shepherd priest. Moses would leave again to fulfil his prophetic destiny, and she was determined to remember him with fondness, not with regret and grief.

  That is why Zeforah was fascinated with Moses. Not, as her sisters supposed, because she expected to marry him, but precisely because she did not, and therefore had to watch him and memorize everything he did and said so that she could treasure the memory when he was gone. She would bring out the nameless book and read it again and say, Yes, now I understand this part, and Yes, that obscure word is now clear, for I have seen him do these things, the Son who was foretold. His hand touched mine as we covered the well on the day we met. . . .

  So she knew the first time he tried to pray. It was a warm afternoon, the deceptive kind of day when you think you don’t need to come inside because it will be hot all night; but Zeforah knew, as Moses could not, that in late autumn the night would turn cold very quickly, bitterly cold, dangerously cold. She saw how he helped them finish the chores but then slipped away when they were walking home, and withdrew himself into the rocks.

  Of course there were a thousand reasons why a man might part with the company of women and hide himself among the rocks of the mountain, and there was not a one of them that Zeforah would not be wrong to interrupt. But what if he lingered too long, and it got cold, and he took sick? She had to stay and wait for him, so that if he delayed too long she could warn him, call out to him to come home now before the night’s chill came. And she could help him find his way home in the dark, for there wouldn’t be much moonlight tonight.

  Keturah noticed she was hanging back. “Tell the others to go on without me,” said Zeforah. “I’m waiting for Moses. But don’t tell them that, they’ll only make crude jokes.”

  “They’ll make them anyway,” said Keturah. “You keep promising to explain to me what they mean.”

  “And I’ll keep that promise. When you’re older.”

  “I’m not completely ignorant, you know. I know what sheep do.”

  “Well, I can assure you that Moses and I will never do what sheep do. Now go!”

  “Sheep eat. Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “Go!” Zeforah said, pretending to be pretending to be annoyed. Keturah must have noticed the edge in her voice, for she stopped herself before her next jest could come out of her mouth, and then hurried away down the mountain.

  With the girls gone, it became very quiet. Zeforah did not walk around looking for Moses, for she did not want to interrupt his solitude. Instead she sat very still, resting on a sun-warmed rock, lying back and looking at the stars. In that stillness, she could not help overhearing him, even though he spoke quietly. She wasn’t eavesdropping, or at least that wasn’t her intent. But she heard him.

  “O G-g-g-g. . . .”

  This was not his normal hesitation. Instead of a pause, the word he was trying to say seemed to be hung up in his mouth like cloth on a bramble bush.

  “O G-g-g-g. . . . Hear the words of my. . . .”

  It was the word God that he could not say. Why? Yes, he was slow and halting of speech, but it was as if speaking the common name of God would tear something inside him.

  And well it might. To speak to God might very well require him to tear something deep and strong and well-beloved out of his heart. His love of Egyptian learning, or the arrogance he sometimes put on as a tool to overawe and command others. Or it might be some secret sins that she knew nothing about, perhaps even the killing that had toppled him from power. Or it might be the enemy, the evil one, Satan, tying up his tongue so he could not speak. She wanted to run to him, or even to speak out—in this still evening air she knew he would hear her if she spoke in the mildest of voices—she wanted to tell him that he did not have to speak the words aloud, that if Satan blocks the tongue, God can also hear the thoughts of the heart.

  But she said nothing. After a while, Moses’ voice fell silent. A long while later, she heard his footsteps on the path down the canyon. There was still some pink-edged daylight left, so he had no need of her. He would never know she was there, that she had heard him, had violated his solitude at such a fragile time as his first uttered prayer to the Lord.

  She lay on the rock and waited until his footsteps faded and she could hear him no longer. Then she opened her own mouth, and whispered her prayer. “O God,” she said. “O Father, open his mouth, ease his heart, give him peace.” And then she added, as she always did these days, “Let my prayer be borne to you in the name of the Son.”

  At that moment she almost laughed aloud at her own absurdity. If Moses were the man of prophecy, then she was praying to God in his name to help the very man in whose name she prayed! No, it was too absurd. How could a mere man, like Moses, be at the same time the ambassador between men and God? She must have misunderstood the prophecy. Moses was simply an interesting man with an unusual past and a strange name. The nameless book was not speaking of him; indeed, she had almost certainly misunderstood it in the first place, and anyway, if the book had any value people would have taken better care of it, Moses is a waste of my time and . . .

  And she knew where these thoughts were coming from.

  “I want nothing to do with you, Satan,” Zeforah whispered fiercely. “I won’t listen to you.”

  With that she slid down from her perch and walked home. It was nearly dark now, for night fell quickly in the desert, especially in the craggy shadows of the mountain, but she knew the way, as sure-footed as an old sheep. When she came home supper was already being served, and Hamar told her off for worrying them all, most of all Keturah, who nevertheless insisted that she had been waiting to talk to Moses about something. “But when Moses came home without you and didn’t even know where you were—”

  “I was fine,” said Zeforah. “I didn’t stay to talk to Moses.”

  Strictly speaking, it was true. She had stayed to listen, though that was not her original purpose. She had stayed to listen, and she had heard—the scriptures weren’t just an interesting project to him. He was taking them to heart. He wanted to pray. He wanted to feel the spirit of God in his heart.

  And he had failed. That’s what kept her awake that night, praying again, praying herself to sleep. O God, have mercy on Moses. Even if he isn’t a man of prophecy, he’s a good man who has lost everything. Let him find thee, O Lord, and then he will have everything again, only this time what he’ll have is that which can never be lost, can never be torn from his grasp by those who hate or envy him. For the love of God cannot be interfered with. Let him feel thy love, O Lord.

  Just as she drifted off to sleep, she heard the words as if someone spoke them softly into her ear. “He will be your husband,” the voice said. “He will love you, and he will lead a mighty nation in the service of God.”

  She must have imagined it. It must have been the secret wish of her heart speaking. It must have. . . .

  Why bother coming up with more excuses when she knew the truth: That God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart. To know that he would be her husband. That he would love her. That he would lead a mighty nation—those were the questions that she really wanted to ask. And yet her prayer had not been a lie. She knew, though not because of words invisibly spoken in the darkness, that if she had not been praying for Moses, God would not have answered her unspoken wishes. It was just as Father said: God hears the words that we’re too proud or too ashamed to say.

  Oddly enough, instead of flustering her, instead of making her even more shy in front of Moses, her new sureness of a future connection with this man made her more relaxed and confident in front of him. Her marriage, when it came, would come because God or Moses had decided on it, and either way she would be content. She wasn’t the sort of woman who could ever be a queen, but she would certainly do her best to give him children, and to train them up to be true sons and daughters of this kingly man that God had brought to her. That was all she could do, but if he loved her, then it would be enough.

  * * *

  Hatshepsut stood in her chariot, wearing her regalia, striking the pose that her father had told her looked most mannish. She knew that it fooled no one, and outraged some; but she also knew that if she did not strike such poses, affirming her will to rule as a man, then resentment would turn to ambition, and someone, fancying her to be weak and womanly, would strike out to try to take her place.

  There were no crowds around her this time, and Tuthmose was in the custody of the teachers she had hand-picked for him because they had the essential qualification: They loathed Tuthmose as a patricide and hated having to associate with him. There was no chance of him charming them, winning them to his side. But even without the crowds and without her dangerous rival, the poses were still necessary, for with Moses gone she was utterly alone. There was no one whose love and loyalty she could trust, for it was in the best interest of the disloyal to behave exactly as loyal men would. She knew that not all the people around her were hypocrites, but she had to act as if they were, for to trust any of them was to open herself up to betrayal. So the poses never ended, even here, surrounded by a few of her most intimate counselors. For all she knew, every single one of them was ready to leap to Tuthmose’s side the moment he called them to act. Every single one of them might have a knife he longed to plunge into her heart.

  She stood in her chariot and inspected the carvings in the ravine. Scribes had stood on scaffolding to write the exploits of her reign on the smoothed stone walls, where there was hope that the wind would not scour the words away too soon. Then, in the past few weeks, they had ground away the old writing and replaced it with new, for the name of Moses had to be utterly expunged. Now there was no story of Hatshepsut pulling a child out of the Nile; now it was Hatshepsut herself who conquered the Ethiopians and took Saba by force of arms.

  When I am dead, she thought, Tuthmose will do the same to me. I removed Moses’ name because he represents a dangerous mistake that threatens my authority; he will remove my name because he hates me. What will he write? That far from being Pharaoh, I was a usurper. No doubt he’ll declare that his father was the true Pharaoh and not a mere puppet that I controlled. He’ll say that I was his sister-wife, and only when he died with Tuthmose III still a child did I seize power. I’ll be painted as a traitor, when he was the traitor. I’ll be painted as the illegitimate ruler, while he is the son of a son of a concubine in whom the blood of the Pharaohs runs so thin as to be nonexistent. History will believe his lies, and claim that my true history is only propaganda.

  Well, it’s what I deserve. As I expunged Moses’ name, so will my name be scoured off the stone.

  She wanted to weep for him, could feel the tears welling up inside her. But she refused to let them show. She did not come this far to have it all erased. Whether it was the wind or Tuthmose’s artisans, this writing on the wall was in vain. It would disappear. The stone would become raw stone again. She would be forgotten. She would be denied. She would be vilified after her death, and her great achievement in maintaining Pharaoh’s house and Pharaoh’s kingdom, despite all the disadvantages of being a woman, would be turned into a crime instead of a credit. It galled her. It made her angry. She would shed no tears today.

  There had to be a way to cheat them. To send her story forward into the future so they would have at least the chance to know some truth about her. Moses would be forgotten, of course, but that couldn’t be helped, he made that choice himself when he killed the Egyptian for an Israelite’s sake. Hatshepsut, however, would be remembered.

  “Bury it,” she said.

  The chief of the stonecutters looked at her in confusion. He must have heard her wrong, but it was not his place to question Pharaoh. Seeing his hesitation, she had mercy on him, and made her instruction clear. “Take all the rubble you have cleared away and fill the ravine. As high as you can fill it, covering these inscriptions.”

  “But then no one can see them,” said the chief of the scribes, who, being more educated, apparently felt he could speak boldly to Pharaoh.

  She looked at him coldly, to let him know that she did not need a fool like him to tell her something so obvious.

  “We will fill it,” said the chief of the stonecutters. “We will fill it and cover everything.”

  Someday, thought Hatshepsut, someone will be digging here and will discover these inscriptions. It will be long after Tuthmose III is dead, hundreds of years from now. My story will be there for all to read, to tell the truth about my reign.

  Of course, it will be a man who discovers it, and men who read it, and so they will probably doubt my story, and believe his. But what they believe is their business. The truth will be told. I will not be slandered without giving my answer to the ages.

  If only Moses could have the same power, to write down his story, to tell his life. Oh, my son, my son, why, after a life of such iron self-control, did you have to have such a lapse as that, to let a moment’s compassion throw you into the river of history to be swallowed up and carried out to the sea of forgotten men? You had the seeds of greatness in you, but when they list the names of the great Pharaohs of Egypt, your name will not be there, my lost son, my lost joy, my lost hope.

  As she rode away in her chariot, the driver keeping the horse at a stately pace, a dreadful thought came to her. What was to stop Tuthmose from digging up these inscriptions to destroy them?

  But then she remembered the kind of man she was dealing with. He had no forethought. He cared nothing about the future, only about his own time, obtaining a kingdom and holding it for himself. What she buried would stay buried while he was Pharaoh. Having her story out of sight was good enough for him. If he had the will to be great, to create something for the ages, she would not despise him, and they would not be at war. But he was a small-hearted man, and so he was her enemy. He would win in the end, but defeating her would not make him great, it would just make Egypt smaller, too.

  * * *

  Moses worked hard at learning all the new things in his life. The shepherding was hard, and some of Jethro’s daughters were anything but patient with him, making it clear how stupid they thought he was that he didn’t know the things that any shepherd’s child knew from the cradle up. He never answered harshly, though, and over the weeks and months their scorn became teasing, and now and then even a moment of grudging respect, as he showed that he could, indeed, master at least some parts of their art. The sheep no longer sensed his awkwardness, and would obey him and submit to his care. The girls did not obey him, of course, but they finally treated him as an equal. As a brother.

  The other part of his education was more enjoyable but also less important. To help with the sheep was the duty he owed to Jethro for his extraordinary hospitality. To read Jethro’s books was a pleasure for its own sake, and Moses felt guilty for how many hours he pored over the strange Hebrew writing by the light of a floating wick in a lamp of oil.

  Why was he so fascinated? The Hebrew language was strange enough to him that he couldn’t hear the nuances in it the way he could in Egyptian; he had no idea if the writing was elegant or plain. The books were so different from the holy writing of the Egyptians. There was no attempt to glorify the men and women in the stories they told. They were shown plain, sins and stupidities along with their moments of godliness. A small mind and a great heart could exist in the same man. How refreshing, to read such plain, believable tales! How it inspired trust, to know that the prophet did not always paint himself as a perfect man. How could the story of Jacob be known, if it had not been told by him? True, there were different accounts, some in which he had a perfect right to the inheritance because he was truly the firstborn, others in which he was the pure trickster, setting out to take the inheritance because his brother was such an oaf and Jacob resented the way Isaac favored the red-haired one. There was no reason, however, why these tales could not all be true. Why shouldn’t the same man be both an ambitious trickster and yet have right on his side? Why shouldn’t God send a vision to the exiled Jacob, showing him heaven and letting him choose? Jacob paid in years of service for his sins—how could he damn Laban for tricking him, when he himself had tricked his father to win his blessing? So he bore the life God gave him, and served him humbly, and in the end he got his beloved Rachel, and his sons. And if the sons in turn caused him grief, they also brought him joy in the end. It was a believable life, not one made pretty for the admiration of others. It was not a hero story. It was a story of a man made good by God. Or rather, of a man who chose to be good when taught by God.

  Of course Moses saw himself in all these men. In Abram, laid under the knife in Chaldea, saved from becoming a human sacrifice himself by the intervention of an angel; then, his name changed to Abraham, holding a sacrificial knife himself as he almost, almost gave his own beloved son to God. Lying and putting his wife in great jeopardy, though one account said it was Pharaoh who wanted her and another account said it was another man; and yet a third story said that it was Isaac who lied about his wife. For all Moses knew, the same thing happened three times, for surely God was not afraid to repeat history. Having great wisdom and hearing the voice of God in their ears did not turn these men into something other than men. They could still be unwise sometimes. But their unwisdom did not trouble them: They wrote it down right along with the stories of the goodness and majesty of God. They were not afraid of truth.