“Then wait until the Lord gets used to the sound of my voice. Wait until I’ve had a chance to become more like the man that she deserves to marry.”

  “I’ll wait as long as you want,” said Jethro.

  “Well,” said Zeforah from the door, “I won’t.”

  “Zeforah,” said Jethro. “When did you come back?”

  “When Keturah ran and told me you were talking marriage, right out in the open.”

  “That little scamp was eavesdropping?” asked Jethro.

  “When you’re talking about marriage?” said Zeforah. “When you’re deciding our future? You’ll never have a private discussion of that subject, if we can help it.”

  Moses rose to his feet. “Jethro, didn’t you hear what she just said?”

  “Yes! She and her sisters plan to spy on me!”

  Moses turned to Zeforah. “Won’t you wait for me to become ready?”

  “And when will that be? When you’re perfect? When I’m long past child-bearing?”

  “Well, that didn’t stop Sarah and Abraham,” said Moses.

  “Ask father for my hand,” said Zeforah.

  “I want to marry your daughter,” said Moses.

  “Do you love her?” asked Jethro.

  “At first I admired her, and then I desired her, and then I was in awe of her, and then I honored her, and then I longed for her good opinion of me, and then I wanted to have what she had, which is to have a heart perfect before the Lord.”

  “Think again,” said Zeforah.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” said Jethro.

  “I passed through each of these stages, and every single one of them is a part of love. Better than I loved either of my mothers. Better than I loved any of my friends, better than I love even you, Jethro, I love your daughter.”

  “But do you love her as much as you love God?” asked Jethro.

  Zeforah rolled her eyes impatiently. “Father.”

  “Sir,” said Moses, “I don’t know God that well yet. I really only know that part of him that shines from your life, and from Zeforah’s. How can I love God more than you, when part of what I love about the two of you is God in you, and in your lives?”

  Jethro turned to Zeforah. “Well, what do you think? Will he do?”

  Tears were streaming down Zeforah’s cheeks. “This is the beginning of my marriage, Father. Couldn’t you have handled it normally?”

  “What?” said Jethro. “What did I do?”

  Moses walked to her then. “I never knew my father, Zeforah. May I have yours?”

  “Gladly,” she said.

  He reached out to her, a tentative hand, toward her cheek. She let him touch her, to wipe away her tears; then she turned her face to meet his hand, kissed his palm. “I never had anything like a normal family, either,” said Moses. “But will you help me make one, even though I don’t know how?”

  “I don’t have a normal family either,” said Zeforah. She put her hands on his chest. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he longed for her touch.

  “I know why I need you, the thousand reasons why my life could never be complete without you,” said Moses. “You are your own best dowry. But I have nothing to offer you in return, except my love and honor, and all my hope of joy in this life and in the life to come.”

  “That will do,” she said.

  “Stop talking and kiss her, Moses,” said Jethro.

  “With all due respect, Jethro, that’s not for you to decide.”

  “Stop talking,” said Zeforah, “and kiss me.”

  “Now you, you get a vote.”

  With a growl of frustration she flung both arms around his neck, pulled him down, and kissed him firmly on the lips.

  “I hear there’s a priest nearby,” said Moses, when the kiss was done. “Let’s see if he’ll marry us right away.”

  “Took you long enough,” said Jethro. “Now if you two don’t mind, I’d like to finish my supper.”

  They laughed, they embraced him, and then they left together, to walk and talk for another hour in the moonlight. Jethro found he wasn’t hungry after all, and when the other girls, all aflutter with excitement about the first betrothal in the family, finally cleared the supper dishes away, Jethro fell to his knees and wrestled with the Lord about Moses. The gist of his prayer was this: Whatever you have planned for this boy, Lord, don’t let it interfere with my daughter’s happiness. Don’t make a widow of her, don’t make her a lonely woman, don’t break her heart. No daughter of yours or of mine has ever deserved better from you than Zeforah does. I’m not telling you what to do, Lord, but let Zeforah have her time of joy with him, before you call him away to do whatever it is you plan for him.

  The Lord didn’t strike him dead for his audaciousness in praying such a prayer. Jethro took this as a good sign, and went to bed.

  * * *

  Hatshepsut was not expecting any visitors, but there were footsteps in the corridor. And they were not the quiet padding steps of a barefoot servant. They had the clipped sound of the hard military sandal.

  Hatshepsut rose at once from her bed and gathered a robe around her body. She could feel the stiffness in her joints that told her every night and every morning that she was getting old. But she cared little for such minor pains. What mattered was the sound she was not hearing—the soldiers on guard, asking her if she needed something, where she was going, whom she wanted to summon. Therefore she knew there were no soldiers on guard, even though with no moon and no lamps lit, she could not see their places by the walls. And if there were no guards to protect her, it meant that her reign was over.

  She had kept Tuthmose carefully pinned down for years beyond his maturity, for she knew he was too young and angry and immature to rule. But this strategy only worked because the others around her—the military leaders, the high priests at Karnak—agreed that Tuthmose III would not make a good ruler. Not that they discussed it. She knew they agreed because her orders continued to be obeyed, and Tuthmose’s were not.

  But someone had decided that tonight would mark the change. Tuthmose III was ready to rule. Unfortunately, there could be no sharing of power. Tuthmose would not allow Hatshepsut even to be a figurehead. His hatred of her was unabated, however it might be hidden behind studied courtesy. To decide that Tuthmose no longer needed to be restrained was to decide that it was time for Hatshepsut to die.

  Were you in such a hurry, Anubis, to lead me to my father? She could almost hear the breath of the jackal god in the doorway of her room.

  But it was no jackal god. It was a mere jackal.

  “Hatshepsut,” he whispered.

  “Tuthmose,” she said. “So you came to do your murder by your own hand?”

  He took the cover off the lamp, and now instead of a faint ruddy glow there was a flickering yellow light that framed his face. A tall man now, taller than his father. And with a pretty face—another legacy of his father’s penchant for bedding only pretty concubines. No political marriages for him! Nor bedtime conversation, either. And this was the result. The murderer standing in the doorway, bearing a lamp in one hand, and in the other . . .

  Not a sword or a knife, as Hatshepsut had expected. Rather he held a platter of fruit.

  “Hungry?” she asked him. “Come to share?”

  “There are two ways we can handle this,” said Tuthmose. “You can eat a few of these very bad figs and die of their unfortunate aftereffects. Or you can be condemned for treasonously usurping the throne of Pharaoh, and be publicly executed.”

  “Which would you rather I did?” said Hatshepsut.

  “I only care that you die,” said Tuthmose. “I’ve had your talons around my throat long enough.”

  “Years. But not enough years for you to learn decency.”

  “Are you going to criticize me even now?” said Tuthmose. “Or is this a prelude to appealing to my better nature?”

  “Oh, my dear boy, I am well aware that this is your better nature. Your ill nature would be to hire someone to slit my throat in the night. So I’m proud of you for coming to do this yourself.”

  He sighed. “Choose, Hatshepsut.”

  “What do you think I’ll choose?” she asked.

  “More teaching?” he said. “All right, I think you’ll choose the fruit.”

  “And why?” she said. “Let’s see how well you understand your enemy.”

  “Whatever I say, you’ll tell me I was wrong.”

  “Now, Tuthmose, be fair. I’ve never lied to you.”

  “I know you’re not afraid of pain, or of death either. Nor are you willing to die, so you won’t see the fruit as a welcome way to end this life. You care about history: You’ll choose the fruit so that your name won’t be shamed by your public execution as a traitor.”

  “Perhaps I do care about history,” said Hatshepsut, “but not enough to die for it. No, you still don’t understand me.”

  “It won’t matter when you’re dead.”

  “It will matter that you couldn’t even comprehend the enemy who was closest to you. How will you do at seeing into the heart of enemies you’ve never even met? I tremble for Egypt with you to protect her.”

  He strode to her and thrust the platter toward her. “Just eat the figs.”

  “How many?” she said.

  “A couple should do it. The more you eat, the faster it will go, and so the shorter the time you’ll go through excruciating abdominal pain.”

  “How kind of you to choose a painful one.”

  “Even if we handle this privately,” he said, “you are being punished for your crimes. It shouldn’t be painless.”

  She took a fig from the plate and popped it into her mouth. It had a bitter taste. “Oh, this is a subtle one,” she said. “Don’t use this one again unless you find a better way to disguise the flavor.”

  “Yes, well, Mutnefert died before I could learn the really devious methods of the poisoner’s art.”

  “I don’t even like figs,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Do you know why I’m eating them?”

  “Because you wanted to pretend that you died by your own choice instead of mine,” said Tuthmose.

  “No, Tuthmose. I choose this death because . . .”

  “Is the pain starting?”

  “Of course.” She took another fig. “If you execute me, you would bring turmoil to the house of Pharaoh. It would weaken you and every ruler after you. Once the killing came out into the open, there would be no stopping it. You’d have to kill any potential heir—including sons—that appeared to be vying for power. Your eventual successor would have to kill all his brothers and cousins and nephews. The Nile would run with blood.”

  “Why should you care?”

  “I think you’ll be a very bad king, Tuthmose. You want power and glory, but glory above all. You’ll plunge Egypt into stupid wars.”

  “I’ll win my wars.”

  “Perhaps you will, but you’ll end up with conquests you haven’t the firmness or strength to hold. And you’ll never have the wit to yield when it might look like defeat. You would rather bring Egypt to ruin than to humble yourself even a little.”

  “Pharaoh does not have to yield to any man.”

  “And yet I yield to you.”

  “You were never Pharaoh.”

  “Even now, I care more for Egypt than you ever have or ever will. I eat these figs because I know that the house of Pharaoh must be very strong to survive your foolish reign. Therefore I will choose a manner of dying that will not weaken the house of Pharaoh. This gives me hope that after you, better Pharaohs will inherit a kingdom that is still governable.”

  “I’m really surprised you’re still talking. But I suppose your will to talk is even stronger than your will to live.”

  She ate another fig. And another. And another. The pain was terrible, but she did her best to show none of it.

  “I have done nothing in my life that I’m ashamed of,” she said. “I’m not even ashamed that you are my heir, for I chose and raised and taught and trained a better man than you, and it was not my fault that he did not last.”

  Hatred flamed up in Tuthmose’s face. “You dare to speak of him even now?”

  “He was a man, Tuthmose,” said Hatshepsut. “Unlike your father. Unlike you.”

  He lost his temper then, and struck her a brutal blow across the face. She crumpled to the floor, and for a moment the pain in her jaw made her forget the agony in her belly. She wondered if the pain of this poison was anything like the pain of child-bearing. That was something she had never experienced. She had had one son, but not from her body. How symmetrical, to feel the birth pangs now, just before her death.

  Her jaw did not work. She had to open it with her fingers; the pain shot through her head and made her gasp. But now she could speak, mumbling, barely intelligible, but it was speech, and he would listen, because, despite his hate, he knew that she was Pharaoh.

  “Moses fought a strong man with his bare hands, and killed him,” she said.

  She wanted to finish by saying, You can only strike a dying old woman. But she hadn’t the strength for speech now. No matter. He knew without her having to say the words.

  “You’ll be nothing,” said Tuthmose. “When the history is written, it will call you a usurper who stole my rightful place from me.”

  Let him babble. She didn’t care. She had done as well as she could with the time she had as a god upon the land. It was time for her to ascend to the realm of the gods.

  Now, Anubis. I’m finished here. Take me to my father.

  * * *

  Even the married daughters came home for this. Asa and Hamar both found husbands who turned out not to be village bumpkins after all, but men who could read and write, one a man of trade, the other a stonecutter who was often called upon to carve inscriptions in stone. They were there, with their husbands and their children; Jethro’s other daughters fussed over the little ones until Zeforah’s younger children were quite jealous. But Zeforah’s oldest boy, Gershom, the firstborn, cared nothing for what the younger ones were doing. He thought himself a man now, and to Zeforah’s unaccustomed eye he could well be a man; what was the dividing line, she wondered? If it was character, then he had the character of a good man. If it was size and strength, well, he had a ways to go. Clearly he meant to be worthy of his father. So Zeforah charged the boy with no duties today. Let him give his full attention to his father, to his grandfather.

  Jethro looked at his grandchildren scampering around, made his normal pointed remarks to the unmarried daughters, as if it were their fault and not his that they hadn’t married yet. “Look at these children the Lord has given me!” he said proudly.

  “We’re your children, Father,” said Dinah. “Those belong to Zeforah and Asa and Hamar.”

  Jethro continued, undistracted. “I raised you up, with the help of your mother for a while, and then with the help of God. I prayed you to adulthood, and now look at you, raising your own flocks. I have every intention of sharing all my wisdom and experience with you at every opportunity!” He pointed to Gershom. “This boy! How can I teach him?” And to Asa’s oldest girl. “This girl! I must gather her in. That’s what a father does, and that’s what I am, a father. No matter how old you are, I am still a father.”

  “If my children learn from you,” said Moses, “then they can have no better teacher.”

  “Of all my sons-in-law, Moses,” said Jethro, “you’re the one who stayed around in hopes of inheriting my secret fortune. Today you’ll have the only treasure I have truly valued.”

  Moses stepped forward and knelt before the old man. Zeforah rested her hand on Gershom’s shoulder; she felt Keturah take her other hand.

  Jethro laid his hands upon Moses’ head and spoke words that Zeforah had never heard before, for Jethro had been ordained to his priesthood before Zeforah was born, and he had trained no other priests until Moses came. Now Jethro had decided it was time to give Moses not only the priesthood, but also his own new copies of the scrolls. The fading, aging copies that Jethro had collected all his life would stay with the old man—but his copying work was done. It was for Moses, now, to make new copies and pass them on.

  It was a simple ritual, the words gentle as birdsong in the still air of the summer morning. They were in a high meadow where the heat did not come so insistently, and where no curious onlookers would come by. Because they were shepherds, even their moments of holiness took place in the presence of the sheep. But the herd was quiet, too, as if they were also reverent before the power of the Lord as it was given from one trusted servant to another.

  And then it was done. Moses rose to his feet, embraced his father-in-law, and then came to Zeforah and embraced her, too. “Why am I afraid?” she whispered to him.

  “I feel it too,” said Moses softly. “But it isn’t really fear.”

  “Moses,” said Jethro. “I dreamed a dream last night. I saw you walking on Mount Sinai.”

  “What happened there?” asked Moses.

  “In the dream, nothing. But I awoke knowing that this was a dream you should fulfill. Wasn’t it the wind that blew you here? That same wind has come again.”

  “It’s time to divide the flock for the heat of summer. I’ll take a portion to the summer meadows on the slopes of Sinai. But why does the Lord want me there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jethro. “God often whispers in the hearts of men.”

  “I have felt his presence in my heart,” said Moses.

  “But now and then,” said Jethro, “he feels the need to shout. Go and hear him.”

  For a moment, Zeforah’s fear seized her. She wanted to cry out to him, Don’t go! I’ll lose you if you go! Our mornings of prayer, our days of labor, our evenings of peaceful study, our nights of talk and dreams and ardor, all will be finished if you go up to the mountain of the Lord.

  She forced herself to stay silent. I knew from the start that he belonged to God, and God would someday claim him. I had more years than I ever hoped for. I have these children. I have a place in his heart. And maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he’ll go up the mountain and pray and the Lord will show him that the life of a village priest in Midian is the great calling he was prepared for, that the simple duties here are greater than all the majesty of Egypt.