For one thing was certain. No matter how the rest of the camp might long for the baby Isaac to be born, and dote on him after he appeared, there would be one woman who hated him because he had taken the place of her son.

  What made this secret harder to bear was the fact that she was the only one who knew it. For only Sarah had grown up in a king’s house, knowing all the family lore of dynastic struggles, assassinations, poisonings, maneuverings behind the curtains and under the sheets, all to secure a throne for this child instead of that one. The bitterest stories she learned from her father were the tales of fratricide and parricide. The sons who could not wait to inherit, and so rebelled against their fathers. The wives who feared their husbands would choose the wrong child, and so poisoned the rivals. The young men who, upon acceding to the throne, had their brothers murdered. The royal uncle who somehow forgot to feed his “sickly” nephews, the little princes, so that they passed away and the regent inherited the throne after all.

  She tried to tell herself that only royal houses had such problems. Shepherd families did not kill each other to get control of some wells, some sheep, some tents.

  But Abraham’s house was a royal family. Kings were priests first, soldiers second, rulers third. Abraham was all three. And he had the promise of God that his descendants would rule the land of Canaan. Hagar would have to be a fool not to know what her son was going to be deprived of because of Isaac’s birth.

  She would not be in a hurry, though. She was still young. Abraham and Sarah both were old. How long could they live, after Isaac’s birth? What if Sarah lived till Isaac was three? What if Abraham lived five years after that? Isaac would be eight years old, and Ishmael would be a man of twenty-two. By then he would have had time to make friends and gather followers. He wouldn’t even have to lift a finger himself. One of the men would do it for him. Or perhaps Hagar would. Whoever it was, Ishmael could be outraged, could deny that he ever wanted such a thing. He could have the killer strangled over Isaac’s grave. Whatever show he wanted to put on. All that mattered was that Isaac would not outlive Abraham by a week.

  That was the fear that lived in the back of Sarah’s mind. That was what she tried so desperately not to think of while she lay on the litter, her belly growing above her brittle bones. That was the one thing she never mentioned to Abraham during all those months until at last the child was born.

  It was a terrible birth. The midwives commiserated with her and tried to comfort her, but she could see how frightened and frustrated they were. Her body was too old. She hadn’t the strength in the muscles of her back and belly to push the child out. Nor could she give birth squatting: Her bones were too brittle, her joints too frail to sustain her in that position. For hours she lay in the pangs of birth, as the child waited in vain, unable even to show the crown of its head.

  Of course Sarah prayed. For her baby, for herself. After all the years that she had been barren, her womb unused, the passages of her body closed, it was no surprise that the baby should have trouble being born. But if the Lord had done the miracle of letting these two old people conceive a baby, shouldn’t he go ahead and finish the job? She prayed and complained and pleaded and, yes, demanded, for in the throes of pain she did not care about the protocols of addressing God, and instead spoke to him as one would speak to a friend whose help was needed and who, for reasons known only to him, was standing uselessly by.

  Then there came the moment when, once again, she remembered that the goddess of childbirth was Asherah, the one that Sarah had repudiated by marrying Abraham. Was there some divine struggle going on over the baby in her womb, the God of her husband battling with the stubborn, angry, vengeful goddess of her childhood?

  O God of Abraham, help me drive such thoughts from my mind! I know that Asherah is nothing, a misunderstanding, a memory of Mother Eve and not a god of any kind. I know that I sinned against no one when I broke the vow that gave me to her. And yet the fear and pain drive the thought of her through my body like a tent spike and I cannot pry her out. O God, deliver me of this baby, pull him out of my body and let me die, if that be thy will, only let me die forgiven for having thought of Asherah again.

  The baby suddenly slid down, and a midwife said, “Ah, there’s the little one.” Another pain. Another sensation of release, of sliding, of her body being pried open like a butchered sheep and all of her insides slopping out and she tried to scream at the pain and terror but all that came from her throat was a gurgling sound and she thought, This is death.

  “A little man,” said the midwife.

  A baby cried.

  “God is merciful to his daughter!” cried Sarah.

  “She’s whispering something,” said someone.

  “God watch over my son!” she shouted.

  “Hush, sleep.” A hand stroked her forehead. And as if the words had some power in them, she could not stay awake another moment, but slipped into the darkness of sleep, not knowing if it was the sleep from which the dreamer never wakens, and at that moment not caring either. The child was born. Her boy was alive.

  She woke again and again, each time surprised to be alive at all, and then surprised by the pain that still gnawed at her. Hadn’t the child come out after all? Was this going to go on forever? And then back down into the darkness of sleep.

  Finally she awoke and did not feel so much pain. Nor did she collapse again. She saw only darkness around her. Then she realized that her eyes were not open. She parted her eyelids and saw that there was faint light coming from somewhere. She was thirsty. Her mouth was so dry that she could feel her lips split open like sun-dried mud.

  “Water,” she whispered.

  Someone stirred beside her. Her handmaid, of course. She closed her eyes and waited. Soon water splashed over her lips. She licked with her tongue, drew water inside her mouth. More trickled in. She managed to swallow some through a throat that seemed to have been mortared shut. That was enough. Sleep reached for her again. “Thank you, Hagar,” Sarah murmured.

  At last, hours later, she woke to daylight. Her mouth was dry again, but this time she could see who lay beside her. Abraham. What was he thinking, to lie by a woman who was not yet purified? But then, why not? If she died, what would it matter then?

  “Abraham,” she whispered.

  He woke, and almost at once reached for a flagon of water and offered it to her, just as Hagar had offered it last night, a splash over the lips, a trickle into the open mouth. “More?” he asked.

  “It was you last night,” she said.

  “Not Hagar, no,” said Abraham.

  “Where’s my baby?”

  “He’s with a wetnurse. A woman from Hebron and a shepherd’s wife are taking turns with him.”

  “Is he whole?”

  “Strong and healthy, all the right parts to his body,” said Abraham. “As beautiful as if his mother had been a bride of only one year.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Three days,” said Abraham. “It was hard on you, that birth.”

  “I thought of Asherah,” she confessed at once.

  “You can think of Satan himself. What of that? Did you pray to her?”

  “No, I prayed to God, but I feared her all the same.”

  “You were filled with fear, and Asherah was a name that came to mind.” Abraham kissed her forehead. “Fear nothing, Princess. God knows you are worthy. Your heart turned to him in your pain. And more than that, my love. When hands gave you water in the darkness, you called the waterbringer by the name of your friend.”

  She remembered last night, the water. “Hagar,” said Sarah.

  “It was only your husband,” said Abraham.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t see.”

  “In your heart, you have forgiven her.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. “Have I?”

  “You spoke her name so gratefully.”

  “I was in the madness of a dream,” said Sarah. “All the years were fled, and she it was who slept at my feet. But no, Abraham, you judge me too kindly. I have not forgiven her. I fear her more than ever.” And then she poured out her heart, all her fears for her son.

  Abraham listened gravely. When she had finished explaining all and then explaining her explanations because he was so adamantly silent, showing nothing on his face, when she had no more words left to say, she concluded, “Now you know the evil in my heart, and how I judge the mother of your first son.”

  “My firstborn son, in the eyes of God and the law, is Isaac,” said Abraham, “because only he was born of the body of my wife. And I am not as utterly innocent as you think me. Do you think I don’t know the same tales that have haunted your nightmares? Hagar has shown no sign of resentment, but she’s shown no great joy, either. But Eliezer keeps two men awake all night and watching through the day. I told myself that such a thing was foolishness, that no one would harm our son. But . . . who knows what dark thoughts might find purchase in someone’s heart?”

  “What will we do about Ishmael?” asked Sarah.

  “I love him,” said Abraham. “He’s a good boy, bright and happy, obedient, ready with animals, playful. How can I harm him, when he’s done no wrong?”

  “No, of course not,” said Sarah. “Your love for him is right. I understand.” But her heart cried out: Isaac!

  “Let’s see what Hagar does, what Ishmael does.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they do,” said Sarah. “You and I are old.”

  “I know how old we are,” said Abraham. “Old enough to know how precious life is. How few the years we had with our parents, how fast the years pass while your children grow.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Sarah. “I may not live to know it.”

  “We’ll see what happens,” said Abraham. “I love Ishmael. And you love Hagar—I heard it in your voice last night. We’ll wait and see.”

  She heard it in his voice: This discussion was over. He had heard her, and he had decided what he would do. And she knew that he was right, that it would be seen as a cruel thing to send Hagar and her son away. It would taint Isaac’s childhood, a stain on him despite his innocence, for with his first step, everyone would remember the first step of another boy, and with his first word, everyone would remember another voice, now unheard.

  Show us what to do, O Lord. Isaac will be in thy hands, not ours. He is thy gift. He was born to fulfill thy covenant. Show us how to keep him safe.

  Chapter 23

  All the flocks and herds were driven to nearby meadows, so that as many shepherds as possible could be at the feast for Isaac’s weaning. Everyone wanted to see him, to be part of the celebration. Many friends were coming from Hebron, too. Several bullocks and kids and lambs had been roasting all night for the feast. The choicest lamb, however, was reserved for the Lord, to be offered as a sacrifice at dawn.

  Sarah received the congratulations of the women. From time to time Isaac came toddling up, demanding to be fed. When Sarah offered him cheese and bread, he stamped his feet and reached again to be picked up and nursed. Sarah had been warned by many women that it was so hard on the mother not to give in to the child’s pleading. But it wasn’t hard for her at all. She had enjoyed nursing when Isaac was very little, but teeth had pretty much killed the pleasure for her. And she had wanted to wean him a year ago, when he started being able to ask for a breast with words instead of gestures. “He’s ready to be a boy and not a baby,” she had said, but the wetnurses acted as if Sarah were some sort of monster, not to keep the baby at the nipple until he was three, so she gave in.

  Wetnurses. Hagar hadn’t needed any help to nurse Ishmael. Well, Hagar wasn’t an old woman with dried-up little dugs that had to practically be wrung out like damp clothes to get any milk from them. So two nursing mothers, one from Hebron, one from Abraham’s household, had each given Isaac two nursings a day when he was little, one each day as he grew older and began eating solid food as well. Naturally, they felt they knew as much about mothering as Sarah, and offered their advice freely; and Sarah took their advice when she agreed with it, or when she didn’t know. That’s why Isaac was actually being weaned on the day of his weaning feast, instead of having been long since dining on bread and cheese and figs and dates, well-watered wine and chopped-up meat.

  So today Isaac was being bratty, naturally. Everybody else was having a party, and he was getting ignored by his mother and his wetnurses. With all the strangers coming in from the town and the nearby villages, and all the men returning from the outlying flocks and herds, Isaac was afraid and wanted to be held, and to him, being held and protected meant suckling. Poor child.

  Abraham was the proud host, which meant that he sat near the cookfires and talked to people who were lining up for food or whose flatbread was freshly covered with spicy meat or stewed beans and fruit. From time to time he’d call for the servants to bring Isaac to him, and Abraham—still remarkably strong and fit for a man his age—would hoist the boy high over his head for all to see. Naturally, Isaac, already out of sorts because he wasn’t getting suckled, regarded this as an affront, and he yelled in protest, his face turning red. This provoked laughter and applause from the crowd, which only made Isaac angrier, and the moment Abraham set him down, Isaac would run off on his stubby little legs. The crowd parted for him and cheered him on.

  Then, of course, Isaac would head for Sarah, needing the comfort of the breast. Soon he would learn that it was his mother he wanted, and not just one small part of her, but then, plenty of grown men had a similar problem, didn’t they?

  Feast days were tiring. Abraham seemed to thrive on them, getting so energized that he often could not fall asleep until late in the night. But Sarah could only take a few hours at a time before she had to withdraw to her tent. In her younger days, she would have lasted out the day and fallen exhausted into bed the moment the crowd broke up. But she simply couldn’t do it now. And, because she was old, she didn’t have to. People assumed her weariness was physical, that like many old people she needed frequent naps. Well, she didn’t mind napping, but if that were her problem, she’d simply doze off where she sat. It was solitude she needed at times like this, not sleep.

  So no one thought ill of her when she got up and doddered off to her tent. She hated the fact that her hip joints had never really recovered from the pregnancy, so that now she could walk only in fairly short steps. It made her look crippled, when in fact she was quite robust in most other ways. She could still outspin most of the women in the camp. Her eyes and her mind were sharp. Her hearing was acute. But, seeing her walk in that shuffling way, people assumed they had to speak slowly to her, and shout, and tell her who they were even though they were standing right in front of her. Oh, well. Let them assume what they assume. It only meant that when she revealed how keen her mind was they were pleasantly surprised. Or unpleasantly—depending on their own character.

  It was hot inside her tent, but she didn’t care. She drew the curtain closed all the same, so she would not be intruded upon. She lay on her bed, not intending to sleep, but soon she did doze off.

  She slept only lightly, and not for long, for she heard noises outside her tent. A grunting sound, and soft laughter. Her first thought was to wonder if some young village couple, wits dimmed by wine, had decided to have a tryst behind her tent. But as she lay there listening, the sounds began to make a different sort of sense. The grunting was really not grunting at all. It was more like a sustained scream, only so muffled that it could hardly be heard.

  A muffled scream, she realized, from a little child’s throat.

  She rose from her bed with an alacrity she had not thought her body capable of. Heart pounding, she drew apart the door of her tent enough to see a sight that chilled her to the soul.

  The soft laughter came from Ishmael. The screaming came from little Isaac. Ishmael had bound a long scarf around Isaac’s open mouth, muffling his voice. And Ishmael held the end of the scarf like a tether, so that even though Isaac strained against it with all his might, he could not get away.

  Isaac was desperately trying to get to Sarah’s tent. It was his mother he was calling for.

  Was this not Sarah’s worst nightmare, being acted out in the flesh? All her fears of what would happen after she died, with Isaac helpless in the hands of Ishmael, were here before her eyes.

  Isaac threw himself toward the tent so hard that his legs flipped out from under him, and he fell on his back, still tethered. The way his head was twisted by the scarf as he fell sent panic through Sarah’s heart. His neck! Ishmael has broken his neck! But after a moment of lying there, still and winded, Isaac scrambled back to his feet and ran at Ishmael, pummeling him with his little fists. Ishmael only laughed, holding his little half-brother by the head so that his blows struck only air, or landed uselessly on Ishmael’s tight-muscled arm.

  Grinning, Ishmael glanced up to share the joke with someone standing off to the side. Obviously, he was still unaware that Sarah was watching—but he had some audience that he was playing to.

  Sarah parted her door wider, and now she could see who it was that watched this miserable scene of torment without intervening. It was Hagar of course, standing in the door of her tent, smiling indulgently at the sight of her son mocking Isaac’s fear and rage.