Taking his leave of them, he strode on ahead, walking on his shepherd’s legs, far less fatigued by this journey than anyone else. He was not young, but even the young men were worn out by the day’s journey. No one could keep up with Moses.

  Not that there weren’t some who wanted to try. Young Joshua, of Ephraim, seemed to find it impossible to stay with his own tribe, and was always traveling with the Levites and seemed to be within earshot of Moses whenever possible. And now, as Moses took off ahead, Aaron could see how the young man took a few rushed steps, wanting to catch up, and then realized that no one else was going with Moses, that he would be noticed following him, and then he glanced at Aaron, and Aaron shook his head. No, don’t follow. Joshua smiled sheepishly and allowed himself to fall back to the slower pace of the rest of the tribe.

  Aaron understood why Joshua didn’t travel with the Ephraimites—Joshua was young, and while his eagerness and intelligence were appreciated, he wasn’t taken seriously by the elders of Ephraim. Moses, on the other hand, answered his questions, asked what he thought, treated him as a companion worthy of noticing. And Moses, after all, was the prophet of God.

  Not that Joshua was ambitious. After all, the trust of God was bestowed by God himself, not by any man. Joshua wanted to be with Moses because he wanted to help with the most important work. Which, now that Aaron thought of it, was a kind of ambition. The bad ambition that led Pharaoh to poison Hatshepsut and at least go along with the murder of his own father, that was the ambition for personal power and prestige. Joshua had no scrap of that. His ambition was the good kind, to find where the most important thing was happening and then help to understand it and bring it to pass. There were others like him, though none so young. Hur, of Levi, was emerging as a trusted man whose loyalty was to the Lord and not to his tribe. Caleb of Judah bore watching. Others, with too much of the wrong kind of ambition, were soon given modest assignments that kept them far from the counselors Moses gathered around him.

  Aaron couldn’t help wondering: Which kind of ambition is mine? Or Miriam’s? How much of our passion for freeing Israel was because we wanted Israel saved, and how much because we each wanted to be the savior? Until this moment, Aaron would have told anyone who asked that the distinction didn’t matter. As long as you were there, helping, working constantly for a good cause, who cared whether your motives included a little hope that someone would recognize your efforts and reward you with honor or even entrust you with power?

  But maybe it does matter. Maybe you don’t have to be completely corrupt. Maybe a little bit of personal ambition could corrupt you a little bit. Maybe out in the desert, Moses was stripped of the last shred of personal ambition, and when it was gone, then the Lord could use him as his prophet. Maybe that was what Moses saw in Joshua, so that he allowed this—this mere boy, after all, however nicely his beard might be coming along—allowed him to take part in discussions that even the elders of the other tribes were not invited into.

  Maybe the Lord is going to find a way to purify Miriam and me before this journey is through.

  Or maybe the Lord has already given up, and doesn’t think I’m worth purifying.

  * * *

  “Wait for your son’s body to be embalmed,” Sakhmet said.

  “The embalmers know their business,” said Tuthmose. “My son was killed by the Israelite god. He took away what I loved best! Now I’ll show him how it feels.”

  “Go then,” she said. “Show him, and see what he shows you.”

  “Is that a threat? A challenge? Or a warning?”

  “You are Pharaoh,” she said. “Your kingdom is in ruins. We have no crops, our herds are depleted, the people are grieving and dispirited—and you want to take the one remaining pillar of the kingdom, the army, and throw it against a god who can do the things we’ve seen him do!”

  Tuthmose looked at her in fury. “Now the mask comes off and I see how I was deceived. You were so mild, so virtuous, but now I know you for what you are.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Hatshepsut,” he said, as if the name were a curse.

  “We lost our son,” she said. “It changed me. Being quiet and obedient to you cost me my son! So now I speak, and you get angry at me.”

  “I didn’t marry you to hear your advice.”

  “You married me to produce heirs,” she said. “I produced one, a fine one. Where is he? What have you done with the child I made for you?”

  Tuthmose roared with rage and grief. She cowered, expecting another blow. But this time her voice was not stilled. “Yes, hit me! Show the power of Pharaoh! The same power the lowliest slave has—to beat his woman! Oh, you’re the mighty one! Oh, Egypt is proud of you!”

  “I’m done with you. I divorce you.”

  This caused her far more fear than the threat of violence had. “My body has more children in it. Ptahmose was perfect; we can have another, and another.”

  “I never married you,” said Tuthmose. “You never lived in this palace.”

  “If you strike out my name from all the inscriptions, you will have to strike out the name of Ptahmose, too!”

  “Yes!” cried Tuthmose. “I will do that! A child who dies in his sleep might as well be a miscarriage! I need a man who will live, and for that I need a real wife, not a complaining woman who thinks she rules Egypt!”

  “Do you repudiate Ptahmose?” she said, stricken as she had never been before, even by the death of her son. “Do you deny him?”

  “I never had a son. I never had a wife. When I marry it will be for the first time, and whoever is born to that marriage will be my firstborn. Moses and his god took nothing from me! I was not defeated.”

  “This is beyond madness,” said Sakhmet. “You have given your heart to evil.”

  “When I come back from slaughtering the leaders of the Israelites and dragging the rest back to Goshen to begin their slavery in earnest, you will not be in this palace. And that son of yours, the one who was so feeble that he died in his sleep, I will not have his body embalmed like a son of Pharaoh! He was never my son. My son will be Pharaoh someday, and Pharaoh is a god. Gods are not killed by the spells cast by escaped slaves.”

  She wept bitterly, and wailed at him as he stalked from the room, “You loved him! He is your son and you loved him!”

  Out in the great hall, Jannes stood with several priests. Clearly they had heard the argument; there was no privacy in the palace, if you shouted, for the stone walls would carry the sound to every corner of the building.

  Jannes and the priests said nothing to Tuthmose. Just looked at him.

  “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Tuthmose. “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m looking at the king-god who rules Egypt,” said Jannes.

  Was there irony in his voice? “I need a priest to bless my six hundred chariots before I take them out to destroy the power of Moses. I should have done it the moment he returned to Egypt.”

  “I pray that Amon will bless Egypt with all good things,” said Jannes. “But I will not say a blessing on your chariots.”

  “High priests can be replaced!” roared Tuthmose.

  “As you wish,” said Jannes. “But I cannot give blessings today, for I’m in mourning. Unlike you, I lost a son.” And with that, Jannes headed for the door.

  Tuthmose looked around at the men gathered in the great hall. There was one, a soldier, a man who was crisp in his obedience and submissive in his advice. “You,” said Tuthmose. “You are now the high priest of Amon at Karnak.”

  The great hall fell silent, and Jannes stopped in the doorway, waiting.

  “Go take the vestments of the priesthood from that old traitor and put them on. You will bless my chariots today.”

  Without question or complaint, the man walked briskly to Jannes, who surrendered immediately every scrap of priestly garb and decoration. Jannes walked naked from the hall, his old hams sagging, his skin hanging on him like old clothes, his back bent. No wonder the kingdom was in such trouble—the high priest of Amon had been this pathetic old impostor! Now there was a new high priest, and there would be a new queen, and new heirs. Egypt would rise from the setbacks of recent weeks, and Tuthmose would show the world that Pharaoh bowed to no man, and no god but the gods of Egypt.

  At some point today, he would need to make discreet inquiries in order to remind himself of the name of the man he had just appointed to the highest religious office in the land. It wouldn’t do for people to find out that Pharaoh’s memory was less than perfect. Though with so much on his mind, a lesser man than Pharaoh would probably have forgotten his own name.

  * * *

  By the time the pillar of cloud led the people to the shores of the sea, Moses was ready for them, and from his smile, Aaron and Miriam knew that he had received his answer.

  “The Lord is merciful to Israel,” said Moses. “For the heart of Pharaoh is harder than anyone but God could ever have guessed. Even now he is coming with six hundred war chariots with their archers and swordsmen.”

  “Tell us about the goodness of God,” said Miriam dryly.

  “There is our highway,” said Moses, pointing to the sea.

  “And who will hold the chariots at bay while we cross?” asked Aaron.

  “The Egyptians will know that the Lord is God,” said Moses.

  As the last of the Israelites came down to the shore of the Red Sea, Moses summoned the elders of the tribes. “Tell your people we will encamp here tonight.”

  “The people will ask where we are going from here,” said Hur. “And why we came to the sea.”

  “Tell them this,” said Moses. “The Lord will fight for Israel, and protect the children of Israel. Trust in the Lord, and not one soul of us will be harmed. Tomorrow the Lord will show forth even mightier miracles than the plagues. For there were flies and frogs and lice before, and darkness and blood and death. But what you will see tomorrow has never been seen on earth, and only the power of God could accomplish it.”

  “Pharaoh is coming, isn’t he?” said one of the men of Naphtali. “The army is coming against us.”

  “Yes, Pharaoh comes in triumph, thinking his chariots have trapped us, hemmed us in against the sea,” said Moses.

  “Will the Lord make us mighty in battle?” asked Joshua. He said this with so much eagerness that it was plain to Moses the boy had never seen war. But then, none of the young men of Israel had fought in battle. Only the oldest men remembered the days when, under Hyksos Pharaohs, Israelites had been trusted with minor command. If Israelites younger than Moses had ever practiced battle, they had done it with sticks.

  “The Lord will defend us against Pharaoh by his power alone. Our job,” said Moses,” is to walk from here . . . to there.”

  And he pointed out to sea.

  “I’m looking for the boats,” said an elder of Dan.

  “I said we would walk,” said Moses. “By the power of the Lord God, we will cross on dry land. Now go to your people and prepare them to move tomorrow at dawn, tribe by tribe, in the order of march.”

  They dispersed, except for the few who were emerging as part of Moses’ inner council—Aaron, Miriam, Hur, Caleb, Joshua, a few others. Moses spoke to them as if he had asked them to stay. “Hur,” he said, “tomorrow you will stand at the shoreline to keep the people moving. Caleb, Joshua, you will circulate among the tribes in the rear, and reassure them when Pharaoh’s chariots come that not one Israelite will be harmed today. The three of you will be the last to cross. Aaron, Miriam, I want you to lead Israel across. They have to see you go first, because many will be afraid to believe the evidence of their own eyes.”

  “And you?” said Aaron.

  “I will cross when I cross.”

  “Moses,” said Aaron, “Israel needs you. Don’t stand alone against Pharaoh.”

  Moses laughed, but touched his brother’s arm affectionately. “It’s good of you to worry about me, Aaron, but I’ve seen enough of war to know that the best battle is the one you don’t have to fight. Now go, make your camp for tonight. Tomorrow you’ll see what the Lord will do.”

  Joshua spoke up again. “Shouldn’t we post guards, to watch for Pharaoh’s army?”

  “Why should we watch?” said Moses. “They’ll follow our trail easily, and they’ll find us when they find us.”

  “But what if they come tomorrow before we cross?”

  “They will come tonight,” said Moses. “They’re almost here right now.”

  “And we’re making camp?” said Joshua, incredulous.

  “So young, to be losing his hearing,” said Moses. The others laughed. But he could hear that they, too, were nervous, that Joshua had given voice to everyone’s fears. “I said the Lord will protect us, and we will not do battle.”

  Even as he spoke, cries of fear came up from the camp, a tumult of noise. For there at the crest of the ridge, where only recently the last Israelites had come down on their walk to the sea, chariots began to appear, spreading out as if to attack. Archers could be seen nocking their arrows; the glint of swords in the last sunlight of the day brought screams from the people.

  And then, before the people could panic and begin to flee, the pillar of cloud that until now had stood out over the water moved rapidly over the camp of Israel, changing shape as it did. Now the pillar became a thick cloud that blocked Pharaoh’s chariots from view.

  It took a while for the people to calm down and get back to making camp. They had got better at pitching their tents, those who had them; many just laid out blankets or robes on the ground. They would all have tents soon enough, refashioning robes or blankets, or making new cloth from wool as they traveled, for the nights in the desert could be bitterly cold, and the wind could blind them. But so far on the journey, the nights had been warm, the air still. Of course, for the weather belonged to the Lord and did his will.

  All through the evening, as the sun set, the people kept looking at the cloud, waiting for a chariot to burst through. Instead, the cloud gave off a glow that brought light to the camp. And by the time the sky was fully dark, the people had finally come to trust that the Lord really was protecting them. Many of them even slept.

  * * *

  “What can I do about the fog?” answered an officer. “I try to drive my chariot into it, but the horses stop in terror. And what does it matter? Morning sun will clear this fog away, and they’ll still be there. Where can they go?”

  Pharaoh didn’t like hearing opposition to his orders, but the truth was the men had tried to obey, and the horses would not go. No doubt some of them were saying this fog came from the god of Israel, and that didn’t help them find any new eagerness to plunge into the mist. Many of the soldiers had lost siblings, and some had lost children, and some of their own company had died, being firstborn. But these troops were the elite, and they would obey with courage and vigor. The officer was right. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  And Moses was wrong. Pharaoh would look at his face again. As Moses’ corpse lay on the ground, his severed head between his feet, Pharaoh would see his face, with Moses’ eyes finally downcast in obedience to his Pharaoh, who was the only god with any real power in Egypt. The time for tricks and spells was over. This was war, and while Moses had a vastly larger force, in no sense could it be called an army. Tuthmose’s six hundred chariots would slice through the Israelites like sickles through wheat. Then the women of Israel would keen and mourn like the mothers of Egypt had mourned, as all the males of Israel died before their eyes, and then the women and girls would be raped and then sold off into slavery, dispersed throughout Egypt. There would be no Israelites then, only slaves in Egyptian houses, and the only children they would ever have would be fathered by their Egyptian masters. Thus Pharaoh would extinguish a rebellious people, and all the world would acknowledge his irresistible power.

  * * *

  Before dawn the spirit of the Lord whispered to Moses that it was time, and he began to rouse the people. By the light of the cloud that protected them, they dressed, they loaded their burdens, and they gathered into marching order, tribe by tribe. Moses made only one change. “Today we pass beyond the border of Egypt. Therefore I charge the tribe of Ephraim to be first to follow Aaron and Miriam across to the other side. Ephraim! You are the bearers of the bones of our father, Jacob, called Israel. He prophesied that one day Israel would leave Egypt and return to Canaan, and today the prophecy begins to be fulfilled, for his bones will be carried at the front of our march.”

  A ragged cheer went up from Ephraim, but since no one could see how they were going to cross the water, it was hard for them to work up much enthusiasm.

  Moses walked to the edge of the water. The camp of Israel was fanned out on the sloping beaches, and many could see him. “O Lord,” said Moses softly, “show them your mercy.”

  Then, as the Lord had commanded, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.

  At once the sea began to roil as the water fled from the beach in front of the place where Aaron and Miriam waited. Immediately they walked boldly out onto the ground that moments before had been covered with water. “The ground is dry!” cried Aaron. He and Miriam strode on, as the water continued to recede before them. But it receded only where they walked; on the right hand and the left, it stayed up against the beach, lapping the shoreline normally. The water simply moved out of the way, making a path through the sea.

  The farther Aaron and Miriam walked, the higher the walls of water stood on either side. Yet no drop of it fell on them, and the ground was a smooth highway under their feet. Behind them, the company of Ephraim began to march down that road, bearing before them the carven box that held the remains of father Jacob. They marched in silence, some not daring to look right or left, others unable to look anywhere else but at the canyon of water that loomed silently over them.