And something else. Sarai wasn’t sure, but she thought that Kay had recognized Abram’s name. That concerned her. What report had come back to Egypt, after the attempt by Suwertu to have Abram killed? Surely those events in Ur-of-the-North all those years ago could not be remembered now.

  When Kay had already formed up his men to escort Abram’s household into Egypt, he asked, almost as an afterthought, “And this is the princess, yes? Your wife, yes?”

  Abram hesitated for only a moment, and then answered with a laugh. “My wife, come on such a journey? You don’t know princesses! This is my sister, Milcah.”

  Sarai had long since learned how not to let her face or body reveal surprise—or anything else. A king’s daughter must master that skill, at least, even if she was intended for the temple.

  Kay turned to her. “The sister of Abram is very beautiful,” he said.

  “Pharaoh’s voice at the border is sweet as honey,” she replied.

  “Where is the lady’s husband? Is he not with this party?”

  Abram laughed. “Husband? And where would I have found a husband for my sister? You see how my herds are depleted. I haven’t the bride-price for a great man, and I love my sister too much to give her to a peasant.”

  “Some women are their own bride-price,” said Kay.

  But he had gone too far, even for an official of a great king. “You speak like a suitor,” said Abram coldly, “and not like a soldier.”

  Kay did not seem at all abashed, or even embarrassed. He simply bade them stay near the road and follow him and his men toward the first town.

  Sarai was careful not to confer with Abram for some time, waiting until the soldiers were some distance ahead. By then Abram had already passed the word through one of his servants that Sarai was to be addressed by the name of Abram’s sister-in-law Milcah, who lived in Haran, in the house of Abram’s father Terah far to the north.

  “How did I become your sister?” she asked him softly.

  “When he asked me about you,” said Abram, “I knew by the power of God that if I told him the truth, I would be killed.”

  “But you already told him your name,” said Sarai. “If they blame Abram the son of Terah for the death of Suwertu, what difference does it make who I am?”

  “This isn’t about Suwertu,” said Abram. “He knew that Abram son of Terah had married Sarai the daughter of the king-in-exile of Ur, and I knew in that moment that if they thought I was bringing you into Egypt as my wife, you would soon be a widow.”

  “Why?”

  “So Pharaoh could marry you himself.”

  “But . . . that’s absurd. Pharaohs marry their sisters, everyone knows that.”

  “Yes. Which means that something is terribly wrong here.”

  “One thing, certainly. You just presented me as a single woman, and here I am dressed like a married one.”

  “And he said nothing about it, though if he knows anything about the way we dress, he could see the difference,” said Abram. “So he’s no doubt wondering if I lied, or if you’re married, or perhaps widowed.”

  “Abram, if the daughter of an exiled king is desirable, why wouldn’t the sister of a desert priest-king be just as useful?”

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” said Abram.

  “So there’s no danger?”

  “No danger?” He looked grim. “There’s very grave danger. The first Pharaohs originally came from our country, the grasslands of the east—that’s why the Egyptian language is so close to ours. Perhaps Pharaoh is trying to assert that ancient authority. Or perhaps he fears it. And . . . I have the very authority the original Pharaohs claimed to have. Pharaoh might regard me as a threat, or he might regard me as someone worth linking himself to. As my sister, you may be even more useful to him than you would have been as my widow.”

  “Useful?” said Sarai. “How am I to be useful to Pharaoh without dishonoring myself and betraying you and disobeying God?”

  “I tell you what Pharaoh might be thinking. What God is thinking, I don’t know.”

  This was not the comfort Sarai had been hoping for. “What will I do?”

  “Trust in God,” said Abram.

  “That’s your whole plan?”

  “It was God who told me to come here, and God who told me to tell him you were my sister,” said Abram. “Beyond that, what do I know?”

  “What are you and God doing to me?” asked Sarai. “I’m not your sister, in case you’ve forgotten, and I’m not a single woman, eligible to be snagged by kings in order to prop up their dynasties.” Finally, though, she got a good look at Abram’s face, and saw that he was as upset about this as she was.

  “For now, you must pretend to be single,” said Abram, “or I’m a dead man. I’ll plead with the Lord to keep you safe.”

  Sarai heard this in silence, and walked in silence for half a mile before she found her voice to answer. All the while she was in turmoil, frightened and angry but not sure whom to be angry at, God or Abram. And when she did speak, she didn’t say at all what was in her heart. She didn’t plead with him to turn around and leave. She didn’t beg him to protect her himself. She didn’t demand that he go back to God and get an alternate plan. Instead, she answered with a voice that she had never heard herself use before. Qira’s voice, sarcastic and cutting. “And if there had been a battle, would you have handed a sword to me and pushed me ahead of you into the fray?”

  Abram felt the accusation like a blow—she saw him stagger under it. “I did not choose this way,” he said.

  Try as she might, she could not get that nasty tone out of her voice. “The thought came to you that calling me your sister would keep you safe. What I wonder is, was it really God that gave you the idea? Or fear?”

  Before she could say more to wound him, she strode faster, moving ahead of him. Part of her wanted to turn back and cling to him, weeping, assuring him of her love for him. But it would not do to let the soldiers see her act so wifelike. And besides, a part of her was very, very angry and meant every nasty word that she had said. What exactly would Abram do if Pharaoh decided that he wanted a woman from an ancient priestly house as his wife? What would she do? Kings were not inclined to take no for an answer. If she did not bend to Pharaoh’s will, even in such a terrible sin, Abram might end up just as dead as if Pharaoh thought that she was his wife.

  The thought of Abram murdered was unbearable. At once her anger at God was swept away in fear for her husband. Do whatever you must to me, she prayed silently, but let no harm come to Abram!

  And another thought: Maybe God means to take me away from him, so he can marry a woman who will bear him sons.

  Chapter 6

  From the first, the palace officials did their best to separate Sarai from Abram. As they first came to the green and settled lands near the river, Kay suggested that Milcah and the other women and children might want to rest in the shade while Abram went ahead to meet with Sehtepibre, Pharaoh’s most trusted steward.

  “My sister is as wise as any man,” said Abram, “and I will not be without her counsel.”

  Kay did not press the point. But when they reached the river, where a servant from the palace awaited them with ten ships, again there was an attempt to separate them. Abram made it clear he would leave only the herders’ own families with them. “Milcah” would stay with her brother. “Does a man leave a precious jewel among cows and sheep?”

  “But floating on the river makes women ill,” said Khnumhotpe, the servant from the palace. “At least let your sister’s boat travel more slowly, so she and her maidservants do not suffer, while the oarsmen make your boat leap ahead to take you to lord Pharaoh.”

  “Those who have ridden on dromedaries will not be sickened by a bit of wobbling in a boat,” said Abram. “And I wish to see the greatness of the river with my sister, whose eyes are my own, as mine are hers.”

  Abram’s statement might have been true, but Sarai had never actually ridden on a dromedary—only those who crossed the great stretches of pure sand far to the south of their rangeland ever needed those towering beasts. But to these city people, utterly without experience of the desert life, anything was possible.

  On the lead boat, oarsmen poled them up the edges of the river while boats and rafts floated down the middle current. Abram and Sarai sat together, watching the farms of Egypt endlessly pass by them. “It could be the Euphrates,” she said. “But here, there isn’t a cubit of land that is not farmed or dwelt on. Where will your herds graze?”

  “There must be grassland beyond the farms,” said Abram.

  “No, lord Abram,” said Khnumhotpe. “The farms run to the desert edge. That’s what the drought has done to us. All the grasslands are buried in sand or burned away by the sun. Where the river’s flood puts mud, we farm; where it doesn’t, there is no life at all.”

  “But I’ve seen many desert people living here,” said Abram. “From their clothing, at least, they seemed like those who once lived in Canaan or on the range. Where do their herds live?”

  “Those who wish to keep their animals buy fodder. Others rent some scrap of surviving rangeland from great lords or from Pharaoh himself. Most, though, came to Egypt because their herds were gone.”

  “How do they live, then?” asked Sarai.

  “As servants, of course.” Khnumhotpe did not seem surprised that Sarai spoke up as if she were their conversational equal.

  “They give up their freedom?” asked Sarai.

  “Many were captured in war,” said Khnumhotpe. “Many others, though, sell their freedom for gruel and beer. We have it, they don’t. And they have nothing to buy it with except their labor. They survive, and Egypt has more servants than it knows what to do with.” Khnumhotpe chuckled, as if this surplus of slaves were amusing.

  But Sarai had seen the Canaanites and Amorites, too, and very few of them seemed to be servants. Khnumhotpe was either lying, or he was himself ignorant of the life of the desert people. Which was quite possible. Hsy, the term he used for Canaanites and Amorites, Hittites and Sumerians and Libyans interchangeably, was not uttered with any special contempt—but the word meant “vile” or “shameful.” It was clear that Egyptians regarded even the great cities of the east as nothing compared to the majesty of Egypt.

  Well, what city did not think itself the best of all possible places? The difference in Egypt was that it was not a series of cities vying with each other for supremacy. That issue had been settled long ago. Egypt was a single kingdom, and all who held office in any city did so at the pleasure of Pharaoh. People did not belong to a mere city, they belonged to a great nation whose king was a god who ruled from the far reaches of the high river to the coasts of the sea. So when an Egyptian spoke of foreigners as contemptible people, it was not just empty brag. Egypt was whole, and all other nations were in pieces.

  “Egypt seems to find something for every man and woman to do,” said Sarai. “I’ve seen no idle hands . . . except our own.”

  Khnumhotpe laughed at that, laughed without derision. He seemed genuinely to enjoy her company. But when Sarai glanced at Abram, she saw him roll his eyes. Apparently he did not take Khnumhotpe’s jovial disposition at face value. Sarai wondered if Abram was right. After all, they were no longer in the desert. They were with royal servants now, and that was something Sarai understood, having grown up in a house that, despite its poverty and lack of power, was nonetheless royal. Was it not possible that Abram was distrustful because he was on less familiar ground?

  He had held his own in encounters with her father, Sarai remembered that, and Abram often did business in cities. Still, she had been raised in a king’s house, and it was to a king’s house they were going. She liked Khnumhotpe, and Khnumhotpe seemed to like her. Why was that a matter for suspicion? If Abram wanted to act the jealous husband, he might have declared her publicly to be his wife.

  She smiled at Khnumhotpe. “Then again, we are the sort of people who work by thinking and speaking. So while our hands may do little labor at this moment, yet we are not at rest.”

  Again she glanced at Abram, but now he was not looking at her at all. He was gazing out over the water, toward a large brightly painted building that opened onto a great sweep of steps leading down into the river. The boats were steering toward a jetty that flanked the stairs.

  “So this is the king’s house,” she said to Khnumhotpe.

  “One of them.”

  “Will he see us, do you think?”

  “Without question,” said Khnumhotpe. “He has a keen interest in your brother. His name is not unknown here.”

  That set off a silent cry of alarm in Sarai’s heart. Khnumhotpe was a man who chose his words carefully. And he had carefully avoided saying whether Pharaoh’s “interest” in Abram was kindly or threatening. Yet Khnumhotpe gave no sign of any but the cheerfulest of attitudes. Perhaps Abram’s suspicions had been wiser than Sarai’s trust.

  Khnumhotpe leapt to the jetty as soon as the boat drew near enough. He held out a hand as if to help Sarai, but while she was still gathering her skirts about her for the leap from bouncing boat to solid land, Abram bounded to the jetty with such force that, had she been in midstep, she would have plunged into the water. “Abram,” she said in consternation.

  “I wanted to help my sister to shore myself,” Abram explained to Khnumhotpe.

  In reply, Khnumhotpe clapped Abram on the shoulder. “Oh, no need of that! Milcah will be taken to the house of Pharaoh’s wives to be given a chance to rest and refresh herself in the company of women.”

  Sure enough, the boat was drawing back from the jetty; it was already impossible for her to make the leap, and Sarai could not swim. Neither could Abram, though as he stood there on the dock, she could guess that he was furiously trying to decide just how hard swimming could be, since so many children of servants here by the Nile could do it. Khnumhotpe had outmaneuvered them. Abram had understood the Egyptian well enough to know not to trust him. But Khnumhotpe had understood Abram even better, well enough to manipulate him into allowing the separation he had so adamantly refused. And Sarai—clearly she had understood nothing at all.

  “No, Abram, you go with Khnumhotpe,” Sarai called to him. “Pharaoh does not want to meet your sister covered with the dirt of travel.” She was warning him not to try to fight this right now. This was the moment of greatest danger. If they were going to kill him, they would do it now, the moment Sarai was out of sight. “Think nothing of me,” she insisted, her voice now echoing from the stone steps as she shouted over the growing expanse of water. “Let your thoughts be on your own imminent meeting with Suwertu’s master.” The name of the priest who had sought to kill him was the only warning she could give him. And she was now too far away to be able to see, from his face, whether he had understood.

  O God of Abram, she prayed. Forgive my selfishness in resenting the deception thou didst urge upon us, and my vanity in thinking I was wise in the ways of a royal house. I will bear whatever burden thou placest upon me, but keep my husband safe. Let him live, O God, to have the children of thy promise to him. It matters not to me that I be the mother of those children, as long as Abram is their father.

  But even as she prayed the words—and surely she meant them—another voice, one that could not find words, was crying out in anguish in the deep recesses of her mind. To think of another woman as the mother of Abram’s children was unbearable. Was this the vengeance of Asherah?

  Yet with the part of her mind that she could control, she outshouted that wordless wish. Better that it be Asherah avenging a broken oath and reclaiming a lost servant than to have it be Pharaoh, avenging the death of Suwertu and claiming the life of an escaped sacrifice. God, hear the words I pray, not the unworthy, selfish cry of my inmost heart.

  Part III

  Pharaoh's Women

  Chapter 7

  What impressed Sarai most was the cleanliness. How did they manage it? The same wind blew here as anywhere else, carrying dust, fine sand, fleas, and flies. Yet in the house of Pharaoh, the stone floors held no dust, the tapestries on the walls were unfaded by dirt or sunlight, and water stood in pools so clear she could see the mosaics on the bottom. Everyone moved swiftly and quietly about their tasks. She could hear the laughter of children as she passed one door, the low throaty chuckle of a gossiping woman as she passed another, but the work of the house—the work of banishing every grain of sand—went on silently, invisibly.

  In such cleanliness, where does anyone live? Children are dirty, work is dirty, life is dirty, so when you ban the dirt, where does the life of the house go? And yet there was that laughter, that chuckle; there was pleasure and delight in this place. And Sarai felt, for the first time in her life, like a country bumpkin, for in Ur there was no such luxury as this, to banish the desert.

  It was men who brought her here—obsequious men in command, bored soldiers giving teeth to their authority. Sarai said little and tried to smile benignly as if being kidnapped and carried off to Pharaoh’s house were exactly what she had expected in a place as benighted as this. She tried not to let herself gawk at the size of the house. She refused to ask questions. And so she found herself now following a servant girl through the labyrinth of rooms, with no idea where she was going or what was expected of her.

  They entered a room where a woman sat in conversation with a man. The woman wore a linen drape so light that Sarai could see the shape of her breasts as easily as if she were naked. The man wore a kilt of linen, but it was apparently long enough to be wrapped twice around him, so it was not so transparent. Still, even from behind she knew more about his body than she wanted to. On the way here, she had seen that the workers in the fields were naked, but they were far away. The soldiers wore kilts, but of rougher, thicker fabric. It seemed that the rich wore clothing, but clothing that left them as close to the nakedness of the poor as possible.