* * *

  As slavery went, Nun had rather the best of it. No one supervised him because he had no betters to correct him. He arose in the morning because he couldn’t wait to get to his work. He dined with his family and there was always plenty to eat, enough that guests were welcome at his table, because the work of a painter of glyphs was well-rewarded. He had to have the talent of a painter, with the same knowledge of colors on stone and colors on plaster; and yet he had to be able to read and form words as well as any scribe—better, since his work would be seen by thousands at once, and any error would be visible for decades, perhaps centuries. Nun was well-regarded for he made no mistakes and his glyphs were gracefully shaped and he worked at a good speed. Surely if there was any Israelite who had reason to love Egypt it was Nun.

  And yet his heart seethed as he walked the streets of his village of artisans, for even though he received deference himself, he saw how his fellow Israelites were despised, ordered about, jostled, insulted, and set to foolish tasks by Egyptians who fancied themselves their superiors. Their masters.

  If I lost a finger and could not properly hold a brush, he thought, if my eyes failed me and I could not see, how would they treat me then? One fallen stone on my hand, one fleck of sand in my eye and that would be me shoved against the wall by passing Egyptian youths, me set to carrying water even though I was done with my labor for the day, merely because to resist the order of an Egyptian meant a certain beating.

  They valued him, they paid him well, they left him alone, but as he often said, a valued slave is still a slave.

  A few days ago, Nun had heard the tumult when Moses passed down the river. Nun paid no heed. He bade his eldest son Joshua good-bye and set out for work. “But papa,” said Joshua, “Moses is coming down the river!”

  “Moses can fly overhead like a flock of birds for all I care,” said Nun.

  “He’s the general of the armies, and he’s one of us!”

  “He’s one of us,” said Nun, “and that means that he’s a slave.”

  “He’s son of Pharaoh!” cried Joshua.

  “Don’t argue with your father,” said Anna, Nun’s wife, Joshua’s mother.

  “He’ll be Pharaoh himself someday!”

  Nun laughed bitterly. “Joshua, he will never be Pharaoh.”

  “Why not, Papa?”

  “Because a valued slave is still a slave.” And then he took his paintpot up to the top of the scaffolding and in the most dizzying place he wrote the words of triumph. The name of Moses was written there, and the name of Hatshepsut, but Nun had seen the places where once the names of Hyksos Pharaohs were written, and then were chiseled and rubbed smooth again as if they had never borne writing. Moses, I put your name here in paint; the chisel will someday tear it out, because no slave’s name will be on the monuments of Egypt. And as for your mother, how long will her name last as Pharaoh, once a man again rules this land? All her deeds will be ascribed to her father or her husband or her successor, and she’ll be counted as the mere daughter of Pharaoh once again. You are temporary, Moses and Hatshepsut. But I put your names here in my most enduring paint because that is what puts food on the table in my house.

  In fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years, the desert sand will eat away all my painting. So what will it matter if my work gets undone in five years, or ten? Five years or five centuries, the acts of men will not last. Only God will remain, and the works of God, and of man only his soul will withstand the worms to stand before God, and I will stand there and God will say, “What did you do with your life, Nun of the tribe of Ephraim!” And I will say, “I worshiped the Lord God from my first word of the day until my last.” And he will say, “What did you paint upon the stone?” And I will say, “Nothing, for all the works of man are nothing.” And he will say, “Were you a slave in Egypt?” and I will say, “I was a servant in Egypt, as I would have been a servant in any other land, for a true man of Israel is a servant of God. Who then will make a slave of him who serves God of his own free will?”

  Such was the comfort Nun took, such were his thoughts as he painted.

  Today he went too long, and it was nearly dark when he came down the scaffolding. All the other artisans had left, and now he remembered that some had called out to him and asked if he was going to keep painting in the dark. Did I answer? he wondered. He could not remember. The moon lighted the path down from the monument, lighted it well enough that he hardly walked more slowly than he did in broad daylight, though darkness and shadow did change the shape of things.

  A man fell in step behind him on the path.

  “If you’re a robber,” Nun said, “you’re wasting your time. I’m an Israelite and a slave and I carry nothing of value except this paintpot.”

  “I’m not a robber,” said the man. He spoke Hebrew, and Nun relaxed.

  “What brings you here so late at night?” Nun asked.

  “Going home,” said the man.

  “What a pointless lie,” said Nun.

  The man stiffened.

  “You obviously live in the palace, and you’re going the wrong way.”

  “Perhaps I’m lost.”

  “Perhaps you’re sneaking out at night, in which case your clothing will give you away.” The man was wearing perfect white linens like a servant in the palace.

  “Then . . . trade me . . . your clothing,” said the man.

  Nun stared into the shadow where the man stood and laughed. “My clothing is smudged and filthy with work. There are flecks of paint all over me, and where I sit is covered with dust.”

  “That’s what I want,” said the man. “The clothes . . . of a common . . . Israelite.”

  Nun laughed. “I’m a painter of glyphs. Dirty as they are, my clothes are far finer than most Israelites can wear. Find a shabbier man.”

  The man was silent for a moment. “You’re here . . . and not a shabbier man.”

  “Your clothing is too fine for me,” said Nun.

  “Too fine for me . . . to pass through this . . . village . . . unobserved,” said the man. “Come, do it quickly.”

  Nun noticed how he paused, searched for a word. Slow. Strange. From his speech, he might even be a fool, halting, staggering through his sentences. And yet he spoke with authority, as if he were used to command. Who that spoke Hebrew had such a ready sense of his own authority? This could be no one else but Moses himself, slipping out of the palace to move among the Israelites in secret. Well, I’ll keep your secret, thought Nun. I’ll keep it so well that even you don’t know that I know it.

  “I have a better plan,” said Nun. “Let me take you to where the common workmen keep coats against the cold air of the desert night. True slaves’ clothing, if that’s what you want.”

  Moses—if that’s who it was—followed him to a shed where many old and cast-off things were kept; the leavings of slaves, so valueless that the doorway stood open at all times. In the darkness, the man stripped off his fine linen and put on a tattered tunic and a filthy coat and laughed. “It feels strange on my skin,” he said.

  “You should have left your linens on under it,” said Nun. “Wool itches, when it chafes your skin.” Which you’d already know, if you weren’t royal.

  “Then I should learn what it . . . feels like,” said Moses.

  “Go where God leads you, then, my friend,” said Nun. And silently he added: O God, please stop this poor fool from using that tone of authority when he speaks to Egyptians, for they’ll see the clothes, not the man, and this poor fellow’s proud bearing cries out for a beating. “Be meek,” he said. “Obey everyone.”

  The man was in such a deep shadow that Nun could not see his face.

  “Why is that?” asked Moses.

  “You’re used to the palace and its ways,” said Nun. “Or perhaps the temple, though I’ve heard of no Israelites serving there.”

  “The palace,” the man grudgingly confirmed.

  “Out here, you’ll get no deference, now that you’ve shed that spotless white linen.”

  “I appreciate the advice,” said Moses.

  “May it not lead you to destruction,” said Nun softly.

  “What?”

  “A prayer,” said Nun. “I prayed for your safety.”

  A pause. “Thank you.”

  “Go where God leads you.”

  Nun walked from the shed and back onto the path. The moon’s position meant that he had to pass through a long stretch of shadow. He had to stop and think where the path went, lest he step from it in the darkness and plunge down some cliff or break his leg on some stone.

  “You can follow me through here,” Nun said. “I think I know my way in the darkness.”

  Moses laughed. “I memorized the path when it was still light. You, who walk through here every day, you’re unsure of how it goes?”

  Nun was offended. “I have other things on my mind.”

  “A man should watch where he’s going,” said Moses, “so he doesn’t . . . bark his shin.” Then Moses took Nun by the arm and led him through the deep shadows and back out into the moonlight. Not one false step, not even a pause, though they walked with some deliberation.

  “You have good eyes and good memory,” said Nun.

  “I’ve trained them,” said Moses.

  “But only God sees far and true, and only God remembers all that should be remembered.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Moses.

  “You say that but you don’t believe it. You’re not sure at all.”

  “I’m sure you . . . believe you’re right,” said Moses.

  “Even when you think you choose for yourself, you still walk the path that God has chosen for you,” said Nun. “That’s what I teach my son.”

  “You have a son?” asked Moses. Nun saw with amusement how he kept his face averted. As if it had been his face that gave him away.

  “I named him Joshua.”

  “Deliverer. From what will he . . . deliver you?”

  “It’s not for me to choose how he’ll fulfill his name,” said Nun. “Perhaps he’ll earn it by delivering you out of danger.”

  Moses laughed again. “Perhaps he might, when I’m old, and he’s still young and strong.”

  “May you live to be old,” murmured Nun.

  “Another prayer?”

  “I pray always,” said Nun.

  “No wonder the world is so rife with . . . misfortune,” said Moses. “God is busy . . . listening to you.”

  Nun shuddered with the cold that ran through his heart at such casual blasphemy. This man does not know God, thought Nun. Lifted up as you were, Moses, don’t you know yet how powerful God is, when he takes hold of the brush of your life? He will make the lines, and your life will flow into the glyphs he makes with you. Until you run dry of ink, until your bristles clot and the painter throws you away. Let some good glyphs come out of you before then, my friend, so God will feel good about the work he did with you in his hand.

  * * *

  Moses knew that the painter recognized him, but he couldn’t figure out how. Perhaps it was simply a good guess. He meets a Hebrew-speaking man in clothes of perfect whiteness and fine weave and cut—who else could it be but Moses?

  Nonsense. That description fit a good number of slaves in the palace. There must be other clues to who he was that he hadn’t anticipated. Things that gave him away, that showed he had spent his life in Pharaoh’s house. Just because he went on campaign and saw the common people’s houses as they were getting pillaged didn’t mean that he understood what it felt like, how a peasant might act, the words he might say. Moses was probably speaking in too educated a manner. Or too confidently. Though, now that he thought about it, this man who just helped him find clothing wasn’t exactly diffident. If anything, he spoke more boldly than Moses did, and his Hebrew was quite elevated. And if he painted glyphs on stone, he must also be educated in the Egyptian language. What is it about me that makes it so obvious I’m not like him?

  So he would keep to the shadows, avoid speaking to anyone. The point was not to prove that he could pass for a common Israelite—why should he? He wasn’t Israelite at all, except by accident of birth. No, what mattered was for him to learn what the experience of the Israelites was, to see if Aaron and Miriam actually knew what they were talking about. No, to prove that they were wrong.

  But why did he care about that? Why prove them wrong? Why did he let them irritate him and goad him into doing truly stupid things like this? He should give up this mad charade and go back to the palace at once.

  “You! Israelite!”

  An Egyptian man called out to him. Then he turned and leaned into a doorway and spoke loudly to someone else. “There’s a big strong one right here.” He turned to Moses again. “Come here! Why should I have to tell you twice?”

  Moses answered in Egyptian. “You didn’t . . . tell me . . . before.” And he didn’t come.

  The Egyptian looked almost pleased, though there was rage in his eyes as well. “Ah, he thinks he’s too big. What is it, Moses comes down the river and suddenly Israelites think they’re all princes? Well, let me give you a bit of information. If Moses ever left the palace he wouldn’t last two minutes, there are plenty of us who’d be glad to finish what the river left undone.”

  It was only a fleeting temptation for Moses to tell him who he was and watch him cower. Because it occurred to Moses now that he didn’t have soldiers at his back or a sword in his hand. He could certainly defeat this Egyptian scoundrel in single combat—but this fellow lived here, and how long would combat between him and an Israelite remain single? They wouldn’t believe Moses was really Moses, and even if he did, his boast might be true.

  Indeed, the man’s remark had already made Moses’ venture worthwhile. Despite all the rituals and assurances and declarations, in the eyes of at least some ordinary Egyptians, Moses was still just a jumped-up Israelite.

  The man had pulled a stout walking stick from inside his house.

  If he lays a hand on me I’ll kill him.

  Moses immediately repented of the thought. It was Moses himself who had chosen to come here incognito. This man was showing him what he wanted to learn—that any Egyptian could accost any Israelite and expect obedience. If Moses resisted, not only did he risk his own life, he also risked provoking more hatred and ill-treatment of the Israelite slaves, and that would be wrong. If he was going to be Pharaoh someday, he had to care more for the people than he did for himself.

  “Sir,” said Moses, “forgive me. I . . . didn’t hear you and all I . . . meant was . . . I didn’t understand your . . . command. Whether you . . . wanted me . . . to come or go.”

  “Whether you. Wanted me. To come or go!” The Egyptian mocked his halting speech. “Kneel where you are, mudhen.”

  Moses sank to his knees.

  The man raised his walking stick and struck Moses across the shoulders. Again. The pain was sharp and hard, but Moses was well-conditioned and proud and would not bend or show that it hurt. Until it occurred to him that the man was waiting for a sign of capitulation, and if Moses didn’t give him one, the beating wasn’t going to stop.

  “Sir,” said Moses. “Please.” It hurt him worse to beg than it did to bear the blows of a man who was clearly not as strong as peasants were reputed to be.

  The man’s wife poked her head out the door. “Oh, you’re the bright one, beating him when we need him to carry water.”

  “I’m not hitting him that hard,” said the man. “And you should have seen his eyes! He doesn’t know his place.”

  “He’s a dimwit,” said the woman. “Didn’t you hear the way he talked? He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Now are you fetching me water or not?”

  “Get up,” the man said to Moses. And in a few moments Moses found himself being driven to the edge of the river like a beast, and like a beast he was burdened with two heavy jugs of water hanging from a yoke. Moses was strong, but his muscles were trained for battle, not bearing, and in a surprisingly short time the weight overbalanced him and made him stumble.

  At once the Egyptian was screaming at him, hitting at his shoulders with his stick. “You clumsy fool! Are you trying to break my water jars? Where am I going to get another?”

  “You’re going to break them with your own stick, you bonehead!” shouted Moses in reply. He didn’t stammer when he spoke in warning.

  Moses’ daring in calling him a name stopped the man long enough for him to realize that Moses was right, not a drop of water had been spilled but the stick was in danger of breaking a pot.

  “Stand up and carry it. You’ll pay for those words when we get home.”

  Moses marveled at the man’s stupidity. Did Egyptians really think an Israelite would carry water for them, knowing he’d be beaten when they arrived home?

  And then it dawned on him just how humiliated and despairing the Israelites must be, that even knowing they would be punished, they continued to obey and serve, knowing that resistance led to much worse.

  There were onlookers now, of course, even though it was dark. Egyptians stood in their doorways, laughing and goading the man on. “Break his leg when you get him home!” “Stripe him good!” “Break your stick on him!” “He’s not from around here, who is he?”

  In other doorways, though, the people were silent. Moses noticed that the silent observers lived in the smaller, shabbier houses. The Israelites, living cheek-by-jowl with the Egyptians, and yet helpless to help one of their own. Not that Moses needed their help.

  Not that he was really one of their own.

  I won’t come back and get vengeance here, thought Moses. That would be petulant of me. This man is actually helping me to learn what I came out here to learn.

  At the house, Moses walked sideways through the door and carefully lowered the yoke until the jars sat on the floor. Only when he got the yoke off his shoulders did the man raise the stick again. But now they were indoors, and Moses was trained in combat. He caught the walking stick in one hand and tore it out of the Egyptian’s grasp.