“As my future is in yours,” said Hagar.

  So it would be a bargain. “How can I hold your future?”

  “When you leave here and go home to the east, take me with you.”

  “But you belong to Pharaoh.”

  “I do not ask you to steal me,” said Hagar. “He’ll ask you what gift you want to take with you. I beg you, ask for me.”

  “But I live in the desert, where life is hard and we lack for water, for almost everything.”

  “What do I care? I own nothing, not even my body. I have spent my childhood wishing I could die. But if I lived as your servant, my captivity would be bearable.”

  Sarai tried to figure out why Hagar might feel this way. And then gave up, for there was never a way to know why others felt as they felt or did what they did. “As long as you want, you will always have a place at my side.”

  “But you must ask for me, as a gift.”

  “I will ask,” said Sarai. “When the time is right. I won’t leave without asking, as long as you don’t—”

  “Don’t what? This is not a bargain, not a trade. I will never tell your secrets.”

  Sarai blushed at having been caught in such a false judgment. “It’s the same with me,” she said. “Even if someone else guesses my secret as you did, I’ll ask for you as my handmaiden. But on the day when the desert life is so hard that you wish you were still a slave in Egypt, remember that this was your own choice.”

  They clasped hands. Sarai wondered as she gazed into the eyes of this bold Arab girl: Might this child be a part of God’s plan?

  Or was Sarai merely part of Hagar’s plan?

  Chapter 9

  For a woman who was used to being deeply involved in all the concerns of a large household, the sheer inactivity of Pharaoh’s house was mind-numbing. No one came to her to make decisions. She could not even see any real work being done close by. Hagar helped her bathe that first day, teaching her the use of bathing tools that she had never seen before, and then it took two hours to do up her hair to Hagar’s satisfaction. There were more hours spent searching for Egyptian clothes that Sarai was willing to wear, until at last she insisted that her own clothing be brought from the camp. Hagar looked at even her lightest frock in distaste, but when Sarai wore it she didn’t feel naked as she did in the Egyptian linens. She ate supper, she went to bed, she tried to sleep, and for hours she drifted back and forth between fretting about Abram and dreaming about him.

  Then, the next morning, Hagar was ready to start it all over again.

  “Bathe again?”

  “Every day,” said Hagar.

  “But I’ve gone nowhere, done nothing since I bathed yesterday. I’ve done no work.”

  Hagar looked faintly ill. “You expect to move through Pharaoh’s house unwashed? What if he sees you?”

  “I won’t do it. It would take hours to do my hair again.”

  “Not so long a time as yesterday, Mistress. I’ve done your hair once, and now I understand it better.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. I’ll bathe again when there’s some reason to. Water is precious!”

  “Begging your pardon, Mistress, but here it’s not.”

  “That’s still no reason to waste it!”

  “You might as well use the water, Mistress. If you don’t, it either dries up in the heat of the day or it flows back into the Nile.”

  “Forget the bath, and tell me where I’m to go.”

  “Go?”

  “The work of the house,” Sarai said. “I’m good with a needle, I’m excellent at cakes, sweet or hearty, and if I’m not up to the standards of the house I can always work the distaff.”

  Hagar looked baffled. “You’re not a servant, Mistress. You’re a guest.”

  “I should hope that I may still do something useful. What I don’t know, I’ll learn.”

  “But . . . there is no work in this house. Except handmaid’s work—and whose hair would you put up? Mine?”

  In the days since then, Sarai had come to see that Hagar was right. When Sarai pitched in at any task, horrified servants backed away in fear, complaining that she’d get them beaten if anyone caught her doing their work. At last she found herself pacing her room like a lion in a pit. “What do the women of the house do all day?” she demanded.

  “They visit each other, which you could certainly do.”

  “I don’t know any of them.”

  “You can be introduced.”

  “I would have to lie to them.”

  “You have to lie to everyone.”

  “Each time I tell it, it becomes less convincing.”

  “If you won’t visit, and you can’t work, I suppose you’ll have to lie on your bed and sleep.”

  “I’ve lain there long enough without sleeping,” said Sarai. “I’ll at least walk somewhere.”

  “I thought you were a captive.”

  “As long as they have Abram separated from me, I dare not go far. But I can walk by the river.”

  Which is what she was doing when a horn was sounded from the roof of the house. Sarai turned to face upriver, back toward the house, to see if there was some raid on the flocks by marauders or a lion. Of course there was no such thing. The horn had sounded in greeting—a barge was coming down the river, a throne in the center of it, and on the throne a splendid-looking man wearing the double crown of Egypt. It was Pharaoh.

  “They’ll be looking for you, Mistress.”

  “Why?” said Sarai. “I’m sure Pharaoh will keep them busy enough.”

  Hagar smiled knowingly. “I’m sure Pharaoh is here to keep you busy.”

  “Enough of that, I beg you.”

  “Why do you deny the very reason for a woman’s life?”

  “The reason for a woman’s life,” said Sarai, “is the same as the reason for a man’s—so that she might have joy.”

  “Then most people have no reason to live,” said Hagar.

  “Most people try to find joy where joy is not to be found,” said Sarai, thinking of her sister. Though Qira no doubt thought she was joyful. If you believe you have joy, Sarai wondered, then how can you be wrong? Certainly many people managed to be miserable in the midst of a life that others envied, and their misery was real enough. Didn’t most of the household think she was a woman who should be happy, having every luxury they knew of, and the love of her husband? Why did she allow the one great lack of her life to blind her to the many great bounties?

  As Hagar had predicted, a runner soon came to seek her—came straight toward her, without hesitation, which proved, if she had needed proof, that someone was always watching where she went. “If Great Lady Mistress will return to meet the god,” said the girl.

  “I told you,” said Hagar.

  With sick dread Sarai went to meet the man who held her life, and her husband’s life, in his hands.

  The regalia of the Pharaoh gave an overwhelming impression, but the man beneath the double crown did not. Sarai tried to be fair—what man could measure up to the majesty surrounding the king of Egypt?—but then realized that she knew dozens of men, including her husband and her father, whose personal dignity would easily match the costume and the pomp. As to Pharaoh being a god, no man could equal such a claim, and in Sarai’s opinion calling a man a god did not elevate the man, it only diminished the idea of godhood. If this weak-chinned, flaccid, narrow-faced, cheery-looking fellow was a god, then why were gods worth worshiping?

  But Sarai could not blame this man for the pretensions surrounding Pharaoh. He had inherited all of it, the stories and the costumes and the ludicrous claims. When Pharaoh was strong, with military might and political skill, no one would dare to question his claim to divinity. But this man . . . Sarai could see at once the contempt that powerful men in Egypt would feel for him. As long as it was in their interest to keep the office of Pharaoh strong, then they would tolerate a weak man on the throne. And, of course, it was quite possible that Pharaoh’s physical appearance was deceiving. He might be an extremely clever man.

  For that matter, though, he might be merely a figurehead, occupying the office while others wielded the power. Sarai thought back to Sehtipibre, the man who, according to Eshut, managed the kingdom of Egypt for Pharaoh, while Eshut herself managed his household. Two loyal stewards in such offices would naturally confer with each other. But it might just as easily be the case that they conspired with each other to keep the reins of power in their own hands.

  Suddenly the life of a pastoral household seemed very simple and clean to Sarai, while here, where the palace was kept free of dirt, nothing was simple and there might be many a dirty secret hiding in plain sight. She felt sorry for Pharaoh. He had once been a little child in a king’s house, as she had been. The formalities of royalty came easily enough to one who grew up with them. But because her own father was without power, Sarai did not have to grow up suspicious of everyone and unsure whether anything said to her was true. She had learned much about political maneuvering from her father, with his tales of past political struggles in Ur-of-Sumeria and his analysis of the politics of Ur-of-the-North. But the worst that she ever saw for herself was the idle flattery that is the cheap coin spent by everyone who speaks to a king, even one who is in exile. Since her father had no power, no one was trying to steal it; since he was already off his throne, no one was trying to topple him from it. Pharaoh, though—from boyhood on, whom had he ever been able to trust?

  Well, he certainly can’t trust me, thought Sarai. I come to him with lies on my lips from the start, and whether he himself directed that I be separated from Abram or that was the plotting of his underlings, the fact remained that everything she said to him would be calculated to keep Abram safe and this king out of her bedchamber.

  The first step in her deception was, of course, to flatter him, and so she greeted him, not as the daughter of another monarch, for that she could never admit to being, but as the daughter of a noble house. To her knees, then, but no farther, her eyes cast down, but her forehead never coming near the stone steps by the water. Hagar, of course, was bowed like a broken reed, fairly pressing herself into the stone. But that’s what it meant to be a slave. You were lower than everyone.

  “This is the sister of my good friend Abram! Arise, Lady Milcah, and walk with me into the house of my wives!”

  Good friend Abram. The words gave Sarai hope. Not that they couldn’t be said by a king planning to murder Abram—but the fact that he bothered to say them at all suggested that he was still trying to win whatever it was he wanted by flattery and persuasion rather than by force or threat.

  “I am grateful to the mighty Pharaoh Montuhotpe for his kindness in bringing me into his own house, where I have been so well treated that it takes half the sting from being separated from my dear brother Abram.”

  “Only half?” said Pharaoh, with a wink. So he knew that she and Abram were being kept apart, and understood that she did not like it. “I suppose it was too much to hope that the graceful life in Pharaoh’s house would make you forget your brother completely.”

  “Would Pharaoh deign to offer hospitality to a guest who could so easily forget her own brother?”

  There it was—her challenge. She called herself a guest and asserted that Pharaoh was offering her hospitality. It was a claim to the privileges and rights of a guest. Not that such rules could not be broken, but to break them would be a crime before the gods, and would do Pharaoh’s reputation harm.

  He smiled more broadly and cheerfully. “Must we think of ourselves as host and guest? I would so much rather think of you as kin.”

  An ambiguous answer. A marriage proposal? An evasion of guest-right?

  “I am glad if the ruler of Egypt has come to think of my brother as his kin. Am I to think of mighty Pharaoh as my father? Or my brother?” And there was her answer: She was not going to play flirtatious games. If he wanted to claim kinship, he was welcome to do so—but not as her husband.

  “I think of Abram as my brother,” said Pharaoh. “But Lady Milcah, I am unsure yet how I might think of her.”

  “As your guest, first,” said Milcah, “for that is how I arrived in your house, as a lonely traveler separated from her family and friends.”

  “But how can that be?” said Pharaoh. “Have you not been visited by your people?”

  “I have had no visitors, nor even a servant from my brother’s household.”

  Pharaoh glanced at Hagar, who was tagging along behind them. “Is this not your handmaid?”

  “She is a servant of Pharaoh’s own house, assigned to me by the Lady Eshut, to my great pleasure.”

  “Well, let’s solve that problem right now. I give her to you. She is your handmaid now. So you do have someone from your household with you—and not from your brother’s household, either. She is your own.”

  Just like that. As a grand gesture. And a sneaky one. For he had easily sidestepped the whole question of hospitality and guest-right, and by making Hagar a member of Sarai’s household, he had made it unnecessary to admit anyone from Abram’s household.

  They were indoors now, and Pharaoh seated himself, not on the throne in the main hall, but rather on a bench beside a pool of water. He patted the seat beside him, but Sarai had no intention of playing that game. She knelt beside the pool, not even touching the bench where he sat. “Your kindness and generosity are legendary,” said Sarai.

  “I have no doubt,” said Pharaoh dryly. He understood what she meant by not sitting beside him.

  “I am glad that my brother has found favor in your sight.”

  “More than favor,” said Pharaoh, and now his expression warmed. “Your brother is precisely what I had wished for. All my life I have sought the learning of the East. Here in Egypt we claim to be the most ancient kingdom, but I have studied the oldest books, and I know that the first Pharaohs of upper and lower Egypt were conquerors from the East. Rulers of the ancient lineage of Utnapishtim, whom your brother calls Noah. It is the might of the East that first established the kingdom of Egypt, and Pharaohs who forget the source of their ancient authority grow weak through their ignorance.”

  Sarai tried to see if anyone in Pharaoh’s retinue seemed to chafe at this idea, but of course they would long since have learned to hear Pharaoh’s attitudes without visible response. Any resentment she could see, Pharaoh could also see. Still, she knew at once that if Pharaoh often talked like this, it would surely provoke many of the nobles of Egypt, who, despite the eastern origins of the original Pharaohs, thought of themselves as pure Egyptian and despised the Hsy who came now to Egypt as refugees from the drought. To them, the idea that Egypt had anything to gain from these impoverished wanderers must seem either laughable or offensive.

  And it also meant that the more Pharaoh liked Abram and Sarai, the more the nobles of Egypt would detest them. As long as Pharaoh was powerful, he was the greatest danger to them; but if he slipped from power, then those who took it from him would almost certainly be filled with resentment toward any of the Hsy whom Pharaoh had preferred. Danger from every quarter. Hagar remained her only friend here—and there was always the possibility that Hagar had been assigned to her as a spy.

  She hated that—the fact that she could not trust anyone completely.

  “My brother has always spoken of Egypt as the repository of great and ancient knowledge,” said Sarai.

  Pharaoh laughed. “I know exactly what your brother says. My father knew of his ideas before I redeemed him from death. Pharaohs as usurpers of a priesthood that only he and his family—your family—possess. We have agreed to politely disagree on this point, and to learn from each other on every other subject. I’m afraid I’m getting the best of the bargain, however. Abram is opening my eyes to many things in heaven and earth.”

  “My brother is known for his wisdom and learning. But I am sure that if he were here with us, he would insist that he was learning more from Pharaoh than Pharaoh could ever learn from him.”

  “Oh, I doubt your brother has ever spoken to you of the things he has been teaching me. For instance, did you know that the sun is a star?”

  Sarai was taken aback. What an absurd thing to say. “I would be sorry if I could not tell the difference between sunlight and starlight, since it is the very difference between day and night.”

  “Ah, there, you see? He has not taught you. But just as a candle grows dimmer the farther away you are, so also are the stars dimmed to our sight by great distance. They seem to us to be smaller than the sun because the sun is so very close, and the stars very far away. But Abram assures me that our sun is not even the greatest of the stars. As the sun governs the Earth, so are there greater stars that govern the sun, until you come to the one star that governs them all, and there, he says, is the place where God dwells.”

  “He speaks to you of God?” asked Sarai.

  “The one he worships, yes,” said Pharaoh. “He does not mention to me that he thinks his god is the only one that exists, and I pretend to him that I do not know that he thinks so, and so we do not argue. It is enough for me to try to imagine the heavens as he sees them. Instead of the great dome of the sky, pierced to let starlight shine through when the sun is not present to blind us to their faint light, he shows me a heaven in which the Earth is a ball whirling around the sun, and the sun but a star among many stars that are governed by a far greater one. The River of the Sky, he says, is really millions upon millions of stars, so many that their light flows together. Ah, but he sees a wondrous vision of the heavens! The priests think him mad, of course, but I see that many of them—the younger ones especially—grow thoughtful when he speaks, and I suspect many of them go home and write down the things he said. They will remember. He is our teacher. And the god that teaches him to see such things, that god is a mighty one indeed, even if he is jealous of any rivals.”