The Red Tent

The terrible sound brought all of Nakht-re’s household into the room: cooks and gardeners, bakers and children, and the lady of the house. Nakht-re gathered his sister up and put her on his own chair, where she was fanned and given water. All eyes were fixed on Re-nefer, who took her brother’s hands in hers and told him the bare details of her tale, as she had rehearsed it to me. She said that her home had been overrun by barbarians, her possessions stolen, her family butchered, her whole life pillaged. She spoke of her escape and the storm at sea. When Nakht-re asked about her husband, she replied, “Dead. And my son!” and collapsed in tears once more. At this, the women of the house commenced a high-pitched wail of mourning that crept up the flesh of my neck, like a curse.

Again Re-nefer was embraced by her brother, and again she composed herself. “Nehesi is my savior,” she said, directing all eyes to where he stood beside me. “I should have died but for his strong arm and his wisdom and comfort. He brought me out of Canaan, with this girl who was my son’s consort and who carries my grandson in her womb.” All eyes turned to my belly now, and my hands moved, of their own accord, to the place where the baby grew.

This was a dumb show for me. I knew only a handful of words in their language, and these I had learned from my beloved in bed. I knew the words for the parts of the body, for sunset and sunrise, for bread and wine and water. For love.

But Egyptians are expressive people who speak with their hands and show their teeth when they talk, and I followed the story well enough. I watched Re-nefer’s face and learned that her father had died, that her younger brother was far away, that a favorite friend—or perhaps a sister—was dead in childbirth, that Nakht-re was as successful as their father had been.

I stood by the door, safely forgotten, until I collapsed. I awoke some time later in the dark, on a sweet-smelling pallet beside a bed where Re-nefer slept softly. The rest of the household seemed asleep as well. The silence was so deep, if I had not walked through the noisy streets of a city that very afternoon, I would have thought myself in the middle of a deserted meadow or on top of a mountain.

A bird broke the hush, and I listened, trying to find the melody in its wild song. Had I ever heard a bird sing at night? I could not remember. For a moment, I forgot everything but the sound of a bird singing to a half-moon, and I nearly smiled.

My pleasure ended the next moment, when I felt a light touch on my fingers. I jumped to my feet but, remembering Nehesi’s sword on my feet, stifled my scream. A small shadow moved in a circle around me. The bird still trilled, but now it seemed to mock the joy I had felt a moment earlier.

I watched in horror as the shadow leaped onto Re-nefer’s bed and then seemed to disappear. My eyes ached from searching in the dark, and I found myself weeping over the death of my good mistress, for surely the creature had killed her. I wrung my hands and pitied myself, alone and abandoned in a far land. A sob escaped me, and Re-nefer stirred.

“What is it, child?” she murmured, half asleep. “Danger,” I hiccuped.

She sat upright, and the shadow leaped down toward me. I covered my head and shrieked.

Re-nefer laughed softly. “A cat,” she explained. “It is only the cat. Bastet rules the heart of the house here. Sleep now,” she sighed, and turned back to her pillow.

I lay down, but my eyes did not close again that night. Before long, light began to filter through the windows which lined the walls up near the ceiling. As sunshine filled the room, I studied the whitewashed walls, and watched a spider weave a web in the corner. I looked at unfamiliar teraphim tucked into niches around the walls, and reached out to touch the handsome leg of my mistress’s bed, carved in the likeness of a giant beast’s foot. I inhaled the aroma of my bed—hay sweetened with the scent of an unfamiliar flower. The room seemed crowded with elaborate baskets and plaited mats. A collection of flacons sat on an inlaid box, beside a larae stack of folded cloths, which I later learned were bath towels. Every surface was dyed or painted in bright colors.

I had no place among all of these wonderful things, and yet, this was my only home.

I was barely aware of the child within me those first few weeks. My body looked no different, and I was so occupied with my new surroundings that I didn’t notice the moon’s progress, which Egyptian women marked with little ceremony and no separation. I stayed beside Re-nefer, who spent her first days resting in the garden, and translated when I didn’t comprehend the few words addressed to me.

I was not ill-treated. Everyone in the household of Nakht-re was kind, even his wife, Herya, who suddenly had to share her home with a long-forgotten sister and her two alien servants. Nehesi knew how to make himself useful, and Nakht-re soon sent him to carry messages between the house and the temple and the tombs being built in the western valley.

I was not quite a servant and not quite a niece, a foreigner without language or obvious skills. The lady of the house patted me when she saw me, rather like a cat, but turned away before there was any need of speech. The servants did not know what to make of me either. They showed me how to spin linen so that I might help with the work of the house, but my hands were slow to learn, and since I could not gossip with them in the kitchen, I was left alone.

My main occupation was attending Re-nefer, but she preferred solitude, so I found other tasks to occupy my days. I was drawn especially to the stairways of the house and took any excuse to walk up and down, watching how the room changed with every step. I assumed the task of sweeping them in the evening and washing them in the morning, and took a mindless pride in their maintenance.

Whenever I could, I climbed all the way to the roof, where a northern breeze from the river might lift the tent hung for shade. Much of the household slept up there on hot nights, though I never joined them, fearing to bring my nightmare among others.

From the rooftop, I stared at the sun reflecting on the river and at the grace of the sailing boats below. I remembered the first great water I had seen as a girl, when my family had crossed from Haran to the south. I thought of the river where Joseph and I had been charged by an unseen power and saved by our mothers’ love. When I remembered Shalem’s promise to teach me how to swim, my throat closed in agony. But I fixed my eyes wide, as I had at Mamre, and stared at the horizon to keep from sobbing and to keep from walking off the roof.

The days passed in a blur of new ways and sights, but the nights were always the same. I struggled against the dreams that left me drenched in sweat, soaking the pallet as Shalem’s blood had soaked our bed, gasping for air and afraid to make a sound. I

n the morning, my eyes ached and my head throbbed. Re-nefer fretted over me and consulted with her sister-in-law. They ordered me to rest in the afternoon. They tied a red cord around my waist. They made me drink goat’s milk mixed with a yellow potion that stained my tongue.

As my belly began to swell, the women of the house doted on me. It had been a long time since there had been a baby in Nakht-re’s family, and they were hungry for a little one. I was fed amazing foods, as exotic to me as the flowers of the perpetually blooming garden behind the house. I ate melons with orange flesh and melons with pink flesh, and there were always dates in abundance. On the many feast days dedicated to gods or family holidays, there was goose made with garlic or fish in honey sauce.

But best of all were the cucumbers, the most delicious food I could imagine, green and sweet. Even in the heat of the sun, a cucumber kissed the tongue with the cool of the moon. I could eat them endlessly and never get full or sick. My mother would love this fruit, I thought the first time I bit into its watery heart. It was my first thought of Leah in more than a month. My mother did not know I was pregnant. My aunts did not even know that I was alive. I shuddered with loneliness.

Herya saw my shoulders tremble and, taking me by the hand, walked me to the vestibule at the front door. We stopped at the wall niche, and she gestured for me to remove the little goddess. It was a water horse standing on her hind legs, with an enormous belly and a huge, smiling mouth. “Taweret,” she said, touching the clay figure and then moving her hand to my belly. I frowned. She squatted down, like a woman in labor, and placed the figure between her legs, and in pantomime, showed me that Taweret would ensure an easy labor.

The lady of the house thought I was afraid of giving birth. I nodded and smiled. She said, “Boy,” and patted my belly again.

I nodded. I knew I was carrying a son. “Boy,” I said, in the language of the house.

Herya closed my hands around the statue, indicating that I should keep it, and kissed my cheeks. For a moment the hoarse rattle of Inna’s laughter sounded so loud in my ears I thought the old midwife was in the room with me chortling over her prophecy that Taweret would take me for her own.

In the next week, I felt a flutter like a bird’s wing beneath my heart. I was thunderstruck at my love for the life I carried. I began to whisper to my unborn son as I lay on my pallet, and hummed the songs of my childhood to him as I swept and spun. I thought of my baby as I combed my hair and as I ate, morning and evening.

The bloody dreams about Shalem were replaced by a joyful dream of his son, whom I called Bar-Shalem. In the dream, my son was not a baby but a tiny copy of his father, nestled in my arms, telling me stories about his childhood in the palace, about the wonders of the river, about life on the other side of this life. In this dream, my beloved protected me and fought off a hungry crocodile that had come for me and the boy.

I hated to wake up and took to sleeping later and later only to remain inside this dream. Re-nefer permitted me my bed and everything else. Before we slept, she and I would watch my belly roll and shake. “He is strong,” she rejoiced.