Beginnings - William Meisheid (new ebook reader .txt) 📗

all right. We don’t need to hurry,” Jochebed said, even though the slow pace would become a problem if they couldn’t speed up soon. Right now, she had to keep her daughter focused. If her fears took over it would be easy for the darkness to fill up with imaginary dangers. The real ones were bad enough.

Barely loud enough for her daughter to hear, Jochebed said, “Remember your father’s prayers before we left. We have to trust that God will guide our steps and clear our path. Let him deal with what lies in the darkness.” She said it as much for herself as for Miriam.

Their route would take them past a small Hebrew village, then a medium-sized Egyptian community. These settlements had grown up east of the fertile ground along the river opposite Memphis. To the south was the large royal estate, which stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Directly ahead and opposite the port of Perunifer, numerous small farms lined the river. To the north of the city, another large estate took over the land.

Jochebed had chosen to stay on the road as long as they could, as it passed through the small Egyptian farms. She and Amram had agreed it was the safest route. No one should be on the road this late at night, and since the farms were smaller and had fewer resources, they did not have real guards like the Great Estate. The same families had worked these small plots of land for generations, which were all that remained around Memphis from the time when small, commoner-run farms dotted the banks of the great river.

Every farm, no matter its size, depended on the floodwaters of the yearly inundation and its fertile deposits of silt. The surge of life-giving water from the great river submerged everything near the river, which created the need for special preparations. The living and livestock areas, the walking and cart paths that allowed passage through the farms, as well as any roads, such as the one on which they now walked, were high enough above the fields and the yearly flood level that they stayed dry and usable during the flooding. The inundation was about a month away, which meant the fields were still dry and unplowed.

Even so, their planned route would put them close to the northern edge of the Great Estate, which belonged to Prince Amunthuya, husband to Asati, the sister of Pharaoh. It had regular night patrols, and they would be close enough to require careful vigilance.

“How are you doing Miriam?”

“I can see better now and can go a little faster. I will let you know when I get tired.”

“Remember,” Jochebed said, “we planned several rest stops along the way. Do not push yourself too hard.”

“I won’t.”

Jochebed balanced the basket on her head in the traditional manner of working women. This gave her a good view of the ground ahead. That was important, since her greatest concern was tripping. Any fall might damage the waterproofing.

The carry sling freed up Miriam’s hands, allowing her to sweep the area ahead with her stick for snakes and other dangerous creatures, but it was tiring and difficult. A fall could injure or startle her brother. A baby’s cry carried a long way, and it would alert anyone within hearing to where they were.

Jochebed wished this journey was their only concern. A long shadow hung over the whole land. There was growing unease throughout Egypt over the approaching inundation. The last two floods had been well short of what the farmers needed, causing meager harvests. Another cycle of shortages would make it even harder on their family and the rest of the Hebrews.

Ever since the overthrow of the Pharaoh that no one would name over a generation ago, the priests of Egypt had blamed the Hebrews for his heresy. He had claimed, like her people, there was only one god, the Egyptian deity Aton, the life of the sun and lord of all. He had almost destroyed the country before he died. Some said poison took him, others credited the gods with reasserting themselves. After restoring the historic divinities of Egypt, the pharaohs began controlling the movement of Jochebed’s people. They broke up the larger Hebrew communities and relocated the people to building projects scattered throughout the country. The Egyptians wanted to keep the Hebrew settlements small and separated to limit their ability to organize against the edict that took their newborn sons and the steadily growing oppression. This became critical once the soldiers began searching their homes for newborn males who were taken to the priests of Sobek.

Jochebed’s husband, Amram, had argued that the advisors who guided Pharaoh’s decisions did not understand the Hebrew tribal rivalries. Their sordid history made uniting for any reason extremely unlikely. Each tribe, who traced their origins to one of the twelve sons of Jacob, was suspicious of the motives of the other eleven. They were more likely to be at odds with each other than unite and turn against the Egyptians.

Jochebed was a Levite, descendants of Levi who, along with his brother Simeon, avenged the rape of their sister Dinah. Despite the covenant their father Jacob had made to settle the issue, they killed the offender and his entire Hivite clan. Jacob disinherited the two brothers and in his dying blessing, denied Levi, Simeon, and their entire lineage any inheritance. They would have no place in the lands God had promised to the descendants of Abraham. Ever since, the other tribes had looked down on these two tribes almost as much as the Egyptians looked down upon the Hebrews. No one expected anything good ever to come out of the descendants of Levi or Simeon.

The Hebrew village should not be far. Getting past it would be easy; it was another Levite settlement, and Jochebed knew the area well. No one would be up, and she knew there would be no guards on patrol. The much larger Egyptian community would be another matter. It had regular night patrols that made her anxious.

“We should be close to the first place where we will leave the road,” Jochebed said. “You should see the pile of stones off to the left.”

“I think I see them up ahead.”

Miriam adjusted the carry cloth as best she could without stopping. Her brother seemed undisturbed by the jostling. As she moved off the road around the small pile of stones she said, “I have to slow down and I may have to stop suddenly.”

“Do the best you can. I will increase the space between us.”

“Wait!” Miriam whispered as she suddenly stopped, alarm rippling through her voice. “The stick struck something that moved.”

“Can you make out what it was?” Jochebed said, trying to keep the surge of fear from overwhelming her words. She stopped a few arm lengths behind her daughter.

“I could barely see it, but something moved when I struck it,” Miriam said. “What if it was a snake?”

At the word snake, Jochebed felt her heart leap in her chest. She struggled to get the words out, “What did it feel like when you struck it?”

“I'm not sure. It might have been a rabbit. I will try sweeping the area again.” Miriam swept the stick back and forth in front of her, widening her arc. “I can’t find it. It's gone.”

As the pounding in her heart slowly faded, Jochebed said, “Maybe you should sweep wider for a while.”

Jochebed watched Miriam cautiously start forward, expanding her sweep far to either side. While it would take more effort, at least it would make them feel safer.

They were about half of the way around the village when Miriam stopped and whispered, “My arm is getting tired.”

"Go back to only sweeping the area in front of you.”

They made it around the Hebrew village without further incident. Once they were back on the road, they picked up their pace. It was an easy walk to the Egyptian community, which meant they were nearing the halfway point of their journey.

“I see the next marker,” Miriam whispered.

As they approached the pile of stones, Jochebed’s apprehension began to grow. She was not sure where this uneasiness came from, but she could not shake the feeling. Trusting that the Lord might be trying to tell her something, she decided to swing farther away from the outer wall of the village than they originally planned. She wanted to avoid even a chance that someone like a night patrol might see them.

“I want you to swing wider to the south,” Jochebed said.

“Is there something wrong?”

Jochebed could hear the tinge of fear in her daughter’s voice. Her own apprehension had not dissipated, and now she had begun to alarm Miriam. “No. Nothing is wrong.”

“We have reached the marker. I am going to leave the road now and I will swing wider like you asked.”

Jochebed could hear the distress running along the edges of her words. “Nothing has changed, Miriam. We have time; I am only being cautious.”

Without answering, her daughter turned to the left and moved off the road onto the rougher ground.

The new moon was an ideal time for thieves and other criminals to pursue their trade. That meant the local police would patrol their towns and villages with extra vigilance all through the night. In Egypt, they separated the civil police force from the standing army long ago. They considered the two duties very different in both training and function. The Egyptian police took pride in their responsibility as well as their status.

Even so, it was common knowledge that you could bribe these outlying officers. Unfortunately, Jochebed had nothing to offer despite Amram’s good working conditions at the shipyard. They had exhausted their meager funds on the waterproofing materials for the basket. So, unless they happened upon a band of criminals, the village policemen would be their greatest threat. Two Hebrew women walking past an Egyptian settlement in the middle of the night would arouse suspicion and need investigation, something they had to avoid at all costs.

They were almost half of the way around the village, which was well off to their right, when suddenly, Jochebed saw Miriam’s hand fly up as a warning. Her anxiety clutched at her throat and she could feel her heart pounding at an alarming rate. As her daughter slowly crouched down, she cradled her brother in the space between her knees and her chest. Jochebed, trying to keep her emotions under control, moved close in behind her and as quickly as possible put the basket gently on the ground.

They remained absolutely still. As Jochebed’s ears adjusted to the sounds of the night, she could hear two men. Their voices were low and hard to hear, but it sounded like they were coming straight toward them.

“Are you sure you heard something?” one of the men said.

“Yes, and it wasn’t a hyena either.”

Sniffing the air, his companion asked, “Does the night feel strange to you?”

“Now that you mention it, there is something in the air.”

“Maybe we should go back.”

“Not until I find out what made that scraping noise,” the second man said, striding forward a short stone’s throw from Miriam and her mother.

Jochebed was sure they could hear her heart hammering in her chest when suddenly, a fluttering of wings broke through the tension. From a short distance to her left, she could barely make out the form of two large birds as they took off and flew over her head in the direction of the two searchers.

As the birds flew past, the first one asked, “Are they what you heard?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied and then cursed loudly.

“Did you just get hit by their droppings?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied, then let out a curse against every bird that ever existed and angrily stormed back toward the village.

“Tell me,” his companion called after him, “what is worse, having to make rounds outside the wall or you being spooked by a couple of birds?”

With an especially robust string of curses