Moses, Man of the Mountain Page 3

  He said that his goodness and mercies were too well known to waste time talking about. The only reason he mentioned it at all was because he could see all over Goshen that it was not appreciated as he had hoped and expected. Here they were, Hebrews, who had come down into Egypt as the allies and aides of those oppressors of the Egyptian people, and as such had trampled on the proud breast of Egyptian liberty for more than three hundred years. But the gods had used the magnificent courage of the real Egyptians to finally conquer and expel those sheep-herding interlopers whom the Hebrews had aided in every way they could to deprive the real Egyptians of their homes and their liberties. And now that they, the Hebrews, were conquered and beaten, he might have killed them all. That would have been right and just, seeing the great injury his beloved country had suffered at their hands. But did he do that? No! He was gentle and he spared them and allowed them to continue to live in the country. All he had required of them was that they work and build him a few cities here and there to pay back in a small way for all the great benefits they had received in their long residence in Egypt and also to give back some of the wealth they had so ruthlessly raped from the helpless body of Egypt when she was in no position to defend herself.

  And now, what does he discover? He finds that these same Hebrews, instead of setting to work with glad hearts, happy that they have been given a chance, even in a small way, to make some sort of pay back on their huge debt to Egypt, and to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world, were congregating in Goshen and planning protests against his mild and beneficent decrees! It was hard to believe, but he happened to have the facts. So what did it prove? It was too plain for even the most merciful to ignore that these Hebrews whom he had saved from the fury of his people and against the advice of his wise counsellors, did not want to pay their debt to Egypt and decency. They were doing all they could to evade it. This show of ingratitude and hardness of heart was bound to arouse the mild but courageous Egyptian nation to fury unless something was done to show the loyal nation, who had suffered so much already, that its ruler would not further encourage such iniquities. His piercing eyes and all-hearing ears had discovered a well-organized plot to swindle Egypt out of her just amount of work out of them, by slowing up their work—a most reprehensible and low-down trick worthy only of Hyksos and Hebrews! But he had a remedy for this. The overseers had been instructed to use the lash more freely to speed up work and to rub salt in the welts raised by the whip. But still that did not repay poor suffering Egypt for the work they had lost in the past. So he now decreed that Hebrews must begin work one hour earlier in the morning and work one hour more in the evening.

  Furthermore, the dishonesty and general wickedness of the Hebrews had reached the gods in their remote retreats and the gods had cried out for cleansing. The gods had announced emphatically that they would visit no altars which Hebrews were allowed to approach. Hebrews must not approach a single temple in Egypt. Neither must they build temples to Egyptian gods in Goshen. The gods were forbidden the boundaries of Goshen.

  Just in passing he wanted to acknowledge a petition with many signatures that had reached him. In it the Hebrews had again raised that question of leaving Egypt. He just wanted to say neither in this generation nor yet in the generations of their great grandchildren would they be allowed to escape their just punishments. Did the Egyptians run away when they were being robbed and oppressed by these same malefactors and their friends? No!

  Then he went on to say that even greater wickedness had been uncovered. His laws and most royal decrees were being flouted. He, after taking counsel with his wise advisors, had decreed that all boy babies born to the Hebrews must be destroyed. But he found that certain people were plotting together to make his laws come to nothing. And something was going to be done about it. The strong arm of Pharaoh had never failed against his enemies, in spite of his merciful nature.

  Pharaoh paused and looked at the faces of the Hebrew Elders grouped below and before him. He saw the uncomfortable stir that moved them almost imperceptibly. The slight shifting of feet; the nervous movements of hands, the gaping, stricken faces of the less wary among them, and he smiled.

  “I see that I got you by the short hair when I told you I know what is going on about those boy babies. That is not the worst yet. My police have captured several of those midwives who have been waiting on your womenfolks in secret. They claimed that they wouldn’t talk, but when my men got through with them they talked and talked aplenty, from old Puah on down.”

  Amram started violently and then hated himself for his weakness, but he couldn’t help himself. It looked like Pharaoh was looking straight at him. He could see the gleam in Pharaoh’s eyes as he went on. “So now I know all about those births behind rocks and in caves and such as that. And I know all about those babies hidden out in the woods and in holes dug under house walls. My soldiers will be around to call on you, and when they come to call, they won’t miss nobody. I done told you.”

  The Elders looked at one another and finally Hur spoke up. “Give us a chance, Great Pharaoh. We proved ourselves builders and generally constructive under the last regime. We love Egypt. It is the only home we know. Trust us and see if we are good citizens or not.”

  “Why should I trust people without monuments and memories? It looks bad to me—a people who honor nobody. It is a sign that you forget your benefactors as soon as possible after the need is past.”

  “We don’t build monuments, but we do have memories.”

  “How is anyone to know that? Take for instance your great man Joseph. As long as you have been in Egypt you have not raised one stone to his memory.”

  “Look at it another way. Perhaps we do not need stones to remind us. It could be that some folks need stones to remind them. It could be that memorial stones are signs of bad memories. We just don’t trust our memories to stones.”

  Pharoah’s face darkened at this. He laughed in a harsh way.

  “Well, anyway, you won’t need no stones to remind your children and your great-great-grandchildren of the punishment that Rameses put on you. You are going to work and work and work. You are going to weep and you are going to bleed and bleed until you have paid in a measure for your crimes against Egypt. I done told you now. Don’t give me no trouble unless you want to make me mad.”

  The Elders shuffled out of the place somehow and started on home. “No rest, no property, no babies, no gods,” Amram gasped. “Why would anybody want to live? Why don’t we kill ourselves and be done with the thing?”

  “Maybe we hope we’ll beat the game somehow without dying. That’s human, ain’t it?” somebody said and so they dragged themselves on home to tell what was said. They ground their souls between their teeth as they went but there was nothing to spit out. It was just a grinding and an aching.

  Jochebed was asleep when Amram got home, so he wouldn’t wake her to hear what he had to say. Tomorrow was time enough to start the weeping. So he stepped over the straw bed of his two older children and stretched out beside his wife till daylight. Then he told her.

  She didn’t say anything and she didn’t stand up. She took the sleeping baby in her arms and sat there on the straw pallet staring down in its face. Amram squatted down before her and stared down at the baby too. Its little hands and feet and the helpless soft body was between the man and the woman and they huddled over it in silence for a long time. Then Amram said huskily, “Shall we grant it merciful escape, Jochebed?” and felt in her lap for her hand and pressed it. He could not bear to look at her eyes.

  “No, Amram.”

  “Those brutal soldiers, Jochebed, grin with pleasure when they hunt down one of our children like hounds after rabbits.”

  “I don’t care, honey. If my child is murdered, old Pharaoh has got to do the murdering his own self. I ain’t going to allow him to make me do his murdering for him. If the gods want the life of my innocent boy, then they got to make a move and show me. I mean to hold out till they do. Let’s hide it on the r
iver like some others I know.”

  “All right, honey. I sure do want him to live and do well.”

  Impulsively he caught the child up in his arms.

  “To think that we have not had the joy of giving it a name, nor fondling it, nor circumcising it lest it cry out and be found.”

  “It sure is sad. But you hurry on to work, Amram, before the soldiers come to hunt you up. It sure would hurt me to my heart to have to see ’em lay that salted lash on your back.”

  “But what will you do about this big, fat son of ours?”

  “Go on to work, Amram, and I will find some way. One of the children is always on guard.”

  Amram hurried off and Jochebed called the children to her. “Go and cut me rushes from the marshes,” she told them. “Go and hurry back fast. I got to make a good basket. Get me the best rushes you can.”

  The basket was scarcely started when Amram reached home after dark. Jochebed had given way to her despair more than once and crumpled on the straw beside her growing child. Twice he had cried so loud that Jochebed knew he could be heard all over the neighborhood and prayed that no prowling Egyptians were near.

  So four people forgot hunger that night and sleep was not present in them. Four pairs of ears strained towards the night outside the house and four hearts fainted at every creeping sound as four pairs of fingers toiled over the basket until it was woven strong and tight and daubed and calked with pitch and mud.

  “You think, Amram, if I took the baby before Pharaoh and begged him, he might get sorry for me and let me keep my child?”

  “Get sorry for you? No. He plans harsher measures for us. The horn that is hooking us gets stiffer day by day. If you could only run away with him or hide him for a while!”

  “There ain’t no other way then, but the river. All the roads is full of spies. Goshen is ringed with steel. Amram, do you think this basket will be safe?”

  “I hope so, Jochebed. It is a real good basket, even if we was in a hurry. I don’t believe the water will get into it. Hand me the baby and let us see how he fits in it.”

  Jochebed lined the basket lovingly with one of her garments and then with goose feathers before she laid the child inside. Then she knew the basket was ready, so it was the time for tears. There was nothing any more with which to busy her hands and brace her spirits. She beat her breasts and wept without restraint for several minutes. Amram bowed his head in silence. Aaron and Miriam sat in dumb terror watching their parents and occasionally smiting their breasts to show their sympathy of grief.

  “We must put him on the river, Amram,” Jochebed said at last. “That is why I made the boat—the basket for him.”

  “But why upon the river?”

  “We ain’t never been nowhere, Amram, so we don’t know. It could be other people besides those we know that live along the Nile. It may even run outside of Egypt. Maybe someone among them may find him and love him. Maybe even in Egypt there might be somebody with a heart.” She broke down into sobbing again. “Anyway, there ain’t nothing left for us to do. One thing I know Pharaoh can’t make out of me. He can’t take my son away from me and make me a murderer at the same time. That’s one thing I don’t aim to let him do.”

  Amram looked at his wife’s face and was fed inwardly by her look. So the night of the morning found them with the basket moving stealthily down to the Nile. At the river, Amram withdrew with Aaron and Miriam to watch. Jochebed fed the child copiously from her breasts and put him back into the basket. Then the thought assailed her that perhaps her basket was not seaworthy after all. She took him out again and held him across her knees as she tried her woven boat upon the water. It floated dry and lightly upon the stream. She drew it back to her and placed her baby in it for the last time and covered it with the lid. The little bark was propelled out from the shore among the tall bulrushes and rested there with the Nile lapping it gently and lulling the child to sleep.

  Jochebed squatted there watching until her husband sent Miriam to call her lest she be found there by some Egyptians. She rose stiffly after a while and closed her bosom slowly. She spoke to Miriam and told the girl to station herself beneath the clump of palms not too far away to see what happened to the child. She must go home and sprawl on the earthen floor with her fears. Then she spoke to the morning, and the Nile: “Nile, youse such a great big river and he is such a little bitty thing. Show him some mercy, please.”

  CHAPTER 5

  All the little stars crept back into heaven and the sun rose. Miriam, standing on the watch wall among the palms, calmed herself and sat down. Her eyes wandered from the particular spot among the bulrushes to bulrushes in general. Then she regarded the river and the activities on the river. Far up-stream, several fishing boats were out. A group was drawing water with oxen for the fields. Water birds swooping and diving, and occasionally feeding-fishes, flinging their bodies out of the water in the exultation of the kill. Then Miriam went to sleep.

  She woke up with a guilty start and looked for the little ark on the river which contained her baby brother. It was not there. She looked all around her to see if anyone was watching her and feeling sure on that score, she crept down to the spot where the basket had been and parted the bulrushes. The child and his basket were gone, that was all. And she had not the least idea of where he had gone, nor how. What should she tell her parents? She began to cry.

  But her tears did not flow long. Down-stream at some distance she saw a glorious sight. A large party of young women dressed in rich clothing was clustered on the bank. The morning sun struck against shining metal ornaments and drew Miriam away from her search for her brother and from her tired and frightened self. She crept downstream, keeping as close to the shrubbery growing along the river as best she could.

  Ten young women stood out in the stream holding up a long piece of cloth that shielded another young woman from public view, or almost shielded her. Two others washed and massaged her for several minutes while Miriam watched from her hiding place. It was a marvelous scene to her and she felt uplifted from gazing on it. This could be nobody else but the Princess Royal—only daughter of Pharaoh, newly widowed by the death of the Assyrian crown prince and returned to Egypt. Miriam noted her person, her trappings and her attendants and said to herself: “Royalty is a wonderful thing. It sure is a fine happening. It ought to be so that everybody that wanted to could be a queen. I wish I could get close enough to touch that princess. I wish I was one of those girls waiting on her, even.”

  The Princess came up out of the river. The girls holding the screening cloth moved up with her on dry land and kept shielding her until she was rubbed down, oiled and dressed. There was chatting and laughter. The lift of a thin, sweet tone came to where she crouched in the bushes and the child Miriam stood up and craned her neck to see where it came from. And now she saw two black eunuchs squatting on their heels at a distance from the bathing party playing, one on a flute and the other on a stringed instrument. Some of the girls took positions and began to dance. The others went on folding garments, packing caskets with toilet articles and generally preparing to leave the bathing place. The dance ended and then the music. The Princess rose from the stool placed for her and was instantly surrounded by her party. One eunuch carried a sunshade over her head. Two girls waved ornate fans on long handles. Miriam’s heart beat fast as she realized that they were coming in her direction. Now she would be able to see them at close range.

  But the party did not move off at once. Something in the water had attracted the attention of the Princess. She was directing someone in the party to it. One of the girls removed her sandals and went down into the stream and came out with a dark, oval object. “Aha!” thought Miriam, “They had forgotten the casket in which is kept the things for washing the Princess. They will get a good scolding for that. But I wish they had left it so I could have seen what was in it. That would have been wonderful! I could have run after her and returned it to her and maybe she might have made me one of her ladies in wai
ting. Oh, a lady in waiting to the Princess! Nothing could be greater than that.”

  The party moved off leisurely and came abreast of Miriam. They were not more than thirty feet from where she hid. She was so entranced that she stood up, the better to see, and one of the ladies saw her.

  “It is a Hebrew!” she all but screamed. “What is she doing here? Catch her!”

  “She is only a child,” the Princess said lightly. “She can do nothing harmful.”

  “But she might be a spy,” one of the ladies pointed out.

  “Yes, these Hebrews may be planning to assassinate you.”

  The eunuchs drew their swords at this and looked threateningly at Miriam.

  “Nonsense!” the Princess rejoined. “No one knew we were coming here today and no one—not even I—knows where we go tomorrow.”

  “Still she should be questioned. Never can tell what these Hebrews might do to overthrow the government.”

  “Governments are not overthrown by little girls,” the Princess retorted, and the party swept on its way towards the palace of Pharaoh.

  Miriam stood blinking for a long time. She was completely beside herself with ecstasy. She had seen the daughter of Pharaoh. The daughter of Pharaoh had spoken to her. Well, anyhow she had spoken of her. All her life she was going to remember the gait of the Princess when she walked. She wondered if that movement was a special gift to royalty or if people like her could copy it. She certainly meant to try it before her playmates. “This is the way the Princess walks,” she would tell them. “I know, because I saw her and she spoke to me.” She flew home as fast as her legs could move to tell what she had seen.