Dreamers (9 page)

nounced that she had come from a nobleman’s house, and

assigned her fellow slaves to various stations. She gave orders

to the kitchen slaves every morning, saw to it that the bath-

rooms, cattle yards and stables were cleaned out, and ordered

that the waters of the pool be changed and stocked with fish.

Anyone who did not obey would be brought before the master,

who might choose to beat them or sell them…

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Used to the lazy life of fat cats, the slaves obeyed, but they

grumbled as they worked.

Tuya could not believe that Pharaoh’s captain lived in such

a disorderly house. Despite his lionlike reputation, the slaves

did not fear or respect him, for he did not respect his home or

his lands. Discipline did not exist in the household, for as long

as Potiphar had an edible meal and a bed to lie on, he made

no demands. He held no parties, commemorated no feasts or

festivals. The captain of the guard found his amusements

elsewhere and spent most of his time in the palace.

Tuya took her problems to Yosef, and discovered that

although he had never lived in an Egyptian house, he had

strong opinions as to how people should be handled. He had

a gift for administration and his diplomatic suggestions about

how to handle the recalcitrant slaves helped Tuya establish the

changes she wanted to make.

When Yosef was strong enough to move about, Tuya took

him on a tour of the villa. Potiphar’s house resembled every

other Theban nobleman’s except for two things: it contained

the jail for Pharaoh’s prisoners, and it held little charm. Sur-

rounded by a high, crumbling wall of mud-dried brick, the

house stood in the center of an extensive plot of valuable

riverfront land. A towered gateway led into the estate, and the

prison warden’s lodge rose immediately at the visitor’s left

hand. The prison, a collection of stone buildings, lay off to

the east, far away from the main house. Tuya assured Yosef

they would have no responsibility for the prison. Potiphar kept

a slovenly house, but his guards ran a secure dungeon. Their

lives depended on it.

To the right of the entry, a small path lined with drooping

trees led to the family temple. “When I first came here, the

dilapidated look of this place revealed that our master is not

a religious man,” Tuya whispered to Yosef. “No incense

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burned in the censers, no offerings had been spread, and the

gods themselves were covered in dust. No wonder they have

not blessed Potiphar’s household! I cleaned the statues and ap-

pointed one of the slave children to bring food, water and

incense each morning and night.”

Yosef said nothing as she led him from the temple. The

narrow dirt path in front of them pointed a curving finger

toward the west, leading to a flight of steps and a pair of

peeling columns. Beyond them was an inner courtyard and a

doorway framed in stone. The lintel had been carved with

Potiphar’s name and position, but the paint had weathered out

of the fading letters. A vestibule stood at the end of the porch

and led to the north loggia, a reception room that had been

poorly furnished and barely decorated. The west loggia, used

by most families as a sitting room in winter, stood totally un-

furnished and smelled of dust, as did the guest rooms.

The master’s bedroom was as primitive as a battlefield

tent, and the bathroom offered neither a slab for bathing nor

a basin for washing the hands. Throughout the house, sprained

doors hung open and walls shed their coats of fading paint.

The stables, servants’ quarters, kitchen and stockyard were

located on the southern and eastern sides of the house so the

prevailing wind would carry away the odors of dung fires,

cooking food, horse sweat and the slaves’ sour beer, but the

servants of Potiphar had allowed sewage, garbage and manure

to accumulate for so long that the sirocco winds accumulated

in a single blast could not have diffused the stench.

Tuya noticed that Yosef perked up when she led him to the

stockyard. Potiphar’s horses were in fine fettle, for the master

loved to ride and often engaged in chariot racing, but the few

cattle in the pen were scrawny and blotched with skin dis-

eases. Yosef paid special attention to the cattle, probing their

skins with deft fingers and examining their eyes and noses

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with great care. “I know how to cure this condition,” he said,

catching up to Tuya as she strode through the stockyard.

“With the right grains and a poultice or two, these cattle can

be made well.”

“That would please our master.”

From the stockyard, an open, roofless corridor led to the

well, and beyond the wall surrounding the well lay the mas-

ter’s formal gardens. Tuya showed Yosef the small door that

led to the gardens. The pool, which had been stagnant and

laden with green scum, now glimmered in the sun while lotus

plants dotted its surface. Yosef gave the area an admiring

smile. “This is beautiful.”

“The blue lotus is my favorite,” Tuya said, unwillingly re-

membering the lotus blossoms of Sagira’s pool.

“Not just the flowers,” Yosef answered. “Everything. You

have done well.”

“Not I alone,” Tuya answered, taking his uninjured arm as

she led him back to the servants’ quarters. A thin sheen of per-

spiration shone on Yosef’s forehead, and she knew the brief

walk had tired him. “Without your encouragement, I would

never have had the nerve to speak to the other servants.”

If any of the older slaves bore resentment toward Tuya, they

did not dare show it after Potiphar praised her administration.

He called her into his presence one evening as he sat at dinner

in the central hall. From the high windows near the ceiling,

the rays of sunset tinged the room with gold.

“You were presented to me on account of your beauty,”

Potiphar said after she knelt at his feet. “But now I find that

you are more than ornamental.”

Bent into submission, Tuya felt her stomach tighten.

Donkor had never summoned her into his presence, and the

few occasions she had faced Kahent had ended in punishment

or rebuke. What did Potiphar have in mind?

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“Rise, girl, and speak freely,” her master mumbled through

a mouthful of food.

Slowly, Tuya stood, lifting her head at the last moment.

Potiphar sat before her, his hands busy with his food, his eyes

bright and alert as an eagle’s. She gathered her courage.

“What would you have me say?”

He swallowed. “How does a harem girl know so much

about running a house?”

“If it please you, my lord, I was not reared for the harem.

Before entering Pharaoh’s house, I was companion to Sagira,

daughter of Donkor, a kinsman of the king.”

Potiphar bit into the pigeon the cook had prepared ac-

cording to Tuya’s direction. “Does Donkor know you live

now with me?”

Tuya shook her head. “I have no way of knowing, my lord.

I was sold when his daughter no longer wanted—had need

of—a companion.”

Potiphar lifted his goblet and took a deep drink, then sighed

and smacked his lips. “Well, Tuya, I have no harem and no

need of a concubine. But I like what you have done, so you

may continue to oversee the house.”

Relief washed over her, but Tuya did not leave. In three

months, Potiphar had spoken to her only once, and if all went

well in his house he might never speak to her again. If she

wanted to speak to him of Yosef, she’d have to do it now. For

despite her intentions to remain aloof from the young man’s

dancing eyes, she could not bear the thought of waking one

day to find him gone.

“If it please you, my lord—”

The master lifted a brow. “You have a question?”

“A suggestion. If you want your estate to truly prosper, you

would do well to heed the advice of Paneah, the injured slave

you bought from Pharaoh’s court. His arm is now mended,

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and he has cured your cattle of a mange that would have

spread through the herd. He is a capable overseer. Let me su-

pervise the kitchens, but place everything else in Paneah’s

hands. By Pharaoh’s life, I swear he will not fail you.”

“By all the gods, I knew he was bright.” Potiphar grinned.

“Bring him to me at once.”

Tuya hurried away, her heart as light as her step. Yosef

would turn the estate into the pride and treasure of Thebes.

And soon he would be as important to Potiphar as he had

become to her.

Potiphar

And it came to pass from the time that he had made

him overseer in his house, and over all that he had,

that the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house for

Yosef ’s sake; and the blessing of the LORD was upon

all that he had in the house, and in the field.

Genesis 39:5

Chapter Eight

A year passed. The waters of the Nile altered from the thick

silk of the inundation to the green of verdigris shining on

copper. Potiphar’s slaves tilled the soil of his lands during the

proyet, the months of the land’s emergence, and harvested

during shemu, the four months of drought. Far to the south,

monsoon winds swept inland from the great ocean and

dumped torrential rains on the highlands of the continent,

feeding the tributary known as the Blue Nile. Through steep

mountain gorges, tracts of marshland, and fetid jungles, the

swollen river roiled northward and merged with the White

Nile. Beyond the point of their convergence lay six cataracts;

the northernmost cataract, a craggy gorge through which the

floodwaters tumbled in an angry rush, marked the southern

boundary of Egypt.

Unaware of the natural forces at work, at the summer

solstice the priests made their offerings to Egypt’s gods and

waited for the annual arrival of the bounteous flood. Pharaoh

prayed to the god Hapi, begging him to pour the holy waters

into the river known since ancient times as Hep-ur, or “sweet

water.” According to legend and Egyptian belief, Hapi sat on

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a mountain and poured the Nile on the land from two bottom-

less pitchers. One pitcher brought forth the sweet bright green

river of harvest time, from the other flowed the gray, silt-

laden waters of the inundation, needed to flood and fertilize

the thirsty Egyptian fields. Pharaoh and the priests did not

doubt that the gray waters would come, but they begged the

god to dispense his gift with mercy and wisdom. Too much

water and villages would be swept away; too little and Egypt

would starve.

When Sirius, the dogstar, arrived in the vast and immea-

surable canopy of the night sky, the priests announced that the

waters were near. As they had predicted, the flood rushed north-

ward a few days later. Over the centuries, natural levees had

built up along the Nile, and on the Night of the Cutting of the

Dam, the people of Thebes mounted these natural walls along

the riverfront and waited for Pharaoh’s signal. Once the dam

was “cut,” or broken, the precious waters flooded a series of

man-made channels and carried their nourishment to the fields.

Scowling at the noise of celebration, Potiphar climbed one

of the towers built into the walls of his villa. To the west he

could see the silver water and a shimmering skyline where

earthen dams at the border of his property bristled with life

as the sun dropped behind the horizon. Already glowing orbs

of torchlight moved through the darkness.

A twinge of nostalgia struck him. In every year until this

one, he had been at Pharaoh’s side for this ceremony. He

would have been on the royal barge this year, too, but a royal

courtier called Narmer had convinced Pharaoh that Potiphar

needed time to rest.

The high squeal of the priests’ trumpets rent the air. Though

he couldn’t see clearly in the darkness, Potiphar knew that

long boats of bundled papyrus reeds were breaking through

the banks to allow the river to spill into the land. He smiled.

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Aside from Narmer’s tiresome presence, he had no reason to

complain. The gods had been good to him in the past year.

Under Paneah’s direction, his cattle had begun to produce

and his fields to grow. His slaves, a motley crew who had once

managed his house in spite of themselves, had become a dis-

ciplined corps, each content to labor in his or her assigned task.

While Paneah oversaw the stockyard, fields and business

of running the estate, the girl, Tuya, had become a valuable

housekeeper. Under her direction Potiphar’s new cupbearer

had become almost as skilled as Taharka, the esteemed slave

who had been purchased to grow, ferment and offer Pharaoh’s