Reflections in the Nile (51 page)

“Just sit still and I will pull you out,” he called, picking up his muddy staff.

“I… ugh … don't need … errr … your help!” Chloe said, resuming her struggles, now determined to free herself. As Thief made his way to Cheftu's side, the two of them sat on the packed earth to watch her demonstration. Her sleek, slippery body repeatedly emerged about a cubit, then sank in the relentless bog. Cheftu felt his heart pound as she writhed against the mud, twisting and turning, each graceful muscle and sinew active.

“Are you sure that you don't want me to rescue you?” he called.

Chloe was exhausted but making slow progress—one leg was halfway to the surface. Cautiously she spread her weight evenly across the surface. Her other leg was still firmly in the wet vacuum of the bog. After a few moments of trying to free it, she was back to the beginning. In frustration she slapped her hands into the mud, spattering it everywhere.

“Haii-aii,
beloved,” Cheftu said consolingly, almost concealing the amusement in his voice. “Wait for me, and I will help you out.”

Realizing that she was firmly stuck, Chloe didn't refuse his offer this time as he stripped off his kilt and stepped into the mud. The sight of him fully aroused sent an answering heat through her. He walked toward her carefully, his staff in his hand, plumbing the depths for solid footing. His skin, tanned mercilessly by the sun, merged into the mud, so that he looked like an otherworldly creature rising from the depths. Cautiously he made his way closer to her suspended body. Finally he extended the stick to her. Exhausted and beaten, she slowly and laboriously extracted her arms from the goo and grabbed the sturdy branch. She watched the muscles in Cheftu's arms ripple with the effort of pulling her slowly through the reluctant clay. When she was a few cubits away, he stopped.

“Chloe …” His voice was low, husky, and Chloe felt her own moisture melt into the mud. “Do you really want me to help you free?”

She nodded, panting from exertion.

“Do you like the way it feels?” His voice was like melted butter… decadent and delicious. “Tell me.” His eyes were dark, almost opaque, passion etching lines of tension around his mouth.

She gasped. “Mud… what did you think?”

He arched an eyebrow. “I know you are more descriptive than that. If it were a
glace,
” he said with a wicked, muddy smile, “which flavor would it be?” He pulled her again. The, texture was smooth as lotion, caressing every inch of her body, sucking softly at her thighs, massaging and stroking her. “Ch-chocolate cappuccino gelato,” she stammered.

“What is gelato?”

“A creamier, thicker, more sinful ice cream,” she murmured, watching his eyes flame. “It is so rich, you think you're going to die if you eat more, but you cannot resist it. It is slick on your tongue until it melts, spreading the taste throughout your mouth—” Her words ended with a soft gasp as she felt; his grip on her wrists.

His eyes were slitted as he pulled her to him. Clinging to him as he stepped backward, she was amazed at how soft yet solid he felt. She felt his every straining muscle coated with mud, and she stared into his eyes, directing him as they walked backward. He pulled her to her feet once they were both only knee deep.

“Are you safe now?”

“Am I?” She felt his hands clench against her back. “I came here for a reason, Cheftu.”

He withdrew without moving a muscle. A shutter fell behind his eyes, and she suddenly was scared. Too late? Change of heart? “I want to stay.”

He blinked.

She ran a mud-covered hand up his slick torso. “With you. Wherever. Whenever. I am yours.” She began to wonder if he'd had a stroke, as he just stood there, blinking. “Are you breathing?” she finally asked.

He kissed her, hard. All the energy, anger, and passion that had been leashed was free. He was rough and clumsy as they toppled backward onto the muddy shore. Holding her close, he kissed her forehead and crooned to her. It was minutes before she realized he too was crying.

The mud was drying in the heat and becoming as thick and sticky as paste. They struggled laughing and crying, out and away from the bog. Cheftu's strong arms held Chloe close to his side. Hand in hand they climbed down the cliff and ran to the ocean, laughing like children as they bobbed in the shallows, had water fights, and tried to catch minnows with their hands. The sun was low when they stepped out and lay on the beach, letting the last of the day's heat dry them.

Cheftu boiled the eggs, and they ate them with leftover bread in the early darkness. He drew Chloe to him, and they stayed in the receding waves, connected until the quiet intensity grew too much and they finished in fury what had begun in calm.

The days blended together, like beads on a necklace. Each different, each precious, and together they made a whole. For the first days they worked in the mud pit, shaping the bricks that would make their home and cooling themselves in the afternoon by soaking in the mud. At
atmu
they carried down the day's worth of bricks and laid them on the scratched-out plan for a two-room house with solid roof (for storage and hot nights) and alcove for cooking. One side was planned so the door looked toward the palm trees. One day, Chloe said she would make a hammock, and they could swing and talk and make love in it.

They'd awoken one morning to a family of scorpions sleeping on their mat, inches from Cheftu's leg. Bleary with sleep and her heart pounding in her throat, Chloe had smashed the closest one with a dagger and they'd both run, naked into the cool morning.

Five days after the scorpions, the house was standing. It had taken some real work to create the large window, bracing it with more branches, but with the addition of palm fronds and rigged with torn linen to form a movable window shade, it was quite habitable—if you didn't mind not having a front door.

Cuisine improved. Cheftu explained that the brown furry thing she'd found before was a type of rabbit. He showed her how to split it, clean it, add fresh herbs that grew close by, and then roast it, skin and all. Amazingly enough, the skin peeled off when it was done, providing enough fat so that the meat was not dry and stringy.

They dined on oysters and caught more fish. They had run out of flour, so there was neither bread nor the beer that was made from it.

“You have never told me about your family. I know you are the oldest,” she said one night. They'd spent the day farming the one arable strip of land, carefully tending the small shoots that had grown up in the past weeks. Sex, their main recreation, was out for the moment. The good news was that the giant fennel seeds were working. Cheftu was relieved.

“They are from the Oryx—”

“No, no,” she interrupted in English. “Your French family.”

Cheftu grew ominously silent. “It matters not,” he said stiffly.

“Sure it does. You said you have a brother, but he is older, right? What does he, did he, do?”

Cheftu got up. “I am going to hunt with Thief tonight, I think.”

“You can't just walk away! I did not ask about former lovers, just your family! What is wrong?”

He gripped her forearms. “It does not matter. Do not ask. I was betrayed, and I have no desire to recall it.”

“Betrayed? By whom?”

“My brother. Good night.”

Chloe stared, openmouthed, as he and Thief hiked up the trail and disappeared over the ridge. Would she ever know this man? “So much for no secrets and no boundaries,” she whispered.

With no warning their just blossoming life came to an end.

The day repeated the pattern of the previous ones. Cheftu was hacking away at the earth with a makeshift hoe of shell and branch, and Chloe had just caught fish for lunch and cleaned it before setting it on their rocky grill. Suddenly Thief, who had been focused solely on the fish, flattened his ears and began alternately creeping and running toward the cliff face. Away from the pounding surf, Chloe could hear the sounds of struggle. She wasted precious seconds debating, then scrambled up the cliff side. Peering over the edge, she saw Cheftu pulled flat between two soldiers. They were speaking, but she couldn't hear them. The smell of roasting fish was carrying on the wind to them, and she ran back down, racing into the cave for the bow and quiver. She tore through the basket, panic rising as she heard Thief's growling and saw his tawny fur ruff rise.

Then she heard Cheftu calling out in English, “Hide yourself! They do not know you are here!” He masked his words with other screams and curses, and Chloe cowered in the back of the cave. The soldiers might not know she was around this very second, but it wouldn't take a temple education to figure out that cooking food and one working man didn't add up. She nocked the arrow carefully. Three men were visible, though there were possibly more, but they were out of range. The soldiers had bundled Cheftu into the house and were now grouped by the fire to the rear of the mud-brick building. She poked her head out; one man had his back to her, urinating into the sea. Chloe released the arrow and ran to the house when she saw him fall to his knees, his dying groan drowned out by the roar of waves, his hands reaching frantically around to his back.

The darkness of the hut was refreshing, but she needed Cheftu to be silent. “Beloved?” she whispered in English. He moaned in response, and she ran to his side, almost tripping on the mostly finished hammock. He was bound, but steady enough on his feet. Chloe grabbed her belt, cloak, and waist pouch, then cut the flax ropes. They could hear the three soldiers wondering what was taking their compatriot so long.

Halting, they listened as the soldiers joked about their diet of unleavened bread and dried meats. “Some date wine would ease him!” one of them offered, and they all laughed. Creeping to the doorway, Chloe tried to plan a route. Thief had disappeared, the unfamiliar smells of the soldiers increasing his fear of predators. Chloe's eyes searched over their little bay … where could they go? It didn't matter—she grabbed Cheftu's basket trunk and shoved in their food and belongings.

She caught Cheftu's gaze in the shadows, and they kissed briefly. They ran out across the beach, by the dying man in a pool of his drying blood, and around the promontory, back toward Egypt. Reaching the other side of the cliff, they listened, trying to hear beyond the rhythm of the waves. The breeze dried her nervous sweat as Chloe shifted the basket. Cheftu looked upward and motioned her first. They began to climb.

Cries of discovery floated up to them. Their tracks would be easy to follow. Chloe bit back a scream as Thief brushed against her leg. They began running inland to the well. They could plan from there.

Chloe filled their bottles with shaking hands at the well while Cheftu kept watch. Still on dry ground, they headed northwest, desperate to escape yet uncertain
where to
escape.

They ran through a grove of trees that grew parallel to the cliff's edge, crashing heedlessly through the undergrowth, and right into another well area, where six soldiers, three chariots, and six horses were resting. There was a moment of mutual shock before Cheftu and Chloe split up, each running around the small encampment. The commanding sergeant sent four men after Chloe. They tackled her, and her cries halted Cheftu. Two other soldiers restrained him from running toward her as she was set on her feet.

Chloe considered fighting until she saw the knife held at Cheftu's neck. Sweat poured off him, his hair slick with it, his kilt torn, and his arms and legs crisscrossed with scratches. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked into his raging countenance. But when he saw the resignation in hers, his eyes melted. “Do not tell them we are Egyptian,” he said in English. “Our penalty will be death.”

Speaking in another language to each other was a good idea, but still a barrage of questions from the soldiers hit them. Cheftu stared stonily at the captain, his head high. “Why do you trap us?”

“Are you an Israelite?” the man demanded.

Cheftu shook his head. “Nay. We are free.”

The captain whipped his flail across Cheftu's face, and Chloe gritted her teeth. “Did you see what happened to the Pharaoh and soldiers, slave?” he asked.

“Nay. We saw nothing.” Chloe flinched as Cheftu was slapped on the opposite cheek. The hands that held her shoulders were as resistant as granite, though she squirmed in their grasp. The marks on Cheftu's face glowed red against his burnished skin, and his eyes were hungry gold, like Thief's.

The commander stared at Cheftu. “Take them to Avaris,” he said. “Between here and there we will get the truth from them.” He touched the finely crafted bracelet on Chloe's wrist. “Why would an Egyptian deny his heritage unless he had rebelled with the Apiru?” he mused, staring into her face. Chloe bit the inside of her cheek. Why had Cheftu said their penalty was death? Their wrists were bound, and for a few seconds they stood together.

“I am sorry,” Cheftu whispered before the soldiers on either side of him drew his hands to the front and tied him to the chariot.

The soldiers set up a tent to rest in, and Chloe and Cheftu found themselves sitting against acacia trees, cubits apart. Cheftu's eyes were closed, and welts were rising along his cheekbones. She saw the tension in his body and knew he was awake. The soldiers took the water supply into their tents and left their captives to the abandonment of the scorching afternoon heat. There was no need for a guard, since without water they wouldn't last two hours.

“What is our plan?” Chloe whispered, her eyes on the soldier lying before the tent.

“Rest. We can do nothing until nightfall. After that…” Cheftu's voice trailed off. They sat in silence, the droning of the cicadas a music in this desert glen. He swallowed, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. “I love you, Chloe. They do not need you. If you can get away, they'll take me and be gone. Thief is nearby. He can guide you to water.”

She kept her eyes focused on his hands. Such mobile, long fingered, lovely hands. She'd never drawn them.

“Where is the quiver?” he asked, his voice no louder than the buzz of an insect.

“By our basket and my bow, over there.” She gestured with her chin. She rested her head against the wood, closing her eyes against the afternoon glare. Thank God for kohl.