People of the Ark (Ark Chronicles 1) Read online

  3.

  “You may leave now,” Ham told Taia, who held on to his elbow.

  Ham wore fine linen garments. They were the best in the world, as Egyptian linen was unmatched anywhere.

  A bronze-shod staff banged against a floor. The sound seemed to come from behind stone doors. Someone bellowed muffled orders, the chamberlain, no doubt.

  “Go,” whispered Ham.

  “Let me help you into Pharaoh’s presence,” Taia said.

  “A guardsman can do it.”

  “He’ll be too rough, Great-Grandfather. I will finish what I started.”

  A rush of gratitude swept over Ham. So in his fine robes, with the lovely Princess Taia guiding him, Ham hobbled to his fate. She must have nodded to the guardsmen. The well-oiled hinges moved as warriors swung open the double doors.

  The voices in the throne room stilled.

  Ham imagined everyone turning and staring. Some must have looked on in amazement—those who knew who he was. More than a few surely frowned, wondering where the princess had dug up such a dotard.

  Ham hobbled toward the throne, swathed in silence, feeling the staring, stabbing eyes.

  “Halt,” a sick-sounding man said.

  The bronze-shod staff of state thumped three times. “Halt!” the chamberlain cried. “Prostrate yourself before Pharaoh.”

  “I’m too old for that,” Ham said.

  Silence greeted his words.

  “Don’t you recognize me, Pharaoh?”

  “Dismiss the ambassadors,” said the boil-ridden man on the throne.

  There was more staff-of-state banging, more shouts and the clatter of marching guardsmen. Soon the heavy stone doors closed. Then the tired, dying man whispered, “Come closer.”

  Taia tugged Ham along, until he wrinkled his nose. The smell of putrefaction, of rotting flesh, was strong.

  “That’s close enough,” Pharaoh said. He coughed. It was a rough, aching sound. Ham could hear the sound of sipping water and heavy breathing. Finally he asked, “Have you come to gloat, old man? Is that why you’ve crawled out of your hole?”

  “No, Pharaoh.”

  “Ah, so suddenly you’ve become respectful. It won’t save you, though.”

  “I am here to help you,” Ham said.

  That brought on another bout of coughing and the sound of a man spitting into a bowl.

  Ham shivered. He’d always loathed sickness and being around sick people.

  “So now I disgust you?” Pharaoh asked, anger riding his words.

  “You may yet live,” Ham said.

  “What do you know, old man? Quickly, spit it out.”

  “Patience, Pharaoh.”

  “Guards!”

  Shields rattled as the guardsmen stepped closer.

  “I know why you and your household have been cursed with the plague,” Ham said.

  There was silence. “Do you know what my father told me about you? ‘Kill the old goat. Have him strangled in his sleep. Otherwise, you’ll always feel him breathing down your neck as I have.’ Why do you suppose my father told me that, old man?”

  “If you have patience, Pharaoh, I will tell you that too.”

  “What?” Pharaoh asked. “You will tell me?” He laughed. “Why all of a sudden now, old man? Why on this day do you dare enter my presence?”

  “If you will listen, Pharaoh, I shall answer every question and make all plain.”

  “Is this your doing, Taia?”

  “No, Father,” she said, trembling, reminding Ham of a canary he had once held shivering in his hand.

  “Your brother has grown weary of you, Taia,” Pharaoh said. “Khufu has grown sick of your cackling.”

  Taia knelt. “Please listen to him, Pharaoh.”

  “So,” Pharaoh said, “you’ve turned my own daughter against me.”

  “Not true, Pharaoh,” Ham said. “She loves you. She hopes, too, that you will have the wisdom to listen to me.”

  “I am going to kill you for that,” Pharaoh said.

  The old fire that had been rekindled now blazed. Ham pointed a knobby finger. “You are being foolish, Pharaoh. You have the chance of life and instead vent it disrespecting your father’s father’s father. Never doubt that I am Egypt. My folly and weakness gave birth to what you are. Listen if you dare and learn the truth. Perhaps you will yet save yourself and your household from doom.”

  There was more silence. Ham said, “Fetch me a stool.”

  “Pharaoh?” the chamberlain asked.

  The dying man on the throne cleared his throat, coughed and spat into the physician’s bowl. “Yes,” he whispered. “Get him a stool.”

  Ham sank onto it. Ah, it was such a relief for his old legs. Yet a strange strength filled him. Maybe it was the bread in his belly. Maybe Abram’s prayers had worked. Ham put his knotted hands on his knees and leaned toward the throne.

  “I too am dying. I too pass from this world. But today I will give you the truth. In my youth, I listened to Methuselah, the oldest man who ever lived, as he related the prophecies of his father Enoch. On the Ark, Noah and Shem each dreamed most strangely. At the time, I dismissed their revelations. Today I understand some of what I heard. Yes, I have witnessed much, Pharaoh. You know that to be true. If you have the patience you can learn how this death by plague in your household can be avoided.”

  “If you’re lying, old man, your death will be as painful as mine,” Pharaoh said. “By my right hand, I so swear, and may the gods—”

  “The gods?” Ham shouted. “No! Today you shall learn the truth!”

  “I forbid you to blaspheme Egypt’s gods.”

  Ham barked laughter. “Not gods, Pharaoh, but the devil and his hosts.”

  Men gasped, as did Princess Taia behind him.

  Ham grinned crookedly. “Now listen, O ruler of Egypt, and learn the true history of the world.”

  The Antediluvian Age

  Nephilim

  1.

  Ham was born, raised and grew to manhood under the shadow of the Ark. Everyone thought his father was a fool, except the teamsters who plotted to cheat crazy old Noah. They found his father a stubborn bargainer, who inspected each ox-load of gopher wood with teeth-grinding thoroughness. A warp, the minutest rot damage or the palming off of unseasoned, green logs, Noah found it all and drove shrewd bargains for everything. The worst of it, however—at least the teamsters complained about it the most—was enduring the preaching. Anything could launch Noah into a dissertation on sin, righteousness and judgment.

  Ham understood the teamsters. From the very first, his father had watched him closely, as did his mother. Together they hammered the lessons of Jehovah into him. He grew up certain that something dreadful must be wrong with him. Why otherwise belabor him every day with admonishments to walk uprightly? Why else forbid him to run free with the other children? Only his parents scolded them if they took apples out of Methuselah’s favorite orchard. No one else but his parents minded if they pelted Simple Shechem with cow manure or if they tore the tunics off the water-girls and switched their backsides. The regular joys of childhood—how everyone else played—weren’t allowed him. Someone responsible always had to tag along: father, mother, Japheth, Europa or Shem. His older brothers were given lectures about it.

  “Yes, Mother,” Japheth would say. “I’ll watch him like a hyaenodon.”

  “This isn’t a joking matter,” their mother, Gaea, said, a dark-haired matron whose hair was never out of place. A strapping woman, handsome rather than beautiful, with bright eyes and a hearty laugh, she too could be stern like his father. She always wore a shawl and was forever hurrying to Grandfather Lamech’s house to bring him pastries or her wonderful raisin bread. From his childhood, Ham most recalled her sitting in the high-backed cypress chair outside the house, stitching garments.

  They were rich enough so she could have ordered the servants do it. Noah was wealthy, extraordinarily so, but he poured everything into the Ark. Whenever Ham asked her about that, his
mother’s mouth firmed. Only guests entered the house, never the servants, farmhands or carpenters. From the first, Ham thought his parents were over-protective and took these precautions because they saw a hidden evil in him, that they didn’t trust him around anyone, not even the hired hands.

  He was right, but not for the reasons he thought.

  They lived in the sprawling clan compound, the one protected by a huge stone wall. Great-Grandfather Methuselah judged any disputes. Mostly his sons, daughters, granddaughters and grandsons like Noah (only no one was remotely like Father) did what was right in their own eyes. Ham’s grandfather Lamech—Methuselah’s third oldest son—was the only one who ever took Noah’s side. There were plenty of grand-uncles and aunts, and hundreds of first, second and third cousins, all sorts of relatives.

  At night, he remembered the loud drunken singing outside his bedroom window, the screams of laughter and the shouting and sometimes the wild orgies that took place on the grass. He recalled his father going outside and reproving the aunts and uncles. Sometimes it turned ugly. Few cared, however, to stand toe-to-toe with Noah and his gopher-wood staff.

  Father just didn’t feel pain. You could punch him, cut him and even thrash him and he always kept coming. One morning Ham made the mistake of asking his father why he had bruises all over his face. Ham had spent the next three days with Shem, an auger in hand, as they smoothed boards for the Ark. It had been hard, sweaty work. And it had given Ham a handful of blisters and the stern eye of his father who had inspected each piece of lumber.

  “Nothing but the best for the Ark,” Noah said.

  Ham hated the saying… until the rains began.

  As a youngster, he had loved going into the forests, a grand adventure. He had ducked from dragonflies with bodies twice as long as his father’s hand, some with three-foot wingspans. Slashing rays of sunlight sparkled off their gossamer-like wings, while their dangling legs made him shiver. Massive sabertooths lurked in the forests, cats that sent the huge hounds to barking. Ham had even seen a behemoth once! Its tread shook the earth, and the length and thickness of its tail… ha! It had been like a dragged cedar.

  His father and field hands went into the forests to chop down trees and make pitch. Pitch! It seemed as if everything concerned with the Ark had to be covered with it. But first, they had to make it, and the process had always fascinated Ham.

  Gathering pine tree resin was the beginning. Dense forests of various kinds dotted the landscape, but the pinewoods were the farthest away, atop the highest hills. After a lengthy trek, they entered a pine forest and Noah gouged herringbone patterns into the massive trunks. The oozing resin ran down the grooves to the bottom of the tree and into brass pots. When the sap stopped flowing, thudding axes felled the trees. Oxen dragged them back, where they were covered with ash and burned into charcoal. Then a fire was set under huge kettledrums until the pine resins bubbled and boiled, producing a wicked stench. Crushed charcoal was added and mixed to produce thick, dark pitch. The substance coated and waterproofed ship timbers and was used to caulk the Ark’s planks.

  When Ham turned fourteen the grand uncles and aunts and his myriad of cousins became fed up with “righteous” Noah. They held a clan meeting under the stars and solemnly told his father that he either had to promise to shut up—on oath before his Jehovah—or he and his family would be exiled from the stronghold.

  “Face the Nephilim on your own, Noah,” one grand uncle said.

  “Or grovel the next time a bene elohim sends his slavers into these parts,” laughed an aunt.

  “That’s right!”

  “See if your words can shield you then!”

  “Make the oath, Noah!”

  With his big, broad shoulders and long, white beard, with his clothes dusty from a hard day’s work and the bonfire throwing its lurid light across his face, Noah turned to Methuselah.

  The patriarch sat in a huge wooden chair. His beard wasn’t as long or even as white as Noah’s beard. Methuselah wore fine silk robes, and his right hand held onto a chalice, while his left lingered upon the arm of his latest wife, a scandalously young thing of one hundred and fifty-five. Even well into his nine hundreds Methuselah was virile, a legend in terms of hale long life.

  “Throwing Noah from the compound is a grim act,” Methuselah said, “one fraught with peril for both him and you.”

  “How so?” a man shouted.

  “Perhaps you’ll better understand it if I explain it as a fable,” Methuselah said.

  Someone in the crowd groaned. The old man was infamous for his animal stories.

  “Long ago, an eagle hen and a vixen agreed to live near each other as friends. The eagle laid eggs at the top of a tree, while the vixen gave birth to cubs in a thicket below. One day the vixen went off in search of food. The hungry eagle swooped into the bushes, snatched up the cubs, and made a meal of them with her brood. The vixen returned and saw what had happened. She was less distressed by the loss than overcome by the difficulty of punishing the eagle. Later, some men sacrificed a goat in the field, and the eagle darted onto the altar and carried off a smoldering piece of meat to her nest. A strong gust sprang up and fanned the piece’s flame so the nest’s dry stalks blazed. The nestlings, not yet fully fledged, fell to the ground. The vixen ran up and gobbled them under the eagle’s eyes.”

  “Are you saying we should kill Noah instead of banishing him?” a grand aunt asked. “So he doesn’t come back and attack us in a time of danger?”

  “No!” Methuselah said. “Rather, those who break friendship cannot escape the vengeance of heaven.”

  “Bah,” a grand uncle said. “Fables can’t change the fact that we’re sick of Noah.”

  “That’s right,” an aunt shouted. “He’s the one who has broken the peace. Let him heed the fable.”

  The chorus of shouts and catcalls rose, until Methuselah turned to Noah. “What can I say, my grandson? It is my sad duty to inform you that you must decide.”

  Noah frowned, peering at the shouting faces, listening to their cries and taunts. Many drank beer. Some were already drunk, their sweaty faces glowing in the firelight. In back, a slender youth piped an indecent tune upon his flute.

  “I will move,” Noah said.

  A wild cheer went up.

  Mother gathered Shem, his bride-to-be Ruth, Japheth and his tall wife Europa, and Ham. Tears welled, although she held her back straight and her head high.

  Ham was terrified. He knew the stories about the Nephilim, demon-energized warriors, about wandering bands of raiders and monstrous beasts trained to attack in packs.

  The next morning at the breakfast table Noah announced that he saw the hand of Jehovah in this. It wasn’t right raising children among idolaters, even if they were family.

  Mother nodded as she ladled soup into Father’s bowl. He always ate heartily, breakfast, lunch or supper. Hard work keeps a body from evil, was one of Noah’s sayings.

  Noah collected farmhands and carpenters and marched to a site less than a league from the Ark. The thudding of axes and adzes, continual sawing, and hammering, sweating, and shouts, and pulleys and constant digging, and camping out at night, with Mother and Ruth cooking for everyone, Ham admitted this was exciting. Father bargained for more dogs, brutes with shaggy red hair and slavering fangs. The wooden palisade rose and so did their log dwelling, a heavy, little fortress within their new stronghold: Noah’s Keep.

  Within a year, Shem married Ruth and time passed quickly for Ham, until he found himself a young man of twenty-five. At this age, he was no longer sure there would be a flood, or that Jehovah wanted to destroy the world. Certainly, he believed Jehovah was real. And it made a peculiar kind of sense to believe in a holy Creator who was fed up with how everyone behaved. But how could he be sure his father’s way of living was the only right way to serve Jehovah?

  Maybe what Ham really wondered was, why did everyone get drunk and carouse except for Noah? Was it possible that only Noah lived righteously? Surely, ot
her people could see the truth of Jehovah just as easily as his father did. The others always poured a libation to a higher power, which many of them said was all a person could know about Jehovah. After all, Jehovah wasn’t walking around talking to them, was He? And the others had assured Ham, the few times that he talked with them about the subject, that this higher power would never send a flood to slay everyone. That was preposterous! Jehovah, if that’s really what He wanted to be called, wasn’t so petty and cruel as to actually want to destroy everyone.

  “That’s ridiculous!” the others would chide Ham. “Noah only said that Jehovah had actually talked to him, and all those other tales, to make himself seem important.” It was obvious to anyone who thought about it.

  Besides, Ham had better believe that even if Jehovah was who Noah claimed Him to be that there were other powers with plenty of say in the matter. Just look at the Nephilim. Or more to the point look at the ones some called the “sons of Jehovah.” Bene elohim was the actual term. Now there were beings with power! They wouldn’t let Jehovah destroy the world. And if you simply had to worship somebody, well, the visible bene elohim made a lot more sense than an invisible god did. Certainly, Ham had to agree to that.

  Ham pondered these things as he sawed back and forth with his cousin Jubal. They held onto a long, double-handled saw, first pulling and then pushing, as they cut a gopher-wood log in two.

  Normally to rough out and shape planks one used adzes and axes. A saw cut out a straight piece of timber every time, whereas splitting logs with axes, wooden wedges and mallets could result in twisted planks. A saw however cut through everything, even the direction or grain of wood, thus weakening a plank. And a saw was expensive and difficult to maintain. There were only three in the entire construction yard, and probably no more than another ten in their region of clan strongholds. Today they ripped through a beam of timber to create planks for stalls in the Ark.