Miriam and Menelaus Read online

  “No doubt she learned them all in the royal palace,” I said, as I tore my bread and stuffed the cheese inside. “She must have been raised there.”

  “She was raised among the Hebrew slaves,” he answered, as he poured the wine for us both. “I was adopted at birth by a royal princess, who sent for my sister to be my nursemaid. As I grew older, she had more time to study music and even foreign languages. Before we left Egypt, she learned midwifery, too. That makes her even more important to us.”

  Our conversation paused then as he gave thanks to his god for the bread and wine. We had separate deities…Ceres and Bacchus…for the grain and grape. But I could see that his way was more economical, because they needed to make sacrifices to only one.

  “I am sure that you will find your sister the finest husband,” I answered, when his prayer was through. “This Caleb will be a fortunate man.”

  “To Miriam and Caleb, then.” He lifted his earthenware cup. I copied the gesture, even though I found it hard to raise my hand in the toast. To Miriam and Menelaus, I thought. I only wish he were saying as much to our departing backs, as I took her back to the Argive camp with me. I shook my head impatiently. There was no sense in even thinking of this prince’s sister in that way.

  She did not look at all like a princess, and even less like a slave girl, when she came back through the tent flap. Her face, her hands and her gown were covered in blood, which had even gotten smeared into her hair. We men both looked down in sympathy, knowing how she must have gotten that way…bending down desperately over her patient, in a frantic effort to heal her.

  “Did you save the child?” Moses asked.

  “I lost them both,” she answered, in a calm tone, before she burst into tears. “The mother begged me to stop the blood from gushing out, but I could not do it. Then at the last, before she faded away, she pleaded with me to save the child, but I could not do that, either. I was so useless; I might as well have stayed away.”

  No, I thought, my wife, my queen, the most beautiful woman in the world, the one we are going to war for…she is the useless one. I could not imagine her going off to fight for a mother and child’s life, much less to weep after losing the hopeless battle. With her cheeks red with tears and her hair matted with blood, Miriam was more beautiful to me in that moment than Helen in all her face paint and finery.

  “You did what you could,” her brother assured her in an awkward tone, rising and coming around the table to press his hand on her shoulder. “God will bless you for that.”

  “God should have blessed that mother and child,” she answered bitterly.

  “Miriam!” he reproached her once again. “They died in freedom, and we must remember that.”

  “Will her husband and other four children remember it?” she asked bitterly.

  “It was God’s will,” he firmly replied.

  “You could not cut the baby out?” I asked. They both glared at me in revulsion.

  “That is what our physicians would have done,” I explained. “I did not know it was against your law.”

  “It is not,” Moses assured me. “We simply have never done it and do not know how. The physicians of Egypt must have known, but we had little to do with them.”

  “Machaon knows,” I said suddenly. “He is our chief physician and he could teach you that.” As she hesitated, I went eagerly on, “That and many other things. How to heal wounds so that they do not fester and how to cure the sick. Not always, of course, but often enough to make it a fair fight with death. Then you can go back and teach the other midwives and physicians to help you.”

  “We had great physicians in Egypt,” she retorted, apparently moved by some obscure national pride. “But they were priests and would hardly have taught a Hebrew slave, even in Pharaoh’s house. I learned only from the Hebrew midwives.”

  “Machaon is also a priest and wears the white robes to prove it,” I assured her, “but his father taught all who could learn, and he will do the same.”

  She looked up at Moses for approval. He hesitated for a long moment, knowing as well as I did that my offer was not entirely generous…that I wanted to see her for a few more days at least. But he put his people first, like the true prince he was, just as I had expected him to do.

  “Will it take many days?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Some of his teachings will be very simple. When you go from one patient to another, do you wash your hands?”

  “Should I?” she demanded. “Will my patients care how dainty my fingers are? Will it help them heal?”

  “Machaon and Achilles both say so.” Since the brother and sister now seemed more confused than ever, I explained, “Achilles is a famous warrior now, but they both studied to be physicians first, and with the same teacher. He was Machaon’s father, Asklepius.”

  Her eyes widened at that. Of course she would be overwhelmed, I thought bitterly. What woman would not be, at the great Achilles’ name? Even her brother seemed in awe, although for a different reason. But I soon realized that it was not the hero’s name that had impressed her.

  “We heard of Asklepius, in Pharaoh’s house,” he said eagerly. “God must have sent this great physician’s son to teach you.”

  For a moment, I was stunned at the sheer conceit…as though a thousand ships were coming here, so his sister could study medicine. I heard no arrogance, though, but only gratitude, and I pressed my advantage.

  “She could hardly find a better instructor,” I said. When he hesitated again for a moment, I went on, “and for a better purpose.”

  Chapter Two

  Before going to Machaon’s house, I had to pay my respects to Menelaus’ fellow rulers. He coached me carefully to remember that his brother, Agamemnon, was the first among them, as the King of Mycenae. He himself was the ruler of Sparta and Achilles the Crown Prince of Thessaly.

  Never mind how grand their titles were. In their simple log shelters, lit only by torches on the walls, they looked like the common soldiers we had passed along the way, and they behaved like them, too. I must admit, though, that after our wooden wagons, their shelters seemed fine enough to me.

  Agamemnon still seemed to consider me a slave girl, even after his brother had explained my true position to him. The Great King’s narrow black eyes stared at me as shamelessly as his followers had done, from out of his strange, wedge-shaped, goat-like face. They gave me the uneasy feeling that he would have taken me for himself as quickly as any common bowman would have done, if his younger brother had not been there to protect me.

  Achilles stood smirking, with his great square hands on his hips, as he threw back his lion’s mane of red-gold hair. He obviously assumed that I would have flung myself at his feet in rapture, if my royal companion had not been standing beside me. No doubt enough women had done so before.

  “And who is this lovely girl?” Agamemnon asked, his eyes growing even narrower in his goatish face.

  “A Hebrew woman who has come to learn medicine from our chief physician,” Menelaus answered.

  “She is beautiful enough to take Helen’s own place,” his brother said, and he seemed displeased at the thought. Helen’s husband soon explained why.

  “Don’t worry, Agamemnon,” he said, with a sigh. “We will take my queen back from the Trojans and control of the seas as well. This lady will not replace her as my wife.”

  Achilles was gazing at me steadily with his bright blue eyes. “She is still too beautiful to do a physician’s work,” he declared. Then he smiled in a way that made me realize, with some irritation, that he expected me to faint with joy at his praise.

  “But that is what she came here to do, Achilles,” Menelaus told him, and grasped my arm to lead me from the room. I did not think of resisting, since I felt well rid of them…and I am sure they felt the same way about me.

  * * * *

  The chief physician peered down at me from pale blue eyes, like Menelaus’ own. At first I rejoiced as I breathed i
n the sharp, clean scent of the medicinal herbs, unmixed with livestock and human sweat. I also noticed how neatly they were all set out in a row, as though awaiting the healer’s hand, rather than being jumbled together on a wagon shelf, as they were back in our Hebrew encampment. It all left me in awe of the great Argive physician.

  But he, in turn, seemed to feel little regard for me, as he stood gazing down. Seeing that, I decided that I had had enough of those great Argive lords staring at me like common street boys…or, even worse, like masters examining a newly purchased servant. So I am afraid I made a rude response of my own.

  “Are you trying to decide if you can teach a runaway slave girl?” I demanded.

  That brought a smile that made him look like a simple country lad, with his thatch of straw-like hair topping a long, thin face, which was even more badly sunburned than Menelaus’. Beneath his tunic, his legs seemed awkward and coltish. It all made me wonder if he were as great a healer as I had heard.

  “I plan to train our captive women to help me,” the physician confided, with a boy’s enthusiasm. “I can practice my teaching on you, so we will both benefit.”

  “Will you be able to trust them?” I asked, wondering if an Egyptian physician could have trusted me, once we had fled his country. Obviously, he had thought of that problem.

  “I will make them take an oath,” he said. “They will have to swear by Apollo to do no harm, but only good, to everyone they care for.”

  Needless to say, I would not swear by Apollo. But somehow those words impressed me with the sheer weight and purpose of what I was learning to do.

  Looking around at his spacious log room, where the empty beds were waiting, I wondered how I was to do it. Soon there would be patients in plenty, I feared…but for now, I saw not even a sign of wounds or illness.

  “There is no one here to care for now,” I said. He had to think about that for a moment, looking even more boyish as he knit his sun-bleached brows.

  “Menelaus!” he finally exclaimed. “Can you take the place of a wounded man, so I can show this girl how to treat one?”

  He had no need to ask me twice. The thought of her hands on my body was enough to send me practically jumping onto the bed, where I lay gazing up sadly at her, trying to seem like a wounded man indeed.

  “Now, this man has been carried in from the battlefield with a gaping wound in his thigh,” he said. Neither Miriam nor I could resist smiling at his description, little knowing that I would soon be in just that position for real. “What is the first thing you do?”

  “Pray to God for his healing.”

  “Yes, well,” he answered dryly. “You must do something else at the same time.”

  “Wash my hands?” I had heard of this custom of theirs, even though I did not understand it.

  “Exactly.” Noting my confusion, he went on firmly, “That is what my father taught us to do, and he was a great physician.” I bowed my head slightly, knowing that fathers must be respected.

  He nodded towards a bowl of water that stood on a side table, beside piles of woven bandages and healing herbs, which filled the air with their strange fragrance. As for the bandages, I had worn the same sort of wrapping during my monthly flow and was not surprised to realize that it would also be used to contain other forms of bleeding as well.

  When I dipped my hands into the water, I was greeted by his disapproving frown.

  “More carefully than that,” he said. Obediently, I submerged them and rubbed them together while counting to ten.

  “That will do,” he said, as I dried them on one of the cloth wrappings. “But you must make sure that the bandage you dry them on is also clean. My father taught me that, too. And what must you do next?”

  As I shook my head in confusion, he obviously fought to hide his impatience with me. Finally, he said, “You find out if he is still alive. Do you know how to do that?”

  “Well, if he is not moving or breathing…”

  “You do this,” he said shortly. Seizing my hand, he guided it to Menelaus’ neck.

  My fingers began to tremble as I felt the hard muscles beneath his warm skin. Making matters worse, the physician pressed my hand down as he ran my fingers across the Argive ruler’s throat, from jaw to collarbone, so that I felt every muscle in it. At last my instructor stopped triumphantly and held it in place.

  “Do you feel that?” he demanded. “You are touching the vein that will tell you if his heart is beating.”

  I tried to concentrate on counting the tiny, leaping throbs, while avoiding Menelaus’ eyes. I was very glad, then, that neither man was trying to gauge the pounding of my own heart.

  * * * *

  She is only trying to learn to help her people, I told myself sternly, as her fingers pressed against my neck. The stirring in my loins comes only from my manly weakness.

  If I want only to grasp her arms above those searching fingers and pull her down on top of me, that is only the natural, physical desire I feel, after being without a woman for so long. It is the furthest thing from her mind or her heart.

  But the truth comes to us in dreams. That night I dreamed of doing just that to her, and seeing her joy as she took her fingers from my throat and threw them around my neck. Her pleasure grew into ecstasy as I held her body pressed against mine.

  * * * *

  I dreamed of Menelaus that night…

  Once again, I was in my room in Pharaoh’s house. Ramses himself came to me with the Argive behind him, in his red plumed helmet, towering even above the great Egyptian king.

  “He is my guest,” Pharaoh informed me, as I clutched the soft spun cotton bedclothes to cover my chest. “You are to be my guest gift. Do you object?”

  I should have known it was a dream then, since the great emperor would never have asked my permission for anything. Instead, I said, “I do not object.”

  Pharaoh vanished then, as the Argive reached out to pull down my bedclothes and climb eagerly beside me. Lifting his heavy helmet in both hands, I managed to pull it off and set it on the floor beside me. He responded by drawing me into his muscular sunburned arms. My long hair fell across his forehead and his beard brushed my brow, until our red curls mingled together.

  Our chests were pressed together, too. His seemed as hard as bronze, and I hoped that my bosom was as soft as cushions against it. I lifted my mouth to his, closing my eyes to give myself fully to the firm pressure of his lips against mine.

  My eyes flew open as Moses came through the door, glaring at us both.

  “Let’s ignore him,” Menelaus urged, but I could not help shrinking beneath my brother’s angry gaze.

  “She is my guest’s gift,” Menelaus told him. “Pharaoh himself gave her to me.”

  “My sister is not your gift,” he proclaimed, all of his usual hesitancy gone.

  “Then she will be my queen!”

  At that, I knew it had to be a dream indeed and awakened suddenly, to find myself in the central room of Menelaus’ shelter. I had indeed heard his final, fateful words, while half awake. But even through the door, I knew it was his brother, not mine, who now answered them.

  “She cannot be your queen,” said Agamemnon, through gritted teeth that barely concealed his rage. “Your queen is Helen of Sparta…and the whole world will see it as weakness if you let her transform herself into Helen of Troy. No man’s property would be safe then. Even the Northern raiders would cross the sea for her.”

  “Then we will be ready for them!”

  Hearing his brother’s anger, Agamemnon took a more tactful tone.

  “This Miriam is a lovely girl, no question,” he conceded. “But we will capture scores of them…you may chose the finest, who will dance, sing and even heal the wounded as well as she could.”

  “I do not want another,” Menelaus answered stubbornly. Through my tight-shut eyes, I could imagine his square jaw jutting forward from beneath his curly red beard. “I will have Miriam as my queen.”

  I could not believe he had
said it…until, in that moment, I saw it all coming true. I was lying in his bed, standing by his side, sitting on the throne beside him, as the queen of Sparta and the bride of his heart. My brother might object, but he could not stop us, since I was already in Menelaus’ hands.

  But Menelaus’ own brother was much closer by.

  After a long silence, when I could well imagine the two kings glaring at each other behind the door, I heard Agamemnon speaking in a much lower, more reasonable tone.

  “Very well, then, you may keep her,” he said. “She cannot be your queen, of course, but we will say she is your first captive, taken from a gaggle of rebel slaves, who should all have been returned to bondage. They could have no thought of stopping us. That would show Argive strength and leave you free to welcome Helen back in any way you choose.”

  I could almost hear Agamemnon smile as he added, “You know our saying, brother…that a woman will forgive a man for anything after just one night with him.”

  The army of Egypt had faced this gaggle of slaves with no great success, I thought angrily, and was actually on the verge of bursting into the outer hall to tell him so. Menelaus stopped me by making another objection…and one that was much more worthy of the great king he was.

  “Would this show Argive honor?” he demanded. “Who would trust us then, if we treated a guest, and a student, that way? And who would then believe us when we blamed Paris for breaking the same laws of hospitality when he was my guest and took Helen from me?”

  I was very proud of him in that moment, and proud of myself for wanting him. Yet I admit I was disappointed, too.

  In my secret heart of hearts I had hoped that he would accept Agamemnon’s offer, taking away my guilt and shame by leaving me no choice. I could become Miriam of Sparta, without the disgrace that had followed my predecessor when she became Helen of Troy. An even greater difference was…Moses would not sacrifice our people to retrieve me.