Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) Read online

  Nor did Abraham believe there would be fifty. “I know I don’t have the right to ask, being nothing but dust and ashes before the Lord, but what if the city comes only five short of fifty righteous men? Wilt thou destroy the city for lack of five?”

  “If I find forty-five righteous souls, I won’t destroy it.”

  “Please don’t be angry,” said Abraham, “but . . . what about forty?”

  And so it went, until Abraham had bargained all the way down to ten. And the visitor said, “I will stay my hand and spare the city for the sake of ten.”

  With that, the visitor arose. Abraham offered him no food, nor did they embrace. But Abraham looked long after the man as he walked away.

  “Was that the Lord?” asked Sarah, not wishing to disturb Abraham’s reverie, but less able to wait a moment longer without asking.

  “A messenger,” said Abraham. “But he spoke with the authority of God.”

  “Will he find ten righteous souls in Sodom?” asked Sarah.

  “Let’s pray, for Sodom’s sake, that he does.”

  “When will we know?” asked Sarah.

  “If the city is destroyed, it will be no secret,” said Abraham.

  “And while we wait,” said Sarah, “when is this other miracle supposed to happen?”

  Abraham came and took her by the hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if we’re going to have a son a year after the covenant, there’s no time to lose.”

  Chapter 21

  Qira normally paid no attention to what Lot did, since he was always more concerned with the flocks and herds outside the city than with anything going on inside. But this was hardly the time to receive visitors.

  “You know how dangerous it is on the streets after dark,” said Qira. “If your visitors are foolish enough not to arrive in daylight, then let them take their chances outside the city.”

  Lot only looked at her with the cool, distant expression he might use to gaze at a recently-stepped-on roach. She saw that face so often these days that she avoided speaking to him at all, when she could. But Lot was her husband, and if he was so disconnected from the city that he didn’t know what had been happening lately, she had to warn him. Not that Lot himself was in any danger—everyone knew that he was under the protection of the king. But that protection meant less and less these days.

  The war with Chedorlaomer had changed everything. During the time when the king and the richest men had been in captivity, the worst sort of men had ruled in the city, and those days had been terrible, with all sorts of vengeance-taking that left many men dead in the streets. And as the riotousness in the streets went on, the murders began to include more and more women—most of them killed, it was rumored, by their husbands or their husbands’ friends, which struck terror in the hearts of many wives. Not Qira, of course. Lot had no reason to wish her dead. The wives who were murdered during those days of chaos were rumored to be the ones who had tried to interfere with their husbands’ friendships. Since Lot had no friends in the city, Qira had nothing to worry about.

  When the king and the leading citizens returned, they found it impossible to get the streets back under control. The king came up with the bright idea of creating bands of citizen-soldiers to patrol the streets by night, and this became quite a popular idea—there was hardly a man of any stature in the city who did not join one of the patrols. Lot, of course, refused to take part, saying that the patrols were not going to be much help to public safety.

  Which turned out to be the case, to Qira’s surprise. The patrols looked so fine when they paraded by day, each group with its own costume, competing with each other in their finery. But by night, the killings did not stop, though the choice of victims changed. The victims now seemed to be foreigners or low-class men who ventured out after dark. Word soon spread that the killings had been done by the patrols themselves in their effort to keep the streets “safe,” but the victims were hardly dangerous. And darker rumors began to spread. “The patrols chase them,” said Qira’s friend Jashi. “For sport.”

  “Sport?” said Qira. “Like hunting gazelles?”

  “And when they catch them,” said Jashi, curling her mouth in disgust, “they use them up.”

  Qira had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t want to ask and appear foolish. So she nodded knowingly and then, later, asked her handmaid what such a thing might mean—for she knew that the servants talked among themselves.

  “Mistress, they use them for pleasure,” said the girl, “and then for pain.”

  This was hardly more information than Jashi had given. But when Qira pressed for more information, the girl became so frightened and upset that Qira gave up. Servants were useless for anything really important.

  Whatever they were doing, the patrols were getting bolder every day. Naturally, men who were not in the patrols had stopped venturing out after dark, so the patrols had begun going to the homes of foreigners and dragging the men out in order to chase them. But when the king demanded an accounting, the leaders of the patrols denied any knowledge of the event, even when the women of the house identified them by name. The members of each patrol simply gave their oaths to the king that they had been patrolling in a different part of the city and had seen nothing like what the women described. What could be done? Apart from the king’s bodyguard, he had no army except for the very men who were in the patrols. And each patrol was sponsored by a leading citizen. There was hardly a man of any stature in Sodom who was not involved with one patrol or another.

  “My husband hates it,” said Jashi. “But when I tell him that he should quit, he looks at me as if I were stupid and says, ‘In this city, you’re either a hunter or the prey.’ Well, I’m not either one, that’s what I tell him, and he says, ‘You don’t even exist in this city,’ which I find offensive, I must say. Didn’t I push him into the friendships that led him to membership in the most prestigious of the patrols? Some of the patrols may do nasty things, but the streets are safe by night, and no more women are being killed. And boys will be boys. We women have to look the other way, that’s all there is to it.”

  Qira knew well that Jashi was right. Just like tonight. Qira could warn Lot that it would not do to bring visitors into the city, but if he was so vain as to think that his personal prestige in the city would protect them if he flaunted them right out in the open, well, what could Qira do about it?

  How did he know these visitors were coming, anyway? As far as she knew, there had been no messenger. He just seemed to know, suddenly, that travelers were coming and that he had to go meet them at the gate of the city.

  Lot had been gone for hours, and the sun was just setting, when a servant called Qira to the door. It was a man in the costume of the same patrol that Jashi’s husband was in, though he was a young man, and Qira didn’t know him.

  “Mistress Qira,” said the young man, “they’d kill me if they knew I came here, please tell no one.”

  “How could I? I don’t know who you are.”

  “Everyone’s very angry at your husband. He says he’s waiting for visitors to come to him, but he won’t say who they are. There’s a lot of talk about how Lot is flouting the authority of the king’s patrols, and it’s time to show him that he doesn’t rule in Sodom.”

  “What can I do? He doesn’t listen to me.”

  “Don’t let him bring these visitors here tonight. There’s talk of taking them, if he doesn’t give them up.”

  “But . . . we’re citizens!”

  “There’s talk about how you aren’t really citizens. You’re from Ur-of-the-North, and he’s a Hebrew.”

  “But it was because of Lot that Sodom was saved from Chedorlaomer!”

  “That was thirteen years ago,” said the young man. “When I was four. The men don’t care about that now. They don’t like the way Lot thinks he’s better than everybody else. They aren’t grateful, they hate him.”

  This was worse than Qira had feared. “But if everyone hates him, why are you here?”<
br />
  The young man wanted to leave, she could see that. And he didn’t want to tell her. But still he stayed, and with his face twisted as if the words hurt to speak them, the young man said, “When I was a boy and the patrols were just starting, my father used to share me with the other men. It hurt but I couldn’t even cry because my father would beat me if I didn’t smile and say I liked it. And then one day Lot and some of his servants came to my father’s house. I don’t know what he said or did, but my father stopped lending me to his friends. In fact, he left me alone himself after that. Tell your husband the warning came from a boy he saved once.”

  Qira watched as the boy darted away from the house, then closed the door and had a servant bar it. Moments later she thought better of that. She called the servant back to the door and made him open it. “Leave it standing open,” said Qira, “and stand here to watch for the master.” Then Qira went through the house and sent several more servants to the door to stand watch there. “Be ready to close and bar the door behind him.”

  All the while, Qira pondered what the young man had said. She had heard that young boys often were included in the men’s parties, but it had never occurred to her that they might not be there willingly. And Lot, who seemed oblivious to what went on in the city—he had found out, somehow, and intervened to protect a boy whose family Qira didn’t even know. Surely Qira would have heard a rumor about such an event. Unless the boy’s father simply never talked about what had passed between them.

  But Lot should have told her. She was his wife, after all. Besides, it was a foolish thing for Lot to be doing. What if he tried such a thing with someone who was dangerously powerful? It might have had repercussions for Qira and for their two youngest daughters, did Lot think of that? It was bad enough that he would not allow the girls to entertain any suitors. “I won’t allow any more of my girls to marry men of Sodom or any of the cities of Siddim,” he said. Qira had wept and howled and vilified him for that. “The older girls have married perfectly respectable young men of good families!” she cried, but that did no good—Lot had taken it into his head to hate his sons-in-law, even though they were always perfectly respectful to him. He was so judgmental, condemning perfectly nice people just because they went to parties and didn’t bring their wives. Arguing had done no good. Lot remained adamant—his youngest girls were going to marry Hebrew men, or perhaps men of Salem. Well, Qira wouldn’t hear of that, either—she hadn’t raised these girls to be the wives of shepherds, or to live in some mountain village. They were still in the midst of that particular war, and the poor girls cried themselves to sleep as often as not. They were getting old enough that it was a little scandalous they weren’t yet married.

  The sky was almost dark when, finally, she heard the servants at the door speak in greeting. Qira rushed to the door, meaning to tell Lot at once about the young man’s warning, but Lot had no interest in talking to her. All he seemed to care about was the two visitors. Qira didn’t know them, and they didn’t look like anybody important—their clothing was very plain, the costume of poor men, not merchants at all. And when one of them stopped and looked at her for a moment, his eyes were very disturbing. He seemed to see right into her, and to pity her. Which made her furious. She tilted her chin in disdain and looked away from him.

  Looked, in fact, right into Lot’s face. There was no pity in him. He was looking at her, not with that distant who-stepped-on-this-bug expression, but with open contempt.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your guests?” said Qira archly.

  “You’ve never heard of them,” said Lot, “and neither have your friends, so it wouldn’t matter.” He ushered the men into the room where he talked business, and closed the door.

  Well, so much for the young man’s warning. Qira couldn’t help it if her husband was so rude to his wife that he didn’t even give her a chance to speak. Let him find out the hard way.

  Only a few moments later, however, Qira realized that the young man’s warning was more important than her anger at the contemptuous way Lot had treated her. He had spoken of a patrol breaking into the house, and that put them all in danger. Even if Lot didn’t care what danger he brought to the house, Qira did. She’d knock on his door and make him deal with her.

  But as she passed the front door of the house, she heard a commotion outside, and something banged against the door. The old servant at the door opened the small viewport and turned back to her, shaking his head. “There’s no one there,” he said.

  “Open it and see if someone left something,” said Qira. “I heard something strike the door.”

  The servant unbarred the door. At once it fell open as if someone were pushing on it, and when the servant stepped back, a man fell partway into the entry hall. He was naked, and skin had been stripped away from his flesh on his arms and chest. His eyes were open and something bloody was in his mouth and Qira couldn’t understand why he didn’t spit it out and say something.

  And then she understood after all. He was dead.

  It was the young man who had warned her.

  She screamed.

  At once Lot and the visitors rushed out, and Lot ordered the servants to get the body out of the doorway. Qira started to tell him who it was, what the young man had said, but Lot cut her off. “I know him,” he said. And then his eyes turned to the doorway. For there was someone there.

  Qira stepped to where she could see what Lot was looking at.

  It was the patrol that the young man had belonged to—the same costumes. But there were the costumes of at least two other patrols there, also, and Qira could see torches burning far enough away that it seemed as though all the men of Sodom had gathered in the street outside their house. The men nearest the door were smiling. Some were young, some middle-aged, some old—but their faces were all the same, their eyes glistening in the light of the torches some of them held, an intensity of expectation on their faces. Like hungry men looking at a feast. Like cats who have spotted a rat.

  “We hear you have visitors,” said one of the men. “Our job is to keep the peace here. Bring them out, so we can know them.”

  Qira looked up at Lot, to see what he would say. He seemed to be considering what the man had said, and he half-turned, as if to give an instruction to the servants. But instead, he slammed the door shut and dropped the heavy bar into place. His movement came suddenly enough that the men outside had no time to react before the bar was in place; but it terrified Qira, the force with which they slammed against the door and pounded on it. A great shout went up from the men in the street, and then the babble of many voices crying out.

  Lot stood there looking at the visitors, who looked back at him wordlessly.

  “That young man tried to warn us,” said Qira. “I would have told you, but you didn’t bother to give me a chance to speak.”

  Outside the door, snatches of the shouting could be distinguished from the general tumult.

  “Letting spies into the city!”

  “Hebrew traitor!”

  “Too proud to let us court your daughters!”

  “Never a true man of Sodom!”

  Lot turned to Qira, but it was as if he hadn’t heard a thing she said. “Bring the girls here,” he said.

  “What for?” said Qira.

  Lot turned to one of the servants and repeated the order.

  One of the visitors spoke. “We’re in no danger, Lot.”

  “You don’t know these patrols,” said Lot. “This is a city of monsters now.”

  “No,” said the man sadly. “It’s a city of men.”

  “I will not let them take you,” said Lot. “I’ll die first, I and everyone in my house.”

  “I tell you, Lot, they can’t hurt us.”

  The servant reappeared with the girls following.

  Lot opened the viewport. “Stand away from the door,” he shouted. “Let me come out to you.”

  There was more shouting outside the door, but after a few moments Lot was satisfi
ed. He unbarred the door. “Close it and bar it after me, and don’t open it unless I say. No matter what they do to me.”

  “Lot,” said the visitor, “you don’t need to—”

  But Lot was already through the door, and it closed behind him.

  Qira could hear him as the girls came close to her, frightened by the noise even though they hadn’t seen the tortured body of the young man. Qira held their hands.

  They could hear Lot speaking loudly to the crowd outside. “My brothers of Sodom, I beg you, don’t do this terrible thing.”

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the leader. “We only want to do our duty and find out whether these men are dangerous to the safety of Sodom.”

  Qira looked at the visitors. Whoever they were, if they had any decency they would go out themselves and answer whatever questions the patrols had. By staying here inside the house they were exposing the whole family to danger. Lot couldn’t make them do it, because he had taken them as guests. But they could take the decision out of his hands, if they weren’t so selfish and cowardly. She glared at them, but they looked at her as coolly as if she didn’t exist.