The Watershed

Next morning, Amaal and Hannu joined a boat going ashore. No sooner had they stepped onto the sand than Hannu stopped in his tracks, his gaze fixed on a lone figure trudging toward them from down the beach.

“Why…it’s Uru!”

He ran toward her. She burst into tears the moment she saw him. Hannu hugged her and stood back to give her room to speak. Her eyes were swollen and rimmed with red.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “I thought you stayed in Tyre.”

Uru’s hands trembled as she signed, “I came on the last boat. The one out there, beyond the harbor.”

Amaal and Hannu looked at each other in horror. “What were you doing on that ship?” he asked.

“The other ships had already gone. Mom wouldn’t let me go, so… so I ran away. She doesn’t even know I’m here! She’ll be so worried!” Uru fell into a torrent of tears. Hannu took her in his arms and held her until she stopped sobbing. She stepped back and signed, “I thought I’d never find you.”

“Well, here we are.” A reassuring tone came into his voice, one that Amaal hadn’t heard before. “Did those people on that boat bother you? Did they touch you?”

Uru shook her head as if to rid herself of a bad memory.

“Are you sure?” he insisted.

“There are bad people on that ship, Hannu. I hid behind a stack of cargo all night and all day yesterday. Last night I jumped overboard and swam ashore.”

“You swam ashore?”

“I slept on the beach. I haven’t had anything to eat since Tyre.”

“Well, there’s loads of food for you here,” Hannu said.

He took his cousin by the hand and walked her into town. He knocked on the first door they came to and pointedly asked the woman of the house for a bite to eat for his hungry cousin. Amaal was surprised by Hannu’s noble transformation. The woman gave them dates stuffed with chopped almonds and oranges from the tree in her yard. She advised them to stick together and pointed them in the direction of the market square. They ate the dates along the way and joined the crowd gathering for the meeting with the Queen. They sat on a step next to the Nursemaid who had been brought with some effort from the Phoenix. Amaal offered her a piece of orange, sure she would wave it off, but the old crone took it and sucked it noisily as the meeting began.

Bitias and Barca and the captains of the four ships waited on the top step of a public building while a local priest made a smoky offering at the market shrine. The priest prayed loudly that the decisions of the people should align with those of the gods. He also asked the gods to bless the continuance of the voyage, which many took to mean that the Kitions were looking forward to their guests’ speedy departure.

Barca raised his hand and quieted the crowd. He spoke in a clearly articulated shout, one that might be used to organize troops. “To build a city takes more than a queen and a handful of ships. We need to identify who you are and what you can do. There have been some changes overnight. Some passengers from Tyre have decided not to continue…”

The people turned to one another, asking who had reached such a decision.

“…and,” he added forcefully, “some people from Kition want to join us.”

The titter of excitement sounded through the crowd.

“Listen up! Let’s get down to business. I understand there are two carpenters among us. Is that correct?”

“No,” a man shouted, “I’m the only one. The other has decided to stay in Kition.”

Another voice called out, “I’m a carpenter from Kition, and I’d like to join you.”

“Do you have tools?” the Tyrian carpenter asked.

“I do!”

“Then, by all means, come with us!”

The Kition carpenter made his way through the crowd, and they greeted one another with manly slaps on their brawny backs.

Barca continued. “Stone masons, raise your hands.”

The masons, an older man at one side of the crowd and two young apprentices at the other, spotted one another and drifted together to form a team.

People started calling out.

“I build carts and wheels!”

“I kept the royal honeybees!”

“I make sandals, but I’ll need leather!”

“I managed the King’s stables!”

“I’m the palace accountant!”

Vohu Manah, the escape artist, indicated that he was good with knots and latches.

Barca held up his hand and called out, “Who among us knows cures and healing?”

No one replied. The people looked around at one another and whispered among themselves.

“How can we go on without a healer?”

“What if someone gets sick or injured—or bitten by a snake?”

“Doesn’t anyone here know medicinal plants?”

“Or tinctures? Or poultices?”

As the agitation grew, one woman anxiously called out, “Who will attend the women in childbirth?”

Again, Barca called for order, but the crowd was starting to lose focus. Above the din, he called for metal smiths. One raised his hand but said he couldn’t continue if there was no healer. “I am responsible for my wife and three young children,” he said. “I’ve already put their lives at risk by taking them from Tyre. Now,” his voice cracked, “I can’t endanger them further by traveling with no healer.”

When they heard it put that way, others in the crowd were swept away on a wave of doubt. Having spent the night debating the wisdom of following a runaway queen into an uncertain future, they drew the line at continuing without a healer. They followed the smith and his family to the outer edges of the crowd, heartbroken that their dream had been crushed but, truth be told, relieved at least to be in friendly, familiar Kition.

Despite the dwindling numbers, Barca continued to organize the crowd: the royal gardeners, originally two in number but minus one who had joined the carpenters; father and son glass blowers, the royal vintner, a perfume distiller, a good number of musicians, and, of course, the sailors, each of whom possessed a wealth of useful maritime skills that might be brought ashore in the new settlement. He counted many aristocrats and other members of the palace household among the passengers, as well as several wealthy merchants who had risked prison or death by throwing their support to Elishat and who now formed her inner circle. The problem was, they had no applicable skills. The elites knew how to run a city, but they had no idea how to build one. Who among them could have imagined such a thing? The city of Tyre had already stood off the coast of Canaan for a thousand years by the time any of these folks were born. Whoever had planned it, insomuch as it had been planned, was already long-gone ages ago.

As Amaal listened to the proceedings, it occurred to her that someone was missing. Gader was nowhere to be seen. She stood up to get a better view of the elites who were huddled near Barca. Gader was not among them. She sat down again and leaned over to the Nursemaid, “Didn’t Gader come with us?”

The Nursemaid slowly shook her head. “A great loss,” she said.

Amaal stared into the crowd. “How are we going to remember all of this without the Keeper of the Flame.”

The old woman put her hand on Amaal’s arm. “Yes,” she said, pleased that someone had remembered, “He was Keeper of the Flame.”

They were interrupted by the bellowing of the stonemason who had swooped Uru up onto his shoulder where everyone could see her. “We have someone important here!” A cheer went up from the crowd. In Uru, the secret of the famous purple dye would travel with them to the new settlement. She was none too happy to have been swept off her feet, but she could see that people were pleased to have her there, so she put on a pleasant face.

From somewhere in the crowd a sailor called out, “Barca, we need women!”

“We’ll go!” three young sisters giggled from the doorway of a nearby shop.

“Oh no, you won’t!” their father barked.

The crowd laughed, and before Barca could quiet them, another woman called out. “My sister and I will go!” She indicated the woman standing next to her. “Our parents have passed away, may the gods bless them in death, and we have no other family here in Kition. Our father made mud brick ovens and taught us how to build them. Perhaps our skills could be of use.”

“Bring your skills—and all of your woman friends!” shouted the sailor.

Barca raised a hand and hushed the crowd. “We sail tomorrow morning. All passengers report to the harbor at first light to load the—”

“And where are we going, Queen?” a man’s voice boomed from the edge of the crowd. Everyone turned to see the stranger with his arms folded across his chest. He was tall, well-built, with a trim black beard, an aquiline nose, piercing dark eyes, and a scar on his cheek that told of a fight long ago. His companions, underfed, rumpled, hungover, slouched nearby. People moved away from him as though they had detected an unpleasant odor.

“Where are you taking us, Queen?” he snarled. “My sailors and I want to know.”

An anonymous voice on Elishat’s side called out, “Not every man who pulls an oar can be called a sailor!”

The crowd grumbled and whispered that these must be the men from the rogue ship that had been following them. Barca started to speak, but Elishat waved him off. She set her hands firmly on her hips. “Tondo! What business do you have here?”

The mention of the name drew a murmur of puzzlement from the crowd. The Nursemaid heard it and insisted on being helped to her feet to witness the exchange. Amaal stood close by to steady her.

“This is chaos!” Tondo said. “You have no plan and no power!”

The pitch of Elishat’s voice rose along with the color in her face. “It is not lost on me, Tondo, that in this so-called ‘chaos,’ every person here has identified a skill that they wish to bring to the new settlement, while you and your crew have offered absolutely nothing.”

“Settlement! What settlement? There is no settlement! You are homeless! Wandering aimlessly! There is nothing for you out there!” He pointed in the direction of the Great Sea. “Moreover, Queen, you have forsaken Tyre and the Tyrian people.”

“I have given my all to Tyre!”

Tondo scoffed. “You never truly sacrificed anything!”

“What would you have me do?”

“Return to Tyre and fight for the throne!”

“With what army, Tondo? My brother would have had me and my people murdered had we not fled Tyre.”

“You abdicated before you even tried.”

“You have no claim here, Tondo. Leave us alone!”

“Whether I have a claim or not remains to be seen.”

“Fine! If you believe you have a claim, you go and fight for the throne. What are you waiting for? Acerbas is dead! Go! Raise an army against Pumayyaton, and he’ll kill you, too!”

The old crone cackled loudly, and the confused crowd turned to her. “Acerbas may be dead…” she squawked, pointing her crooked finger at Tondo, “but this…this is his legacy!” To Elishat, she said, “If you are truly queen, Elishat, let the truth be told!”

Someone in the crowd shouted, “Truth? What truth?”

“Yes, what truth? Tell us the truth!”

“This man, Tondo…,” the Nursemaid screeched, “…is the son of Acerbas! Born out of wedlock long before Elishat and her brother were born!”

It took a moment for the information to sink in. Acerbas, by order of birth the intended king of Tyre, had a son, Tondo, who stood before them. Now they saw how much he resembled his father. It took another minute for them to grasp that Tondo therefore had a legitimate claim to the throne. His proposal to Elishat, his cousin, to return to Tyre and take control of the city was not the tirade of a bully or a madman but a sober attempt to secure his birthright.

“Enough!” Elishat shouted. “You may have claim to the throne in Tyre but here, among my people, you have no power. Be gone, and take your ruffian crew with you.”

The flustered queen withdrew from the market square, and her entourage followed, leaving a stunned crowd to make sense of what they had just heard. The Nursemaid leaned in and patted Amaal’s arm. “With this family, trust me, child, the drama never ends.”

← Chapter 19 | Chapter 21 →