Brothers Read online

  Praise for the novels of

  ANGELA HUNT

  “Prolific novelist Hunt knows how to hold a reader’s interest, and her latest yarn is no exception…Hunt packs the maximum amount of drama into her story, and the pages turn quickly. The present tense narration lends urgency as the perspective switches among various characters. Readers may decide to take the stairs after finishing this thriller.”

  — Publishers Weekly on The Elevator

  “Christy Award and Holt Medallion winner Hunt skillfully builds tension and keeps the plot well paced and not overly melodramatic.”

  — Library Journal on The Elevator

  “Angela Hunt has over three million copies of her award-winning novels in print today, and this poignant tale about breast cancer will only help to make the number rise. Jonah and Jacquelyn are both strong characters, and the medical terminology is well-written without confusing the reader. Both must learn to trust in a God they weren’t sure really cared about them anymore, and ultimately find that God’s grace will see them through.”

  — Romance Junkies on A Time to Mend

  “Only a skillful novelist could create such a multilayered, captivating portrait of Mary Magdalene…Hunt’s attention to detail in her historical research, combined with her bright imagination, fills in the sketchy biographical facts and creates a fascinating and convincing Magdalene. First-rate biblical fiction.”

  — Library Journal on Magdalene

  BROTHERS

  Angela Hunt

  www.millsandboon.com.au

  CONTENTS

  MANDISA

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  SHIM’ON

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  TIZARA

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  YAAKOV

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  IDOGBE

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Epilogue

  Questions for Discussion

  Bibliography

  Which of us has known his brother?

  Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?

  Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent?

  Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

  —Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel!

  MANDISA

  And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him,

  And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over

  Egypt and all his house.

  Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance.

  But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first.

  — Acts 7:9–12

  Prologue

  Thebes, Egypt

  Z aphenath-paneah, Father to Pharaoh and acting ruler of all Egypt, caught his breath as Queen Tuya lifted his hand and pressed it to her cheek. The hot, dry wind of the famine’s second year blew over the palace garden as the lovely woman struggled to frame an answer to his proposal of marriage.

  “Asenath is a lovely woman, and you have two fine sons,” she finally whispered, her eyes glinting with warmth. “You will not be happy loving one wife and offering kindness to the other.”

  A wave of relief flooded his soul. She was wise, his Tuya, but she had always been perceptive beyond her years. More than once in Potiphar’s house she had guided him away from foolish mistakes, helping him remember that he was no longer Yosef, the pampered son of Yaakov, but Paneah, a slave to an Egyptian. And even though he now ruled all Egypt at the young Pharaoh’s side, Tuya’s insight and love still sought the best for all.

  Curving his hand around her cheek, he pressed his lips together, not allowing himself to protest. The queen lowered her thick black lashes and from the corner of his eye, Yosef saw a servant enter the garden. He dropped his hand and turned, composing his face into dignified lines as the dark-haired slave hurried past the reflecting pools where lotus blossoms bloomed in abundance.

  The attendant fell at Yosef’s feet. “Life, health and prosperity to you, most noble and excellent vizier!”

  “Yes?”

  The man lifted his head a few inches from the pathway. “The steward of your house begs your indulgence and your pardon for this interruption. He waits outside Pharaoh’s gate to give you a message.”

  “A message?” Yosef asked, aware that Tuya had moved away. “What is of such importance that I must be interrupted when I am with the queen?”

  “Ten men from Canaan wait at your house to buy food,” the servant said, a note of apology in his voice. “Your steward says you would want to be told of them at once.”

  Yosef took a quick, sharp breath. “Ten Canaanites?”

  “From Hebron, my lord.”

  A thrill of frightened anticipation touched Yosef’s spine. “You were right to disturb me. Tell my steward I will join him in a moment.”

  As the servant leaped up and retreated, Yosef turned to say farewell to Tuya. But like the early part of his life, she had vanished amid the breathless beauty of a royal Egyptian garden.

  Chapter One

  “Y ou two! Come away from there!”

  Mandisa snapped her fingers at the two giggling slave girls who lingered in the doorway of the north loggia. With fewer manners than ignorant children, they had partially hidden themselves behind a pair of painted columns to gape at the dusty travelers milling about in the vestibule. At Mandisa’s rebuke, the two young ones bowed their heads in shame.

  Mandisa stepped forward to herd the girls away from the open doorway. “Ani will be far less gentle than I if he finds you away from the kitchen.”

  “But, my lady,” the first girl said, a glint of wonder in her eyes, “they are so strange a group! So much hair covers their faces!”

  “We were wondering—” the second slave lifted her fingers to her lips to suppress another giggle “—if they are as hairy all over. Look! Hair sprouts even from the throats of their garments!”

  Despite her best intentions, Mandisa cast a quick glance through the doorway. She was accustomed to seeing foreign dignitaries in the vizier’s vestibule, for since the advent of the famine representatives from all the world’s kingdoms had come to buy Egypt’s grain. But the men who now stood in the house wore neither the richly patterned garments of the Assyrians nor the carefully pointed beards of the Mitannis. They were clothed in the common woven garments and animal skins of herdsmen
. Compared to the shaven Egyptians, they were as hairy as apes, with hair to their shoulders and long, full beards.

  What madness had possessed Tarik when he allowed this rabble through the gates of the vizier’s villa?

  She dismissed the question; the steward undoubtedly had his reasons. “Not everyone lives as the Egyptians do,” she said, turning back to the ill-mannered slaves. She placed a firm hand on each girl’s shoulder. “Now away with you, get back to your work in the kitchen. If the vizier has agreed to meet these men, he may want to feed them, and you may be sure that hairy men are hungry men. So hurry back to your grinding, lest Ani or Tarik find you out here.”

  The two girls scurried away at the mention of the steward and the captain of the vizier’s guard. Mandisa smiled, grateful that her words carried weight with someone in the house. Lately her son Adom had balked both at her requests and her suggestions, reminding her again how stubborn twelve-year-olds could be.…

  She folded her hands, ready to seek her mistress, but paused outside the vestibule, curiosity overcoming her finely tuned instincts. The men beyond were like thousands of others who had come to Egypt in this second year of famine, so why had this particular group of Canaanites been invited to meet Egypt’s royal vizier?

  The strangers did not appear wealthy or highborn. Theirs were the faces of sunburned herders; they gripped their staves with broad and callused hands. Generous strands of gray ran through several of their heavy beards; only one or two possessed unlined faces. They stirred, their hands and eyes shifting as if at any moment they might have to reach for a knife or spear to defend themselves. With one look, anyone could see these unruly shepherds had run as wild as the wind since infancy.

  Mandisa bit her lip. She had seen men like these before. Her father and brothers were herdsmen. Like dogs, they marked their boundaries and charged any lion, bear or stranger who dared violate their territory. They, too, had habitually worn an uneasy look.

  Memories came crowding back like unwelcome guests and Mandisa closed her eyes, refusing to entertain them. Whoever these men were, they had nothing to do with her past or present. They would probably not be allowed to waste more than five minutes of the vizier’s valuable time.

  A snatch of their conversation caught her ear and Mandisa tensed, recognizing the Canaanite tongue. The sound stirred up other memories of a time before Idogbe the Egyptian carried her away from her clan. She reached for one of the pillars, steadying herself against the tide of strong emotions she could not stanch, then realized that the men in the room beyond had grown silent.

  “This Egyptian prince has pretty slaves, I will not deny that.” A sharp voice cut the silence as she opened her eyes. The man who had spoken stood apart from the others, his hands on his hips, a confident smile upon his face. An air of command exuded from him, and at the sound of his voice the entire group turned toward Mandisa.

  She ducked behind the column, her cheeks burning. She had not meant to be seen! They must think her as ill-mannered as the two slave girls. And she was not a slave, but a free woman and the personal maid to Lady Asenath.

  “Ah, you startled her,” another man said, a thread of reproach in his voice. “You should not be so brash, Shim’on. She will tell her master that we are brutes and then we shall never obtain what we have come for.”

  “We will, Levi, never fear,” the commanding man answered. “We will get our grain and leave Egypt as soon as we can. But what is the harm in admiring a pretty face while we are here?”

  Mandisa flew out of the hallway and flattened herself against the wall separating the vestibule from the north loggia. How foolish she had been, allowing these rough men to gawk at her. If they had not been ignorant foreigners, they would have known by her dress that she was no slave.

  She shuddered in humiliation. The powerful one who spoke had appraised her like a stockyard animal, then allowed his gaze to cling to her face as she burned in embarrassment.

  By all that was holy, she hoped these herders were guilty of robbery or treason. She’d love to see them squirm before her master. Especially the bold one who had propelled her into such an undignified and hasty retreat.

  Wrapping the rags of her fragile dignity about her, Mandisa peeled herself from the wall and went in search of her mistress.

  Chapter Two

  S him’on growled under his breath when another pair of stone-faced Egyptian guards entered the great hall into which he and his brothers had been escorted. Did they think the sons of Yisrael planned to steal the vizier’s treasures in broad daylight? They had come to buy grain, nothing more, and yet they had been yanked from the line outside the royal granary as if they were ten of the kingdom’s worst criminals. But criminals, he reflected, would not have been ushered into a villa fit for a king.

  A king, it seemed, was determined to have an audience with them. The ruling Pharaoh, twelve-year-old Amenhotep III, had not yet attained maturity, and everyone who entered the Black Land known to Canaanites as Mizraim learned that the acting regent was one called Zaphenath-paneah, a man so wise and gifted that the common people believed him to be a gift from the gods. Apparently this Zaphenath-paneah had either an extreme liking or distrust for men from Hebron, for as soon as the brothers told the royal scribe their father’s name and their place of origin they were accosted by guards and herded to the vizier’s palace.

  “Why do they stare at us?” Shim’on muttered, fastening his gaze to the cool faces of the smooth-skinned guards. “Do they think we are beasts?”

  “Who can tell what they are thinking?” Levi answered, his fists flexing behind his back. “They don’t speak our language, and they hide their feelings behind those painted eyes.” He whirled to face Re’uven, the eldest. “I tell you, Re’uven, we should not have gone to the granary together. We attracted too much attention, arriving in a large group.”

  “Be silent, Shim’on and Levi, and wait,” Re’uven said, planted like an oak on the tile floor.

  “How can you be so accommodating?” Shim’on lifted a fist. “We have done these people no harm. We have never even entered this cursed country before, and yet we were plucked from the mob and dragged away to face their almighty vizier. Why?”

  “Perhaps God is testing us,” Yehuda said, turning to face the others. He had been walking around the room, studying a detailed mural on the wall. The painting made no sense to Shim’on, for it depicted seven fat, healthy cows on the banks of the Nile. Shim’on hadn’t seen a fat cow in two years.

  Yehuda stopped before Re’uven and offered a smile. “You forget, brother. Though we have never made the journey to Mizraim, our great-grandfather Avraham once brought extreme sorrow upon Pharaoh’s head. I have often heard Father tell the story.”

  “But this vizier would know nothing of our forefathers!” Levi protested, joining the circle. “And we cannot be held accountable for some sin Avraham committed years ago.”

  “Yet God knows all.” Yehuda nodded toward Levi. “As He knows the hearts of all men. If the people are right and the spirit of God lies upon this vizier, perhaps he knows more than we think. Perhaps he even knows what happened…at Dotan.”

  A palpable chill moved through the group. Shim’on felt it, and resisted. “We did nothing wrong at Dotan,” he said, his mood veering from irritation to anger.

  “Have you forgotten that we sold our brother to a caravan bound for the Black Land?” Yehuda went on, his voice hardening. “To Egypt, my brothers. Our brother, if God wills that he still lives, is a slave in this land. Perhaps in this very house.”

  “Our brother, ” Levi spat the word, “is certainly dead. Yosef was too proud to survive as a slave. Can one who imagines that the moon and stars must bow to him survive long under the whip? You cannot seriously believe that a man as great as this vizier—” he waved at the ornate columns covered with ornamental inscriptions “—would endure the insolence of our favored brother.”

  “Levi is right,” Shim’on snapped. His voice, like his nerves, was in ta
tters. The unendurable frustration of waiting had destroyed what little satisfaction he felt when they finally reached their destination. “Yosef is gone. Instead of worrying about the past, we should discuss how we shall answer this vizier.” Sarcasm laced his voice as he turned to Yehuda. “And I would not worry, brother, about the power of the vizier’s god. The spirit of God Almighty is far from this heathen land. Did you see their temples, their stone idols?”

  “The Almighty does not dwell in houses made with human hands—” Yehuda looked at Shim’on with a wry but indulgent glint in his eyes “—but in the hearts of men. How do you know that this vizier does not hear God’s voice?”

  “Because El Shaddai chose us! ” Levi thumped his chest. “We are the people of the Almighty. We, the sons of Yisrael, are the chosen ones. Shim’on is right, we have nothing to fear from this Egyptian. He has no supernatural power.”

  “His natural power concerns me most.” Re’uven nodded for emphasis. “He commands Pharaoh’s army. At this moment a host of guards wait outside to answer his bidding. He has the power to put all of us in prison, and without the grain he controls, our little ones will starve. Think, brothers, before you speak rashly in his presence.”