Beloved Gomorrah Read online

  Synopsis

  What if Sodom and Gomorrah, those synonyms for debauchery, were in fact perfect societies? What if the avenging angels were genocidal terrorists, and the “one righteous man” who escaped the annihilation was a murderous fanatic and the rapist of his own daughters? Justice is a long time coming, but finally the serene waters of the Red Sea give up the secret of a millennia-old lie. While surrendering to biblical wantonness with a film actress, sculptor Joanna Boleyn, discovers that righteousness can conceal its own depravity, that art tells more truth than scripture, and that challenging authority can be mortally dangerous.

  Beloved Gomorrah

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  Beloved Gomorrah

  © 2013 By Justine Saracen. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-901-5

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: March 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Cover Photo By Jean-Marie Lefebvre

  By the Author

  The 100th Generation

  Vulture’s Kiss

  Sistine Heresy

  Mephisto Aria

  Sarah, Son of God

  Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

  Beloved Gomorrah

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to acknowledge all the divers who have acted as technical advisors for this novel, especially Riccardo Preve, Dawn Williamson, and Yves Leflot, who explained how to kill someone underwater without being caught. (In the event of my sudden and unexpected death while diving, these three should be the first suspects.)

  I’d also like to thank Philippe LeDoux, who lured me into diving in the first place, Gilbert Collins, who guided me through the frigid outdoor waters of Belgium, and Charlie (Top Gun) Hernie, who whetted my appetite for shipwreck-diving and then accompanied me down to the magnificent wreck of the Thistlegorme. I owe a special salute to Georges Guillaume who organized our diving trips to the Red Sea two years in a row and is far nicer than he is portrayed in this story.

  Shelley Thrasher must surely know how valuable she is to me, this being our seventh novel together, but she is also a friend and a scuba diver, and one day I hope to collaborate with her on a dive. Thanks to Sheri for another deliciously dramatic cover (with fire and water, this time) and most of all, thanks to Radclyffe for being our Prime Mover and éminence grise.

  Dedication

  To the Wolu Plongée Club

  And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. …And they entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door. …And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. …And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

  Genesis 19: 1-11 King James Version, 1769

  Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. …And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow. …And Lot went up…and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; …and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger. …Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that…the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

  Genesis 19: 24-36 King James Version, 1769

  Prologue

  Ezion-Geber, later Aqaba, Jordan

  Roused from sleep by the banging at his door, Maneshtu did not have his wits about him when he opened it. And thus he stood perplexed by the sight of two young women cowering in the doorway each carrying an infant.

  “Forgive us, sir, for the intrusion and this late hour. We come in secret from our husbands, and no other time is possible.”

  “In secret?” he repeated, his befuddlement deepening. But for lack of better wisdom, he bade them enter, raising the wick on his lantern the more to see them. Drawing them to his table, he offered water, but they declined. “For what reason, may I ask…” He struggled for a polite way to inquire why they had disturbed the sleep of an old man.

  The one who seemed the older of the two spoke first. “Again, we beg forgiveness for this imposition, but our cause is just. We implore you, hear us out.”

  “Yes, dear lady. I do so willingly.” The old scribe leaned forward on his elbows.

  “I am Astari.” She held her infant close so that he slept. “And this is my sister Aina. We are the daughters of Lot, the son of Haran, who is the brother of Abraham.”

  “Yes, I have heard of Abraham and of his nephew Lot.”

  Astari said, “We fled from Gomorrah before it was destroyed and came to live in Zoar. There we met men who revered the One God, and hearing of the destruction of our city, they took us into their households, not knowing of our condition, and shortly we were espoused to them. They are merchants who do business in Ezion-Geber.”

  He urged her on, trying to draw some wisdom as to how Gomorrah and “our condition” were connected to the secrecy of the visit.

  “All was well in our new home, but within a two-month time Lot came unto Zoar with condemnation and forgiveness in one breath. For he gave report of how we were with child with his own seed, but that it was we who forced ourselves upon hi
m. It was an evil tale, and our husbands gathered up stones to bring judgment against us. We were spared the stoning when Lot raised his hands and proclaimed it the will of God. The people took him at his word, for he was the nephew of Abraham, whom they held for righteous above all other men.”

  She said “righteous” with venom, which stirred his curiosity. Maneshtu was nothing if not a judge of tales and the way they were told. This one had the ring of truth. “Dear ladies, why do you come to me, a stranger, and not to one of your own people?”

  “Our own people will not hear us. But it is said that Maneshtu is wise and much trusted in the courts. The tribe of Abraham is growing strong and they proclaim the judgment of Gomorrah, yet we would bear witness here, with you, that the tale is false.”

  “Gomorrah.” Maneshtu scratched under his chin. “Men say it was destroyed, and Sodom too, for the people’s iniquity.”

  “No, teacher. That is a slander as great as the one that taints ourselves. Truly, it was the fairest of cities—a place of sages, shopkeepers, and honest men. Gomorrah was a crossroads. Its caravanserai sheltered merchants passing through from Egypt and Damascus. They haggled in the marketplace and said their prayers in many languages. The city had temples to Dagon, El, Anat, Ba’al, and Moloch, and shrines to all the lesser gods.”

  “Indeed, that is a rare thing,” Maneshtu said, and the young woman shrugged.

  “Our father called them idolaters, yet his own wife, our mother who was born in Gomorrah, was a follower of Anat. She renounced the goddess and converted to the True Faith upon her marriage to our father.”

  “A place of great freedom, then.” Maneshtu furrowed his graying brow. “Perhaps too much freedom. I heard talk of depravity as well, of men who lay wantonly with men and women with women.”

  “Yet more slander, teacher, by those with no understanding of the old ways, where family was more than kith and kin, and one might join by affection alone. Our mother had such a lover, whom she met at the fountain every day. It was a tender and enduring thing, not wanton at all, though it much enraged our father. He called her “daughter of Eve” and beat her for it, but she held fast to her love in spite of him. We too longed to have a companion in this way.”

  “But then the angels came.” The younger woman spoke for the first time and with a certain melancholy. “And they told us this was an abomination in the eyes of the One God.”

  Astari interrupted gently. “But we would not burden you with tales of our youth. We wish only to leave a true account of Lot and the cities of the plain, so that one day, when the story is widely told, you or another can say, ‘No, this tale is false, for here is the word of the maids themselves.’”

  Maneshtu scratched his beard, uncertain.

  “Teacher, we are prepared to pay. Our husbands prosper, and we have saved money from our allowances.” The young woman untied a small cloth from her waist and poured out four pieces of silver. “We need only a few hours of your time.”

  The silver pieces glimmered in the candlelight, and Maneshtu made up his mind. “Let me fetch some clay and cut a new stylus.”

  While he gathered his tools, the child of Astari began to whimper, and she stood up. “Forgive me, teacher, but my son Moab cries for hunger. With your permission, I will go into the other room to let him suckle. My sister can tell her tale, and when she is finished, I will tell mine.”

  *

  At the end of two hours, the tales were told. Maneshtu took his payment, led the two young women to the door, and bade them farewell. Mechanically, he threw the bolt into the lock and returned to his worktable, shaking his head in amazement. Fifty years he had carried on his craft, and thirty of those years he’d kept a library, but he had never been called upon for a task such as this.

  He raised the wick on the lantern a second time, for his eyes were weary. Then, careful to protect the still-damp clay, he reread the cuneiform texts he had so carefully incised. The tale seemed fanciful, yet both the women’s voices held a somber conviction. He himself was a follower of Marduk and cared not a whit about the desert tribes and their ways, yet it troubled him that any man should be called righteous who had acted thusly. He might indeed have good reason to save the two testimonies.

  He slid the four damp clay tablets onto wooden planks and took them to his kiln. Once the fire hardened them, he would cement them back-to-back, making two double-sided documents. Then all that remained was to keep them in his library and await the day that someone asked for them.

  He rubbed his neck, and glanced up through the window. The position of the moon told him it was nearer the morning than the night. But just as he returned to his bed and was about to extinguish the lantern, another knock sounded at his door.

  The night had already proved remarkable, so he was not perturbed to open to another stranger. But this one hunched forward, his face concealed under a cloak, as if fearing to be seen. Maneshtu waited quietly for explanation.

  “Master,” the man said in muted tones. “This night, you have received the daughters of Lot and they have surely told you their story. But another part to the tale wants telling, which is unknown to them, and so I beg you to hear me as well.”

  Maneshtu sighed. “Come in,” he said, and went to fetch a new clay tablet.

  *

  Maneshtu waited long for someone to inquire about the tablets of Gomorrah, but no one ever did. They languished in a corner of his library until his death, when his house passed to his son, and then to his descendants, unto the tenth generation. Finally, none could read the scrolls and tablets, and the library was given over to store grain in.

  When the family line died out, the house, which was on the outskirts of the town, fell into such disrepair that it was pillaged of its furnishings and abandoned. The land around it became a scrap heap that rose ever higher with broken crockery and objects that did not weather or rot. Desert creatures took up residence and rats scampered in the pitch-dark chambers, consuming whatever was of parchment or of wood. Asps and scorpions made their colonies around it, discouraging interest in the bit of wall that jutted out of the pile of rubble.

  *

  The desert is discreet. Its sands blow equally over mankind’s feats and follies covering them for centuries or millennia. But men are curious, and they penetrate the darkest places in search of things. And so it was, fifteen hundred years later, when Ezion-Geber returned to life as the city of Aqaba, that an Egyptian merchant named Ibn Yunus al Qasim arrived. Ever watchful for opportunity, he sent his men into the rubble field outside the town and they came upon the crushed remains of a house. The roof had long disintegrated into powder, and only fragments of the stone walls stood. But under the sand they uncovered a cache of tablets, in hieroglyphic, hieratic, Greek, and in cuneiform.

  Al Qasim could read none of it but believed he had a treasure and resolved to ship the tablets back to Luxor. It made no difference that their contents were a mystery. They were documents of an ancient time and would surely have value. Many scholars dwelt in Luxor, and even more in Cairo, who would pay well for such antiquities.

  In good time, he packed his treasures in a crate and set sail on an Egyptian dhow, bound for Safaga. It was the month of May and the Red Sea was calm. Al Qasim stood each evening with a Persian scholar who also made the passage, and they talked of weighty things: of faith and reason, of God and science, and of the stars by which they navigated.

  The scholar pointed toward a band of three stars low in the sky. “There hovers al jabbar, the giant whom the Hebrews call Kesil, the fool, and the Greeks have named Orion. See how he raises his arm and menaces? He swings the mace, rigid and arrogant in his strength. Some say that he aims to kill all animals who, in their variety, somehow offend him. Others say it is the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas, that he pursues, but perhaps, in his brutishness, he does both. Giant that he may be, the tiniest of creatures, the scorpion, fells him.”

  “Do you mean to read a lesson of justice in that?” Al Qasim chuckled.

&n
bsp; “Perhaps only that the prideful and the cruel look not at their feet, and the smallest of things can bring them down.”

  “So you think the stars are there to instruct us.” Al Qasim twirled the hair at the tip of his beard. “I think they are indifferent. In any case, I leave the stars to the pilot for navigation and my fate to Allah.”

  Having amicably disagreed, the two men curled up in their blankets under the gunwales for the night and sought to sleep.

  But before the dawn, storm winds drove the dhow against a reef just off the coast of Egypt, near a tiny fishing settlement that one day would be called El Gouna. Within minutes, the ship foundered. All hands went down, and the cargo of salt, incense, hammered gold, and al Qasim’s tablets was given to the sea.

  Chapter One

  A shiver of pleasure went through Joanna Boleyn as she plunged into the warm water of the Red Sea. It was her two hundred-something dive, but she never ceased to experience a sense of wonderment at the first undersea moment. She allowed herself the leisure of turning once on her own axis, like an ice-skater, absorbing the bright-blue world that surrounded her and Charlie. The sense of three-dimensionality was so completely different from the horizontal experience of solid ground. She no longer stood across from things, detached and analytical, but was suspended in a sphere, in the primordial element, and wherever she looked she saw life.