The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (17 page)

“Phoenicians?”

“I listened in on the gossip of the courtiers and asked around the city. And now I know it is the reason he did not receive us, that a great number of Phoenician artisans have arrived and many of them have gone down to the Red Sea gulf, where the wadi separating Edom from the Amalekites empties into the sea at the port city of Ezion-geber . . .” He walked to the table, drawing a map with his finger upon its polished surface, pressing his fingertip last of all to the port in the northern gulf of the narrow sea on the border between Israel and Egypt.

“Phoenicians, in the gulf . . .” I said faintly.

“When we left and passed through Edom, I took a small company of men and went to the gulf. My queen—” Tamrin shook his head. “The king is building a port city there. The Israelites have brought down timber from the forest of Lebanon where they are even now constructing a fleet of ships—a merchant ship navy.”

I took a step backward as one struck.

Now I understood why the king had given towns to Hiram, and why, in his need for wealth, he felt he could snub the riches of Saba.

Solomon, the Israelite king, meant to neutralize Saba’s trade and render our caravans obsolete.

Even as I raged that I would cut him out, he had already undertaken plans to do the same to me.

“Wahabil,” I said, staring at the table. “Fetch the maps. Gather my council. And notify the temple that I will not make the marriage this night.”

When he had left the room, I cursed and turned away, stalking down the length of the table to lean upon its surface, glaring at the faint shape of the sea invisibly drawn on the tabletop.

“There is something else,” the trader said strangely, behind me. “That I could not say in the company of Wahabil.”

“Anything you say to me may be said in front of him.”

“Not this.”

I turned my head. With a last glance at me I saw him go to a packsaddle on the inlaid bench against the wall.

“As we prepared to leave, a band of men on fine horses came to our fire as we camped near the fortified city of Arad. Their bridles were adorned with golden tassels. The king’s men.” He withdrew something wrapped in a hide. When he uncovered it, I saw that it was wrapped underneath in a piece of purple cloth.

It was the size, perhaps, of an incense burner, if less square. “The chamberlain who received us had the customary gifts brought out to my men where we camped beyond the city. Jewelry, cloth, spices. And a slave skilled in the playing of the lyre, which I am told the king’s father played as well. I have brought him here in the case that he may shed some light on the gossip of court.” I nodded, grateful for his foresight. “But the men who came to my camp that night brought one thing only. This.” Tamrin came and held it out to me.

I took it from him. “And what did they say?”

“Only that it came from the king himself and that I was to deliver it to you in private. That is all.”

I unwrapped the fabric—the same purple of the Phoenicians. Within the cloth, it was wrapped again in linen embroidered with a gold lion. I glanced up at Tamrin to find him staring again at me.

“Truly, my queen, I did not exaggerate your beauty, but find every praise of it insufficient now that I see your face,” he said softly.

But I was in no state for flattery. I held up the linen’s embroidered corner.

He frowned. “There are such lions on either side of the king’s throne.”

I untied the fabric to reveal the figure of a bull. A fine, ebon bull with a gold ring through its nose. I stared at it blankly, turning it over in my hands. I might have thought it his god had I known better. But he worshipped the Unnamed One. Our own artisans made idols very much the same as this . . .

There, on the back, was the blessing of Almaqah.

This was the very idol I had sent with the trader to the king.

“He throws our gifts back in our face? What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, the linen square in my fist.

“I—I don’t know,” Tamrin said, seemingly at a loss.

“He does not receive my trader. He returns my idol. And even now he builds Phoenician ships to neutralize our trade. But I tell you, this so-called king will regret the day he heard the name Bilqis, queen of Saba!”

I threw the idol against the wall, where it splintered.

“Go!” I said to Tamrin. “See your camels watered. Eat. For love of Almaqah, bathe.”

When he had gone, I slumped down into the nearest chair. In all of this, Yafush, ever silent in the corner, had said nothing.

“I think,” I said softly, “this is my doing.”

“I do not think you can make a man do what he does, Princess.”

I shook my head faintly. “Are you so sure? Last night as I looked into the garden pool, a part of me prayed to be relieved of this wedding to the god. And now I have had what I asked . . . It is the way of the gods, is it not, to make every prayer a riddle, so that they grant one petition but exact such cost that we wish it back? And now Saba is not only without heir, but her prosperity lies threatened as well.”

What manner of man was this—this king supposedly wise and certainly as arrogant as his god? This king of an infant nation who presumed to command the queen of a land as old as time itself—why? Because he was a king and I was a queen without a king? Because arrogance demanded he take offense that I did not scrape and send an envoy to him as the others—because I did not make of myself a treaty bride?

I sifted through these questions like rune-stones, as magicians do when the proper lot has not been cast, searching to see that the one they wanted was even among them.

What did it mean that he meant to render our overland routes obsolete? With ships, he might sail along the southern coast of Saba directly to Hadramawt and the best incense in the world.

No. He did not mean to cut Saba out—only her queen.

I became aware then of Yafush standing before the wall where the idol lay broken. He had moved so silently that from the corner of my eye he seemed like an obsidian statue that had changed places on its own.

“I think you had best look, Princess.”

I turned away. “I know. I will send an animal in reparation. Three,” I said. I would likely be required to put the confession of my desecration in writing and make an oath over the grave of my father. To journey as far, perhaps, as the new temple of Nashshan in penance.

“I think you had best look, Princess,” Yafush said again.

I glanced back to find him staring at the smashed idol. But there, something lighter peeked through the ruined body of the bull. I got up, walked over, and then crouched down in front of it. Lifting it from the floor, I pulled it apart with the distinct crack and splinter of wood. Now I could see that the idol was hollow and that inside the cavity there was a small scroll.

“What trickery is this?” I said, pulling the scroll from the cavity. It was sealed with a lion, identical to that on the cloth.

I swiftly broke the seal and unwound the scroll. As my gaze passed over the fine Phoenician script, my heart began to pound.

A scrape outside the door. I closed the scroll and gathered up the broken idol, wrapping it in the embroidered linen and purple cloth.

“Quickly,” I said, shoving the bundle at Yafush, who followed me through the side door even as the main one opened and the voices of my council, raised in curiosity and outrage, began to file in behind us.

TWELVE

I
nside my bedchamber, I fell down beside my table. I forgot the broken idol the instant I dropped it onto a cushion and, with shaking hands, unrolled the scroll.

Your words have come to me on the wind. How they stir me! Not in the longing of their own echo, but because they are the echo of my own.

What a riddle you are. High Priestess, woman, queen. Who are you really? What is your secret name? Who is this woman who denies me her emissaries and her flattery? She is either fearless or reckless, and I do not think her reckless. You say you write to me as a woman but do not try to entice me—a woman who will not rely on wiles, but proves me with hard questions instead. They tell me the name they call you in Punt means “Woman of Fire.” How you have enflamed me.

If you have found these words, you are suspicious enough to examine your own god. Only the fearless or reckless question the gods. But no, I misspeak—not reckless, but driven by that divine madness to know what others deem dangerous. And so we are dangerous because we know no other way to be.

And here I am, holding a conversation with myself, only imagining that it is with you. For all I know these words will brittle in hiding and turn to dust in the dark. But one way or another, we will have words. Not because I command it, but because we must. What hold have you taken over me? How dare you command the distraction of a king in the space of a single line?

I sat back hard, and read on.

I have sent you a gift within a gift—a slave that plays the lyre. His name is Mazor—a name that means “medicine.” My father played the lyre, and it was medicine to the king before him. Mazor is a musician, yes, but he also speaks and writes both the Aramaic of the traders and the language of my people. He knows our stories and hymns. He was precious in my court—there is no one like him—and I pray he is precious and useful in yours.

You ask about my god and my temple. Send your emissaries. I will tell and show them great things to carry back to you. I will answer you and you will leave my table filled. But for now I tell you this: our temple is not open to the sky because our god is found in all things. Your god is the god of thunder and moon but mine created the sky. And so he is not to be found there. We do not worship his handiwork—the moon and stars are his fingerprints—but the dread power and promise of the god himself.

Send your emissary—I have given you every reason now to do so. If you do not, you will be cut out as my ships sail far beyond the range of your camel caravans and sea vessels. I have in this way forced your hand. Will you be fearless or reckless in return? Send your men. Do not be so arrogant. You are without an ally husband. Your commerce is in danger. I do not say it as a threat; it is the truth. You have much to gain through me. But you will recoil at this statement, and so I say instead: save your kingdom. You may, as you say, need nothing of the outside world. But it will leave you behind in innovation, if not in your lifetime then in the generation to come.

In the end, I am not a king, or even a man, but perhaps a boy. Surrounded by courtiers, officers . . . hungry for the world, but too often alone within it. You know something of this, I think. I grew up in my father’s harem, surrounded by a hundred mothers. I learned the language of their sighs and the cant of their gazes when they thought no one was looking. Which way does your gaze go when you are alone, I wonder? How full or empty is the god inside you when everyone else looks to you as High Priestess? How many of your questions have gone unanswered?

You are of the age that I was when I nearly tore my hair from my head. They call me wise, but wisdom does not guarantee peace. It only reminds us what we do not know—what we cannot know—and of our own frailties, so that we resign ourselves to them again, again, again, in those rare moments that we let go of the very world we must rule.

Selah, Queen Bilqis. Selah, Woman of Fire. Selah, Daughter of the Moon. Send your emissary and something for me—not your incense, for I am surrounded by the divine. Not your grain, for my table is full. Not your wise men, for wisdom is given me. But something of yourself. Fire for a thirsty soul.

~Solomon

I dropped my hands to the table. My heart was beating very fast.