The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (22 page)

“I will not command you stay,” I whispered.

In an instant he had crossed the short space between us, a bare arm pulling me to him as his mouth descended on mine.

I had forgotten the scent of skin, the warm musk of it. He smelled of sandalwood and oil.

Tamrin returned to Marib twice more before the autumn rains ended.

And then, the Wolves of the Desert returned.

You send not emissaries, but Wolves, and I opened my gates to them. Such gifts I would have given them for the journey they made beneath the merciless sun had they only the animals to carry them. And so I know now you command the curious hoopoe bird your trader, and the wolves of the very desert, and the jinns to spirit all of them here. But do not think you can command a king.

I hid my tears from them. How do you cut to the heart with a simple tale of a garden and not draw blood? These are not my tears, but yours, for if you are my Riddle, I am your Mirror.

And yet I am the one devoured in a single bite and you are Locust, the plague of Israel’s enemies. Are you my enemy, then? Only demons treat with succulent words. Only demons may so distract, using the secret longings of a man against him. How you have swarmed my thoughts, and consumed them.

But even as I say “I will not be confounded” because I find you haughty, you turn gentle and melancholy. And I must be gentle in return even as you bring me to tears for your loneliness, which is my own.

Now you are angry, for I have found you out. Do you delight in my distraction? Of course you do. You are Woman.

Take care, Bilqis—how many times have I whispered your name?—many women have played at the emotions of kings, few to good fortune.

But play at them, even as I command your caution. I beg you. Let me pretend a little longer.

Send your emissary with words like a swarm that I may be devoured.

“Send word to Tamrin,” I said to Wahabil later that day. “It’s time to leave.”

SEVENTEEN

T
he day we departed, the priests sacrificed a bull in the courtyard of the Marib temple at dawn. It was cold; even wrapped in a heavy woolen shawl I shivered in the pale light. Reading the steaming liver, Asm hesitated before declaring our journey profitable, his forehead drawn.

I drew him aside afterward. “What is it?”

“The return, my queen. It will be . . . more difficult.”

It was an omen I could live with.

I took my leave of Wahabil there in the temple and to all eyes it must have appeared as though he brushed noses with a slave girl. I had exchanged my purple gowns and carmine silks for a simple tunic, my head cloth and veil obscuring all but the barest part of my eyes so that I was indistinguishable from Shara or my slaves.

“Care for my kingdom,” I whispered.

“I shall do so as though your eyes are upon me always. Return safely next year, my queen. Almaqah speed you. Almaqah grant you favor. Blessings on the camel that carries you.”

He had grown precious to me, my stalwart councilor, my friend. I embraced him then and kissed him as a father.

Before I left the temple complex, I stopped at the mausoleum to
stand before the limestone plate of my mother’s grave and the alabaster face of the funerary mask set within it. I sighed and touched the vacant eyes. They were cold.

At twenty-four I was now the same age she had been when she died. Did she know that I was queen? I stroked her carved cheek.

I lingered a moment more, wishing—hoping—that her voice might come to me. But there was only the wind and the snarling of camels in the distance. At last, I drew away and followed the others across the causeway where the men and camels waited. Four hundred camels. Seven hundred men, including twenty Wolves of the Desert. Half the caravan, prepared to journey north to Tamrin’s tribal lands where we would meet up with nearly three hundred camels and as many men more.

As we crossed the oasis through which I had marched just six years ago, I looked back at the tiny procession of Wahabil and his slaves wending their way back to the capital. Morning had broken, infusing the brick buildings of Marib with golden warmth, turning the alabaster windows of the palace ruddy as fifty new suns. Willing the sight of them to memory, I turned my face north.

T
amrin had taken pains to hide my presence, and to find excuse to install Shara and me, and the five girls I had brought with me toward the front of the caravan where there would be less dust.

“They are not hardy for the ride,” I overheard him sigh loudly to one of his foremen, who shook his head at the litter that carried two of them. And so we were well within earshot of Niman and Khalkharib, who had brought with them ten men and fifteen camels each of their own.

The eunuch was the most difficult aspect to disguise, as it was well known the Nubian was ever at my side. He wore a head scarf
and Khalkharib claimed he was his slave and took pains to call him Manakhum, though I heard him slip once on the second day of our journey.

We could not keep up the charade forever, but I hoped at least to conceal my departure until the Jawf lay several days behind us. At the palace, Wahabil had taken pains to select a slave my height and secure her in a secluded apartment of the women’s quarter. Once every day, she was to walk through the portico covered by one of my veils and wearing one of my gowns. She was even to sit on my throne in the Hall of Judgment, leaning toward Wahabil in conference as he pronounced judgment as though it were my own. It was not a foolproof ploy, but it might at least stave off public knowledge of my absence for a little while.

I had never seen Tamrin’s caravan, which was normally three hundred and fifty camels large with nearly as many men. Those first days our sheer size, which was only half of what it would be—astounded me.

Such noise! There was the constant talk of men, of the foremen calling orders to those at the head of each section and riders crooning to their camels in tones as cajoling as a lover. Camels seemed to gurgle and roar day and night, protesting when they were hobbled to forage or coaxed to let down their milk and then when couched at night, and again as they were mounted with packsaddle and bags.

Nearly one hundred and fifty camels carried gifts of gold, textiles, and spices—all of Saba’s usual fare, but in such quantities that even I had never seen. One camel bore an entire load of ivory. Another, ebony. Another, rhinoceros horn and ostrich feathers and delicately packed ostrich eggs painted and adorned with jewels. Another, a pharmaceutical chest of aloe and unguents, salves and balms of myrtle and oliban, and another of kohl and cosmetics. Three more bore
jewelry, cups, and gold boxes encrusted with precious stones as well as wool, hemp, and linen fabrics dyed in a variety of colors. Enough gifts for nearly three hundred wives and concubines, if indeed the tales were true.

The litter that carried my girls was in fact my own palanquin, made more lavish than it had been before, but ingeniously so that it could be removed in parts, its gold struts and feathered canopy wrapped in woolen blankets on a camel farther back. My own wardrobe and jewelry chest required five camels, and that of Shara, Yafush, and my girls, eight more.

Twenty camels strung together by a rope carried gold and silver tassels, saddle ornaments and elaborate tack, tents, rugs, blankets, and incense burners. Asm had eight camels for his own use and that of his acolytes, laden with idols and the objects of his mystical office.

Thirty musicians traveled with us, Mazor among them. I had vacillated about bringing him if only because I could not afford to have him inform on the activities of my palace. Just weeks ago, I determined to bring him under sword oath. The musician had wept, creeping forward to kiss the top of my foot when I asked him how he would like to see his homeland again.

“You have made the arduous journey once in coming here. Do you feel fit enough to make it there and back again?”

“And there and back a thousand times, to see Israel again,” he said, his cheeks wet with tears, his nose running like a child’s. And then such songs he sang that night, well past the time I slept so that by morning I woke to find him still softly playing the lyre.

At the center of our caravan traveled Saja, my prized white camel. And behind her, on another she-camel, the
markab
, wrapped in linen and woolen blankets so that it looked by its shape like only a spare litter. It was unthinkable that I not take it with me—the capture of the acacia ark in my absence would all but constitute a
seizing of the throne. Wahabil had publicly removed it for placement in my private reception chamber over a year ago in the name of its safekeeping. Today a simple imposter lay in its place, covered with a gold embroidered cloth.

One other item of my office followed behind the
markab
wrapped in cloth and strapped to a large bull camel: the duplicate throne that had stood in my garden the night of my now infamous banquet. This had not been a part of my original inventory, but a woman can decide to pack many things in the extra space of a year.

Animals followed in wicker cages: sand cats, songbirds, peacocks, pelicans, and yellow-head parrots. Two camels bore between them a cage with a hissing black panther, and another two monkeys from Punt.

Nearly a hundred camels carried flour, dried meat, dates, water, sesame and other oils, and camel’s milk in goatskins where, by day’s end, the frothing cream would contain a lump of butter. Behind these, seventy more bore emergency fodder.

Armed men rode the length of the train on either side of it, concentrated at the treasure in its middle and provisions near the dusty end. Four men dispersed throughout our length bore the ibex banner of Saba, distinguishable from the royal banner only by the absence of the silver crescent between the animal’s horns.

Two short hours of numbing pain into the journey I remembered how sore I had been the last time I sat a camel saddle, so that I walked as an old woman the first night I dismounted. Shara and I had no choice but to wrap our middles tightly with spare head cloths the second morning, if only so we could bear to ride again.

I had never seen Tamrin in such form. If he had struck me as obsequious once, he was a wholly different creature now. Gone was the flattering courtier. This was the Master of the Caravan, at one moment shouting commands, at another conferring with a
foreman and then riding ahead to scout forage, tasting for himself the water of a nearby well that had had good water two years ago. On occasion he would break out in song to be joined swiftly by his foreman and the next of his men within earshot, all the way down the line.

The first few days of the journey my mind had run like a breakaway colt, the frenetic pace of my last preparations finding no outlet in the tedium of the road. This was not the desperate march of a queen for her throne, stealing through valley and foothill and gathering men to her like the wadi waters, but a slow progression across the ground like a shadow lengthening through the course of the day.

I came to understand why the Desert Wolves, who rode kneeling in their saddles, told so many stories and argued vehemently and pettily to pass the time. Barring the accidents of broken girths, lamed animals, or sick companions, there was nothing to break up the monotony of land before and behind without cease.

Even surrounded by the chaos of hundreds, the caravan had an isolating effect; without privacy, one must make noise continuously or retreat into the solitude of thought. In three entire days I never heard a word come out of Yafush’s mouth, and even Khalkharib and Niman, though they spoke to one another and to their men, seemed strangely contemplative.

Nearly every day a few people from the nearest settlement came to eat by our fires and ask for news and why there were so many more camels than usual. Was Saba going to war? What god or kingdom threatened, or had the queen finally made promise to marry, may Wadd, Sayin, Shams, and Almaqah make it so?