The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (38 page)

“Ah, from the woman who pursues the very gods. How you remind me of those first days. And I think a part of me would let my kingdom crumble to the ground rather than lose that. You.”

As would I.

How well we had pretended that we could run through the city streets and take to the gardens and the underground tunnels forever, even as we did it with a fervor that would never exist were our time not short. But I could not replace his god. And even I knew Yaweh would never stand to be loved second.

For that reason, too, I must leave. But even as I said, “I leave in three weeks,” I wanted to hear him protest, to say that he forbade it, that I must not go.

But neither did I want to become as Naamah, who had surely had roses in her cheeks once, until she grew austere and the light came only to her eyes when she spoke of her son. Or Tashere, with her elaborate and desperate banquets—any excuse to hold the attention of her king husband for even a few hours, because not to hold it meant to lose her place in this world. Was I any different?

Who am I?

Daughter, princess, victim, exile, lover, queen, priestess . . . all
identities in relation to someone else—until that other person was gone.

And Solomon, the voracious prince . . . I knew, had perhaps known all along, that I could never satisfy him. Not wholly, this man missing the first blush of his romance with God, who chased it with the concubines of wealth, wives, and treaty.

He was weeping now and I held him, this man as strong as the Lebanon cedars he prized . . . and as fragile as words.

“Sometimes I think my god will leave me. Moses saw Yaweh but never entered this land. And I, who have everything in this land, have not heard Yaweh’s voice in years. And if he has not abandoned me, how long will he dwell in this temple when I am gone? My prophet has seen that Israel will break apart. And what will become of us then?”

He shook his head, as one who has wrestled for far too long with questions.

“Are you not a friend of your god as your father was? Have you not loved him?”

“What is love?” he said, helplessly. “Contract? Poetry? I thought I loved you and tried to possess you. I love you now, and I let you go. But I am not happy to do it. I know only that the god of Abraham and of Isaac falls in love with certain people. My father was such a one. And my kingdom will stand as long as I am faithful. But I cannot protect it and expand its security without doing the thing my prophet condemns me for doing. Perhaps I have held it too tightly, as you say. Perhaps I consume, as I would have consumed you, and I do not love it well. You were right,” he cried, “when you said I found myself in a trap!”

I was very quiet.

“Do you sleep, my queen?” he said softly after a time.

“I am going to tell you something,” I said. “And perhaps you will come to hate me. But I tell you, because I feel compelled to it,
though I would not have chosen to speak otherwise. There is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak. And this is the latter.”

He lifted his head.

“I know something of the tribal heart. My claim to the throne was the birthright of my blood, through mother and father both. Pure. Your children are born to foreign mothers. It is our stories that bind us, you said yourself. Every god of my youth is a story passed down by my forefathers to keep our blood pure. But yours will be poured in two directions. The day in the temple, I saw the twelve bulls of your tribe break away, and the cauldron spill to the ground.” At this, his eyes widened. “And so this is my gift to you, that I tell you: choose the successor of your blood carefully if you would keep the favor of your god. Because you have broken fidelity with Yaweh more than with your first wife.”

He closed his eyes. “Then I will lose everything.”

“Every time I have found that I have nothing left to lose . . . I have been free. There is a time to keep, but then there is a time to let go. And it always goes in that order. But if you cannot, if you will not . . . if the thing that drives you to hold tightly will possess you until you die, then drink your wine and make your poetry. Because perhaps that is, or will be, all that there is.”

He tore at his hair. “How ill-timed your words! Only today Tashere encouraged me to take an Egyptian peace bride. A sister of Shishak.”

Of course she did.

“And I can see no other way around it, but that I must for the sake of my kingdom! How then am I supposed to do as you say, when the Libyans are practically at my door? And you and I—what of us, not knowing if we will see one another again? How can we live with that, knowing what was lost?”

I shook my head faintly. I didn’t know. My heart was already
breaking. “I tell myself the story that I have always found a way. But this is a lie. Always the way has been laid before me the moment I surrendered the one thing I held precious. And there is something more precious right now to you than even me.”

“I cannot surrender my kingdom,” he said, tortured.

“Then,” I said softly, “I believe you will lose it. And so the Sumerian sages will be right when they say that all is in vain.”

“What am I to do?” he cried. And I had no answer for him.

I held him then, and wept for him and for us both. Because we do not know when we prophesy, but this time I knew that I did.

THIRTY

T
he next day Solomon rose early before dawn.

“Where are you going?” I said, still tired, the melancholy air that had settled about the chamber lingering like a shade.

“Many of my tribesmen have come in early from the north to meet before the feast,” he said, dressing. “They are concerned about unrest within the city. There was a riot in the lower city already this morning, and another outside the city walls.”

I pushed up. “What?”

I slept so soundly I had not even heard anyone come to the door.

He came to the bed. “I love you. I love you. Wait for me.” He kissed my head, my eyes, my mouth. And then he was gone.

I lay back and dropped my arm over my eyes, listening to the sounds of Jerusalem swelled to three times its population—so loud at this hour! How had I slept through that? I could hear their hymns through the shuttered windows, the strains echoing up through the houses stacked one against the other from the streets below. I imagined I smelled the incessant bread mingled with reek of urine, the animal market as far as the olive mount.

Nine more days, the king had said, and the pilgrims would filter from the city.

Ten more after that, I would go down to my camp, there to turn my face south, to the ports, and then home.

So few, precious days. Why, last night, had I been so dire—compelled as I had never been over the crimson bowl?

Tonight I would tell only lovely stories. Our story, of the garden. Tomorrow. The day after. Every precious night until I left.

I got up but then sat back.

How could I leave this man for whom I had forgotten, if just for this while, this lifetime of a season, my entire kingdom?

I closed my eyes in the solitude of the chamber and clasped the sheets in tight fistfuls to my face. They smelled of him.

How right he had been, this man of obsessions. I had not come for ships or ports. Not truly.

I stayed like that for a long time, telling myself I would secure his promise that I would return—not by caravan next time, but by ship. That one day, perhaps, he would journey to Marib and walk through my palace as he had the day in my apartment when he first asked to see me on my throne. Someday, when his kingdom was stable enough.

Yes. That would be the last story I told him before I left.

Eventually I put on my dressing gown and moved on numb feet into the outer room.

A servant had brought in a ewer and I washed my face. There, too, was a pitcher of honeyed water, which I poured and took out to the garden. Beyond the gates I could see the pilgrims’ tents in vivid array from one horizon to the next. Even the trash outside the city seemed to burn more vigorously than ever, so that when I lifted the cup to my lips I drank only a little before the smell wafted up on the wind, sickening me.

I spent the day in my own apartment, sleeping restlessly, the sounds of the city rising up so loudly to the terrace that I cried out for Shara to shut the doors.

I dreamed strange dreams. The temple, in its early building, a mere pile of stone. But then I realized it was not the temple in progress at all, but that it had fallen in. And I could see that the edges of the stones were singed, some of the limestone burned completely away. And that the palace, when I glanced back at it, was no more even as bells, their timbre high and tinny, sounded in the distance.

I woke some time later, dying of thirst. Someone had opened the doors to the terrace and the air smelled of rain. A short time later it came, the patter of it like so many stomping feet. Like an army in the streets. I slept again to the sound of marching, my head clouded as the sky.

I woke later to a mighty shaking, to someone calling my name. “You have slept the entire day!” Shara said. “You are unwell. My queen, we are afraid!”

“The king—”

“Is with the captain of his guard. There has been mayhem everywhere, and fighting in the streets all day!” I got up but the room spun and I immediately retched into the chamber pot. But there was nothing in my stomach to vomit.

“I tried to send Naamah’s girl for the physician but there are guards outside the door who will neither leave their posts nor allow anyone to pass,” Shara cried, clutching me. I looked up, not comprehending.

“Where is Yafush?”

“In the outer chamber. I have never seen him pray before. How afraid we have been for you, Bilqis—for us all!”

I squinted at her, finally hearing the bells of my dream in the clang of swords.

I closed my eyes and willed my leaden limbs to move.

“Dress me,” I said.

A ruckus sounded from the street directly below the palace. But these were not the hymns of pilgrims, or of drunken men. It was shouting, loud and furious, and the clash of weapons again. The city in riot.

I walked on uncertain legs toward the terrace, but Shara grabbed me back, shouting over the sounds below that we must stay out of sight. A projectile hit the outer wall of my apartment and landed near my feet: a large, burnt stone.

I stumbled toward the outer chamber, Yafush instantly at my side. I wrenched open the door to the apartment.

No fewer than ten palace guards barred the way.

“Take me to the king,” I said. My own guard was nowhere to be seen.

“My queen,” one of them said, “you cannot leave.”

“What is this, some sort of arrest? Send for him or allow me to pass. Now.”

“I dare not, for your own protection, by the king’s orders.”

“Is there not a contingent of guards stationed outside the palace?” I fairly shouted in his face. I was rewarded with a roll of light-headedness.

Yafush seized my arm.

“They will not protect you from those within it.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been a murder. A servant was found dead in the king’s apartment. You must stay here.”

I opened my mouth, having been about to say that I was there just this morning. But I stopped in an immediate wave of dread.

“Dead of what?” I said very quietly, as tremors began to shake their way up my shoulders.

A booming ruckus sounded from somewhere within the palace courtyard, followed by shouts.

I turned in shock toward Yafush. I touched my fingers to my lips.

I, sleeping and dreaming as one drugged, the entire day.

“I think,” I whispered, “that someone has tried to kill me.”

Shara stared at me, white-faced, and then grabbed my hands.

“What have you eaten? What did you drink, what did you touch?” she cried.

I started to reply but the chamber went dark around me. The last thing I remembered was Yafush, charging through the guards.

I die
, I thought.