The Queen's Handmaid (17 page)

There was no protection at all in the front of the house. Where
were the guards and watchmen who should have been posted to keep the women safe?

Despite his reluctance to engage with the royal family, Simon’s pulse quickened over the one woman he would not be sorry to encounter. When the troops pulled back from Jerusalem a year ago, scattering to the corners of Judea, the handmaid Lydia had come with Mariamme. Would she still be here?

He did not have long to wonder.

A woman bent over a patch of flowers in the front garden, her back to him, but he knew her immediately. He scraped a sandal across the stone paving and cleared his throat.

She startled and whirled. At the sight of him, her lips parted and a flush pinked her cheeks. She took a step closer, one hand extended.

Simon nodded in greeting, noting the flush with a suppressed smile.

“What are you doing here?” She clutched a handful of stems at her side, the yellow-eyed centers grinning up at him.

So. She remembered.

He held up the scroll he had retrieved from his pack. “A message for the royal women. From Herod.”

Lydia glanced to his hand, then back to his face. “Is he in Jericho, then? Is the fighting over?”

She was largely unchanged—still delicate in stature with the olive complexion of a mixed heritage, her long dark hair unbound around her shoulders like an Egyptian. But even in her few words, it was clear she had grown in spirit. More subdued, perhaps. Less of a child.

“Yes to the first question. And he hopes to report the end of the war soon. But not yet.”

She looked to the scroll again, as though she would ask what else it contained, but then straightened and smiled. “You have come a long way. You must be tired. Please, come inside and let me serve you.”

The kindness washed over him like a balm. His staff in Jericho, just as his soldiers on Masada, treated him with fearful deference and kept their distance. His brief moments with Lydia had lived in his memory for just this reason—she seemed to see him in a softer light. Was he truly the man she saw, or would she treat even an enemy with such generosity?

He allowed himself to be led indoors, following on her heels like a pet. “I should deliver the letter.”

She continued toward the back of the house. “They do not even know you are here. Your letter can wait until you have at least taken some water.”

Had his soldier’s training fallen away so completely that he now took orders from a woman? What was it about this girl? She was nothing like Levana.

At the thought of Levana it was as if a door slammed in his heart. He would not go there again.

In the kitchens, she placed him at a table with the firmness of a mother, then brought more than water. He ate the bread and cheese and fruit with the hunger of a starving man.

“Do you miss the fighting?” She lowered herself to a chair across from his. “Your duties this past year have been quite different, I would guess. And you have been far from the front lines where you seemed committed to do some good.”

He chewed a bit of crust and swallowed, his heart ragged with memories, not only of four years ago, but of all he had seen on his journey northward to this house of luxury.

He placed his palms flat on the table and studied her eyes. “There is a desperation in the people, Lydia. It grows every year, every month. They are hungry and weary of war. They are weary of waiting for the promise and many are giving up hope.”

“The promise?”

He balled his hands into fists. “I forget that you are not one of us. The promise of the Messiah, who will end all of this and bring redemption to the land.”

At the declaration, her head dropped and then she looked away. When her gaze returned to his, it was cloudy and sorrowful. “What can be done?”

He jabbed a finger at the plate of food. “Something more than living like this while the people starve.”

Her gaze fell away again.

He reached a hand across the table and covered hers. Her skin was warm and soft under his touch. “I am sorry. I did not mean to accuse. It is not your fault.”

What would Jonah say, to hear him apologizing to a servant girl?

As if she read his thoughts, she pulled her hand from his. “What do you hear of your friend—Jonah, was it? Does he still fight for Herod’s kingship?”

“I told you once, Lydia. We do not fight for Herod. We fight for a free Israel.” The old anger had risen in an instant, the surge of blood that would serve in battle. Perhaps he was not such a palace pet as he feared.

“Jonah too, then? He joined Herod only to get close to the enemy?”

Was that condemnation in her tone? He pushed away from the table and circled to stand before her.

She studied him, not with accusation but with anxiety. Did
she fear for him? He bent to one knee, bringing his face to the level of hers, and peered back at those lovely dark eyes. “We had no choice. Do you not see that? We have tried to fight them, to fight them all, and the wars have ravaged our land, destroyed our people. Those of us who are willing to be seen as traitors are quietly finding a better way. We will rot the enemy from the inside out.”

She reached across the narrow space between them and touched his jaw, touched the place where an old battle scar furrowed the skin. “And what if you do not survive the rottenness yourself?”

He sucked in a breath at her touch, reached for her hand, and returned it to her lap. “A small price to pay for the vindication of those we have loved and lost.”

“Lydia?” A young man’s voice called into the kitchen, followed by his body. “Have you seen—? Oh, there you are.”

Lydia jumped to her feet, backed away from where Simon still knelt before her.

Aristobulus was much changed. Simon eyed the boy’s muscular frame as he pulled himself to his feet. Good. They needed him strong for the days to come.

“I heard there was a messenger.” Aristobulus glanced to Lydia, then returned Simon’s appraisal with a bit of suspicion. Perhaps even jealousy? “Herod sent
you
?”

Lydia frowned. “Yes, Simon—I did not think to ask. Why didn’t Herod send a servant with his letter?” Her eyes widened a bit. “Is there danger here? Is he worried for us?”

How much should he say? “Herod sent me to assess the holdings here in Samaria. In case supplies are needed.”

Aristobulus strode across the kitchen and thrust out a waiting
hand with the brashness of a youth training to be a king. “I will take your letter, soldier.”

When the boy had gone, Simon turned to Lydia, trying to avoid those eyes. “I cannot stay long. I am expected back in Jericho immediately.”

She nodded but grasped his hand once more. “Be safe, Simon.”

Yes. Safety. But it was not the battlefield he feared. It was this one girl, who was threatening to crumble four years’ worth of cultivated indifference to the world of home and family and anything that involved his heart.

He could not afford to let that happen. Not when they were so close.

Mariamme reached an arm across the silky fabric of the red cushion and yanked a few grapes from an overripe cluster on a gold tray. They went soft between her fingers, and she tossed them back to the platter.

“You are peevish this morning, Mariamme. Have an orange if the grapes do not please you.” Her mother chewed slowly, her dark eyes lowered. Servants crossed behind her, carrying and settling more trays of food before the women, pouring wine.

Herod had spared no expense in settling his women in the lavish family home his father had built in Samaria. Though himself a Greek-lover, the house was built in the style of a Roman villa, with a large frescoed
triclinium
for dining, its three sumptuous couches arranged around a brazier. With only a small, high window on one wall, the brazier’s flames lit the room and chased off the autumn chill.

Mariamme propped herself on one elbow and scowled over
the brazier. She rarely confronted Alexandra, but her mother’s indifference today left her restless and irritated. “It is the Day of Atonement, Mother. A day of fasting.” She spread a hand toward the heavy-laden tables. “And you prepare the most lavish of meals. Have you forgotten what it is to be a Jew?”

Alexandra’s lips thinned to a tight slash. “How dare you, girl? Everything I have done has been for my people.” A slave bent to place honey cakes on her platter and she shoved him away. “Even now, with your Herod wandering the countryside for the past year, trying to grasp the kingdom with his greedy Idumean fingers, I am here—planning, directing—”

“Manipulating.”

Alexandra’s eyes were dead cold. She smoothed back her still-black hair, worn loose in the Roman fashion. “Call it what you will. My father was High Priest of Judea for nearly all my life, before that traitor Antigonus had him exiled to Babylon. I know where power lies and how to command it.” She reached for a jeweled cup and raised it to Mariamme. “You’ll see me in Hades before I let both the High Priesthood and the kingship be stolen from our family.”

Mariamme’s stomach churned, though she had eaten no food since Yom HaKippurim had begun at last sunset. “Then why do you insist on this alliance with Herod? Can you not see that my brother—”

“Your brother is too young.” Her mother’s words were clipped, rushed.

Mariamme would not be dismissed so quickly. “He is fourteen. Perhaps not old enough for the High Priesthood, but the people would soon serve him as king. The Pharisees would back him.”

Alexandra swung her legs from the cushion and sat upright. “You
will
marry Herod, Mariamme. I am tired of this argument.”

“And I am tired of being no more than a coin in a nasty bit of bartering!” She flung out a hand and flipped the tray of warm grapes. It clattered to the mosaic floor, the grapes smashed beneath it.

Her mother’s brows rose at the uncharacteristic outburst.

Mariamme sank against the cushions, already spent by the argument. But the truth must be spoken. “He frightens me, Mother. Do you not see it?”

She shrugged. “He has the way of a king about him. They are all power-hungry tyrants, else they would not be kings.” She leaned forward with a sly smile. “And I may be your mother, Mariamme, but we are both women. Do not try to tell me that all that strength, all that cunning charm, does not fire your blood just a bit, eh?”

Mariamme would not acknowledge the innuendo. Nor the stab of fear that her mother’s comment was perhaps a truth better left concealed. She despised the way Herod made her feel—both repulsed and drawn at once. What kind of woman did that make her?

Herod had already divorced his first wife—a commoner by the name of Doris—and cast aside their son, to be free to make this alliance with her family. He had no scruples, no morals. But if the divorce did not concern her mother, something else must. “That business in Galilee in the spring—do you not remember his face when he told of it? He lay right there”—Mariamme pointed to Alexandra’s couch—“and told of the Galilean nationalists he slaughtered, his men lowering cages to where they hid in cliff-side caves, dragging them out, forcing some to leap to their deaths.”

How many nights had she lain awake, thinking of those poor Jews clinging to the sides of cliffs? And of Herod’s nonchalant
amusement as he told the story? Yes, her hatred of Herod ran as deep as his own ambition.

Alexandra sighed, as though Mariamme were a child afraid of nothing more than imagined fiends.

“Mother, he laughed when he told of that father of seven who stood at the cave’s mouth, called his children one by one and killed each of them, then killed his wife and himself rather than to fall into the hands of an imposter king who is not a Jew—”

“Enough!” Alexandra shot to her feet and circled the couches. She sank a knee into the cushion beside Mariamme and grabbed her wrist.

Mariamme half turned and lay prostrate under her mother’s wrath. Her heart raced but she met Alexandra’s glare with hostility of her own. How she longed to fling Alexandra from her, to push back against the force that had always been too strong for her.

“You are a foolish girl, Mariamme. You do not understand the way of things. We are a small piece of the world here in Judea—a tasty morsel being fought over by the two mongrels of Parthia and Rome.” She shook Mariamme’s arm, her lip curled. “Rome will win, there can be no doubt. My father, Hyrcanus, understood that, and he made sure that when Rome put Herod’s father, Antipater, on the throne of Judea, he made himself a friend to the man. With Antipater dead these five years, of course Rome’s favor has fallen on his son, Herod.”

She loosed her grip on Mariamme’s wrist and stood. “And I am my father’s daughter. Where he befriended Antipater, I befriend Herod. You
will
be his wife, and together you will rule Judea.” Her voice turned to pleading. “Do you not see, Mariamme? We are not aligning ourselves with Herod. You, my daughter, will be queen.
A Hasmonean will still retain the throne. Herod is aligning himself with
us
.”

Mariamme half raised herself from the couch, her arms still propped behind. “Then it is
you
who is the fool, Mother. Rome will never see me as anything but Herod’s wife and Ari as a yapping dog.”