The Queen's Handmaid (34 page)

She tore it open, blood pounding in her ears.

My dearest Cleopatra,

I regret that it was inconvenient for me to attend you and your much-anticipated visit in Jericho. My wife has just given birth and it was necessary for me to remain here. Please take your ease in my magnificent palace, examine the plantations Antony has so generously lent you, then make your way to Jerusalem for an audience in my throne room.

She crumpled the letter and tossed it to the ground with a curse. One of the slaves hurried to pick it up and Cleopatra kicked her. She fell without a sound, then crawled away.

Herod’s words dripped with condescension and arrogance.
Lent
me?
Antony had given her Jericho’s dates and balsam as a down payment on her future rule of this near wasteland.

She would kill him.

Never mind Antony. Somehow she would find a way to see Herod dead.

This latest rejection was as much a slap in her face as the night he had tossed her from his bedchamber like a slave girl who failed to satisfy.

Not even the great Julius Caesar nor Marc Antony himself had treated her thus.

“My lady—”

“What, Anneas? Will you tell me that I am a fool for thinking Herod would show anything but contempt? Fine, then I am a fool.” Her face flushed like an embarrassed adolescent and she cursed again. Anneas backed away, bowing.

She took a deep breath and glanced at her surroundings. Magnificent palace—ha! How could a man who had seen the splendor that was Egypt make such an exaggerated claim?

Well, she would make the best of it. Wash the journey dust from her body, sleep for the night in his finest rooms, and examine her wealth in the morning.

And then she would go to Jerusalem.

She would have to play him with all the intelligence she had been born with, for he was a clever adversary. But she
would
play him, make no mistake. She had not come so far, seen so many rivals dead at her feet, to be bested by an Arab with a tiny, dusty kingdom.

She and Herod had business to finish.

Thirty

I
have a story to tell you, Lydia.”

Lydia sank into the chair Mariamme indicated, a flutter running along her nerves.

“What do you know of Cleopatra’s grandfather, the ninth Ptolemy to rule?”

Lydia blinked. It was a strange beginning. “Little, my lady.”

Mariamme frowned at the title.

Lydia smiled and ducked her head. “Very little. He was dead more than twenty years when I was born, I believe.”

“And when
were
you born?”

“In the last year of the twelfth Ptolemy’s first reign—Cleopatra’s father—just before he was exiled to Rome.”

Mariamme closed her eyes briefly, as if this information brought pain. “And do you know why he was exiled?”

Such strange questions. It was like her early tutoring with Samuel, though he’d been more interested in Jewish history.

“Rome took over the Egyptian-ruled island of Cyprus, where his brother was king, and Cleopatra’s father did nothing to stop
it. The Egyptians were angry and rebelled. He fled to Rome for protection.”

“And what of Ptolemy’s brother, king of Cyprus?”

Lydia studied the floor, tried to remember, then shook her head. “I remember nothing of him. Perhaps the Romans killed him? It would have been the same year I was born.”

Mariamme was watching her carefully. Did she think Lydia was holding back some buried knowledge?

Mariamme seemed to make some sort of decision. “He took his own life, it would seem. He could not bear the shame of Roman annexation and wanted to die a king.”

“How sad.”

“He had a wife. Did you know of her?”

Lydia shook her head. “As I said, my knowledge is very limited—”

“She was the daughter of Alexander Janneus.”

Lydia frowned. “Daughter? Your mother’s aunt, then?”

“And my father’s aunt, since my parents were the children of brothers.”

“Strange. A connection between Judea and Egypt I never knew.”

“Shira was with child when her husband took his life. She feared for the safety of her child, and so she fled to Egypt, to Alexandria, hoping for protection against Rome.”

Lydia sighed. “Alexandria was not a place for protection in those days, I fear. Cleopatra’s sister Berenice had taken her father’s throne while he was exiled in Rome, and she was killing anyone who might wrest it from her, including her own mother.”

“Yes. And Berenice had Shira killed as well.”

“The history of the Ptolemies is much the same story, both before and after.”

“My great-grandfather Alexander Janneus gave his royal seal, embossed into bronze discs, to all three of his children—my two fighting grandfathers and their sister, Shira. Hers was made into a pendant.”

A strange coldness flooded through Lydia. Had the tapestries at the window been opened? Her attention drifted to the window, but they were intact.

“Are you hearing me, Lydia? Do you understand? The daughter of Alexander Janneus, married to the king of Cyprus, wore the pendant you now wear. She was killed by Berenice in Alexandria, and the child she carried was thought dead in her womb.”

Lydia watched Mariamme’s lips moving and somehow watched even her own self, as though she stood apart or perhaps floated above, like a spectator in the theater. A terra-cotta oil lamp flickered at some stray draft and threatened to go out. Mariamme’s elegant perfume, a scent that had always marked her as royalty in Lydia’s mind, was heavy in the air. She tried to focus on Mariamme’s smooth voice.

She saw Mariamme stand and move to where she sat, fixed in her chair. Saw the reddish-brown hair, loosed at this late hour, hang about her shoulders as she bent her head to Lydia’s. “I believe you are that child, Lydia. I believe you are the child of a Ptolemaic king and a Judean princess. You are my mother’s cousin.”

Lydia’s cold fingers went to the string at her neck, pulled the pendant from under her tunic, clutched it inside a fist pressed against her chest.

All those childhood fancies. Daydreams of being a lost princess, torn from royal parents who still searched the world for their beloved child . . .

If it was true—if Mariamme’s mad supposition was true—then they had never searched for her. They had been dead at her birth.

But while they had never searched for her as they did in her fantasies, the reality she had believed was also untrue. She had not been abandoned. Not rejected, tossed away as worthless by the very ones who should have valued her most.

The room swam and blurred. She clutched at the pendant as if it were an anchor.

Mariamme was on her knees, forcing a cup to Lydia’s lips. “Drink this, Lydia. Focus on my voice.”

She took a sip of the wine, studied Mariamme’s sympathetic eyes, her cerulean-blue robes, the elegant curve of her neck. This was what it looked like to be a princess. Lydia was no princess.

She stood on shaky feet, needing to move, to pace.

Mariamme took the chair she vacated and did not force more questions.

Suddenly warm, Lydia went to the window, parted the tapestries, and slipped between them.

Alone in a cocoon, she looked over the city and the night sky. The winter air revived her, and she slipped the pendant from her neck and held it to the window, where a bit of moonlight filtered down.

The bronze seal was worn, but the sheaf of wheat and crown were visible. She ran a finger over its embossing. What was it Samuel had said about Cyprus as he lay dying? She could not remember. He had known, though. Samuel had known the truth and kept it from her.

She grew chilled and pulled the tapestry around her body.

She was lost, lost and confused in what could not be true,
and yet she knew it was. The truth changed not only her present circumstances, but it changed everything she had known, everything she had believed about herself. It was like knowing your life as a story, then having the first few pages ripped out and replaced.

The dizzy bewilderment swept her again, and she wrapped the tapestry tighter.

Yes, it was disorienting. But wasn’t it also like being swept into the embrace of a stranger you have somehow always known?

Lydia put the pendant to her lips.

Her mother.

Giving her life in protection of her unborn child. Never getting the chance to hold that child, to love her.

But
she
would
have
loved
me.

The shakiness of her limbs, her chest, grew and grew until Lydia realized she was crying.

Not merely quiet tears of release. Great sobs wracked her body, tears dripped from her chin, and her legs felt too weak to hold her upright as she wept for the mother she had never known, the mother she had condemned for abandoning her.

Mariamme slipped between the tapestries, pulled Lydia into an embrace, and whispered against her hair, “Cousin, yes. But sister first and always. You will never be without family again.”

Lydia bent her forehead to the queen’s shoulder as her sobs subsided, her heart hollowed out and yet filled for the first time in her life.

Lydia sat on the lip of Mariamme’s window, but the night had long ago fled. The warmth of a late-winter sun on her face and
the tapestry at her back kept her from seeking shelter within the chamber, which was as far as Mariamme would let her go.

Not that she was Mariamme’s servant any longer.

A bit of the shock had dissipated during the long night, while she and Mariamme lay side by side like sisters and talked of what all this meant. But Lydia was no closer to knowing that answer this morning.

She was a Ptolemy and a Jew and of royal blood. Both Alexandra and Cleopatra were her first cousins. But what did it
mean
?

Since the synagogue with Simon, she had been opening herself more to the Jews’ One God. Remembering Samuel’s teachings—that He was not a god like those of the Greeks and Romans, who cared only for their own pleasure and demanded worship and sacrifice in exchange for blessing. The Jews’ One God wanted to know and protect her, to be Father to her. Was He truly
her
God now?

There was only one truth she knew as a certainty, and this she had not shared, not even with Mariamme.

Royal daughters did not get involved with palace managers.

Outside the tapestry, she heard Mariamme call her name.

“There you are.” The queen smiled. “If you keep hanging about that window, I am going to start believing you wish to escape.”

Lydia emerged from hiding and stood. “Did you speak with him?”

“They are in the throne room. He has put off all business and is ready to speak with us. My mother is there as well.”

Lydia smoothed her plain servant’s tunic. “I am sure Cleopatra is not pleased to be neglected.”

Mariamme waved a hand. “She could use a few more days
of it, if you ask me. Stomping around as though it’s her palace. Demanding that her own cook be allowed to take over our kitchens.”

Lydia straightened, a flush of excitement running through her. “Banafrit? Has she brought Banafrit with her?”

Mariamme shrugged. “That may have been the name. Large woman, with cheeks like pink puffed pastries.”

Lydia laughed and clapped her hands. “Yes, that is Banafrit!” A friendly face from home. She started forward. “I must go and greet—”

“Lydia.” Disapproval edged Mariamme’s voice. “You are expected in the throne room, not the kitchens.”

Lydia winced. It was a distinction likely to be important now.

She inhaled a deep breath of courage and nodded. “I am ready.”

They had decided in the late hours of the night that the truth of Lydia’s identity should not be kept hidden from Herod, though the news would be given privately, without Cleopatra’s knowledge. The Egyptian queen’s constant attempts to seize Judea for herself were a source of national aggravation, and no one would have any desire to share a possible asset that Judea had suddenly gained.

In the throne room, Herod lounged on the throne and Alexandra sat in a chair nearby, a servant bent to her with a platter of figs, which she was waving away. Sohemus stood behind her, as though ready to strike her down for any misstep.

She stood at their entrance. “Finally. I was beginning to wonder if you would keep us here all day.” Her gaze ran the length of Lydia. “The handmaid is to be present for this meeting you insisted be kept private?”

Mariamme caught the eye of the servant and inclined her head to dismiss him. When the room held only the four of them plus the trusted Sohemus, she slid the heavy doors closed.

“My, my.” Alexandra’s eyebrows lifted. “Something shocking, I presume.” She tilted her head down and gave Lydia a look of derision. “Has the lady’s maid gotten herself with child?”

Lydia flushed and cleared her throat, then studied the yellow and blue of the floor tiles. They had agreed that Mariamme would take the lead in explaining.

Herod spoke at last. “Mariamme, can we get this tiresome conversation finished? I have business to attend.”