The Queen's Handmaid (36 page)

“So here she is.” Cleopatra sidled in, looking Lydia up and down.

Surely the woman did not still hold animosity after all these years?

“
Cousin
Lydia.” The words shot from her lips like daggers.

Lydia sucked in a breath and stared. “How—?”

The queen of Egypt laughed in her face. “Please. Did you think I would come to such a place without ears everywhere? That little Riva came running to me as soon as she heard.”

Riva.

Lydia’s shoulders fell. Somehow she felt only pity for the girl. Riva worked so hard to make herself liked, believing it was the only way to be of value. She had no idea that even those who used her felt nothing but disdain. She would always be a servant.

Not
like
you.
At the thought, Lydia straightened.

Cleopatra stood too close, pressing in on her. “I suppose you think you’ll come back to Alexandria and be hailed by all?”

Lydia stared ahead, not meeting Cleopatra’s hard gaze. “I have not decided what I shall do next.”

“Oh, she has not decided.” Cleopatra smirked. “Well, we shall all await your decision with great excitement.”

“You have nothing to fear from me, Cleopatra.” The words emerged strong and steady, and with them, a measure of confidence flowed into her veins. She looked the queen in the eye.

Cleopatra shouted in Lydia’s face. “You think I
fear
you? You worthless little worm-servant! You are nothing but a half-breed, raised in the sewers. You are no more to me than an insect.”

“And yet here you are.” Lydia kept her voice low. “Seeking me out. Attempting to intimidate me.”

It felt like freedom, to speak thus to Cleopatra.

Cleopatra took a swift step toward her, arm upraised.

Simon caught the arm in mid-swing.

The queen cast a look of hatred on him and yanked her arm from his grasp.

“That will be all, Simon.” Lydia nodded to him. “You may leave us now.”

She had said it to remove him, to protect him from Cleopatra’s wrath. But the look in his eyes at Lydia’s regal dismissal pained her, perhaps more than it did him.

Simon stepped from the room and Lydia faced Cleopatra.

“Cleopatra, I have seen you charm an enemy. I have seen you cower an enemy. And I know very well how capably you dispatch those who block your desires. I am telling you that while I am no longer a worthless servant, neither am I your enemy. I am a Jewish woman, living under the protection of the king of the Jews.”

Cleopatra’s eyes narrowed. “Then do not forget it. Should you suddenly decide you would prefer to be a Ptolemy, be assured that I shall hear of it and send soldiers to cut off your hopes quicker than you can say ‘Egyptian princess.’ ”

A shadow crossed the door’s threshold. Mariamme.

“I heard the shouting.” She looked from Cleopatra to Lydia. “Is there some problem?”

Lydia smiled at Mariamme. “The queen has received the news already, through the palace gossip. She seems to feel a bit threatened by the new addition to her family.”

Mariamme paled. “Come, Lydia. I have something I need to discuss with you.”

Lydia dipped her head toward Cleopatra in farewell and sailed out of Simon’s chamber with her head high.

Outside the door, Simon leaned against a marble column. His gaze followed her face as she passed, but she could not read what she saw in his eyes.

In Mariamme’s chamber, the queen closed the door and faced her. “They are insisting on using you as a playing piece in their games, Lydia. I cannot stop them.”

“What use can Herod have for me?”

Mariamme’s eyebrows rose. “You are an unmarried daughter of royal blood on both sides. You are one of the most useful things there is.”

Lydia closed her eyes. Was this what she had wished for? She had a history and family and significance, and yet still belonged nowhere. Not here in Judea, the land of her mother, nor in the Egypt of her father’s family.

“Herod will keep you here, and he will wait.” Mariamme crossed slowly to the window and swept the drapery aside with one finger. “Wait and watch and keep his head down. Until it becomes clear who the victor will be. For Caesar has declared war against Cleopatra, and with her, Marc Antony.”

“I thought Herod’s loyalties—”

“His loyalty is to himself alone. If he must break with Marc Antony to retain Rome, he will do it.” She turned to Lydia. “And you will be the prize for the winner.”

Thirty-Two

L
ydia was enduring her empty time by painting floral designs over the faded geometrics of an old pot when Simon ran past her chair in the courtyard, nearly kicking over her paints.

“What is it?” She jumped to her feet and called to his disappearing figure.

He slowed and called over his shoulder, “Trouble in the Sanhedrin!”

And then he was through the palace arch and into the city.

Lydia stood with brush in hand, staring after him. Since when did Simon get involved in the affairs of the Sanhedrin?

But then Alexandra rushed past, as fast as Lydia had ever seen her move.

Lydia gathered her supplies in a hasty pile and followed.

They reached the northern end of the Temple area, where the Sanhedrin met in the Hall of Hewn Stone, and joined the flow of citizens who must have heard the gossip as well.

Alexandra pushed through to the building’s entrance, but
Lydia found Simon, straining to see over the heads of those who shouted and raised their fists outside the hall.

“There!” Simon pointed. “Jonah. I knew he’d be at the front. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Lydia followed Simon’s raised arm. Jonah—and was that Esther with him? They were both shouting at the door, held back by Temple guards.

She tugged Simon’s sleeve. “Who is on trial?”

“Hyrcanus. Treason.”

The doddering old man with the mutilated ears? Even as former High Priest, how could anyone think him capable of treason?

Simon answered her unspoken question. “A letter was apprehended on its way from Hyrcanus to Malik, asking the Petran king to send troops against Herod.”

Alexandra. It could only be Alexandra’s plot to bring down Herod. The senile and harmless Hyrcanus could not have orchestrated such a thing. She had been willing to implicate her own father to accomplish her goals.

A shout came from the front of the crowd. “They have killed him! Hyrcanus has been strangled!”

Lydia sucked in a breath and raised wide eyes to Simon.

His face flushed with anger.

The royal entourage—Herod’s advisers and Salome—were pushing out of the hall. Herod followed, turning his shoulders left and right to jostle through the crowd that pressed against him, voices mingled in hostile shouts.

Simon was forcing himself through.

Lydia followed in the wake he created. Would Esther be safe? So many innocents were relying on her.

Jonah raised a fist to a Temple guard and yelled an epithet toward Herod. The guard struck him in the face and he went down.

Lydia cried out, reached for Esther. Her hand brushed the robe of Salome instead. A coldness, strange and dark, snaked along Lydia’s fingers, across her hand, and traveled the length of her arm.

Salome turned on Lydia, stared with those dead eyes.

“What have you done?” Lydia hissed the words before she could hold them back.

Salome’s lips pursed slightly and she lowered her chin. “Hyrcanus has been tried and executed. His attempt to gain support from Malik against King Herod could not go unpunished.”

Lydia glanced to Esther, who was helping Jonah to his feet. She was close, too close, to the king’s sister. Lydia would not let Salome notice her friend.

But Esther was quiet, watching the exchange between Lydia and the king’s sister with unbelieving eyes.

“Salome, you know very well that Hyrcanus is incapable of such scheming.”

Herod was pulling Salome along, but the woman seemed intent on speaking to Lydia.

“Tell your friend, little Lydia, that this is what happens when she and her mother conspire. There is no one who is safe from my reach.”

Lydia clenched her fists at her sides. “You will be stopped someday. The One God will not tolerate you forever.”

She expected Salome to laugh at her declaration. Instead, the woman took a step backward, her chin lifting in defiance but a look of fear in her eyes. “Do you make yourself my enemy, Egyptian?”

“You are the enemy of all that is good, and you will not
succeed.” Lydia did not know where the certainty came from, nor even what Salome’s unsuccessful plan would be. The words poured forth as though from someone else.

Salome seemed to sense their prophetic nature. Her hands were clutched at her waist, but a slight tremor ran through them. The escorting guards prodded her toward the palace, but she did not take her eyes from Lydia’s, and the unbroken stare between them had the watchful intensity of a lion stalking a sheep.

Once again Lydia had drawn Salome’s dark attention. How long until the woman took steps to eliminate her, as she had Hyrcanus?

When Salome had been sucked away by the crowd, Esther came to wrap an arm around Lydia’s waist.

Lydia bent her head to Esther’s shoulder and wept. For Hyrcanus, for Mariamme, for herself. And for the City of God, which teetered on the edge of a destruction she had uselessly been tasked to prevent.

In the days that followed, Lydia did her best to avoid Salome. She would have taken the scrolls and run if Herod had not made it clear that she was his subject, and if she disappeared, those she loved would feel the consequences. Perhaps Simon, or David. Or even Mariamme. Between brother and sister, no one was safe. Salome was feeding Herod’s paranoia, his jealousy, hatred, and madness. If she had gotten him to strangle the former High Priest, a harmless old man, she could persuade him to do anything.

And so Lydia waited. Waited as news of the war between Egypt and Rome filtered to Judea. Waited through idle days, watching Mariamme try to shun Sohemus just as Lydia avoided
Simon. She watched the streets from the palace roof for the speedy approach of messengers and watched Simon from leafy corners of the courtyard for any sign that he grew more miserable with each passing day, as she did.

There were stolen glances—the occasional sideways look as he passed her at meals with the family, the head lifted at her approach before the sharp turn to other concerns. As the waiting stretched, Lydia began to live each day for only these moments, torturous as they were. She spent nights at her chamber window, overlooking the city she could not be part of and chasing away useless tears.

At least the news from the battlefronts was not good for Cleopatra. A great naval battle had been fought at Actium, with Antony’s troops deserting him and leaving him a fugitive. Even Cleopatra’s loyalties were in question as the queen tried to bribe Caesar Octavian. There was talk in the Senate of conferring the title of “Augustus” on Caesar.

At this information, delivered one night during a family meal by Mazal, the ingratiating cupbearer, Herod grinned in Lydia’s direction. “And when that happens we shall have a fitting gift for him, shall we not?”

Mariamme patted Lydia’s arm from her reclined position beside her, as if to keep her quiet. “Octavian already has a new wife, and Livia seems to please him in a way Scribonia never did.”

Herod shrugged. “Not for Caesar himself, then. But he will certainly want to reward his most trusted generals.”

Mariamme tried a smile in Lydia’s direction. “Perhaps that handsome Agrippa who visited last year. He was very charming.”

Herod’s face darkened. “And do you lust after every Roman who crosses our threshold, my fickle wife?”

Lydia cringed. Herod’s crazed jealousy had grown worse while they all waited, suspended with the tension of their fate decided by those outside their control. Mariamme should have known better.

Her friend scowled. “Roman, Jew, Egyptian. All but the Idumeans—they have never held much appeal.”

It was Lydia’s turn to quiet Mariamme with a firm pressure of the hand. While Herod seemed to grow mad with the waiting, Mariamme had grown bolder in her loathing of her husband. But under her disdain, Herod showed only more infatuation, as though the greater her scorn, the greater his passion.

But perhaps it was only the tension of the impending birth of another child. Within days, a little girl was placed into Mariamme’s arms.

Herod named her Cypros, after his mother.

“She will be my last,” Mariamme whispered to Lydia over the babe’s fuzzy head. She had been refusing to acknowledge Herod whenever he summoned her to his bed, and had no intention of returning. The news surprised Lydia, in the face of the heightening of Herod’s strange, obsessive adoration.

But they might all become mad before their futures were decided. The days stretched like dried-up threads over a loom, taut and fraying, ready to snap. She wished she could have spent an afternoon with Esther, throwing pots and speaking of ordinary things. But such an easy friendship was no longer possible. And to be near Simon, to see him every day but never speaking, never touching, was a pain worse than all the loneliness she experienced in her life. Lydia sometimes wished for it all to be over, for the course of her life to be set, even if it took her from Judea forever.