I remembered the black-clad attendants who followed her; saw again the flat glint of her eyes as she studied the women with whom she would now dwell. Whatever foreign customs the Colchian brought as her gift to King Solomon’s court, I did not think I would find them pleasing.
I stared at the gemstones laid out before me. Pearls glowed in the lamplight; turquoise vanished in shadow. Pearls and turquoise.
And for the first time I wondered how many pearls my father’s court could hold before the turquoise became altogether lost among them.
She had been destined from birth for a king’s bed. When it came time to show her to the goddess Astarte and receive the name that would define her being, the flames dancing upon the oil confirmed her fate.
Naamah,
she was named.
Beautiful.
Her father, the King of Ammon, owned a dozen daughters, but she outshone her sisters as a full moon outshines stars. Always, her beauty had been all that was required of her. No one cared that she was clever with numbers, that she was skilled with cloth and color, that she liked to dance.
They cared only that her hair flowed lustrous as shining water down her back, that her skin glowed like heavy cream in an alabaster bowl, that her hips and breasts curved as perfectly as the full moon. Those who watched the princess, weighing her worth, cared only that she was beautiful.
So when the new ruler of the kingdom David the Harper had shaped from the lands between Ammon and the Sea-Cities wished to treat with her father, she was part of the treasure sent to the court of King Solomon.
“Your beauty will be a jewel in his crown,” her mother told her, and her father said, “Your beauty will make you his favorite.”
No one asked her if she wished to be a jewel in King Solomon’s crown, or his favorite. She was beautiful; to be a king’s wife and a king’s mother was her destiny, and marriage sealed treaties.
No one told her beauty was a snare, a trap for fools. That truth Naamah had learned painfully, and for herself
“Hold the mirror still, or I cannot see myself clearly.” Naamah posed before an oval of bronze as large as a warrior’s shield, its surface burnished to sun-bright clarity. An idea of her own; while her bronze mirror did not provide so fine an image as did silver, its size permitted her to see herself as a whole, to judge her total worth.
As two of her maidservants supported the bronze mirror, Naamah studied her reflection in the polished metal. Yes, she looked well. Despite having borne a child, her body remained supple, rounded and womanly, fit vessel
for any king.
Even the great Solomon of Israel.
The thought was sour; Naamah watched herself frown and swiftly smoothed away the lines of dissatisfaction. Too often indulged in, temper marred the face. Naamah could not afford that luxury.
Solomon has so many women!
The Israelite king’s harem was as full of women as a Damascus bazaar of rich trade goods. Naamah shared her royal husband with women from every people she had ever heard of, and some she had not. Now dark Colchis, Kingdom of Gold, had bowed at last to Israel’s greatness and sent the Colchian king’s eldest daughter as gift to King Solomon.
So many queens. So many beautiful women.
But the last woman to bask in the king’s favor had been Abishag. Now Naamah realized how restful her life had been during those early years of Solomon’s reign—for it had been useless to try supplanting Abishag in Solomon’s heart, and every woman in the harem had known it. No matter how beautiful, how skilled, what woman could triumph over the girl who had been the king’s first love?
But Abishag had lain dead more than a dozen years, and the child that had killed her was only a daughter. Praise to Milcom for that blessing, for surely the son of Abishag would have been proclaimed crown prince, no matter when he was born! As it was, Naamah’s son was heir to the throne; King Solomon had sworn again to that upon Rehoboam’s last birthday, when the boy had turned fifteen. Sworn to it publicly, too, so there could be no doubt in men’s minds.
But a doubt lingered in hers.
This kingdom is built on sand, its kings are crowned by whim. I must ensure that Solomon keeps his promise; that my son sits next upon the Lion Throne.
Naamah turned before the mirror, gauging the effect of the spangled shawl draped over her smooth shoulders. Thin crescents of silver glittered against fine cotton cloth dyed deepest blue—as she had hoped, it seemed as if the midnight sky shrouded her body. The extravagant shawl was her own design. Wearing it alone, with her ripe body gleaming beneath the sheer cloth, she would rival Astarte, would seem the Rising Moon herself. Surely Solomon could not resist her then.
But that is not the problem!
Naamah found herself frowning again. For the king found her pleasing, he had told her so. He enjoyed her well-tended body, complimented her upon her taste and her cleverness, admired her original designs.
Just as he enjoys and praises all the others!
That was the heart of Naamah’s trouble. Solomon did no more for her than he did for every other woman taken into the royal harem. No woman received special treatment from the king, from Pharaoh’s Daughter down to the newest, rawest concubine from the Cilician hills.
How could she trust that dispassionate fairness? For it would last only until a new woman captured his heart—
and if such a one gives Solomon a son, I would not wager a moldy fig on my son’s future crown, king’s word or no!
So, to ensure her son’s inheritance, she herself must somehow become the woman Solomon preferred over all others. It must be possible; there must be some net that would ensnare him!
“What do you think?” Naamah asked her attendants. “Tell me truly.”
She knew they would; Naamah was clever enough to value honesty from her maidservants.
“Queen Naamah is beautiful as the night sky,” her maid Tallai said promptly.
Naamah regarded her sternly. “I ask not of my beauty but of my garment’s. Does it please the eye?”
“Oh, yes.” Tallai’s admiration shone from her dark eyes. “It is beautiful. I wish
I
owned such a shawl.”
“And all the other women in the palace
will
own one by the next new moon!” Ora promptly responded, and Naamah laughed.
“So they will—but the king will have seen mine first!”
Seen her clad in starry night, her skin glowing like the full moon and her hair flowing like dark clouds … . Naamah smiled.
“And by next new moon, Queen Naamah will have thought of yet another new fashion,” Ora added, pride in her mistress’s cleverness warming her voice—and though Naamah’s smile remained fixed upon her painted lips, her heart sank.
Yes, by then I must design something else new, something enticing. Something to catch the king’s eye—and keep it upon me.
Suddenly weary, Naamah stared at her reflection in the bronze mirror, knowing she could not afford dismay. Her son’s future was at stake, and her own as well. When she was the queen mother it would not matter whether her body were fat or lean, her face smooth or lined, her hair glossy or gray. The king’s mother would be honored and protected.
Next moon is many days from now. By then—by then I shall think of something!
I must.
When she had been called before her mother’s chief eunuch and informed that the new-made treaty between the island kingdom of Melite and the swiftly growing empire of Israel was to be sealed by marriage, and that she had been chosen as the treaty-bride, Melasadne had bowed her head and most properly feigned modest reluctance.
“As my mother and my queen orders,” Princess Melasadne had murmured, “but I am not worthy of such an honor.” To her secret relief, no one had paid the least attention to this pious objection. She had been packed off to her new home in great state, and in even greater haste—
Lest the King of Israel change his mind!
had been her scornful thought.
Melasadne knew King Solomon could not change his mind, any more than her mother could. For the island kingdom needed this alliance as desperately as a rich beautiful widow needed a strong husband.
Once Melite had been invulnerable, guarded by the sea around it and the ships that ruled that sea. But that halcyon age had ended a dozen lifetimes ago in a night of fire and death that swept the Dolphin Fleet from the Great Sea. Now all that remained of the Sea Kings and their empire were defenseless island kingdoms and memories of vanished glory. Without the protection of the Sea Kings, little kingdoms such as Melite endured only at the random mercies of the gods—and of the pirates who ruled the Great Sea.
Now a new king had risen in faraway Canaan, powerful enough to force peace upon the restless sea. Tales of King Solomon were sung by every traveler who made landfall upon Melite; Melasadne hardly dared believe half of them. But if even half of all she had heard were true, King Solomon was a second Minos!
Rich and powerful and wise—and handsome too. What more could I desire?
What luck that her eldest sister had fallen prey to the Mouse God’s plague and pox scars now marred her cheeks, and what luck that her prettiest sister had already been given to the Lady’s Temple! Melasadne had been the bride chosen to wed the new power in their world, and sent to King Solomon with the most lavish dowry Melite had ever granted an outlander. In addition to Melite’s goodwill, King Solomon would receive a safe port free of all customs levies, and a free market for Israel’s wool and oil.
Melasadne herself had smuggled out her own gift for the husband who
had unknowingly delivered her from life as handmaiden to her mother: a pair of the small white dogs that only the royal family might own. She still smiled as she remembered King Solomon’s startled laugh when she had knelt and presented him with a covered basket that uttered high-pitched barks.
“What gift is this, that sounds so distressed?” Solomon had asked, and lifted the basket’s lid to stare into two pairs of bright black eyes. The tiny white dogs had stared back at the great king and then began scrambling out of their basket; Solomon had caught them up before they could fall, their long fur flowing over his hands.
Only later did Melasadne come to understand how truly generous this gesture had been, for never had it occurred to her that the people among whom she now must make her home considered dogs unclean.
“They are the luck of our House,” she had said. “Only those of royal blood may own such dogs. They are my own gift to you, my husband.” She had smiled, wishing him to understand that she was pleased with this marriage.
“That is kind.” King Solomon regarded the little animals quizzically; the dogs wriggled and licked his hands with quick pink tongues. After a moment’s hesitation, the king smiled and held the dogs out to Melasadne. “I ask that you tend them; I know nothing of such animals, and clearly they must have the best of care.”
And so, to her great delight, the dogs had remained hers, although Solomon always remembered to ask after their welfare when he visited her. The royal dogs prospered and proved fruitful, and now Melasadne walked amidst a pack of tiny white dogs whose long fur flowed about them like water.
She, too, had prospered. Two merchant ships had been part of her dowry, and she dealt cleverly in trade goods, sending fine cloth and elegant pottery north and bringing furs and amber south. She had borne King Solomon two sons, handsome boys who had inherited their father’s cleverness and kind nature.
Life is good.
She was a queen in King Solomon’s palace; she was the mother of two fine boys who one day would oversee her own ships. All her prayers had been answered.
Melasadne had never ceased to remember that, and to be grateful.
Tomorrow was the Feast of First Fruits—and this year, she, too, would carry a sheaf of wheat and a pomegranate up the hill from the king’s palace to the Lord’s Temple.
This festival I, too, will worship joyfully. This year, I am Ruth.
She had cast aside her old name and her old gods; the Lady Ruth bowed only before the god of Abraham, the god of Great David.
This year I am no longer blind. This year I go rejoicing in the Lord’s light.
Ruth smiled and continued lifting her gowns from the sandalwood chest, weighing and judging. Only the best would do for her first offering at the Lord’s Great Temple.
How different this year was for her than the last. Then she was Princess Surraphel, the King of Chaldea’s daughter, a treaty-bride too stiff and shy to say more to her new husband than “As my lord the king pleases.”
But King Solomon had been so kind there was little she would not do to please him—save for one thing. She would not relinquish her own gods.
So she had held aloof, scornful of King Solomon’s god, who seemed a poor deity indeed compared with her own protectors. How could one surrender oneself to a god with no face, no form? How could one respect a god whose own people refused Him an image to adorn with gold and with jewels? So for many months she had silently jeered at the Hebrew queens, had clung to her own gods.
How stubborn I was; how foolish.
But that folly vanished one morning as she looked upon the Temple crowning the hill. She had often looked upon the Lord’s Temple and silently mocked. But that morning—ah, that morning had been different. That day, the rising sun poured light over the god’s house, and between one breath and the next the Temple seemed to catch fire, a beacon summoning those with eyes to see.
As she had seen at last.
That golden fire kindled answering flame within her, and the blaze of that sacred flame revealed the truth to her: the Lord ruled her small world as He ruled the great worlds of gods and men. The Lord promised nothing, demanded everything. Who could refuse worship to so great a god? And as the god-light faded, she had fallen upon her knees and uttered her first prayer to the Lord of Hosts.
O god of Solomon, make me worthy of you!
That day she cast aside her own gods and turned to her husband’s, only to endure mockery and suspicion from those women who had been born
under the Lord’s sheltering covenant. But upheld by the promise the Lord had written in fire, she persevered. At last she had asked King Solomon, upon the night that was hers, to aid her.
“O King, your handmaiden craves a boon of you.” She knelt before him as a supplicant; Solomon smiled and bid her rise and sit beside him on the bed.
“There is no need to humble yourself, wife; ask, and I will judge your request fairly.”
“My king and husband, I wish to worship your god. I would learn to do Him honor, as you do.”
King Solomon looked intently into her face. “You need not, Surraphel. I have sworn my wives may keep their own gods; you need not fear yours shall be taken from you.”
“I fear only that I shall not honor the Lord as He would wish.” She raised her head and prayed that the king would see the new passion burning within her. “My soul longs for your god to be mine as well; my heart yearns for Him. Do not deny me this, I beg of you.”
King Solomon had granted what she asked, sending the high priest Zadok to instruct her in those rites sacred to the Lord. And the king had done more; he had called those of his wives who were daughters of his god’s Law before him and placed her in their keeping.
“Here is the Lady Surraphel, who wishes to become a good Daughter of the Law.” King Solomon held her hand in his and held out his other hand to Paziah, who was well-known as the most pious of the king’s Hebrew wives. “Will you take her as your sister and teach her?”
What could the Lady Paziah say but “If the king wishes it,” and let Solomon set her hand in Surraphel’s? “Welcome, Surraphel. Be thou my sister now.” Paziah’s voice held no welcome, but Surraphel smiled as if she had been embraced warmly, and bowed her head.
“Call me not Surraphel, for that woman is dead. Give me a new name, I beg of you, a name fit for a daughter of the Lord.”
Paziah hesitated, and then clasped both Surraphel’s hands. “Then welcome—Ruth.” And she kissed her new sister’s cheek.
The new name suited Ruth, as did the worship of her new god. She learned the Lord’s Laws, and strictly obeyed them—and in exchange for her homage received a peaceful mind and a cheerful heart.
What more could a woman ask from any god?