“My lord suffers a common illness. He is bored.”
Startled, Solomon accidentally dropped his fox into the wrong hole.
Bored? With all I must do, all I must accomplish, all I must supervise, my wife can call me bored?
“The hounds have won the game,” Nefret said, flicking Solomon’s misplaced fox with one gilded fingernail.
“Do you really think me bored?” Solomon abandoned formality, addressing her as he would any other woman.
“My lord shows every symptom of that disease.”
“Nefret, I am never idle.”
“Your wife did not say that her lord husband was idle, but that he was bored.” Nefret stroked the sleek-furred cat curled upon her lap; the small beast purred, long whiskers quivering. Solomon found its intense sun-gold stare disconcerting.
“True, my lord is never idle—but my lord never takes time for unalloyed pleasure, either. Even a king requires rest.”
“Perhaps, but even a king cannot add hours to the day.”
“But he can carve years from his life.” Nefret’s hand continued to caress the golden-eyed cat. “My lord must not deny himself pleasure and rest, lest his health suffer.”
“My lady must not trouble herself.” Solomon smiled. “Here I find both rest and pleasure.”
“Then my lord stays this night?” Nefret’s voice carried no hint of her emotions. For all Solomon could tell from her smooth face and quiet voice, she felt nothing.
“Alas, he does not.” Solomon watched her closely, but Nefret’s face revealed nothing. She said only “Does my lord wish to play another game before he leaves?”
Never once has she protested at anything I have chosen to do. Never once has she complained. She deserves more than I can give her.
Solomon smiled.
“Yes. Let us play one more game.” It was not much to offer, but it was all the king had to give. He wondered, as he watched Nefret’s long fingers set the playing-pieces back into the board, if Pharaoh’s Daughter were truly as content as she seemed.
Perhaps she is. Truly, she seems as easy to please as her cats. Yes, I think Nefret is happy.
Solomon smiled, and waited for his Egyptian queen to make the first move in the new game.
After Solomon had gone, Nefret sat motionless, staring at the ivory and lapis gameboard. Her lord the king tried so hard, and there was so little she could do to comfort him. She understood him, but King Solomon could never understand Pharaoh’s Daughter, not even if he lived a thousand years.
How could he? True, he had been born a prince, just as she had been born a princess. But she had been raised to be a king’s wife. Solomon had been King David’s youngest son, far from the throne, unschooled in power and protocol. He had achieved kingship by means that shocked Nefret.
But then, this entire gods-forsaken country had abandoned
ma’at.
Truth and balance.
Instead, the empire Solomon ruled commanded such wealth and power
that even Pharaoh sought alliance, had for the first time in Egypt’s memory offered up a Daughter of the Two Lands in exchange for trade concessions.
As if I were a bale of linen, or a tusk of ivory. As if Pharaoh’s Daughter were trade goods to barter.
Marriage to King Solomon had banished her to a crude, rough land. A land without elegance or art, literature or grace. Its dances lacked symmetry, its music lacked charm.
Worse, they had no manners.
Only Solomon himself made her exile bearable. “Neither one of us is a fool,” he had said to her upon their wedding night, “and so we both know that I am greatly favored—and also that Pharaoh needs Israel’s goodwill now, or you would not be here.” Then he had smiled and said, “But I will try to make you happy.”
He had kept his word; her courtyard and her rooms had been built in the Egyptian style. She kept her own servants, and her own fashions, and her own gods. In exchange, Solomon owned her perfect fealty, and all her talents. He did not have her love, but then, he did not desire it. She offered him quiet comfort, and respect, and friendship.
And King Solomon offered Pharaoh’s Daughter the same courtesies in return.
Slowly, Nefret gathered up the slender ebony and ivory playing-pieces. Slowly, she began setting them back in their holes upon the gameboard: fox, hound, fox again, until each piece stood neatly in place once more.
Respect, and friendship. She was not even the mother of a child. Considering the fratricidal nature bred into the House of David, Nefret counted herself blessed that she lacked children, rather than cursed.
I have my lord the king’s regard, and his affection. I have my own occupations.
Nefret painted, an alien skill in this backward culture. For her own amusement, she kept a record of life in Solomon’s Court, painting daily life in bright colors, storing the papyrus rolls in precisely labeled jars. And she gardened, another skill only half-known here. To design a courtyard garden, to experiment with its flowers and fruits, provided civilized pleasure. Nefret cultivated lilies.
Yes, all in all, my life must be regarded as satisfactory.
Nefret placed the last fox into its hole. The board now stood as it had before the latest game.
Then she rose to her feet and walked calmly to her bedchamber. The
room was ornamented in the Egyptian style, its walls decorated with images of a lush riverbank, its reeds teeming with birds: ducks, ibis, geese. She stopped before her favorite among the painted memories: a family of swallows soaring high above the reeds. There she stood, serene as a painted statue, while her handmaiden Teti gently unpinned and undraped her pale linen gown, unclasped her wide necklace of lapis and carnelian, lifted the heavy beaded wig from her head.
At last Teti took a soft clean cloth, dipped it into water scented with lemon, and gently wiped Nefret’s face clean of its saffron, malachite, and carmine. Teti, as well-schooled and as tactful as her royal mistress, did not comment on the dark smears of kohl spreading beneath the Lady Nefret-meryt-hotep’s tear-damp eyes.
This is no life for a warrior. No life for a war-chief.
But he was no longer a war-chief; he was the king’s general, head of all King Solomon’s armies.
And so he had spent most of the morning listening to his scribe read lists of provisions and equipment; the afternoon discussing the logistics of regarrisoning half-a-dozen border towns, an activity interrupted for an hour by the urgent necessity of soothing the wounded vanity of a royal captain of a thousand who had lost precedence when a cousin was promoted to a sinecure coveted by both men. Now the shadows stretched long, and still Benaiah had not been able to claim one moment in which to set foot beyond the confines of his office.
Sometimes this place seems more a prison than a palace.
For what was a prison but a place one could not leave at will?
It was not like this in the old days, in King David’s time. Then a war-chief ’s sword found work. Now—
Now the king’s general sat and listened to the deeds of other men. Sat and listened to the recitation of lists by men with soft voices and softer hands. Sat and rotted.
Listen to yourself. You sound like an old man.
Benaiah sighed, and rubbed his eyes; the lamp oil smoked—
another detail I must put right.
Benaiah made a mental note to tell his manservant Eben to see to the matter.
He knew what Eben would say: that Benaiah needed a wife. But Benaiah had been wedded to his sword too long; it was too late for him to succumb to softer lures.
And I am no prize for a young woman.
Marriageable girls dreamed
of young heroes. Heroes such as King David had once been, beautiful in body and eloquent in wooing.
Girls do not dream of hard old men with scarred hands and graying hair.
Benaiah shook his head and smiled, rueful. No one would believe that the king’s general brooded on such matters. Not Benaiah the clever, the strong, the endlessly-loyal sword arm of kings. But time served men as a whetstone served blades—sharpened them, honed them to keen use. And in the end, wore them away to nothingness.
“Truly, Benaiah, you sound like an old man—one as morose as a lion with toothache.” Voicing the words lightened them, turned his glum thoughts to grim jest. Benaiah knew he was not old—not yet. But life in a king’s court pressed men into strange, uncomfortable patterns. Luxury and indolence—no life for a fighting man.
Ah, yes, that is the stone in my sandal. I am not a fighting man. Not anymore. Now all I am is the king’s general. A man who orders other men into battle and danger.
Now he was a man who led a life too easy, too lavish. A man who had lost his keen fighting edge.
But it did not matter, for the king Benaiah now served had no need of such a man. King David, now—King David had required men of stone and iron to serve him. King Solomon prized peace; wished to wield his army not as a whip forcing compliance, but as a shepherd’s staff urging cooperation.
Yes, things have changed since King David’s day.
In King David’s reign, Benaiah had commanded only the palace guard, the king’s new-formed corps of foreigners, mercenaries. Benaiah had accepted the post reluctantly; it put him at odds with Joab, the king’s general, commander of the army. And those who opposed Joab did not prosper long.
Nor had Benaiah liked the sight of foreign warriors pacing the halls of the king’s palace. But King David had smiled at him, and spoken soft words. “You are a good man, Benaiah, I need good men about me, men I can trust with the safety of my wives and my children.” When King David had spoken, Benaiah had felt the intensity of the king’s need. How flattering to a young soldier, to be raised high and told that the king trusted him. That the king needed him. Benaiah had bowed and taken up the charge King David had laid upon him.
Commander of the king’s guard—never before had there been such an office in Israel. But after Prince Absalom’s rebellion, and the revolt of the
northern tribes, Benaiah had understood King David’s fears for his family’s safety.
Or thought he had. Gradually he came to see the guard he commanded for what it truly was: a weapon, a counterweight to the unruly army.
An army commanded by the king’s nephew Joab—and while Joab’s loyalty was beyond question, his methods were harsh and brutal. Joab would do anything that he thought good for King David. Anything, including murder.
Abner, Absalom, Adonijah.
Those were only three of the deaths laid at Joab’s door. Abner, who had been King Saul’s war-chief. Absalom, who had been King David’s treacherous, rebellious son. Adonijah, who had been King Solomon’s too-ambitious brother. All had sought power from David; all had received death from Joab’s hand.
But Prince Adonijah was the last of Joab’s kills. For Adonijah grasped at the crown as King David lay dying—only to be thwarted by his father’s sudden proclamation of Prince Solomon as successor. Adonijah had not been wise enough to accept defeat with grace; instead, he had stood before his brother and demanded possession of the king’s maiden, Abishag, to console him for the loss of the crown he had so coveted.
Abishag had been chosen by King David’s chief wife, Michal, as a gift to bring heat to the aged king. The maiden served as King David’s bed-warmer during the long months it took the king to die; that service alone made her a royal bequest, a legacy for the next king. And everyone with eyes to see knew that Prince Solomon had already chosen Abishag for his own queen.
Prince Adonijah’s arrogant folly had earned him death, death Joab dealt him as King Solomon watched in horror. Joab merely shrugged and wiped his sword blade clean on Adonijah’s scarlet cloak. It had been Benaiah who had come forward and quietly ordered his guardsmen to carry out Prince Adonijah’s body; who had surrounded King Solomon with men of the palace guard; who had escorted Queen Michal and the king’s mother, Bathsheba, safely back to the women’s palace. It had been Benaiah who had ensured that before King Solomon again set foot in the throne room, the steps of the throne were washed clean of his brother’s blood.
Benaiah had done those things not to win favor in the new king’s eyes, but because his task was to protect the king and to ensure peace within the king’s house. But King Solomon did not forget Benaiah’s quiet support—and with
Great David dead, it was Solomon’s will alone that counted. Solomon lifted the burden of command from Joab and gave that power into Benaiah’s hand.
Knowing what was due a man of Joab’s rank, Benaiah had gone to tell him of Solomon’s decision before the change was announced in the king’s court. To his surprise, Joab took the news unflinching.
“I thought as much. I am old, and have been David’s man these forty years.” Joab’s eyes seemed to look past Benaiah, into a past the young could never share.
Benaiah shifted, uneasy; more than once, Joab had taken bad news well, then struck down the man who stood in his way. “I did not seek this office, Joab. It is King Solomon’s will.”
“No need to tell me; I’ve known you since you were a boy. Deceit isn’t in you. Rest easy, Benaiah. Adonijah was the last. My sword days are over.”
“I am sorry, Joab.” Benaiah studied the impassive man before him. “You are not surprised.”
“Nor should you be, unless you do not know Solomon at all. He will never forgive me for slaying his brother.”
“But Adonijah as good as demanded the throne. And what he said of the Lady Abishag—”
“Was still not treason,” Joab said. “But Adonijah had to die, or Solomon would not know a day’s peace on that golden throne of his. Someone had to kill him. So I did.”
Benaiah thought this over. “It was murder.”
Joab shrugged. “It was necessary. Always remember, King’s Commander, that the king must do what is right—and his general must do what is needful.” Joab regarded Benaiah steadily, as if over crossed swords. “It will be needful that you kill me, Benaiah. But don’t expect me to make it easy for you.”
Although Benaiah sensed in his bones that Joab was right, he shook his head. “No. Live peacefully in your own house, Joab; King Solomon is not vengeful.”
“No,” said Joab, “he isn’t. That is why he has you.”
“Tell me one thing, Joab—how does a man do what is needful and still sleep quiet at night?”
Joab had smiled, teeth a wolf-white flash. “You learn,” he said.
Much as he had loathed the knowledge Joab had imparted, Benaiah was too honest to deny its truth: King Solomon would never forgive King David’s general. For Solomon had not hated his brother Adonijah—any more than Solomon hated Joab. Solomon did not hate any man.
Sometimes Benaiah thought that was Solomon’s greatest weakness.
Wisdom is not common sense.
In a king’s world, what was good was not always what was wise.
But as Joab had so truly said, knowing the difference, and acting wisely, was Benaiah’s job. King Solomon relied upon Benaiah as King David had relied upon Joab.
And as for sleeping sound—to Benaiah’s dismay, Joab had been right. He had learned.