She had been royally housed and greeted—greeted as an equal, a ruler to set beside the king himself. In this land, Bilqis knew that was no small gift.
Already
her servants brought her rumors of outrage that a mere woman should be so honored.
Let the men and women of this kingdom protest; I shall not remain here long enough for it to matter to me.
One thing only mattered: seeking out the promised queen she had journeyed so far to claim.
If she indeed is here. If she exists at all.
For now she had met King Solomon, and looked upon the City of David, and upon the Great Temple as well. But she had not yet discovered, in this royal city, the daughter that Ilat had promised.
“Cultivate patience and reap riches,” she reminded herself, but the old proverb failed to soothe her unquiet heart. Somewhere upon her long journey she had begun to doubt, not only her goddess but herself Had she mistaken Ilat’s words, heard only what she had longed too greatly to hear?
Have I traveled half the world only to fail?
She pushed the thought aside; worry was weakness.
If I have erred, I must correct the error.
Her goddess had led her here, had promised a daughter for Sheba.
Now I must unravel Her riddle and find the girl.
But perhaps there was no girl—not yet. Suddenly she saw another way—
We are far from Sheba; we will not see Ma’rib’s walls again for a year.
She had young women attending her, women whose bodies were still fruitful.
Get one of them with child by the king, and claim the babe as my own daughter, goddess-granted. I shall have one of them take Solomon to her bed. A child of his to fulfill Ilat’s promise—
No. The denial rang clear. That path was wrong; she knew it in her bones.
Then I must wait. Wait and see what Ilat sends. Only please, Mother, let it be soon!
Seeking ease from her fears, she went to stand before the altar, facing the ivory image of the goddess. Crossing her hands over her breasts, Bilqis bowed her head and then looked into Ilat’s lapis eyes. She did not petition, she merely stood awaiting whatever Ilat might deign to send her. But she felt nothing, and after a time she bowed her head again and backed away.
“The gods aid those who aid themselves,” she told herself, and heard a soft laugh; Khurrami came towards her, bearing an alabaster bowl in her hands. Pomegranates glowed red and perfect against the pale stone.
“A gift from King Solomon?” the queen asked, and Khurrami shook her head.
“No,” Khurrami said, holding out the alabaster bowl. “A gift from King Solomon’s daughter.”
The words seemed to echo in the warm scented air; she stared at the crimson fruit, reached out and took a pomegranate in her hand. “King Solomon’s daughter,” she said slowly, and then, “Khurrami, I am a fool. Send word to King Solomon that the Queen of Sheba wishes to walk and talk with him this afternoon. And tell Irsiya to come to me and help me dress to meet with the king.”
Khurrami set the alabaster bowl upon a carved cedarwood chest and went off to perform her tasks; Bilqis cradled the pomegranate in her hands.
You knew the king had a
daughter, yet it did not occur to you that she might be the girl you seek? Did you think your prize would be set before you upon a golden tray with the king’s other gifts?
And why had the king not offered to show her his wives, his children? Of course she had met Prince Rehoboam—who had greeted her with a sullen courtesy that boded ill for his future reign did he not improve his manners—and such of the king’s sons as were old enough to have left the women’s palace and have quarters of their own.
But Solomon has not shown me his women’s world. Why?
Perhaps it was Ilat’s doing, to remind her that even a queen could be a fool. “Did I expect a slave girl or a novice priestess to cross my path in the street and have my crown fall at her feet?” Her fingers closed over the pomegranate’s smooth tough skin; she laughed softly. “I have listened to too many harpers’ songs.”
She gazed at the fruit that shone like rubies within the moon-pale vessel. Still smiling, she set the pomegranate she held back in the bowl and then carried the princess’s gift to lay before Ilat’s ivory feet.
“Thank you,” she said. She had asked for guidance—and what clearer sign could the goddess have sent her? Soon her quest would be ended and she could return home—home with Sheba’s future safely in her keeping.
When she asked King Solomon if she might see the queens’ palace, she made her request light, half a jest. “Forty wives, and all of them queens! Now that is a sight worth setting eyes upon.” Bilqis slanted her own eyes at the king, teasing glints half-veiled by her lashes. “Why do you hide them from me? Are you afraid of what they may reveal?”
Solomon laughed. “A man afraid of his wife—”
“Or wives,” she said.
“—or wives, is a man who wed the wrong woman—or women,” he added. “No, I thought only that such a visit would bore you.”
“Because I rule a kingdom and they do not?” So that was the reason, no more—and had she had the wit to ask at once, she would not have wasted a week once she arrived in Jerusalem! She tilted her head, letting her tiered gold earring brush her cheek, light as a dragonfly. “Tell me, O King, do you speak only with kings and princes? Or do you learn from all men?”
He did not spend breath on an answer they both already knew; he smiled and held out his hand. “Come, then, O Queen, and look upon the world of the king’s women. Although what the Queen of the South may learn from women whose only interests are their garments, their gems, and their children, I do not know”
O Solomon, you are called “the Wise”
—yet you are as blind as any other man when you look upon your own women.
But she only smiled, and laid her hand over his. “Of course you do not know; you are a man. Show me your women, reveal to me the living treasures of your palace, King Solomon, because I ask it.”
“Whatsoever the Queen of Sheba desires, that she shall have,” the king said, and Bilqis smiled, the curve of her lips as meaningless as his extravagant ritual promise.
As they walked through the courtyards and corridors, Bilqis noted each fruit or flower painted upon plaster walls, each emblem carved in stone, that might serve as a clue to guide her should she ever need to walk these halls alone. The Palace of the Sun and Moon in Ma’rib rose seven stories into the sky and spread its brick skirts wide—but King Solomon’s House of Cedar was a match for it in size and splendor.
And like all kings’ houses—and queens’ too—Solomon’s palace coiled about itself like a serpent. Without quick eyes and mind, a stranger would lose his way by the third turning.
Labyrinth,
such royal puzzle-houses had been called when Knossos still stood and the Bull-King and the Lady of the Labrys ruled all the world washed by the Great Sea.
And like all palaces, King Solomon’s offered hidden vantage points from which to spy upon those the king wished observed. A long gallery shadowed one side of the women’s quarters, its windows veiled by latticed screens delicately carved in stone; from that private spot, shielded from their eyes, the king could watch his women—
“Secretly,” King Solomon said, and she sensed hidden amusement beneath his blandly correct tone.
“And does King Solomon the Wise often watch here in secret?” Her own voice gave no hint of her distaste for such enforced seclusion of royal women; this land was not hers, and its ways were strange. She must take care not to give offense.
Solomon smiled. “King Solomon is too wise to think his presence here is ever truly secret. My women know more of what happens in Jerusalem than do my spies!”
Blind you may be when you look upon your wives
—but at least you are wise enough not to despise women as so many men do in this land that reckons lineage by fathers instead of mothers.
She allowed her own lips to curve in an answering smile, but said nothing. Instead, she moved forward to look down into the garden below.
Clearly the common ground of the women’s palace, the garden spread wide, offering both sunlight and shade, fruit trees and fountains. Flowers, too, and neat-laid paths to walk upon, and benches to rest upon set beneath olive and lemon trees. And for all the garden was set within palace walls, and all the women who walked within it were a king’s wives, the queens’ garden court seemed in truth no more than a village gathering place, the grand fountain no more than a village well.
Here is the heart of King Solomon’s world. The women at the well, and their children. Here is where I Shall truly learn to know him. Any man can play the hero to a guest. His women—ah, they will know him better.
In the garden below, a woman strolled past, half-a-dozen tiny white dogs trotting along with her, their fur swirling about them like water. Two women sat upon the fountain’s edge, their heads bent close in quiet talk. Several small boys kicked a gilded leather ball back and forth.
“Your sons?” she asked, turning away, ready to go on.
If I do not see his daughter soon, I will ask. Patience has limits.
“Some of them.” Solomon gazed down upon the domestic scene and smiled. “And there is my daughter.” His voice changed as he said the words, love and pride haunted by sorrow.
At last.
Bilqis turned back and looked down into the women’s garden once more, and a wave of gratitude swept through her, heating her blood and turning her bones to wax.
Forgive me, Mother Ilat; never again will I doubt.
A girl ran after the gilded ball, caught it up, and tossed it for the little boys to chase. As they ran, she laughed, pushing unruly hair from her face. Then, as if she knew herself watched, the girl looked up, and all Bilqis’s lingering fears fled as she stared down into sun-bright eyes.
Yes. Yes, this is the daughter I have come for. She is Sheba’s next queen,
A great queen, too, for the girl was a fire-child; born under the stars of the Phoenix, the sign that claimed kings and queens as its beloved children. Her birth-stars blazed in the red that rippled through her dark hair, flames born of the sun’s rays.
Yes. That one.
“That one.” Nothing of the triumph and delight soaring through Bilqis touched her voice. “A lovely girl; what is she called?”
“Her name is Baalit,” King Solomon said.
Baalit; little goddess.
Pain grasped her heart; she closed her eyes against bitter memory.
“Baalit … my goddess-child. Sheba’s queen, Mother … .”
Her daughter Allit’s dying words, naming a child who had lived to draw only half-a-dozen breaths—
No. I must think not of what was but of what will be. You were right, my Allit—Baalit will one day be Queens of the Morning.
“It is a good name,” she said at last.
“It is a strange name for a girl of our god’s people to bear, but her mother desired it.”
Now the pain rang sharp in his voice; clearly the girl’s mother had been dearly loved. Bilqis laid her hand upon his. “You are a good man, King Solomon. Many would not have honored such a desire.” She did not give him time to answer but spoke swiftly on. “Let us go down into the garden, for I would meet your wives and sons, and your daughter.”
“If you wish it,” he said, smiling, and she managed to smile back as if she made only the lightest, least vital, of requests.
“Yes, I wish it.”
“Very well; come with me, and I shall present my daughter to you. But I warn you, my Baalit is a clever girl who asks as many questions as—”
“As her father does? Do not trouble yourself, King Solomon. Questions amuse me.” And she laughed, easy and soft; she dared not betray strong interest—not yet.
But she is the one I have been sent here to find. She is. I know. She is a queen already, and does not yet know it.
This wild girl burned with the passionate fire that once had blazed
through Bilqis’s blood. Bilqis did not need Ilat’s whisper telling her this girl was the one for whom she had come so far, and at such risk. Baalit was the daughter of her soul; whatever the cost, Sheba must have her.
Solomon held out his hand, and Bilqis laid hers upon it. Despite her exultation, her skin was cool, her face calm. And her steps matched his; she would not ruin all by undue haste. Behind her tranquil eyes, her mind began telling over what she now must do.
She permitted herself a soft laugh, as if at the small jest King Solomon was telling her over the flowers in his garden.
My true daughter, my gift from the Queen of Heaven. I must return great offerings as thanks for this favor.
Prayers were so rarely answered so clearly; Bilqis was truly grateful.
“Such serenity,” the king said, pausing at the gateway to the garden. “A rare quality; I would give much to possess it for myself.”
She noted the hint of doubled meaning, gratifying to know she could still bring fire to men’s eyes.
Or say, rather, warmth; I do not think this man sparks to fire.