And so I roamed the corridors and courtyards, seeking proof of the folly of my father’s wives—and of my own wit and virtue that set me above them.
Long years later, when I sorted my memories of those passionate young days, I saw that I found proof only of the quiet strength of the human heart. The only folly had been my own, in thinking that all women must dream as I did. Most women, like most men, contented themselves with the common stones that built a wall of life. A husband, children, friends. A task to perform, however simple. Common stones, easy found if one were easy pleased—so I thought then, and despised them in my heart. I yearned for rare gems, longed to perform great deeds.
Only in age does one cherish the simple pleasures, those common stones polished by love to outshine gold. Still, I suppose I was no more foolish at fourteen than any other girl; it is always ourselves whom we judge most harshly.
But I had good teachers, and I can at least say with truth that I paid close heed to their lessons. When those I admired talked, I had wit enough to listen; when they acted, I studied what they had done, and why.
As I did the day I watched the Sheban handmaiden Khurrami catch up a runaway puppy—and gain an ally for her queen.
I had been granted the privilege of walking Moonwind; Khurrami accompanied the sleek hound, serving as elegant escort and drawing all eyes to her as we strolled through the palace gardens. Although the Sheban queen might be resented, Sheban fashions were not. The looped braids of Khurrami’s hair, the drape of her veil over her breasts, even the lines of paint about her eyes would be studied and copied.
I thought of Lady Halit flaunting Sheban style while vilifying Sheba’s queen, and as I laughed silently, Khurrami slanted her eyes at me—but she did not speak. And before I could decide whether to share my private jest, a scrabbling sound caught Moonwind’s notice; his ears lifted and he turned his head, staring down at the ball of white fluff dashing towards him. The
puppy bounced to a stop when it saw Moonwind and began to utter sharp chirping barks. Moonwind tensed, as if he sighted prey; I caught the hound’s collar, coiled my fingers about the gold-sewn leather.
“It’s only one of Lady Melasadne’s dogs,” I said, and Khurrami laughed.
“Truly? I thought it a handful of wool rolling in the breeze.” Khurrami crouched down and held her hand out; the puppy dashed up and licked her scented fingers. She laughed and scooped the puppy up. “So small and valiant—and so lost, I think.”
“Yes; give the pup to me. I will take it back to Lady Melasadne’s courtyard.” I stroked Moonwind’s head; the elegant hound seemed as appalled by the wriggling puppy as Queen Naamah would have been by mud upon her gown. Still, I did not laugh, for I did not wish to offend the hound’s pride. “Take Moonwind back to the queen; he does not care to be barked at.”
Khurrami held the pup up in both her hands; it stared down with bright black eyes and tried to lick her nose. “No, I will carry it. We will all return this small wanderer to his home. You, Princess, may guide me to Lady Melasadne’s courtyard, and as for Moonwind—it will do him no harm to learn tolerance.”
Lady Melasadne’s handmaidens greeted us with cries of delight that brought Melasadne herself hurrying up, her dogs dashing ahead of her. “Oh, you have found my lost one! My thanks, my deepest thanks to you!” She held out her arms, and, smiling, Khurrami set the tiny puppy in Lady Melasadne’s hands. Melasadne cuddled the puppy to her cheek; the pup began chewing upon her dangling pearl earring. “You are the Queen of Sheba’s handmaiden, the one called Khurrami? A thousand thanks; how may I repay your kindness?”
“Oh, it is not I whom you should thank, but my mistress, the Queen of the South.” Khurrami did not make the error of saying more; as she told me later, too many sham details bred traps for their creator.
“Just as a half-veiled face entices and a half-shadowed form lures, so a half-truth beguiles. Why spend useless effort creating a tale that does not matter anyway?”
Now Khurrami smiled and said, “My queen cherishes her dogs and values those who do likewise—although I do not think this proud hound favors his small cousins here.”
We all looked down, watched the Lady Melasadne’s pack of dogs swirl about our ankles like little breaking waves, weave about Moonwind’s feet. Moonwind stood aloof, staring down his long nose in apparent disdain. I laughed.
“He looks as disapproving as the prophet Ahijah himself,” I said, and the others laughed with me.
“Truly he does.” Melasadne began chirping commands at the small white dogs, which blithely ignored her, engrossed in their investigation of the tall newcomer who stood in their midst like an alabaster statue. “Ah, well, they will come away when they are ready,” she said, and then smiled upon Khurrami.
“Tell your mistress, the Queen of the South, that the Lady Melasadne is most grateful for her kindness.” Melasadne lifted her hands and unhooked the ocean pearls that circled her neck like a collar of cloud. “Tell her I send this small token of my friendship. I would give her one of Miri’s puppies, but I do not think the queen’s hound would take kindly to such a rival.”
Khurrami received the pearls with smiling grace. “My queen will be pleased to own such friendship, which is a jewel past price.”
As I watched, holding Moonwind’s collar close, Khurrami bent and caressed the small dogs that milled about our feet. And when one of the pups set its tiny teeth into the hem of her gown and tried to run off with it, ripping little holes in the deep blue cloth, Khurrami only laughed and called the puppy charming and the gown too old and worn for the damage to matter.
As I walked on with Moonwind and Khurrami, I glanced sidelong at her. “Your gown is new; the blue still unfaded. You took its ruin lightly.”
“Oh, I can mend the rents, cover them with embroidery. To have the Lady Melasadne’s goodwill and friendship-that is worth a few rents, even in a new gown.” Khurrami slid the rope of pearls through her fingers, slowly, as if she counted and judged them. “My queen likes to be on good terms with all. It is a wise policy, Princess.”
“Certainly it is a pleasant one,” I answered, and we continued on. And as I walked beside Khurrami, my hand resting upon Moonwind’s silken back, I wondered why a woman as powerful as the Queen of the South should care what one of King Solomon’s wives should think of her—and that wife not even the mother of the heir.
When I returned Moonwind to the queen’s care, I asked if I might speak with her.
“Always,” she said, smiling as she cradled Moonwind’s long head between her hands. “What is it, Baalit?”
So I told her what had happened, and how Khurrami had granted the credit for the puppy’s rescue to her, rather than claiming it for herself. And I confessed myself surprised that so great and powerful a queen strove so hard to please my father’s women. “Why? Are they not your rivals?”
“Why not? Are we not all sisters under the moon? And is it not better to own friends than enemies?”
And even a slave girl can cause trouble if she cares nothing for consequences.
And as I thought this, the queen said, “I am not their rival, although I suppose no one in all Jerusalem believes that.” She sighed, and shrugged. “Well, I cannot control others’ thoughts or tongues. No, I am not their rival-but it makes them happy to think so. I am someone they can strive to defeat, after all.”
I did not understand, and something in her tone and in her eyes made me hesitate to ask for enlightenment. I did not fear that she would not tell me; I knew that she would, if I asked plainly. But somehow I feared to hear her answer.
“So you are pleasant by policy?” I asked, and the queen smiled again.
“Partly-and partly because it is indeed more pleasant to dwell in peace. And partly because I am sorry for them; so many of your father’s wives are unhappy.”
Startled, I stared at her, then said, “Of course they are not! How could they be unhappy here?”
She looked at me for a long moment, her hands resting upon Moonwind’s head as if in blessing. “How indeed?” she said at last. “Go and learn, Baalit, and return enlightened. Your own happiness rests in the balance.”
And she would say nothing more. I went off hurt and puzzled to contemplate this new riddle she had posed.
Never had it occurred to me that any of my father’s many wives might be less than content with him as a husband. All the world knew King Solomon was wise and just; all the palace knew King Solomon was also kind and generous. Each wife, each concubine, he treated fairly. Not one of King Solomon’s women could honestly complain that another received a gift she
herself did not receive as well. Nor could any complain that King Solomon favored one wife’s bed, favored one wife’s son, above any other’s.
Why, then, should any of King Solomon’s wives weep?
So I had thought, heedless as any child is heedless; who, as a child, thinks upon her elders’ sorrows? But I now balanced upon the threshold between girl and woman. Before, a child, I had been blind to what I thought did not concern me. Now, as if the Queen of the South had torn away a veil that had long shrouded my eyes, I began to see clearly.
And to my new eyes, it seemed only regret and sorrow dwelt within the women’s palace. Suddenly each quarrel, each spiteful word, I took as proof of a heart’s misery. But when I said as much to the Spice Queen, she laughed. “Better, but you still see only with one eye. Come back again when you can see with two:”
At first I did not understand her, nor could I understand why a woman whom I knew to be kind could so lightly regard the suffering I had spoken of. But never yet had Sheba offered me less than wisdom-if I had the wit to hear it.
So I began to study the women’s palace as intently as if it were all the world, striving to see all its faults and virtues unveiled before me. And I began to learn that all that men and women did concerned me.
All that long summer I sat quiet beside a dying king and listened as those who thought I was too foolish, and he too far down the path to death, to notice or to care, spun their plots. For King David had not yet declared his heir, and so men thought the crown a prize any prince might yet win.
Only a few knew that the next king had been chosen long years ago. Chosen, and trained, and now waiting as time spun out like smooth thread between Queen Michal’s restless fingers.
When I think if her, it is always that image that I see: a woman spinning. Endlessly spinning-I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I saw the queen without her ivory spindle. To spin wool into thread quieted her, Queen Michal said. Soothed her restless mind.
“Spinning frees me, permits me to think calmly.” Smiling, Queen Michal continued her endless task; her fingers pulled sift wool from the basket, twined the wool onto her lengthening thread. Thread coiled above the amber whirl; the spindle dropped from her hand, swinging as it fell, pulling new thread with it. Queen Michal spun as well as a spider; her thread wound thin and smooth about her ivory spindle.
I spun, of course; what well-reared girl did not? But I had no love for the craft, no sweet sift touch upon thin thread. Bearing Queen Michal company, I too spun, and bemoaned my lack of skill, compared with hers.
“Skill grows with time,” the queen said, “and I have had many years to learn the art. When I was young—when I was young, I found no joy in spinning. That I was taught by hardship, and by sorrow.”
“When King David fled before King Saul’s army, and you sat prisoned far away.” Later I would have known better than to speak of such old memories at all, unless the queen herself did so. But at least I had sense enough not to call King David’s adversary “Mad Saul,” which is how he was always spoken of in King David’s court. Mad Saul was Queen Michal’s father, after all.
Queen Michal looked long at me; her fingers never faltered on the slender thread she spun. At last she said, “Then, and after.”
I realized I had erred, misjudged what she had wished to hear from me. Although I longed to know her meaning, I would not learn it now; her face betrayed nothing, the past hidden behind her steady eyes. So I said, hoping to please, “I too hope to learn the joy you found.”
“Do you, Abishag?” she said. “I wish you better fortune than that, my child—but since you will always be a king’s beloved, I do not think my wishes will count for much,”
“If you had not wed my father, what would you have done?” A simple enough question—but the answers, I had learned, were not simple at all.
Some of my father’s wives merely stared at me when I asked that question of them. Others laughed. But the answer seldom varied: “Oh, I would have wed another king.” “I would have wed a prince, a great warrior, a wealthy merchant.” One or two answered differently: “I would have become a priestess, had I not become a queen.”
And when I asked if they were happy, even those wives who admitted they might have become high priestess of a rich temple eyed me warily and murmured platitudes: “A woman’s happiness is in her children.” “A woman’s happiness is in her husband’s happiness.”
Most of my father’s wives refused to admit that life might offer anything to them other than what they possessed. At least, they refused to admit it to me. Most of my father’s wives answered as if they had all learned their responses from the same strict and pious teacher.
And then there were those like the Lady Citrajyoti.
The Lady Citrajyoti had been sent to my father from a land far to the east, farther even than Sheba; she had come to him bearing a dowry of sea pearls and sapphires, and the right to moor his ships at the Indus ports, and to trade there. She was small as a child and dark as amber and her hair fell in a long plait nearly to her gilded and jeweled feet.
When I was admitted into Lady Citrajyoti’s rooms, I found her standing before a window, a vivid green parrot perched upon her wrist. Like many of King Solomon’s wives, she followed the customs of her own country; she wore only trousers of some cloth so thin she might as well have been wearing water, and all that covered her breasts was a long strand of moonstones as large as doves’ eggs.
She and the parrot both tilted their heads and stared at me, studying me with bright opaque eyes. “Princess Baalit,” she said, and inclined her head. “You are welcome, of course.”
Instantly I sensed that I was not. But neither was I unwelcome; Lady Citrajyoti merely waited to learn what I wished of her.
I looked at the parrot waiting upon her wrist. “Did you bring your bird from your homeland?”
“My home, yes.” She spoke with slow care; our language strange to her tongue. She stroked the parrot’s breast with one finger; from knuckle to fingertip, her skin was rose-red as a sunset, henna-dyed. “The Princess wishes?”
“To ask—” Suddenly my desire for knowledge seemed merely a rude curiosity. But the queen had commanded, and I knew I must obey or fail some unspoken test. “You are happy here? Pleased?”
She and her parrot stared at me with seemingly identical incomprehension; she continued to stroke the bird’s emerald-bright feathers.
At last she said, “Pleased. Yes.” Then, as if feeling she had been less than generous, “King Solomon, he is kind.” She stopped caressing the green parrot to wave her hand in a gesture that somehow gathered up her rooms and the little courtyard beyond and offered them as proof. “Kind,” she said again, and that was all.
I thanked her and went away, my thoughts unsettled.
Had Citrajyoti meant to shock me, outrage my modesty? No, for she had not known I intended to visit her; her garments were simply what a lady from her own land wore. Just as all my father’s foreign wives and concubines
wore the dress of their own land, followed as many of their own customs as they chose.
Now patterns I had never truly noticed sprang out in bright relief to my opened eyes. In the great courtyard of the women’s palace, I saw that those wives and concubines chosen from among the people of Israel and of Judah formed a separate world. They clung together like a bevy of quail surrounded by falcons, turned their faces from the foreign wives as if the very sight of them would breed plague. Their disdain hovered, almost palpable; a murmur of distaste, like insects’ buzzing, hung low upon the heavy air.
And for their part, the foreign women flaunted themselves, preening before the chastely covered Daughters of the Law, swearing by their idols with every other breath. Never would one permit a chance to affront the Hebrew women escape.
It seemed to me that the women of Israel and Judah affected more iron virtue than they would have displayed had they gathered at a public well instead of in the king’s house—and I suspected that the foreigners feigned more wanton display than would have been permitted in their own lands.
Nor did I spy—for that is what it was, although I neither came in secret nor disguised my interest—only upon the foreign women. My father had also married wisely among his own people; each tribe had given a bride to the king. As I say, the Hebrew wives clung together, creating a tribe of their own within the women’s palace.
As a child, I had thought only that they were too bonded by blood to befriend those who were not of their lineage. Too, they had spoken loudest against the freedom my father had always granted me, and so I had not sought out their company.
But when I spoke to them now, I listened with new understanding. For now I knew that these women fought a battle they had lost before ever they set foot upon the cool polished floors of the women’s palace. Trained up to be frugal wives, strict mothers, and pious women, as their mothers and their mothers’ mothers had been before them, they had married not a shepherd or a farmer or a merchant, but a king. They dwelt not in a good plain house or in a desert tent, but within the walls of a great palace.
And their sister-wives were not others who had been raised as prudently
and as strictly as they—but foreigners. Women who had been trained to strange ways, who dressed in alien garments, who worshipped distant gods. Women as exotic and dangerous as bright serpents.
The Hebrew wives feared and envied the foreigners, who embodied the changes time had swept over our land. They could not banish the foreign queens from the women’s palace, or from King Solomon’s bed.
Some had yielded to the alien lure and adopted those habits and fashions that pleased them. These spoke overlong of how they still truly obeyed the Law—“There is no law to say a woman may not wear Colchian black if it pleases her. And who is to know, after all? I do not flaunt this in the marketplace!” This was said with an uneasy laugh; the speaker sought to convince herself as well as me.
Some strove to dwell within the women’s palace as if it were a plain man’s house—and as if the other wives did not exist. These spoke little, but their words cut like poisoned blades. “It is better to stay far from them; I never cross the courtyard to their side. And they know better than to so much as touch my gate with their unclean hands.”
And one Daughter of the Law had surrendered to neither temptation nor hatred. The Lady Dvorah somehow trod a middle path.
Although she owned as many fine garments as any of the others, they were of a cut and color suitable for a modest woman in her husband’s house. In the Lady Dvorah’s courtyard, the Law was meticulously observed and the Lord was honored. But that observance did not prevent Dvorah from gossiping with women who neither dressed nor worshipped as she did.
“Of course I keep our Lord’s Laws,” she told me. “But I cannot keep them for others, nor is His Law binding upon those not of His Covenant. Try one of the little cakes; it is a recipe of my own. I use apricots instead of figs.”
So bidden, I tasted the cake and praised its rich flavor. I admit I had a second motive for visiting the Lady Dvorah at midday; she was renowned for her skill as a cook. “So you do not think my father’s foreign women unclean?”
“Well, of course they are—they eat impure food and worship idols. But that does not mean I cannot be civil to them when we pass in the garden or the courtyard. Now tell me truly, do you like the wine? I spiced it with clove and cinnamon, but perhaps I should add more honey?”
Again I swore the taste perfect. “Do you not think them immodest?” As if the notion had just occurred to me, I added, “Why, the Lady Citrajyoti walks about in less than I wear at night in my bed!”
“Oh, I think sometimes she only does that because Paziah and Leah and the others turn to salt at the sight of her—as if we had not all seen as much in the bath. She does not walk about half-naked when the winter winds blow! Another cake, child?”
Since she insisted, I took another of the sweet, chewy little cakes. “But the idols?”
Lady Dvorah shrugged. “What can you expect from foreigners?” she said. “They do not compel me to bow down before their gods, and I would not even did they ask me. Which they do not, for they know better than to try.”
Yes, for if they offend you, you will no longer offer them cinnamon wine and apricot cakes!
The unworthy thought made me laugh; I managed to turn it into a cough and hastily asked if I might take some of the cakes to offer to my maidservants, which pleased the Lady Dvorah.
“Of course you may, and you must send word to tell how they like them.” She summoned one of her own servants and bade her fill a bowl with the cakes for me. She sipped from her own wine cup and then asked, “Why are you asking such questions, child?”
Although I had created an explanation for my curiosity, her own question surprised me. The Lady Dvorah was the first who had asked. I smiled and said, “Why, because someday I must go from my father’s house to dwell among strangers. I wish to learn how to live in peace there, and be happy.”
“You have your father’s wisdom,” Dvorah said, nodding approval. “Well, I shall tell you what I have learned: keep your own household in your own fashion, and let others do as they please—so long as they let you do the same.”
I thanked her and said that sounded wise to me. “Is that all?” I asked.
She considered the matter, and finally said, “Always smile upon your husband, and serve him what he best likes to eat. And make sure that dish is one of your own devising so no other woman can copy it. Your goblet is empty; let me fill it.”
As she poured more spiced wine into my cup, I thought on what she had said. Then I asked what trial she found hardest to endure, living among so many foreigners.
She sighed. “Truly? My greatest regret is that I cannot eat their food, and so cannot learn their secrets.”
“Can you not ask for the recipe, and alter it to suit the Law?” I asked, and was surprised when she laughed.
“Oh, child, you are so innocent! As if a cook would tell
all
she knows!” She shook her head. “No, to truly obtain knowledge of a dish, I must see it prepared, and taste it, too. So I shall never know that joy … . Do have another cake, child. You are too thin. Men like plump girls.”
When she sent me off to learn what I could of men and women, the Sheban queen had laughed. And when I returned to tell the Queen of Sheba all I had done, and what I had learned, she laughed again, and said only that all my effort was a good start.
“For if you are to rule women, and men too, you must know them for what they are.”
“I do know them,” I said, and she smiled.
“And what do you know, my Baalit?”
“I know that all women and all men are different—and they all are the same. Some would be happy anywhere, and some happy nowhere,” I said. “And not one is other than queen in her own life, or king in his.”
I expected her to laugh again, but she did not. Instead, she smiled and laid her hand against my cheek, her skin cool against mine. “Yes, in our hearts we all are kings and queens. You know at fourteen what many never learn.” And then the queen spoke words whose sound poured through my veins like hot wine. “One day you will be as wise as your father, little goddess. You are fit to rule; you were born to be queen.”
For a dozen heartbeats, I basked in her praise as if it were sunlight. Then I curbed my dreams sharp and hard, as if they were bolting mares. “You are kind. But it will not matter, not here. I am only the king’s daughter, after all.”
And to that, the Queen of Sheba said nothing. What was there to say, when we both knew I spoke iron truth?