The day she was to leave, she went to him one last time, climbed the long stairs up the tower to the paradise he had created for them upon the palace rooftop. Her heart told her he awaited her there; her heart did not lie. When she walked into the honey-light the sun poured upon Jerusalem’s rooftops, Solomon stood before her. He held out his hands, and she walked into his arms.
They stood there until her slow-pounding heartbeat and his seemed one, until their breath mingled the perfumes of rose water and of myrrh. At last she knew it was time to speak.
“Solomon,” she began, and he said, “No. Let me speak,” and she bowed her head, knowing what he would say, and knowing, too, that his words would bring only pain to them both.
But it is his right to say them, and my right to hear them. It is all we will ever have.
Solomon slid his hands up, cradled her face between his palms. “My love, my heart—stay with me. You want it; I want it. You are queen and I am king, who is to say us nay?”
Who but we ourselves?
For a breath, a heartbeat, she let temptation flood her like hot wine. Then she forced herself to smile, and laid her hands over his, curled her fingers about his. She brought their hands down from her face, but she did not release him yet.
“Oh, Solomon, what you want and what I want do not matter, not in this. And even if they did—my love, you who are called the Wise, you must know I am old enough to have borne you as my own son. I am too old to bear you a princess—a prince, here. A barren foreigner—twice folly, and that is truth.” She closed her eyes against the future he offered, the future she saw.
“And if I embrace folly? If I say, Live with me, my beloved, my dove of the rocks? Do not leave me, my sister of spices and myrrh?”
“You know the answer already, you know what lies as a sword blade between us, Solomon the Wise—truth.”
“No.” He turned and set his fingers over her lips; they lay cool over the words she had spoken. “Do not speak truth to me, my love. For this moment, for this hour, no truth between us. Tell me what I want to hear, beloved. Tell me lies. Tell me beautiful lies.”
Shaken, she coiled her fingers about his wrist; his fingers slipped from
her lips to her cheek. “What shall I tell you? What would it please my beloved to hear?”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you; I have always loved you. I loved you before you were born and I love you with all the years I have left to me. That is truth. Is that not enough?”
“No. Tell me that you love me more than—”
“My crown?” She leaned her cheek into the curve of his hand. “That is a shackle, not a treasure.”
“More than your honor. More than your duty. Tell me—tell me that if you were young enough to bear me a child, you would stay.” He coiled her hair about his wrists. “Tell me,” he said, a king’s command.
She looked steadily into his eyes. “To please you, my king. Yes. To please you, I would stay … .” She moved into his waiting arms and laid her head against his breast. Beneath her ear, his heart beat a low, hard rhythm, endless and patient. His breath warmed her forehead, his lips brushing her skin.
“My king,” she said. “My beloved. Ah, yes, if I could give you a child—yes. Yes. If you asked it, I would stay with you.”
His arms tightened around her. “I am a king. I could change my mind, and no one could deny me. I could keep you here with me.”
“But you will not.”
“I could keep my daughter.” His words were muffled by her heavy hair. “Bilqis, I cannot give you both up. I cannot give her up. She is all that is left to me of my yesterdays.”
“She is not yesterday, Solomon; she is tomorrow.” For a moment, she closed her eyes against the pain in his. “You must free her to rule the future.”
“Must. Always a king must. So much for a king’s power.”
“Power belongs to the gods, O King.”
“Then what belongs to man, O Queen?”
“Love, and wisdom.”
“Love, and wisdom,” he repeated, as if weighing the words in an iron balance. Then he smiled, awkwardly, as if the movement of his lips pained him. “And you would have me sacrifice both.”
“As I would, because I am a queen. As you will, because you are a king. And because, for us, there is a thing greater than wisdom, and greater than love.”
“And what is that? What is so great that I must renounce all I have? All I am? All I desire?”
“You know already. Honor, my love. Honor, and duty. Without those, we are nothing.”
“Honor, and duty.” He bowed his head; sunlight gleamed gold upon his hair like a crown. She reached out and placed her hand upon his head.
“That is all there is, in the end. Now kiss me, my beloved and my king, and say good-bye. And think of me, sometimes.”
He took her hands, his fingers closing over hers so tightly it hurt. He bent and kissed her palms; she pressed her hands hard against his mouth. Then he stepped back and set his hands upon her shoulders. “Whenever I smell roses, and cinnamon, I shall think of you.”
She reached out and touched the tips of her fingers to the corner of his mouth. “Finish your song, Solomon. Sing it often. And when you smell cinnamon and roses, think of love.”
He leaned towards her; she closed her eyes. His lips brushed her forehead, soft as smoke from a dying fire.
When she opened her eyes again, she stood alone among the roses and lilies of the tower garden. Solomon was gone.
With Princess Baalit beside her, the Queen of Sheba had ridden out the great Horse Gate, followed by her handmaidens and her eunuchs. The rest of her court came behind, brilliant as peacocks and noisy as jays, pleased at last to be turning south again, towards home. The queen’s soldiers rode ahead of the queen, and behind, safeguarding not only Bilqis herself but the treasure that traveled with her. King Solomon sent his daughter south dowered well enough to ransom an empire.
Nikaulis watched the caravan ride past her out the Horse Gate, watching and judging; nothing must go wrong at this last critical moment.
Soon we will be gone; soon Jerusalem’s walls will be behind us, and only the road home ahead.
The last of the servants and provision carts rolled past; the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon ended.
Now. It is time.
But Nikaulis remained motionless upon her patient horse, waiting.
He will come. We must say good-bye, and wish each other well. Then—then we can forget.
“Nikaulis.” Benaiah stood by her horse’s shoulder. He laid a hand upon her mount’s side, a hand’s breadth from her knee.
“So you ride away.”
“I serve my queen.” She looked down into his impassive face. “So you remain.”
“I serve my king.”
Benaiah lifted his hand, held it out to her, a comrade’s gesture. Nikaulis clasped his hand, and for an endless heartbeat their fingers touched and clung. Neither spoke. Time’s sands had run out for them, and there was nothing more to say. Not even good-bye.
Benaiah released her hand. Nikaulis gathered up her horse’s reins and rode away, following after the Queen of Sheba.
On the far hill, Nikaulis reined in her horse and looked back at the City of David. So many people; so many walls. So many reasons to ride on and never once look back …
… and one reason only to stay.
Benaiah. No, not even the man. The love.
She laid their love upon the scales, and knew that love weighed heavier than all the reasons she could summon to balance against its power.
If I stay, I will grieve for all I lose once I am behind those cold stone walls. But if I go,
I
will grieve for Benaiah, and for myself. And for the future we will not live together.
The choice was hard, hard as bare stone. But the choice was hers.
And now, at last, Nikaulis knew which goddess she would serve.
So for all the years I lived as King Solomon’s wife and his queen, I never again spoke of the time when I had belonged to King David. Never would I say what I knew Solomon would never ask of me.
“Did you lie with my father as a woman does with a man? Did he teach you love?”
Unspoken, the question shadowed us. Unspoken, the words forever bound us. Never would King Solomon cast Queen Abishag off, never would she be less than his favorite—for if he did cast her off, he would always wonder if it had been for that which he had sworn did not matter.
Silence was hard. Sometimes, lying beside him as deep night paled to dawn, I longed to
rouse him with kisses and confess the truth, no matter the price. But always something stopped me. Perhaps my mother’s goddess whispered in my ear. Perhaps it was my own fear.
Or perhaps it was Solomon’s iron faith in himself that closed my lips over the truth. Let my beloved think himself as great in generosity as he was in wisdom.
One last look, and then I go on
. She owed Solomon that; owed herself that last indulgence. And so Bilqis paused, waiting, as her caravan continued slowly on, and stared back at King David’s golden city. Jerusalem gleamed untouched as crystal upon its hilltop, safe within its massive walls. Temple and palace glowed sunfire bright, twin beacons.
She could not see King Solomon at all.
But he watches. I know he watches. Only when the dust my leaving raises settles to the road once more will he abandon his post.
A shadow fell across her hands; she looked aside to see who had broken her vision. “Nikaulis,” she said, acknowledging her captain, and was surprised when the Amazon bowed her head in petition.
“Great Queen, if ever I have served you well, hear me now.”
“Of course, Nikaulis. Speak.”
“Release me from my vow, O Queen.”
Bilqis stared, at first unable to summon words. At last she said only “Why?”
“Because I cannot go with a whole heart. And I will not serve half-hearted.”
“All or nothing. Yes.” For Nikaulis, that was the only way. No half measures. “You go to the king’s commander, then?”
“Yes. I go to Benaiah.”
“Think well, Nikaulis. Israel is hard and cold, its ways strange and its laws cruel.” She tried to keep her voice level, to keep envy from tainting it. “Benaiah now swears to anything to have you; will he keep those vows once you have given yourself into his keeping?”
“I will be not in his keeping but in my own. And yes, Benaiah will hold to his word.”
“You are sure enough of him to walk into that cage, to close that door upon your freedom?”
“No one can take that from me. My queen, Benaiah is an old man. I will give him whatever years he may take of me. If our Mother wills it, I will
give him a son, and he will give me a daughter. And when Benaiah is gone from this life, so I will be gone from Jerusalem, I and my daughter.”
“Nikaulis, why do you do this thing? Because Benaiah asked it of you?”
“Because he did not,” Nikaulis said. “Let me go, my queen.”
She is free to follow her heart; do not punish her because she may do what a queen cannot.
Silent, Bilqis held out her hand; Nikaulis clasped the queen’s hand and kissed it. Sheba laid her hand upon Nikaulis’s cheek and smiled. “Go with the Lady’s smile upon you. Go back to the man you love, and be happy”
Nikaulis nodded, and turned her horse, and rode away down the road that led back to Jerusalem’s great gate. Sheba watched until the warrior-maid had ridden halfway up the hill, until a man who could only be Benaiah walked through the city gate and down the hill towards the rider. As they met in the road, Nikaulis pulled her horse to a halt and dismounted.
There was no passionate embrace, no clasp of hands. Benaiah and Nikaulis merely walked up the road, side by side, and through the city gate. When they could no longer be seen, Bilqis urged Shams forward. She did not look back again until she reached the crest of the first hill.
Once past the Hill of Olive Trees, she would no longer be able to see King Solomon’s palace. Bilqis reined Shams to a halt and gazed back across the Kidron Valley. But she saw nothing—nothing save Jerusalem burning golden beneath the heavy sun. Already she was too far away ever to see Solomon again.
She stared until the sun-bright city filled her eyes even when she closed them against the glare. Then, blinded by the light, she turned away. The road south stretched before her, and at the end of it, Sheba waited. She touched her heels to Shams’s sides, and began the long ride home.
The smooth running of the women’s palace was my task, and its peace my gift to my beloved. It was not easy for me to greet the king’s new wives fondly, to smile upon them and call them “sister.” At least Pharaoh’s Daughter knew how to veil her feelings, as did those of Solomon’s wives who were the daughters of kings. But as more women, and still more, entered the women’s palace, each bringing her own servants and slaves, her own customs and beliefs, my task grew ever harder.
Those wives who clung to their status as good Daughters of the Law moved as a pious flock; set against their tight-woven virtue, the alien ways of the king’s foreign wives flared like
bright banners. At first there were clashes between the two sisterhoods, and I found myself powerless to force even a truce, let alone peace.
It would have been a simple thing for Queen Michal to intervene, but I understood why she did not. She waited to see if I owned the strength and skill to govern those in my care.
I thought, and watched, and listened, and then took the matter to Solomon. When he heard of the warfare in the women’s palace, he summoned all his wives into the queens’ court and commanded peace.
“No woman here stands higher in my sight than any other, and no woman here is to disparage any other. Within these walls you are all as sisters.”
I waited until he had gone and then laid another decree beside the king’s. “You have heard the king’s wishes. Now hear mine. I will not have the king troubled. If I must, I will go to Queen Michal and ask her aid in teaching a queen’s proper behavior to her king—and a wife’s to her husband. Remember that, and act wisely.”
Not one woman there wished to involve Queen Michal in their quarrels; invoking her was as chancy as rousing a quiet leopard. Queen Michal’s only care was for King Solomon’s peace, and she would stop at nothing to achieve that goal. So the women’s squabbles remained hidden among themselves, low bitter whispers beneath the smooth hours of their days.
No one dared risk the summoning of Queen Michal to restore peace. To unwary eyes, the women’s palace ran smoothly, placid as a tranquil pool.
The tranquillity was an illusion, and I knew it. And I dreaded the day Queen Michal would be gone, and I would stand alone, without her shadow to strengthen me.