The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (25 page)

My heart thrashed in my chest.

Niman bowed low again. “I present to you my kinswoman, the queen and jewel of Saba and the glory of Punt. Bilqis, Daughter of the Moon.”

We had agreed that he would not announce me as the Daughter or High Priestess of Almaqah. We must be politic. Nor was I certain Almaqah had followed me all this way, if he had ever looked upon me at all, though of course I had not said this to Niman.

The king descended the dais. But when he came no farther, Niman hesitated. For a long, awful moment, I waited. Why did the king not come forward to greet me, to extend his hand? But he stood fixed upon the last step of the dais. Though it was cool within the stone court, sweat snaked between my breasts. For once, I praised whoever had first drawn the veil across the face of woman.

A queen adept at pronouncing judgment must be expert at many things, but foremost among them is swift appraisal of any man. I noticed immediately how every face in the hall, which was larger than the Hall of Judgment at Marib, returned to Solomon if only to see what he would do next. In what thrall he held them! In an instant I understood why Tamrin had been devastated to the point of gauntness when the king would not receive him.

Niman finally moved as though having waited precisely for this moment. He came around to the side of the litter where Shara stood frozen. She fairly skittered aside as he held out his hand to assist me. Stepping out, I ducked below the canopy and slowly straightened, the crystals on my chest making music like the trickle of water. Niman moved aside, and as he did I noticed two things at once. The first was that the floor directly before the king, different from the mosaicked rest, was not polished marble as I had thought, but a shallow, square pool filled with water.

The second was that several broad steps down from the king’s throne perched a second, simpler seat. In it sat a woman so quiet and unmoving as to appear a painted statue. She wore linen white to rival my own, and on her head an elaborate black wig.

The Pharaoh’s daughter. His queen.

I stepped forward and the court bowed low, and in the moment that their eyes were not upon me—but the king’s undoubtedly were—I confronted the shallow pool. Such an unfamiliar position, to approach a dais like a supplicant, and not the one seated on the throne!

I thought of Heaven, dancing by light of the fire. I lifted my hems. I heard behind me the swift intake of breath from one of my girls.

The king’s eyes dropped to my toes as I slid out of my slippers. On silent feet I walked forward, the marble floor cool beneath them. Without hesitation, I stepped into the pool. Water engulfed my ankles. My hems trailed, sodden behind me. I never took my eyes off the king even as I noted the quirk at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes, so carefully fixed upon me for the sake of the others, began to dance. Ten steps. Fifteen.

I stepped from the pool onto the floor directly before the king, my hems trailing me into the water.

He was nearly a head taller than I. His lips, which were generous, turned up in a smile.

“Welcome, Lady Riddle,” he said quietly, for me alone. “The moon and the sun share the sky at last.”

NINETEEN

I
praised the luxurious apartment appointed for my use to the king’s steward, Ahishar—how strange these names were to me!—but not overly much. I thanked him for the pitchers of wine and Nubian millet beer, the platters of bread and olives, cheese and boiled eggs of all sizes and colors, the bowl of figs, pomegranates, winter melons, and grapes, thankful to see not a date among them. How tired I was of dates!

I nodded in silent appreciation at the roses on the terrace, the tapestries, and imported linens. I discussed quantities of flour and oil, portions of oxen, goat, honey, wine, and fowl to be delivered to the enormous camp of my caravan outside the city walls. I inquired about the comfort of my nobles and was assured that their apartments were nearby, and was shown which corridors might take me there, and which colonnades led to the hall, the kitchens, and the office of the steward himself.

I instructed Ahishar to speak with Tamrin on the delivery of my gifts for the king’s wives, and the others for his concubines.

“Your door is well guarded, my queen. You must fear no harm while you are here,” he said, glancing at Yafush.

“Thank you. And my eunuch,” I said, emphasizing the word, “will guard me also, as he always does. Meanwhile, a man in my
company is in swift need of a physician.” The steward said Tamrin had spoken to him already about his man with the crushed leg and that the physician was with him now.

When at last the arrangements were done and Ahishar left, I gestured for Shara to send the Israelite slaves away.

Outside my apartment, the sounds of Jerusalem wafted up to the terrace: a market in the lower city, dogs barking in the distance, the grinding of a press. The smell of baking bread mingled with roses as the drapes billowed in with the breeze, their hems brushing soundlessly over fine, woolen rugs.

I threw myself down on a sofa, already exhausted though my mission had only just begun.

The girls flitted about the chamber, touching everything, exclaiming over the furs across the bed and the couches, the pillows and silk cushions, the lanterns with their many wicks as though they had never seen such a thing as a lantern before, the ninnies.

Meanwhile, my thoughts were stirred to a froth.

I recalled the ceremony of the hall, the brief procession as the king and I walked together around the pool to sample my gifts. As I stated the full quantity to be transported to his treasury, cellars, kitchens, and temple or into the keeping of his steward, I had treated each as a trifle. And I had taken pleasure in the way Solomon had repeated, as though I had erred, the amount of gold I had brought with me. The way he crouched down in front of the panther to see it like a boy, accepting the dried meat from its tender—ah, that was clever of Tamrin—to feed it to him, and then nuts for the fickle monkeys. One of them was famous for flinging scat throughout our journey. Luckily that did not happen.

In fact, nothing happened. There was no indication other than the king’s quiet words to me that here stood the same man of the letters I had read so many times. I had expected strange tension
between us—of shared secret and unsettled dispute written these years with such poetic wrath. But no. We were two sovereigns surveying the goods of the world, one of us on a diplomatic mission, the other diplomatically receiving his guest. And then he had said that surely after such a journey we must have time to recover and enjoy the best his kingdom had to offer.

“You have come on the perfect day. Tomorrow at sundown the Sabbath begins, a time of contemplation and rest commanded by the I Am, Yaweh. We will see your camp well provisioned and your servants given all that they require to tend you. And we will meet again soon.”

I refused to be so summarily dismissed before his court.

“We require a full five days to tend matters of our own,” I said, “and make sacrifice to our god for our safe journey. I assume there is a place my priest may set up the house of the moon outside your city.”

And so it had begun.

My demand was simple hauteur, though part of it was true; the dark moon would arrive in three days, during which Asm must make his sacrifice for its renewal. Almaqah required it, the fields of the earth required it, and Asm was nothing if not pious.

I told myself five days was nothing; I had six months to win the matter of ships, ports, and terms as well as to prepare and provision the return trip south.

Still, I brooded.

I left my girls to shake out my clothing and went to the terrace bathed in setting sun.

Below, large houses—administrators’ homes, I guessed—packed the space to the very wall of the incomplete palace. To the north smoke rose high over the temple. Had it even stopped? I watched the worshippers coming and going from that outer gate, the procession
of linen-robed men I assumed to be priests. I could smell it from here, the burning of meat. What was the day’s significance—and this not even the waxing moon?

In Marib, I knew the sound of my emissary’s camels on the road. I knew the faces of the slaves, the name of each gardener. I knew the corridors through which I might pass if I did not want to be seen, and the temperament of each of my advisors. Here, I knew nothing.

I realized then what was bothering me. It was the king’s utter self-possession. This was not, in the flesh, the same man who had shown himself capriciously arrogant one moment and lost the next in his script.

In truth, I knew this king not at all. And now, while I was in his palace, he had every opportunity to observe me and my people while he kept to any shadow he wished.

I went inside and called Yafush, Shara, and my girls to me.

“Listen to me,” I said, looking each of them in the eye—my girls, the oldest of which was no more than eighteen, especially. “You are not in the court of a benevolent king and these people are not our allies. You will veil yourselves at all times. You will wear fine clothes and jewelry and perfume at all times. These Israelites are fond of washing. You will send for water to wash daily. Your hands will never be dirty, or your feet. You will not publicly be seen speaking to any man, let alone touching one. Your actions will be beyond reproach. You will report anything you hear from the servants or the guards to me. You will entrust nothing to these foreign servants but undertake all yourself, even the emptying of the night-pots, and so learn the corridors and back ways of this palace. If you are abused in even the slightest way, you will report it immediately to me.

“You will speak nothing about our journey, or me, or the work
ings of the palace at home to anyone, or in the presence of any servant, slave, kitchen boy, or wife of the king should you find yourself in such company. If you are asked, you will say only that Saba smells of perfume day and night, that her palace glimmers with alabaster—this kind of thing. You will not speak of Hagarlat—” Here, I looked at Shara and Yafush. Did I imagine it, or did Shara wince? “Or of my king father unless asked and you will say only that Saba’s enemies met grisly ends. Do I need to explain all of this? You know as well as I that every servant is a spy, and every slave has ten ears and twice as many mouths.”

I leaned forward. “Every court has its intrigues, lies, and alliances woven together like a net. Do not be snared, but notice everything. You are my eyes, my ears. Be alert, and wise.”

They nodded. “Tell me aloud you understand me.”

“Yes, my queen,” the girls said. Yafush did not need to answer.

I sent for Khalkharib and Niman, who arrived a short time later in fresh clothing, looking not at all rested and in fact perplexed—and more so as they looked around the outer chamber of my apartment.

“I do not trust this king. He says that their god calls for rest beginning tomorrow—where is the feast with which to welcome us? He all but dismissed you before his entire court!” Khalkharib said.

“Listen to me now,” I said firmly. “You must order that the camp burn incense at all hours. The animals must wear gold and silver. Every man down to the last slave will wear clean linen or the best that he has. As long as we are here, that camp is Saba. There must not be a single hole or tear in even the corner of a tent.”

I turned to Niman. “I want ten of my armed men in the palace at all times, four of them directly outside my door. Any one of my men who displays drunkenness or looks even askance at a woman, I will have delivered to the king for whatever punishment he sees fit while we are here, and then I will have him bound and stoned
on the journey home. He will never see Saba again. The priests are to set up an altar within our camp. Asm and his acolytes are not to neglect any aspect of our people’s worship. They must buy animals for sacrifice.”

Khalkharib jutted his chin toward the terrace. “That is the second sacrifice these Israelites have burned today. Their animals are marked for the eternal fire of their god.”

“Nonsense. Did you not see the shrines and high places on the eastern hill as we passed through the gates? Those are the gods of his wives. Neither will we neglect our ways. Meanwhile, do not for a moment drop your guard. This king is clever. But if we are wise, and if we are careful, we will have all that we want from him.”