Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba (23 page)

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba
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The Queen of Sheba might as well have dwelt upon the moon, for no one saw her or the exotic court that accompanied her. Protocol must be observed; the royal guest must petition for guest-right and the royal host offer welcome in approved and formal fashion. Until that ritual had been accomplished, the visiting queen remained secluded in the Little Palace. And for once, no amount of cajoling upon my part gained me my own way.
My first confident request to my father that I be allowed to visit the queen had gleaned only a smiling refusal. Unaccustomed to being denied, I asked again, this time arguing that, as the king’s daughter, I had a duty to make the foreign guest welcome.
“Yes—once she has rested. The journey from Sheba is long, and hard on a woman. Do not trouble her now.”
“I would not trouble her, I swear I would not. Surely she will think me ill-mannered if I do not greet her and offer a welcome gift!”
“No, Baalit,” my father said in a tone I had never before heard from him, a tone which warned that I must not argue.
So I bowed my head and went quietly away, chiding myself for having asked his permission at all. Had I simply gone to the Little Palace by my own will, my father might have scolded me afterward, but I would have met the Sheban queen before anyone else. But I could not now pretend I had not heard or understood my father’s order.
So I must find another path to my own way. A little thought provided an answer, for while I might be forbidden to go uninvited to the Little Palace, surely the Queen of Sheba could see whom she wished. After all, my father visited her, as did the palace steward, Ahishar; and the Lady Chadara, overseer of the women’s palace—and my father’s friend, Amyntor of Caphtor.
I smiled, and sent Nimrah to summon Amyntor to meet me upon the wall above the palace gate. As I waited there, gazing over the busy city, I told over to myself what I would say to Amyntor. I knew he would come to me; everyone wished to please the king’s favored child.
I was so intent upon my own plans that I did not hear him approach; only when his shadow fell over me did I turn to see him standing tall and glittering before me. Under the midday sun, the long ringlets of his black hair shone with blue glints. Today a sprig of jasmine gleamed behind his ear, white stars against midnight. Amyntor always wore flowers.
“Princess,” he said, and bowed low; when he straightened, I saw laughter lit his eyes, spangles of gold dancing in dark amber. “You summoned me and behold, I am here.”
And as I smiled, he added, “Now,
why
am I here, Princess?”
“I wished to speak with you,” I said, lifting my chin to regard him with what I hoped was royal composure.
“I’m honored—and at least you had sense enough to choose a very public place for our tryst.” Amyntor waved a hand, indicating the open sky above us and the city below. “Far less suspicious than meetings in shadowed corners and dark gardens.”
His tone mocked, but I decided it wisest to accept his words as praise. I
smiled again and said, “I thank you for answering my summons, Lord Amyntor. I have a favor I would ask of you.”
I paused, but he said nothing, merely raising his eyebrows, and after a moment I spoke again to fill the silence. “You visit the Sheban queen,” I said. “Will you take her a message from me?”
“That depends on the message,” Amyntor said, and as I stared at him, he added, “Now, don’t bristle up like a cross cat—never vow you’ll do something until you know what’s truly being asked.” He smiled, a flash of teeth. “What message, Princess?”
Reminding myself that I wished to ask a favor of him, I bound my temper before I spoke. “My greetings to the queen, and my welcome to King David’s City,” I said, my voice calm. “And my wish that she ask I visit her, to present her with a gift.” This last I added lightly, as if it mattered little.
Amyntor laughed—and then shook his head. “My apologies, Princess, but you’ll have to find another to carry that message—or wait until your father permits your visit to the Sheban queen.”
Chagrined, I made myself ask, “How did you know?”
“If he’d permit you to visit her,” Amyntor said, “you wouldn’t need me to carry messages for you.”
And from that refusal Amyntor would not be moved, although I argued and cajoled as persuasively as I could. What harm could there be in indulging me in this? Sooner or later I would meet the queen; courtesy demanded I welcome her, greet her with gifts. My father was rightly solicitous of his royal guest, but I swore I would not tire her—
Amyntor listened, and laughed. “You’d tire anyone, Princess—even the Queen of Sheba, and I doubt she’s easily wearied! Sorry, but the answer’s still no. Your father doesn’t give you many orders, so you’d best obey the ones he does.”
“Oh, he will not be angry with me,” I told Amyntor, confident of my father’s indulgence. Never before had my father denied me anything. “He will forgive me.”
“Perhaps he will, but he might not forgive me. No, thank you, I shan’t risk it. I’m not yet weary of Jerusalem’s pleasures. And besides, I like your father; I won’t slink about behind his back.”
“He would not know you had helped me,” I argued. “No one would know.”
“Wrong, Princess,” Amyntor said. “The Sheban queen would know, and you would know—and
I
would know. Now run along and play like a good girl.”
“I am not a good girl!” I said without pausing to think how my words would sound, and was paid for this carelessness with Amyntor’s easy laughter.
“Run along and play like a bad girl, then,” he said, and as I gaped at him, he flicked the tip of my nose with his finger and strode off, leaving me standing there furious with both him and myself—and not one step closer to the Queen of Sheba.
For once I held no advantage over the other women in my father’s palace. Like all the others, I must wait until my father chose to reveal his queenly guest.
I strove to conceal my avid interest, feigning indifference when the gossip in the women’s palace turned endlessly to the visitor from the south. But in truth, I was no better than any other woman; like all the rest, I was wild with curiosity to see the foreign queen who had traveled half the world only to see King Solomon with her own eyes. A foreign queen for whom King Solomon had set up a throne beside his own.
And I owned a coign of vantage my father’s wives did not.
Concealed behind my father’s throne was a secret chamber; from its recess, one could view the king’s great court without being seen. I had found the secret room when I was very small. I had been more willful than usual that day, and sought to hide from my nurse, and had crossed from the women’s palace to the king’s world. My wayward act yielded unexpected treasure—behind a heavy leather curtain painted with scarlet poppies, I found a private sanctuary.
The room behind the curtain was small and dark, for the only light came through a latticed window. Later I saw that lattice from the other side, from the king’s great court; only then did I learn how cunningly the spy hole had been wrought. For from the court, all that could be seen behind the king’s throne was a wall of painted tiles. Bright reeds and lotus flowers fooled the eye, masked the secret room beyond.
Someone had set cushions by the latticed window—someone long ago, for the cushions were dull with dust. A faint scent of cinnamon clung to the cloth. The hidden chamber had delighted me; within it I felt safe, as if held in my mother’s arms. There I spent a pleasant hour hidden from all the
world, until I grew hungry and decided I was no longer cross with my nurse.
Of course my nurse was cross with me, but as no one dared treat me harshly for fear of angering my father, she only threatened to tell him I had vanished for hours—“And King Solomon will not like that, Princess. Why, anything might have happened to you! Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” I said, for I had no intention of sharing my secret. But then I smiled at her and begged her not to tell my father, for I did not wish to grieve him. My nurse made me promise that I would not wander off and become lost again; I was able to swear that with a clear heart, for I had not been lost. No one within its walls knew the king’s palace better than I.
And so I claimed that secret chamber for my own. When I grew older, I cleared the dust and took away the old cushions with their dirt-rotten cloth, replacing them with new. I did not tell even my father that I knew the secret of spying upon the throne room—although I think perhaps he guessed. It was not, after all, a very great secret. He might himself have used the room when he was a boy, learning kingship from Great David’s acts.
Now, while my father’s wives watched the Sheban queen from behind the screens of the queens’ gallery, I sat in my hidden room; from that spy post, I could look past my father’s throne straight into the court. No one but my father himself commanded a better view of those who came before the king.
I do not think anyone who watched in King Solomon’s court that day ever forgot the moment the Queen of Sheba stepped into the courtyard and set her feet upon the path to the king’s throne. She knew the tales that had flown from one ear to the next, knew how eagerly all men wished to set eyes upon her, to judge her for themselves. She knew, and she made them wait for what they desired.
Before men saw the Queen of the South, they saw the treasure she had carried with her from Sheba. Bearers clad as finely as princes bore in litters upon which rested open caskets of pearls and incense; these men were followed by others drawing a cart piled high with nuggets of gold. It was no short task for the Shebans who displayed the queen’s gifts to my father’s waiting court, but at last the final gift had been set before the Lion Throne. Then, and then only, did the queen herself come into King Solomon’s court.
Two handmaidens entered before her, women garbed and gemmed so
richly the greatest queen might envy them. Gowns of Tyrian purple, shawls of scarlet fringed with pure rich gold, veils sheer and glittering as moonlight. One woman was adorned with emeralds about her throat and arms and wrists; the other wore about her hips a wide girdle of pearls crimson as sunset. That pearl girdle alone would purchase a kingdom.
As they drew closer to the throne, I saw that their faces glittered jewel-bright. The paint that gleamed upon their eyelids and mouths, their cheeks and brows, had been mixed with crushed gems. Still more precious stones had been threaded upon silver chains and woven through their intricately braided hair.
The two jeweled handmaidens walked to the foot of my father’s throne, bowed low, and backed away to sink gracefully to their knees on either side of the marble steps. While they waited there, still as the carved lions that guarded the throne, the Queen of Sheba showed herself at last.
She walked slowly through the shadows of the cedar columns into the light. There she paused for a heartbeat, and I saw her eyes seek my father’s. And then she began to walk towards him, smiling—and I do not think a man there could tear his gaze from her, or a woman either.
Ivory silk flowed over the curves of her body like rich cream. Two pins of gold formed in the shape of leopard paws clasped the simple gown at her shoulders; two ivory combs held back her heavy shining hair. Thin chains of gold hung with tiny bells circled her ankles. Her feet were bare.
As she paced towards my father’s throne, the only sound in the great court was the sweet small chimes of the golden bells that hung about the Queen of Sheba’s ankles.
I had never before seen a woman like her.
She walked straight and tall, and when she stood before his throne, her eyes met my father’s and did not waver. She was a true queen, a woman who ruled by right. I had thought she would appear hard, mannish, unwomanly. But I was wrong.
The Sheban queen was beautiful; beautiful as summer afternoon when the shadows grow long. Beautiful as wind and rain and stars, as all things ripe and warm. As beautiful as my mother in my dreams.
I could not tell her age; it did not matter.
“Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, greets King Solomon of Israel and Judah.” Her voice rang clear; like my father, she knew how to send her words across a vast
room so that all might hear. She did not bow to my father; she was his equal.
He rose and descended the steps of the Lion Throne, his hand outstretched. “Solomon, King of Israel and Judah, greets Bilqis, Queen of Sheba,” he said. “Be welcome to my court and sit beside me as long as you desire.”
She put her hand upon his, and he led her up the steps, to the new throne set beside his. The Lion Throne of David was formed of carved and gilded cedar, ornamented with solemn lions, footed with lions’ paws. For the Sheban queen, he had ordered fashioned a throne upon which leopards adorned silvered wood. Only when the Sheban queen and my father both sat upon their thrones did I pay any heed to the warrior who stood behind the queen.
Ah, that must be the Sword Maid, the Amazon.
But even so odd a sight as a woman warrior could not pull my eyes from the queen for long.
She is truly a queen—
as much a queen as my father is a king.
This I knew in my bones; a truth I had not dreamed could exist. And I knew another thing as well: I must meet the Sheba queen—
no matter the cost.

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