Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba (40 page)

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba
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Seeking Fire
After Adonijah’s broken feast, and Solomon’s anointing as king and heir, it seemed time itself spun faster. Within a hand’s count of days, King David died and King Solomon ruled alone; Adonijah dared ask for me as prize, and Joab struck him down before King Solomon’s throne. “He’d be asking for the crown from your head next” was all Joab had to say as he wiped his sword’s blade clean on Adonijah’s gaudy tunic.
Joab was right, for I was one of the last king’s women, and to ask for me was tantamount to claiming the kingship. But his brother’s death troubled Solomon, and so I did my best to soothe him, as did Queen Michal. Solomon listened to us both, and smiled, and said only “We must have a fine wedding, Abishag. One fit for a queen.”
King David had died when the moon lay dark: when the moon rose full again, King Solomon married me. The pearls braided in my hair could have ransomed all Israel, and my veil was woven through with threads of pure gold. Ever after, my wedding was the touchstone my husband’s other wives sought to equal.
And upon the day I married King Solomon and became his first queen, Queen Michal unclasped the bracelet that the Lady Bathsheba had given her so long ago, and fastened the thin brass chains about my own wrist.
The fault for what followed lay at my own feet. The Sheban queen’s words kindled a blaze within me, a flame of pride and desire that burned to ash all lesser passions. Sun-bright, I glowed with pride—and despite what the
queen had told me, I believed my father would be just as proud to have such a prize offered to his daughter. All I can say in my own defense is that I was young, and the young are heedless of all save that which concerns them, as if they alone walked upon the earth.
Nor did I then understand how love such as my father endured for the Queen of Sheba turned hearts into adversaries, and love into a battlefield in which neither side could win, or even surrender. They could only lose.
So after I left the queen, I ran to find my father, seeking to lay my wishes before him at once. That haste was my first error; I should have waited, and approached him at an auspicious moment, when he would be already inclined to heed me. But never before had my father long denied me anything—had I not gained even his permission to ride a horse? It never occurred to me that he might deny me this, my heart’s true desire.
Armored in that brazen assurance, I sought my father through the palace, only to learn that he had driven out with my brothers Rehoboam, Jerioth, and Samuel down to the king’s great horse farm that lay in the fertile rolling plain to the north.
And when I learned that, instead of going within to my own rooms and preparing myself to greet my father upon his return, I ordered Uri to be brought to me and rode out to join him. Before laughing at my folly, remember that I was barely fourteen, and had been much indulged. I was clever, yes—but there is no credit to being clever, for one is either born so or not. But wisdom is acquired only through hard schooling and long patience. And the young have no time for either.
 
 
King Solomon’s stables could house twelve thousand horses—that is the tale as travelers tell it now. The numbers grow with the telling; when I was a child, the king’s stables were vast and grand, of course. But I do not think my father stabled more than a thousand in his much-prized horse farm. Still, a thousand horses is a great enough number to require a dwelling place that stretched over half the broad valley. King Solomon’s stables were greater than many kings’ palaces.
Stone walls washed with lime gleamed in the late summer sun; upon stable rooftops, the tents that housed grooms and horse-boys flared blue and yellow, bright as desert wildflowers. Beyond the stables, the horse pastures
stretched broad. In the spring, mares and their new foals wandered the lush fields. Those foals were weanlings now, and mares roamed the tawny summer pastures alone.
Uri called to the mares; a few answered, but most never looked up from their grazing. I smiled and stroked his golden neck. “Never mind,” I told him, “they will be glad enough to see you in the proper season!”
When I rode into the vast stable courtyard, I saw my father’s chariot there; its team of horses had been unhitched and taken elsewhere to be watered and groomed. That meant my father’s visit was not a short one.
Grooms hurried up to me as I signaled Uri to halt. I slid from his back and handed the reins to the nearest stableman. “I seek my father, the king,” I said. “Where is he?”
My words must have sounded both haughty and urgent, and the stable workers must have been eager to make me someone else’s problem. Half-a-dozen voices assured me that my father King Solomon and the three princes had walked out to the schooling field, there to watch the newly weaned foals, that the king might judge which to keep and which to sell.
Leaving Uri in the groom’s care, I ran into the stables, cutting through the stallion barn and causing the head groom there to speak hard words to me. “Slow down,” he ordered, catching me by the arm and forcing me to halt. “No running. Stallions are touchy beasts, fussing like babes if they’re upset. Princess or no, you walk quiet and speak soft when you pass by them.”
I knew it would do no good to complain of Gamaliel to my father—for he was right and I wrong. So I begged his pardon, hastily, saying I looked only for my father—
“And sought to save yourself a few breaths’ time with a shortcut through the stallion court?” Gamaliel shook his head, plainly disgusted with human folly. “How much time have you won with all your haste? None, because you’ve had to listen to a lecture from me.”
“I know; I am sorry.”
“Sorry I delayed you, you mean.” Gamaliel released me and stepped aside, and under his strict gaze I walked quiet and soft to the end of the stallion barn. Once past the head groom’s private kingdom, I walked more swiftly—but I did not run. For Gamaliel was right; it is not wise to race through stables. I could only hope he would not complain of me to my father.
 
 
At last I reached the schooling field, where my father and brothers studiously regarded a chestnut colt as a stable-boy led it back and forth before them. None of them noticed me until the youngling stopped flat-footed, staring at me as if I were a djinn whirled from the air itself. My father turned to see what troubled the colt, and then came swiftly to me.
“Baalit, what are you doing here?” Fear clouded his eyes. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing, Father, I swear it. I wish to speak with you.”
The anxiety vanished, replaced by rueful amusement. “And I suppose whatever you wish cannot wait until evening, or even until I return to the palace? Well, what would you ask, Daughter?”
I glanced at my brothers; Jerioth and Samuel had taken advantage of the interruption to stroke the chestnut colt and argue over which of them was the better judge of a horse’s worth. Rehoboam stood aside from them, wary of my presence; he gazed at me slantwise, jealous as a fox.
“I cannot ask you here,” I said, and my father smiled, resigned as always to my whims.
“Very well.” He took my hand and led me to an ancient oak that shaded the well serving the weaning stables. “Your brothers cannot hear us now; you may speak freely.” Laughter rippled beneath his words. My father thought me a child still; I would prove to him that I was now a woman, a worthy equal.
“To you, Father, I know I can always speak freely.” I drew in a deep breath, and began. As I had ridden to the stables, I had chosen carefully the words I would speak to my father: wise, sober arguments that would obtain his loving consent. Now, facing him, I forgot every clever word I had planned to utter.
“Father, I have just come from speaking with the Sheban queen, and—and she wishes me to go with her to Sheba. To learn from her, to work with her. To be the next Queen of the South—and I think she wishes me to wed her nephew, but I will decide that later, the queen chooses her own consort, and—oh, Father, just think of it! King Solomon’s daughter will one day be Queen of Sheba.”
Sure of his blessing, I was blinded by my shining future. I saw only what I wished to see, that golden vision of me as Queen of the South. I did not
see my father’s eyes turn cold, his mouth draw tight. But I heard his voice as he answered me, and each of his words struck me like a stone.
“Do not be foolish, child. You are not going to Sheba.”
I stared at him, shocked out of my dreams of glory. “But Father—”
“You are not to trouble Queen Bilqis any further; she cannot take you with her.”
Thinking I understood now, I reached out and grasped my father’s hands. “You think she did not mean it, that she indulged a child with a pretty story. But you are wrong, Father. The queen
did
mean it; she will swear to it with any oath you desire. She wants me. She needs me. I’m going with her to Sheba. I’ll make you proud of me when I’m queen.”
For long moments, my father said nothing; the very air about us seemed to chill, time to slow. At last he said, “So you wish to leave your home, your god, your family? To travel to world’s end, never to return?”
Such harsh words—as harsh as truth. I did wish to leave; I could no longer bear to stay. I knew it would hurt to speak the words, hurt my father to hear them. But I knew also that only truth would serve, kinder in the end than loving lies. So I said only “Yes, Father.”
I would have looked straight into his eyes, my will as strong as his—but my father turned away, stared back at my brothers and the chestnut colt.
“You do not know what you ask, Baalit. You are too young to know.” His voice sounded distant; a faraway echo. “No. You are too young to decide such a thing.”
“I’m old enough to marry,” I said. “I am old enough to bear a child of my own.”
“That is different,” he said, and the chill in my bones melted, rekindled as anger.
“How different?” I asked. “If I am old enough to risk death to give my husband an heir, surely I am old enough to decide I wish—”
“To be a queen?”
“To leave this kingdom.” Until the words left my mouth, I did not know I so longed to flee my home.
My gilded cell. My jeweled chains.
Where had those words come from? My father was no jailer, his palace no prison.
Now he turned back, and this time I understood what glistened in his eyes.
Pain. Loss and loneliness.
He had lost my mother to death; he would soon lose Bilqis to duty. He did not wish to lose his daughter as well.
“Father—” My throat tightened until I could barely speak. “Father, soon or late I must go, if only to a husband. Let me go to Sheba.”
“Do not be foolish.” My father spoke as if to an importunate child. “Why do you want to be Queen of Sheba? You know nothing of what that means.
“I know Queen Bilqis has asked me to come with her. Give me your blessing.”
He said nothing; I summoned up another argument, one harder to confess, for I knew it, too, would hurt my father, however much it might be true. “I wish to go, and—it is not safe for me here. My brother Rehoboam—”
“Yes, he has told me what the prophet Ahijah says of you. But he speaks so of all women, Baalit.”
In my dread of Rehoboam’s vengeance, I had forgotten the prophet. But it was true that Ahijah, too, was a danger. “He speaks so of all women because he hates all women, mortal or goddess. He would see us all stoned at the city wall.”
My father managed to smile. “Do not let him trouble you, child. I am the king; Ahijah will rant and rage, but he will do nothing. Do not let him drive you from your home.”
“But I wish to go.” I spoke softly, but iron lay beneath the words.
My father shook his head. “I will give you whatever else you wish. I can silence Ahijah, I can silence—”
“But you cannot silence me, Father. I am too much your daughter, and I cannot live here in peace. Let me go. Please.”
And then my father uttered words I had not thought he ever would say to me. “I forbid it. You are my daughter, and you will obey.”
And as I stared at him, unable to believe that my father had spoken so, he said, “Your place is in the women’s palace, Daughter. Now go home—and stay there.”
 
 
At first shock kept pain and anger chained. I walked slow and quiet away from the schooling field, from my father and my brothers and the chestnut colt over which they quarreled; walked slow and quiet past the restive stallions in their spacious stalls; walked slow and quiet to the courtyard where Uri stood waiting for me. Without a word, I took his reins from the stable-boy who had held
them. I vaulted onto Uri’s back and then walked him, slow and quiet, until we passed through the wide gate and the broad valley lay open before us.
And then I let Uri run.
That was my second error, for Uri was a horse I could ride only when I controlled myself as well as I did my mount. Truly royal, Uri would not suffer a fool upon his back or permit unruly passion to command him. Before he had carried me a dozen strides, Uri knew that anger, not I, ruled him. Anger demanded he run before the wind; Uri tossed his head and snatched at the bit, caught the metal bar between his teeth. Before I understood what he had done, Uri leapt forward and ran at his own will and not mine.
At first the wild motion bespelled me; wind lashed my hair, blinded my eyes. The stallion’s muscles flexed and tensed between my thighs as he fled down the valley, urged on by my wild passion. As if he flew, we swept up the rise to the hills, flashed through the narrow defile onto the Jerusalem road. Even then I did not have sense enough to try to stop him; speed intoxicated me like new wine. But then Uri stumbled upon a rock and I swayed and nearly lost my seat upon his back—and I came to my senses just as Uri lost his.
For we galloped full out down a road cut into rock; beneath Uri’s hooves lay stone polished slick by long use. A hoof landing wrong and both Uri and I would crash down upon the rocks that waited below.
Even as that thought slashed through my angry misery, Uri slipped, scrabbled desperately to regain his footing, and flung himself forward again. Fear sobered me; I caught up the doeskin reins, seeking to check our wild flight. But it was too late. My anger had tainted Uri as well; he ran as I had longed to run, fleeing a future I did not wish to see. The stallion had become what I asked of him—an escape. An escape I could no longer control. Now it took all my newfound skill simply to remain upon the horse’s back.

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