Reign (12 page)

The priests began a low song, a prayer for the future springing to life in her womb. The servants sang too, shaking their rattles back and forth as they chanted. The music rose as the sun did, sounding like the heartbeat of the world, and the priests danced as they received visions.

“Blessing on the house of Ahab!” they cried. “Ahab’s name will be great! He does not cast off the many gods who watch, and so they will watch over him!”

Soldiers poured out from their tents. They were used to the prophets of Israel, who talked in plain terms and preferred the company of simple people and children.

Ahab let go of Jezebel and faced his people. “Everywhere in this country I find a city in ruins. Israel has faced many battles. Like you, I was once willing to die for this nation. But the time to die for her is done. It is time to build, my friends. It is time for new life!”

The priests let out a shout of victory and filled in the path behind the king, cutting him off from the soldiers. Ahab took hold of Jezebel’s hand and led her back up the plain dirt path to the palace.

“Are you pleased?” he asked her, his voice soft enough so that no one else heard.

“Are you?” she asked. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

It was a sweet sentiment that sounded sour from her lips. She was a strange bride, he knew, but she carried his child.

Bearing children changed a woman, people always said. It gave women new purpose in life. It changed their heart, enlarged it somehow. For any other woman, Ahab thought that would be a natural progression, an easy growth. But Jezebel’s heart was so guarded, so carefully constricted, he knew the growth might be slow. He had spent a full month in the beginning teaching her how to rest in his arms, how to bear his touch. He had spent months after that coaxing her to not just receive his touch but return it.

He wondered, with a sigh to himself, how much more he would have to teach her.

Obadiah

“The news from Samaria is not good,” Obadiah said the following morning. “You need to act. If it rains soon we might be able to save the last half of the growing season.”

Ahab drank his wine as they strolled in the vineyard below the palace and surveyed the blossoms growing heavy with fruit.

“We have nothing to worry about,” Ahab said. “I have eight trackers looking for Elijah.”

“What good will it do to find Elijah? It is the Lord who cursed Samaria.” Obadiah could not bring himself to say that the Lord had cursed Ahab—although that was the truth—just as he had not found the courage to tell Ahab that he suspected an infant had been offered on Asherah’s altar. No one could make such an outrageous charge without proof. Obadiah had gone to the altar that night when the priests were gone, and it had been swept clean. If there was no shame in what they did, why did they leave no trace? That they had hidden their actions was enough proof for Obadiah, but no one else.

“One of Jezebel’s priests spoke to me,” Ahab said. “He said the curse will end with Elijah’s death.”

Obadiah grasped Ahab by the arm. “Do you not hear a word I say? I am telling you, the Lord is doing this. He is angered by the worship of Baal and Asherah. He is angered by your marriage to Jezebel. If you kill Elijah, that will provoke Him again!”

Ahab took a long draught of wine, then deliberately shook his arm to break Obadiah’s grasp.

Obadiah’s voice rose as he tried to explain one more time. “Israel is not like other nations. You cannot replace her religion, because she doesn’t have one. She has the Lord. Do you understand the difference? There is a living presence in Israel.”

“All those hours you spent in study, I spent on the battlefield,” Ahab said. “Do you think that makes you smarter?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me how to run my kingdom.”

“There are things you don’t know,” Obadiah began.

Ahab punched him in the stomach. Obadiah fell and laid on the ground, trying to suck air back into his lungs. Ahab didn’t wait for him to recover, and Obadiah closed his eyes as Ahab’s steps away stirred the dust, sweeping it into Obadiah’s face.

The earth was so dry, and it was going to get worse.

“What are you doing?”

Mirra was approaching with a basket of figs.

“Greetings,” he said, standing up too quickly, pressing a hand to his stomach to keep from crying out. He had never been punched in the stomach, not even as a boy.

She handed him her basket, oblivious, and unwrapped her veil from around her shoulders. He could see beads of sweat on her face; the afternoon sun was strong. She shook her hair and dropped the veil into the basket. Her shoulders were beautiful. Obadiah averted his eyes to avoid shaming her.

“Can I have my basket back?” she asked.

Obadiah could think of no reply, so he held it out to her. She looked at him with a puzzled expression, then turned to leave.

Obadiah was watching her, the way her soft robes moved and swayed with every step, her loose dark hair shaking, when she turned suddenly and caught him staring. Laughing, she tossed him a fig and then went on.

Obadiah checked the sun’s position. Not even noon, and he had been humiliated twice today.

8

881 B.C.

Jezebel

Jezebel sat in her bed, propped up by pillows, reading a letter from her father. He had heard of the curse and of the rain that had not fallen. He wanted to know if he should send a man to help her. Perhaps the son of an elder? The letter had come with a gift from the elders, who hoped she prospered in Israel and gave them good trading terms. They had sent a bed made of ivory with red and purple linens tied with chains of gold across the spindles that rose high from all four corners. Fine linen hung from each spindle; she could close it when the evening bugs grew heavy or she wanted to be free from the eyes of the servants. She despised the gift even as she knew she had to accept it. It was like swallowing bad milk. And yet the palace buzzed with excitement at possessing such a beautiful item.

The servants watched all and always had. They watched as she ate. They surveyed what was left in her pot when she awoke and made water. She remembered how her own had watched her drink the copper before worshipping with a man, and watched her without moving when she was sick and retched again and again. She hated anyone who pretended to want to help her. They only wanted to watch.

She looked around the room for a way to destroy the letter, but it was vellum. Burning it would stink up the room, and she had never learned to enjoy the smell of burning flesh.

Ahab staggered into the room, reeking of beer, and she balled the letter as best she could and left it. A servant was unwinding the belt around Ahab’s waist, a huge linen cloth wrapped several times around, and he rocked unsteadily on his feet as it was loosened.

In only his tunic, he stretched and reached for his lower back with a groan. She dismissed the servant. She hated a witness when he touched her, even casually.

“Are you too drunk to listen?” she asked.

“Just don’t lecture me,” he said, collapsing onto the bed.

“Your father is so concerned with Ben-hadad that he may be neglecting a greater threat. Have you heard of Shalmaneser’s raids in the north?” she asked.

“How do you know of those?” he replied, exhaustion making his voice hollow. “You don’t talk to anyone but your priests. And that ashipu.”

“He died.”

Ahab looked at her, perhaps expecting an emotion.

“He was old and not very good at his job. But you are not listening. I was supposed to be a queen. I know how to keep my eye on my enemies.”

“You are still going to be queen,” he replied, touching her stomach lightly.

“Don’t. I earned the crown in Phoenicia. It’s not the same here.”

He sat up. “You are not going to let me sleep, are you?”

She grabbed his right hand, forcing it open with his palm down, and pointed to his thumb. “Egypt.” Then to his index finger. “Phoenicia.” Then she squeezed the tender flesh in between, hard, to be sure he paid attention. “You. Israel.” She pointed to his second finger. “The top? This is Assyria. Shalmaneser. Below him, in between the knuckles, that is Syria. Ben-hadad. Judah and Israel are tempting conquests. Control the middle ground between the two wealthiest nations, Phoenicia and Egypt, control those trade routes, and you can control the nations themselves.”

“But Ben-hadad won’t attack us. You already told us that.”

“Not unless Shalmaneser joins him. Shalmaneser raids the northern territories every spring, just as his father did. Every year the same cities are attacked, in the same month, often on the same day. They agree to pay tribute, and he leaves until the next year.”

“Even I knew that,” Ahab replied. “And I had no hopes of being queen.”

She ignored his joke. “The cities of the north are forming an alliance against him. Shalmaneser will defeat them, of course, using the gold they paid him to finance his campaign. With those cities crushed, unable to pay tribute for years, the Assyrians will have to find a new country to steal from. For years your only defense has been the Assyrian preference for victims who already play dead. Shalmaneser will become dangerous once he has won a real war. I have heard tales of his atrocities that would make the hair rise along your neck. He is growing in aggression.”

Ahab chewed his lip, perhaps thinking of what he had seen in battle. Surely a soldier understood depravity. She had never seen it herself, but the tales had scared her as a child.

Jezebel glanced to the window. “I met his father once, the first King Shalmaneser,” she said. “He visited Phoenicia to discuss trade. He was a sharp-toothed man, with a muddy beard and yellow eyes. He had bruises all over, the way some men have tattoos. I did not like him. His son was there, though he hid behind his father’s robes and leered at me. He stole sweets from the table when he thought no one saw, while the men talked and spit seeds on our floor. It is this boy who is in power, and takes his father’s name.”

“The Assyrians will never conquer Israel,” Ahab said. “I have seen the conclusion of more wars than he will ever begin. That is why I want to build the cities to make Israel great. Every wall I build? Two rows of stone. Every tower? Archers, boiling oil, heaving stones. Every gate? Even the gods have to knock. No Assyrian will come near my cities or my bride.”

Jezebel leaned back on her pillow. She was sleepy, though it was an early hour for her. Her body had changed so much, it was a stranger to her. “What news of Samaria? Has it rained?”

Ahab’s muscles tensed, and he turned on his side. He fell asleep, leaving her alone with her sorrows in the still, quiet room, voices of the soldiers outside carrying through the walls.

The child within her made her stomach feel tight and unsettled. Thankful no servant was in the room, she knew it was time for what she had planned to do. There was something poetic about Ahab in this bed with her tonight.

She reached under the bed for a little dish she had hidden. She had brought it from Phoenicia, almost as an afterthought, realizing it might be of use if she needed to hurt someone. She just hadn’t known that someone would be herself. She hadn’t understood, then, that losing one crown would not be as painful and horrible as wearing one here.

Jezebel sighed as her hands cupped the small round bowl with a carved head of a crouching lioness on top. Inside were a small ivory spoon and the powder she had left over from a sorcerer’s trade. She had given him her fattest emerald for this.

Jezebel lifted the lid off the bowl and shoveled the powder under her tongue. She was breathing hard, frustrated by having to teach a man, frustrated at her own body that made her a prisoner, frustrated at being eaten alive from the inside, every day this thing growing and squirming and kicking her. She spooned a second batch of the powder made from the waxy green flower and waited. If the child died, it was no loss. Not to her. Not even to the kingdom. If Jezebel died, it wouldn’t mean much more. She wanted to feel death in the room with her, to believe escape was possible. She hesitated to reach for the spoon a third time, however. She wasn’t sure she trusted death any more than she trusted any other deliverer.

She’d finally decided to reach for the spoon a third time when the drug blew through her veins, knocking her back onto her pillows as her back stiffened and she bit her lip. Blood ran down her chin, and she tried to wipe it, but could only swat loosely at her face with her limp hand.

But she didn’t sleep. She lay there all night, with blood smeared across her face and the life within kicking her. Toward dawn, as Ahab stirred, she managed to turn away from him and face the wall.

Ahab was gone when she awoke. The sun lit the room, making the colors too bright for her sore eyes. She called for servants to attend her and vomited up the breakfast they brought. Lilith laid wet cloths across her forehead and asked Mirra to send for a crock of warmed water.

Mirra waited at the door for the water, and when it was delivered, she stood at the window, looking out, as Lilith began the slow, warm pour down Jezebel’s spine.