Reign (5 page)

Asherah was the promise that someone would love her, maybe even pat her head or stroke her cheek and see something remarkable in her. All women were honored in Asherah’s name, and so Jezebel knew her time would come too.

Her sister, Temereh, didn’t have to wait. At her birth, a sacrifice had been burning on the altar to Baal when the priest spied the dark-haired child emerging. Temereh was born face down, her arms crossed. News spread throughout the empire, for this birth was a mighty sign from the heavens. Temereh would be able to speak to the gods and goddesses, and they would listen and respond. She would have visions of the future, of their enemies and what they planned. The Phoenicians would grow even more powerful. For nearly ten years now, Jezebel had suffered for her sister’s gift. There was nothing Jezebel could do to change that.

Jezebel had been born second, and as she emerged she was assumed to be nothing but the afterbirth. Temereh loved to tell that story. Jezebel had almost been tossed into the fire. Her mother was exhausted, and Temereh was already in their father Eth-baal’s arms. Jezebel had been passed off to a startled servant with her first cry. Besides, the sacrifice was for one child, not two. Jezebel was born unloved by men and gods alike.

Jezebel did not cry anymore. And tonight, the sounds of pleasure and joy from the worshippers inside the temple stabbed her heart. Jezebel pleaded to Asherah, begging the goddess not to be indifferent, not this time. How many times had Asherah ignored her? What could Jezebel do to be special, to be noticed? She wanted to be wanted more than anything in the world, but the harder she tried to earn affection, the more distasteful people found her. She was nine years old, and the thought of decades of life stretching ahead strangled her with frustration.

The sounds of dancing and wine had stopped. The rue seeds had probably been ingested and the visions begun. She heard the worshippers move on to the high place, the tallest point on the hill, outside the temple. They were bringing infants to die at the hand of the priest. Maybe it was her father who held the blade tonight; maybe not. She had not seen him in days.

Jezebel wandered through the quiet temple to the lamp of the eternal flame, a low room off to the side of the temple that was littered with clay statues of dead or broken children. The room had a closed, musty smell of clay and old incense. The floor was cold tile, and Jezebel wrapped her tunic closer in. This was the saddest room in the temple to some, but to her, it felt like the only home she had ever truly been able to claim.

When a child in Phoenicia was born with a great infirmity, or was ill beyond cure, the parents made a clay replica of the child and placed it here before the god and goddess, so that the heavens would be mindful. If Baal or Asherah should become bored or listless, they might choose to step down from their throne and heal, and a certain clay replica might catch their eye and receive the blessing. Sometimes, when no one was watching in the temple, Jezebel slipped in here and sat among the clay children. Just in case a god came down. She had so many questions, so many wounds. Couldn’t there be a cure for those, too?

Statues were placed here month after month. No one ever came back to remove one, and hundreds were piled against each other, some of the heaviest ones crushing the ones beneath. Jezebel considered the clay children tonight, with their empty eyes and hollow mouths. Why was there no answer, not for them and not for her? She sat, her back against the wall, and reached for one, cradling it in her arms.

A noise startled her.

A mother was bringing her offering to this place, but Jezebel saw at once that this child was real, not clay. It squirmed and mewled from inside its blankets. The mother did not notice Jezebel.

“What are you doing, mother?” Jezebel asked, setting the clay statue aside and standing. The woman jumped, and her eyes quickly found Jezebel sitting among the ruined children, but she could not answer. She just choked back a sob and laid the child near all the clay ones. Jezebel came closer. She moved the blanket to see the little face. The child was perhaps a year old, though it was hard to tell from its emaciated face. Its eyes were sunk deep into the face, and its skin had a yellow cast, even in the dim light of this room.

“She can’t eat,” the mother said. “I try. But she can’t hold it down. No one has been able to cure her, and I’ve taken her to every healer in the land. I’ve sold everything I have. She can’t eat.” The woman sounded utterly defeated.

“The father?” Jezebel asked. The mother shook her head. She had most likely conceived during a worship rite, Jezebel guessed. Most women went into those events knowing beforehand what they would do if they conceived, but this poor woman had held on to her child too long. She had grown attached. Jezebel saw how awful the pain of becoming attached could be. Women needed to be free, above all else.

Every woman gave herself, as the goddess would have her do. Any attempt to inhibit or restrain female desire was nothing more than an attack on the goddess herself. That’s what her father had taught. The sacred feminine was honored when women lived such free lives, and unwanted babies could be easily sacrificed.

“Don’t leave her here,” Jezebel whispered. “Give this child to Asherah. But don’t leave her.”

The mother shook her head and began to weep. Tears ran down her face, staining her faded robes.

“Please don’t let her suffer,” Jezebel said, her chin trembling and a strange pain piercing her heart. She felt as if she were speaking to her father.

Jezebel led the woman by the hand as she cradled the child. The feast for Asherah continued on the high place, naked bodies spent, food passed around on fat platters, but all grew quiet when they saw the two approaching. Tears streamed down the mother’s face as she approached the stone altar. Jezebel gripped her tightly, whispering words of comfort only the mother could hear. Her father was not there.

Sargon, the second highest priest, stepped forward and took the child, his eyes meeting Jezebel’s. He was older than her father by a few years, but his hair had always been white, for as long as Jezebel had known him. She had always thought of him as old, and she had always wondered what secrets he kept. He was a quiet man, but she saw kindness in his eyes, and sometimes, she thought she saw sorrow, too.

With the baby in his arms, he turned, bowing before the statute of Asherah, the mother of the earth, of the gods and all creation. She stood twenty feet tall over them, made of white stone, with great naked breasts and a round protruding belly. Her arms stretched straight out, coming together at the hands, and there was an empty place where her womb would have been. Her face had hollows for eyes, too, and a hollow mouth, but no other features, nothing to hint at her disposition toward mortals.

“Great mother, look upon this child given to you. Turn your face to us at last, Asherah! Receive this child, offered in the name of the goddess.”

Jezebel’s heart beat faster. She had seen sacrifices, but always from a distance. She could reach out and touch the baby if she wanted to. Surely Asherah would turn her face to them now and reveal herself. Jezebel would ask why some children were born to be unloved.

Sargon made a soft swift movement of his arm. The mother wailed and collapsed to her knees, beating her fists against the earth tamped down around the altar. Jezebel fell beside her, wrapping her frail arms around the woman. “Your child was so blessed!” she whispered in her ear. “She will never suffer again. You saved her. You are so strong!”

Sargon’s servants stepped behind the statue and lit a fire in Asherah’s belly. It shot up through the statue so that the dead eyes came alive with yellow and moved. The priest took the lifeless dripping body and laid it into the arms of Asherah. The body rolled slowly down the arms and into the belly, a womb that consumed what another had nurtured. Jezebel stood transfixed. The heat grew with a snapping and hissing noise from the womb. The statue glowed white, the hidden wax plugs melting, milk pouring from the breasts. Jezebel opened her mouth and risked the heat to be blessed. She wanted to be first, but men in the crowd shoved her to the side, trampling her as Sargon called to them all.

“Receive what the Great Mother will bless you with!”

Jezebel crawled away, with bleeding scrapes on her knees and arms. She almost cried. The grieving mother stumbled away, wailing a prayer to the goddess, and the name of the man who had not wanted the child. Jezebel felt a blinding rush of tears sting her cheeks.

The tears had sneaked out without her permission. She beat her head against the earth until they stopped. She would split her head like an egg before she accused the goddess of wrongdoing.

Jezebel

Jezebel had led the prince to a room called The Chamber of Dreams, telling him she would return within moments. She commanded two servant girls to attend to him, not caring what they attended to first. She heard his protestations as she ran down the hall. She knew where her father would be hiding. Was this what he called power, hiding from the past in his bedchamber? From her? From those hungry ghosts, her murdered mother, and the bones of her sister, who cried out in dreams from a deep and crowded pit? Jezebel wondered all that, making the accusations in her mind dark so she wouldn’t allow herself to consider the worst one of all. She had participated twice now in the fertility rites, twice now giving herself to men who wore masks and didn’t care that her head pounded against a marble altar, breaking and bleeding as they panted into her neck. She gave the goddess everything. She held nothing back, nothing for herself.

And nothing had changed. Her father interrupted her when she spoke, often leaving the room in the middle of her stories, communicating to her through servants or scribes. He did not invite her to take meals with him, and he did not attend the ceremonies she presided over as the royal princess of Phoenicia. If she couldn’t earn his love, she had reasoned, nor the love of Asherah, she would just try harder. She had tried very, very hard. But this last betrayal was too much.

Jezebel pushed past the guards and threw open his door. Eth-baal grunted as he saw the light from the hall cast across the bed.

“What have you done?” she shouted.

He sighed, rolling over and sitting up with some effort.

“You wanted to prove you were worthy,” he replied. “The elders thought this was the best way.”

“So they banished me?” she yelled. “You let them send me away to be nothing more than a wife?” The word stuck like a rock in her throat. “Don’t do this! I will make a better ruler than any son in the empire, and you know it. They all know it!”

Then it hit her, a sudden drop in her stomach. “They all know it,” she whispered. Of course. The elders had planned this all along. She had been nothing more than a rabbit for their hunt, to flush out the best among them. It was probably Hetham’s son. It had probably been decided long ago. Though a woman could be elected to the throne, none ever had. None ever would. Not as long as men like the elders were in control. They worshipped the sacred feminine but did not want a woman in command. Jezebel’s flash of insight was so cruel, it had to be wrong.

She sat on the bed next to her father, the life sucked from her body. She had fought so hard, for so long, to prove her worth. To wear the crown. And all along, it had never really been within reach.

She shook her head. “I made a promise to myself, that if a son from the elders won your approval and the crown instead of me, I would kill myself.” She was surprised how ridiculous it sounded now. She wanted to live. The desire was strong. It was a strange discovery—that wanting to die didn’t mean she was ready for death.

“How would you do it?” he asked, a desperate hinged note in his voice, as if he was not really entirely in the room with her.

She glared at him, at those horrid betel seed stains across his mouth and chin. He was in agony, and she knew it had nothing to do with his sour stomach or arthritic hands. She was all he had left of Temereh and her mother. Nothing could save him from the torment of letting this last little part of them go. He thought surely he could hide it from her even now. His emotions had ruined him, and her, too. If he had only kept control of himself, her life would have been different. He had always been weak, though, and she had paid that price for him. Always.

3

Jezebel

Jezebel lifted the snake from its cage. Her father had betrayed her. Though it would be the last betrayal, it still stung like a fresh burn, even after three days since Ahab’s arrival. Her father had so frequently hurt her, the wound was never allowed to heal.

Now she had a gift to give him before she left. She did not want to do this in front of his servants, but it would be better for everyone if they watched. They needed to know. She laughed silently, realizing that even now she sought to prove herself to him.

A lump was evident in the snake’s midsection, the previous meal not yet fully digested. She slowly lowered it into the open sack and picked it up using both hands because of its weight. She walked from the stables into the palace, ascending the stairs toward her father’s bedroom.

He was just waking, the maids tending to him like a flock of nervous pigeons that scattered with her entrance. One of them eyed the bag with a dark scowl. Eth-baal saw it too and struggled to sit up. He grimaced, but whether it was from pain in his joints or grief at seeing her again, Jezebel didn’t know. It would be over soon anyway. She was done trying to understand him.

She stood at the foot of his bed and lowered the sack to rest near his feet.

The serpent’s head emerged from the sack first. The servant girls cowered in the corner, whispering in their own language. Jezebel watched as the beautiful animal slid from the mouth of the sack, gliding back and forth slowly across the linens.

King Eth-baal turned his head and would not look his daughter in the eye. She saw his chest moving rapidly up and down. His face betrayed nothing, however, no emotion. Her throat grew icy and tight from the pain of disappointing him, even now, when she was prepared to sacrifice so much for him.