The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen

  I felt my eyes narrow. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I begged the same question, but he would not answer.”

  “ ‘Is it true,’ he asked me then before his court, ‘that your queen has the feet of a goat?’ ”

  “What?”

  “I was flabbergasted. ‘My lord, who could say such a thing of the most beautiful woman in the world?’ I said. ‘I am here as eyewitness to say she is perfect in every way. Why do you insult the Daughter of the Moon?’ ‘You are neither her advisor nor her councilman,’ the king said, to which I replied, ‘No, but I am the voice of the queen to your court, that bids your men return with me to paradise, and even I come only for the glory of Saba and her gods, with tears each time I depart and songs of thanksgiving each time I return. But judge her words for yourself, as all that she says is wise and true.’ ”

  “And?” I said.

  “And then he dismissed me.”

  I blinked.

  “What of the scroll?”

  “I gave it over to his attendant and my men and I went away stunned.”

  A public snubbing. I thought back to the message I had sent him. I knew it by rote, having revised it a thousand times, speaking parts of it aloud, even, as though in conversation with the man himself. Was it possible I had missed the mark so completely?

  “Does he expect me to send Wahabil himself to grovel at his feet?” I said. “We will find new markets for our goods. We will cut him off completely. If I have to ferry incense to Punt and carry it north by camel to Egypt, we will cut him out!” I would deal with his enemy in Damascus and create our own roads across the mountains into Phoenicia. We would add our wealth to Egypt’s. Perhaps, in time, I would even marry a Pharaoh . . .

  “There is more,” Wahabil said, apparently resigned.

  “What more could there be?”

  “The king’s court was full of Phoenicians,” Tamrin said, “and the king busy with entertaining them, shut away with them often, and then gone from the city for days.”

  “Phoenicians?”

  “I listened in on the gossip of the courtiers and asked around the city. And now I know it is the reason he did not receive us, that a great number of Phoenician artisans have arrived and many of them have gone down to the Red Sea gulf, where the wadi separating Edom from the Amalekites empties into the sea at the port city of Ezion-geber . . .” He walked to the table, drawing a map with his finger upon its polished surface, pressing his fingertip last of all to the port in the northern gulf of the narrow sea on the border between Israel and Egypt.

  “Phoenicians, in the gulf . . .” I said faintly.

  “When we left and passed through Edom, I took a small company of men and went to the gulf. My queen—” Tamrin shook his head. “The king is building a port city there. The Israelites have brought down timber from the forest of Lebanon where they are even now constructing a fleet of ships—a merchant ship navy.”

  I took a step backward as one struck.

  Now I understood why the king had given towns to Hiram, and why, in his need for wealth, he felt he could snub the riches of Saba.

  Solomon, the Israelite king, meant to neutralize Saba’s trade and render our caravans obsolete.

  Even as I raged that I would cut him out, he had already undertaken plans to do the same to me.

  “Wahabil,” I said, staring at the table. “Fetch the maps. Gather my council. And notify the temple that I will not make the marriage this night.”

  When he had left the room, I cursed and turned away, stalking down the length of the table to lean upon its surface, glaring at the faint shape of the sea invisibly drawn on the tabletop.

  “There is something else,” the trader said strangely, behind me. “That I could not say in the company of Wahabil.”

  “Anything you say to me may be said in front of him.”

  “Not this.”

  I turned my head. With a last glance at me I saw him go to a packsaddle on the inlaid bench against the wall.

  “As we prepared to leave, a band of men on fine horses came to our fire as we camped near the fortified city of Arad. Their bridles were adorned with golden tassels. The king’s men.” He withdrew something wrapped in a hide. When he uncovered it, I saw that it was wrapped underneath in a piece of purple cloth.

  It was the size, perhaps, of an incense burner, if less square. “The chamberlain who received us had the customary gifts brought out to my men where we camped beyond the city. Jewelry, cloth, spices. And a slave skilled in the playing of the lyre, which I am told the king’s father played as well. I have brought him here in the case that he may shed some light on the gossip of court.” I nodded, grateful for his foresight. “But the men who came to my camp that night brought one thing only. This.” Tamrin came and held it out to me.

  I took it from him. “And what did they say?”

  “Only that it came from the king himself and that I was to deliver it to you in private. That is all.”

  I unwrapped the fabric—the same purple of the Phoenicians. Within the cloth, it was wrapped again in linen embroidered with a gold lion. I glanced up at Tamrin to find him staring again at me.

  “Truly, my queen, I did not exaggerate your beauty, but find every praise of it insufficient now that I see your face,” he said softly.

  But I was in no state for flattery. I held up the linen’s embroidered corner.

  He frowned. “There are such lions on either side of the king’s throne.”

  I untied the fabric to reveal the figure of a bull. A fine, ebon bull with a gold ring through its nose. I stared at it blankly, turning it over in my hands. I might have thought it his god had I known better. But he worshipped the Unnamed One. Our own artisans made idols very much the same as this . . .

  There, on the back, was the blessing of Almaqah.

  This was the very idol I had sent with the trader to the king.

  “He throws our gifts back in our face? What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, the linen square in my fist.

  “I—I don’t know,” Tamrin said, seemingly at a loss.

  “He does not receive my trader. He returns my idol. And even now he builds Phoenician ships to neutralize our trade. But I tell you, this so-called king will regret the day he heard the name Bilqis, queen of Saba!”

  I threw the idol against the wall, where it splintered.

  “Go!” I said to Tamrin. “See your camels watered. Eat. For love of Almaqah, bathe.”

  When he had gone, I slumped down into the nearest chair. In all of this, Yafush, ever silent in the corner, had said nothing.

  “I think,” I said softly, “this is my doing.”

  “I do not think you can make a man do what he does, Princess.”

  I shook my head faintly. “Are you so sure? Last night as I looked into the garden pool, a part of me prayed to be relieved of this wedding to the god. And now I have had what I asked . . . It is the way of the gods, is it not, to make every prayer a riddle, so that they grant one petition but exact such cost that we wish it back? And now Saba is not only without heir, but her prosperity lies threatened as well.”

  What manner of man was this—this king supposedly wise and certainly as arrogant as his god? This king of an infant nation who presumed to command the queen of a land as old as time itself—why? Because he was a king and I was a queen without a king? Because arrogance demanded he take offense that I did not scrape and send an envoy to him as the others—because I did not make of myself a treaty bride?

  I sifted through these questions like rune-stones, as magicians do when the proper lot has not been cast, searching to see that the one they wanted was even among them.

  What did it mean that he meant to render our overland routes obsolete? With ships, he might sail along the southern coast of Saba directly to Hadramawt and the best incense in the world.

  No. He did not mean to cut Saba out—only her queen.

  I became aware then of Yafush standing before the wall where
the idol lay broken. He had moved so silently that from the corner of my eye he seemed like an obsidian statue that had changed places on its own.

  “I think you had best look, Princess.”

  I turned away. “I know. I will send an animal in reparation. Three,” I said. I would likely be required to put the confession of my desecration in writing and make an oath over the grave of my father. To journey as far, perhaps, as the new temple of Nashshan in penance.

  “I think you had best look, Princess,” Yafush said again.

  I glanced back to find him staring at the smashed idol. But there, something lighter peeked through the ruined body of the bull. I got up, walked over, and then crouched down in front of it. Lifting it from the floor, I pulled it apart with the distinct crack and splinter of wood. Now I could see that the idol was hollow and that inside the cavity there was a small scroll.

  “What trickery is this?” I said, pulling the scroll from the cavity. It was sealed with a lion, identical to that on the cloth.

  I swiftly broke the seal and unwound the scroll. As my gaze passed over the fine Phoenician script, my heart began to pound.

  A scrape outside the door. I closed the scroll and gathered up the broken idol, wrapping it in the embroidered linen and purple cloth.

  “Quickly,” I said, shoving the bundle at Yafush, who followed me through the side door even as the main one opened and the voices of my council, raised in curiosity and outrage, began to file in behind us.

  TWELVE

  Inside my bedchamber, I fell down beside my table. I forgot the broken idol the instant I dropped it onto a cushion and, with shaking hands, unrolled the scroll.

  Your words have come to me on the wind. How they stir me! Not in the longing of their own echo, but because they are the echo of my own.

  What a riddle you are. High Priestess, woman, queen. Who are you really? What is your secret name? Who is this woman who denies me her emissaries and her flattery? She is either fearless or reckless, and I do not think her reckless. You say you write to me as a woman but do not try to entice me—a woman who will not rely on wiles, but proves me with hard questions instead. They tell me the name they call you in Punt means “Woman of Fire.” How you have enflamed me.

  If you have found these words, you are suspicious enough to examine your own god. Only the fearless or reckless question the gods. But no, I misspeak—not reckless, but driven by that divine madness to know what others deem dangerous. And so we are dangerous because we know no other way to be.

  And here I am, holding a conversation with myself, only imagining that it is with you. For all I know these words will brittle in hiding and turn to dust in the dark. But one way or another, we will have words. Not because I command it, but because we must. What hold have you taken over me? How dare you command the distraction of a king in the space of a single line?

  I sat back hard, and read on.

  I have sent you a gift within a gift—a slave that plays the lyre. His name is Mazor—a name that means “medicine.” My father played the lyre, and it was medicine to the king before him. Mazor is a musician, yes, but he also speaks and writes both the Aramaic of the traders and the language of my people. He knows our stories and hymns. He was precious in my court—there is no one like him—and I pray he is precious and useful in yours.

  You ask about my god and my temple. Send your emissaries. I will tell and show them great things to carry back to you. I will answer you and you will leave my table filled. But for now I tell you this: our temple is not open to the sky because our god is found in all things. Your god is the god of thunder and moon but mine created the sky. And so he is not to be found there. We do not worship his handiwork—the moon and stars are his fingerprints—but the dread power and promise of the god himself.

  Send your emissary—I have given you every reason now to do so. If you do not, you will be cut out as my ships sail far beyond the range of your camel caravans and sea vessels. I have in this way forced your hand. Will you be fearless or reckless in return? Send your men. Do not be so arrogant. You are without an ally husband. Your commerce is in danger. I do not say it as a threat; it is the truth. You have much to gain through me. But you will recoil at this statement, and so I say instead: save your kingdom. You may, as you say, need nothing of the outside world. But it will leave you behind in innovation, if not in your lifetime then in the generation to come.

  In the end, I am not a king, or even a man, but perhaps a boy. Surrounded by courtiers, officers . . . hungry for the world, but too often alone within it. You know something of this, I think. I grew up in my father’s harem, surrounded by a hundred mothers. I learned the language of their sighs and the cant of their gazes when they thought no one was looking. Which way does your gaze go when you are alone, I wonder? How full or empty is the god inside you when everyone else looks to you as High Priestess? How many of your questions have gone unanswered?

  You are of the age that I was when I nearly tore my hair from my head. They call me wise, but wisdom does not guarantee peace. It only reminds us what we do not know—what we cannot know—and of our own frailties, so that we resign ourselves to them again, again, again, in those rare moments that we let go of the very world we must rule.

  Selah, Queen Bilqis. Selah, Woman of Fire. Selah, Daughter of the Moon. Send your emissary and something for me—not your incense, for I am surrounded by the divine. Not your grain, for my table is full. Not your wise men, for wisdom is given me. But something of yourself. Fire for a thirsty soul.

  ~Solomon

  I dropped my hands to the table. My heart was beating very fast.

  THIRTEEN

  I read and reread his letter, starting again before even finishing, near the window and then by light of the bronze ibex lamp.

  By Almaqah, he was bold. Haughty. Brazen. And he called me reckless?

  He was conceited. A self-proclaimed dangerous man—pah! But then, by the same token, a man who called himself a boy and wrote as though lost.

  A man who considered himself a knower of women—I supposed he was that—even as he presumed to know me.

  And why did that warm me? How could it—here was a king who presumed to wrest Saba’s monopoly away from her . . . and then audaciously begged for response!

  I did not understand this king!

  Twice on my first reading I had nearly torn the scroll to pieces. He told me not to be arrogant? He presumed to dictate to me? This king of a tribal state no more than a generation old, already festering with tension?

  I reread it again, and then twice more. I leaned against the edge of the table, trying to imagine his voice, what his words might sound like delivered from his lips.

  Which way does your gaze go when you are alone, I wonder?

  What hold have you taken over me?

  My council was gathering. What a stir they would be in! And yet I could not face them in private turmoil myself. I had given Yafush instruction to have them question the musician, Mazor, as I was delayed for an hour. And then again, for two more.

  The Israelite king was right; he was forcing my hand indeed.

  But there was more between the brash lines of his script. Some longing, some emptiness that I knew all too well.

  And here I am, holding a conversation with myself, only imagining that it is with you.

  Was it all fabrication intended to seduce? He would play on my sympathy if he could not command me. Or my need for—what? A teacher? A peer?

  No, a treaty husband. And so he would tempt my own hand to move if he could not force it.

  Yes, he was dangerous, if only for his manipulation.

  I nearly sent for Tamrin but stayed myself. He did not know I had found this scroll. Or had the king given some instruction about it in case I never discovered the idol’s secret?

  What if he had, saying to Tamrin as before that if I reacted in such-and-such a way it meant one thing, and if another, it meant something else? He had nullified my trader as a source of information th
en, or at least rendered him suspect so that I would not—dare not—make myself vulnerable with my questions.

  How well he had done to wrap his scroll in layers! Layer upon layer, like an Egyptian onion. And what lay at the core?

  I could refuse to acknowledge it. I could force his hand in this way, too, waiting to see if he sent word, more blatantly this time. But then how would he judge me if I was not as dangerous or cunning as he might think—even hope—that I was? And how would he approach me then—with more confidence, or with more caution?

  I paced to the window and back twenty times. I forgot my hunger. In all this time, I had not eaten. How could I, who stood to lose everything?

  And yet I had not felt so alive in years.

  At last I poured some wine and sat down to read the scroll again—had he read mine as many times?—the question of my response looming before me.

  “This will end in war,” Khalkharib said, pushing to his feet upon my entry.

  I had steeled myself, knowing they would have stirred themselves into a frenzy in my absence. Even before I entered, I heard their raised voices through my private door as I hesitated, palm upon the carved wood, unsure how to navigate the conversation of this chamber in conjunction with the unseen one of the scroll tucked within my sleeve.

  “You will speak no word of the scroll,” I said to Yafush when I had emerged from my chamber at last. His gaze had been placid—nothing at all like the alarm in Shara’s face.

  “My queen, what has happened? And why have you shut yourself away?” she said, clasping my hands.

  “The upstart king likes to make noise,” I had said, kissing her cheek. “All is well. But Almaqah will not have a bride this night.”

  Now, as my council bowed before me, maps strewn across the table between them, I felt an inexplicable calm.

  Will you be fearless or reckless in return?

  “We will start at the beginning,” I said. “If this will end in war, it certainly does not begin with it.”