The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen

  “I’ve just decided it.”

  “I will go with you into your city,” I said. “But you must do one thing for me.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do not think to lead me by the nose or continue to insult me by asking me to come to you like this.”

  “You think I insult you?” His brows lifted, and I couldn’t tell if his surprise was genuine or manufactured. “I have no privacy anywhere else!”

  “You are a man in a man’s kingdom. Were I Baal-eser of Phoenicia, we would not be having this discussion. Surely I do not need to explain this to you.”

  “Were you Baal-eser, I would not have invited you to my garden.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I am not a molester of women.”

  “I didn’t suggest it.”

  “And yet you are more brave with your eunuch nearby.”

  “Would you have kept Baal-eser’s advisors from him? And he from your council chamber?”

  “Do you not see? I am weary of treaty! Of negotiation. And so are you, I can see it.”

  And to think it only took four hundred wives for him to tire, I thought sardonically.

  “What have I come for, if not that?” I said. “You demand my emissaries and threaten the future of my kingdom. Well, I have given you better than an emissary. But do not think I came to sample delicacies.”

  His expression changed and for an instant he appeared injured.

  “We are two of a kind, you and I. But if treaty is all you have come for, then my answer is no.”

  I blinked.

  “You cannot mean that.”

  “And yet I do. It is no. You may try to move me, but I promise you it will take a great deal of persuasion on your part. Persuasion I am not certain you are capable of, even if you are willing.”

  My mouth opened beneath my veil.

  “Now that that is done and there is no gain to be had, either way, will you see my city with me tomorrow?”

  “Your temple will have no incense to burn! Is it not a command of your god that you do so? And how will he exact his revenge on you if you do not?”

  “Do you think I cannot find incense anywhere else in this world?”

  “You will have none of Saba’s gold—”

  He spread his hands out toward the palace and in the direction of the temple. “What need have I for gold?”

  “You cannot mean to have another wife!”

  He laughed at this.

  “Of all things, what need have I for another wife!”

  “Then for what did I make this journey?” I demanded.

  “I had thought you wise,” he said, turning away.

  “I cannot go back empty-handed. You know this as well as I. My council will cry for war.”

  He waved his hand. “I will send gifts to astound your court. And there are other routes for your caravans. East, toward the great gulf, between the two rivers—”

  I forced down panic, searching for even the smallest lever to turn his capricious mind. I had prepared for so many contingencies. But I had not prepared for this.

  I imagined the Senet board between us, the pawn sacrificed upon the square. I laid my hands on the wall. “As you are tired of treaties and negotiations, I am tired of gifts. And so it seems we are at an impasse,” I said simply, trying to quell the rising sense that I might be ill.

  “So it seems,” he whispered.

  Somewhere in the dusk a bird trilled its night-song and a mother called her children into the house.

  “I cannot leave until late autumn. And so we might as well take in the city and feast as though we die.”

  I felt, more than saw, him look over his shoulder at me.

  “Until tomorrow, King Solomon,” I said, taking my leave.

  Let him think he had won.

  That night after I returned to my apartment, I closed myself into the inner chamber and fell back against the door, pinching my forehead.

  A moment later I pulled my veil free and promptly vomited in the night-pot.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I had been fearless. I had been reckless.

  Now I must be wise.

  Egypt was weak. Baal-eser was newly on the throne. The ships were not finished. And I, I was certain, would never make this journey again.

  How was it possible that after a single conversation I had less than when I had first arrived—than if I had never made the journey at all?

  I had six months. Six months to change an enigmatic king’s mind. To secure Saba’s future.

  But as I lay awake that night, I found no purchase. He would not be moved for incense or gold. He tired of treaty. He disdained flattery. I wondered how many women had repelled him in attempting the usual wiles.

  He was eager to show me his city. But not for my praise, surely—he had, no doubt, plenty of that.

  He had studied my hand as though it were a marvel.

  So he wanted something to worship.

  But he himself claimed his god above all others.

  He tired of gold and wealth, and yet he pursued it as one addicted.

  So then he wanted worth. But that, he had.

  I pulled at my hair and went out on the terrace to gaze up at the impassive moon. What might move a king for whom the luster of conquest had dulled?

  I sighed and drew back, about to go in when I noticed movement on one of the rooftops below. A man, pacing to its edge, looking up at the sky as I had just a moment ago.

  Who was he, I wondered. A merchant? A scribe? What thoughts did he ponder at this late hour, what thing nagged at his soul? A shipment of olive oil? An unfinished work as dawn threatened the eastern sky?

  All the while the moon shone on us both, queen and commoner alike.

  Did the king pace upon his terrace as I did even now? What kept him from his rest? Not an invading army. Not lack of women to warm his bed. Almaqah knew he could have one every night and not have them all in a year.

  Lady Riddle, he called me. Yet I was the one stymied.

  There are things I want to know of you, he had said. Things I want you to understand.

  I looked out at the rooftop again, but the man was gone. I wondered if he would turn on his bed as fitfully as this queen a stone’s throw away.

  The next day I went out with the king and a small retinue of servants—his, and my own. Shara had spent the morning fretting about the bags beneath my eyes, patting them with milk, drawing the kohl around them thicker than usual. My fatigue fell away at first sight of the king, waiting in the palace garden as though he had never spoken a word to me in private, let alone asked like a boy to touch my hand.

  He who listens becomes the master of what is profitable. So, at least, said the ancient sage Ptahhotep, whose words I had read unceasingly these last aggravating days.

  I had come intent on being heard. I would correct that error. Now. Today. And every tomorrow until I turned south, ships in hand.

  We went down to the lower city. I had not allowed the servants to fetch my palanquin, and it felt good to stretch my legs.

  I tilted my head politely as he pointed out the original city of his father. The terraced Millo, the old palace, which housed many of his advisors and captains today. The tower that protected the Gihon Spring, from which the city drew its water.

  “All of this, from the palace up to the temple on the mount, I have built,” he said, with a sweep of his arm.

  “Where was your temple before?” I said.

  “Our temple was a tent. Our people were much like yours of old—tent dwellers. As was our god.”

  “Your father built the city. Why did he not build the temple, too?”

  “My father was a warrior, a killer of many men. It was not for him to build the house of Yaweh.”

  “And your hands are free of blood?”

  “Is any sovereign’s hand free of blood? If not the right one, then the left? Are yours?”

  Of course, I did not need to answer.

  “The temple stands on the place wher
e my father built his altar, over the same site where Abraham was told to sacrifice his son.”

  How long could I banter like this, as though I had come only to stroll through his city and praise his Phoenician workmanship?

  “I have heard this story,” I said. “Do you think your Abraham would have made the sacrifice?”

  He shook his head, not looking at me. “Who knows what a man may do in the name of any god?”

  “Is that because of the god’s power over men, or because of men’s belief in the god?”

  He shrugged. “Is there a difference?”

  We made our way through the market, which caused an immediate commotion. Merchants and housewives and peasants alike fell back like oil and bowed low. Solomon seemed to delight in stopping at each stall, smelling apricots and pomegranates as simply as any country boy. And of course each merchant protested he must take whatever he wished—no doubt so he could boast in perpetuity that the king had admired his produce. I had not come to bite into apricots or nibble sweet cakes and goat cheese—all of which I did as he pressed each one upon me, beneath the edge of my veil.

  “The queen loves it!” he said jubilantly.

  We went up the hill again, toward the palace.

  “Are other gods not jealous that you have built such a grand temple for Yaweh and not for them?”

  “I have financed high places for my wives.”

  “Is your god not jealous?”

  “I have no god before mine. And as you see, his is the only temple within my city.”

  “How do you expect good harvest, good trade? Fertility of field and womb—or is your god the god of all of that, and thunder as well as hospitality?”

  “He is the god of every created thing.”

  “The worship of one god failed utterly in Egypt. Do you truly think such a cult can survive?”

  “If one worships the right god.”

  “Among so many! And if you have chosen wrongly, do you not worry that your record will be erased in retaliation, as Akhenaten’s?”

  “No,” he said softly. “Because in truth, my god chose me.”

  I paused.

  I could not help but think back on that day I had been appointed High Priestess. On every ritual I had presided over. The night I first offered the only precious thing I owned to a god I had never worshipped until then.

  I had chosen Almaqah. Had Almaqah ever chosen me?

  I noticed Solomon studying me from the corner of my eye.

  “How do you know for certain the god chose you?” I said lightly. “Because he came to you in a dream? I dreamed of a three-headed goat once.”

  He picked a stone off the street and tossed it aside. “Because I have never needed to ask myself that.”

  I fell silent.

  “Your brow furrows, Queen Bilqis.”

  “I was simply wondering if it was true that no hammer was ever heard dressing any stone as your temple was constructed,” I said.

  “That is true.”

  “Ah, and I also heard from the hoopoe bird that flies to my sill that jinns built the temple in the dead of night.”

  Solomon smiled and said, “That hoopoe bird has been known to spin many tales.” He considered me again. “Though I find there is always some truth at the core of them.”

  “And so your father was as my grandfather,” I said, pretending interest in something on one of the rooftops. “The federator of his people. We have a name for that—the mukarrib.”

  Now the king turned to me with a dramatic gasp. “Why, lady queen, are you likening me to your father?” And then, to our company: “I believe the queen has called me old!”

  How easily he made light, this king who claimed to be slayed by a story just the night before, who even now held my kingdom’s interest hostage!

  “We do have a saying in Saba, that the juice from the frankincense sapling is whiter, but an older tree has more scent.”

  The courtiers laughed, a few of them politely applauding as we made our way past the palace.

  “And so you have come from nomadic blood, as have I.”

  “As have we all.”

  “But you, much more recently,” I said pointedly. “How do your people fare in cities—are they at peace, or do they long for their tents still?”

  Solomon sighed. “Every man remembers his tribal blood.”

  I had said the same once, myself.

  “And your tribal laws—they are given by Yaweh, are they not? How do they apply now that you dwell in cities?”

  “They teach us how to dwell in community.”

  “I have heard these laws. They are rigorous. Your god is exacting. Do your people not live in constant fear of punishment—if not by priest or king, then by your god himself? Does your god wish only to be feared and not revered?”

  “He wishes to be loved.”

  I thought back to my conversation with Asm years, a lifetime ago.

  “How can you, even as a king, know the mind of your god?”

  “Because it is said to us, ‘You will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ ”

  “And yet you buy his favor with the keeping of laws, and with sacrifice, as do we all. Is that love?”

  He stopped then, seeming to forgot the others. “How does one love any god? With fear. And then with friendship. My own father was a friend to Yaweh.”

  I squinted at him. Friend to a god?

  “My god is different in this way,” he added. “As our laws are different.”

  “How is one statute against murder or rape or theft different from any other?” I said, though my mind had careened into a hundred different questions.

  “They are different in that they come from a god who says we are to show honor of him by honoring others. And so as we feed our hungry neighbor and do not steal from him we honor not our neighbor, but the image of the One who fashioned him. You say our god has no face. This is not true. Yaweh’s face is before us in every person we see, as we are made in his image. Living people who require more kindness and adoration than any idol.”

  The courtiers walking a few steps ahead of us had stopped and turned back to listen.

  “It is easy to love a statue that is fearsome or beautiful,” he said. “But our love is proved when we love those who are not beautiful, who wound with word or deed. When we love not out of pity, or even for their sakes, but for our own. And here is the secret: they do not wound us, as Yaweh does not wound us. We wound ourselves by allowing the offense. And so Yaweh commands forgiveness for our own healing. Because in honoring ourselves—and others as ourselves—we please and honor Yaweh, who looks not on what a person does, but on the heart.”

  I had never heard anything like this—so deviant from the school of merit and favor, the cult of blessing and curse. It defied logic.

  He gave a soft laugh, his expression strangely bemused. “You prove me with hard questions, lady.”

  “You answer deftly, sir.”

  “He is philosophizing,” a man who had been introduced to me as Jeroboam said loudly enough for the king to hear. “We will never make it to the temple at this rate.”

  “He’s come from the north to report on labor. I keep wondering when he will go back,” the king said loudly, as though to me. The man laughed and walked on.

  I glanced sidelong at the king as we made our way to the temple gate.

  He enjoys this.

  When we entered the courtyard, I stopped. How different the temple seemed now as I stood before it! I took in the enormous altar, the horns at each of its four corners. The gigantic cauldron opposite it, taller than a man, on the backs of twelve bronze oxen—one for each tribe of Israel, the king explained, poured in the clay in the plain of the Jordan. He gestured to the sides of the court, explaining its length and height as one who has had to do this many times, as I supposed he had.

  The smell of roasting meat pervaded everything. Somewhere—on the balcony—there was music and sing
ing.

  I gestured to the temple building itself, where two giant bronze pillars like date palms stood sentry on either side of the gold folding doors. “May we go in?”

  “We dare not, for you are priestess of another god.” The king began to describe the giant cherubim within the sanctuary, the gold and palm trees and flowers upon its walls, which I assumed resembled those on the folding doors, the room behind the curtained back where a gold ark resided—a markab, over which the god hovered invisibly like a ghost.

  “The day that the ark was brought to the temple and Yaweh came to live in it, the sacrifices had to be spread across this entire court as the altar could not contain them all. Twenty-two thousand oxen. One hundred and twenty thousand sheep.”

  I had seen a thousand animals sacrificed. But twenty-two thousand? One hundred and twenty thousand? I had seen and presided over countless sacrifices. But even I could not imagine so much blood.

  I suddenly wished I had eaten this morning. The smell of the meat was overpowering, the song of the priests eerie in my ears. I glanced again at the oxen beneath the cauldron—three pointing each to the north, south, east, and west. It seemed to me that one of them wavered.

  Look, I thought. They are breaking apart in separate directions. The cauldron will fall and spill! I lifted my hands in alarm, against that thundering crash. Someone steadied me. The king.

  “My queen, are you well?”

  I glanced swiftly at the cauldron. But no, the oxen were in place, unmoving as the statues they were.

  “It is magnificent,” I stammered, hoping I would not faint here, in the temple yard. “It is twice the tale that I heard, and that one I did not believe.”

  I said this in part because it was true, and in part because I could see how much he craved to hear it. And also because I dare not stand like this anymore; already my ears were ringing.

  “I would like to arrange the gift of animals for sacrifice here,” I heard myself say, “by one of your agents if I cannot by mine. You said there is an ark within . . .”

  Our company turned to leave. Thankfully, my vision began to clear.

  “Yes, of the covenant between my god and my people, and ten laws on their stone tablets are within it.”