The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen

  We walked together as any man and his wife might. Even at this hour the streets were filled with people, making me miss the market and pilgrimage season at home in Saba. But I had never experienced it with the liberation of obscurity.

  Somewhere near the old city, Solomon snuck over the low wall of a baker’s house and filched two cakes cooling in the courtyard. A dog began to bark and the man came out running, shouting curses at us as we disappeared down a crowded street.

  “What were you thinking?” I said, several streets over, panting and laughing despite myself. Somewhere nearby a group of men were singing hymns.

  He handed me a cake. “That I judge myself leniently. I am in love. I am capable of anything!”

  Throughout the upper city, I had seen curious little structures built against the sides of houses, in courtyards and even on some roofs—three- and four-sided decorated booths covered with fronds and colorful fabric housing guests in their tiny enclosures. Solomon pulled me inside an empty one to explain that they were built to remember the huts his people had lived in for forty years in the wilderness after their journey from Egypt.

  Just then a passing fruit cart overturned on the way to the night market, sending pomegranate and citrus rolling into the street. A gang of youngsters and several men came scrambling for them. The king whisked me from the little tabernacle before the onslaught, his men closed tight around us. I looked back, breathlessly, in time to see the booth go down in the jostle.

  “Disaster follows in our wake,” the king said grimly.

  I wished he had not said it, if only because we do not know when we prophesy.

  “When will you take me to see our ships?” I said after closing off the streets outside with the shutters, alone at last. We had talked several times about going to survey them, but I said it tonight in a show of faith.

  “On the day that I escort you to your camp, we will go down to Ezion-geber together, and you will see your ships. I promise. And you will know the way you may return to me one day.”

  I could not smile. The day he escorted me to my camp would be the day I left Israel, and him.

  Tashere required Solomon two days later for the birthday of their son. And then, three days after that, to observe a banquet in celebration of the new Pharaoh’s coronation. Music and laughter issued through the corridors as a steady parade of dancers and musicians came and went from her apartment all evening. It was morning before Solomon returned and threw himself on the bed to sleep until sunset.

  The day after that was the Israelite Day of Atonement, for which the king must fast and purify himself in preparation for his duties at the temple. The city had by now swelled beyond what I had thought was possible, so that I wondered how they did not fall from the very rooftops at night. “Forgive me, my queen,” he said and kissed me before he left me again.

  I walked the garden of his terrace alone, looking out over the city but only from such vantage that I could not be seen from below. Even from here I could see the commotion of the market mount outside the city, the shelters of pilgrims filling the valley in between. Gone, the black tents of my camp, replaced with brightly colored mosaic. Music wafted up from the streets and rooftops, nearly drowning out the singing of the Levite priests whose songs I had been so conscious of those first days, and was so accustomed to now that I hardly noticed it except when it broke through the din.

  I played Senet with Shara and Naamah’s servant, moving my pawn from the House of Happiness to the House of Water.

  How like a board game a sovereign’s court was, the fortunes of nations hinging on the toss of a pair of sticks behind closed doors. Loyalties measured against one another, attractions shared in secret. How the bat of an eye or the slightest snub might bring one nation to its knees and raise up another!

  Solomon returned to me at night, kissing my hands, and lay with me on the sofa.

  “You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes. With one jewel of your necklace,” he said.

  “Gather your lilies,” I said in return, as he pulled me into his arms.

  I did not ask why he came so late from the dinners or parties Tashere found occasion to throw nearly every week now. What would it have won me? I left it all in peace as we frenetically chased the idyll of those autumn days, drinking in one other as though I were a ewer of sweet water, and he an amphora of wine. Neither one inexhaustible, nor meant to be.

  The nights came earlier and began to turn chill.

  “Come. I want to show you something,” he said one evening when it was too chilly to linger on the terrace and the streets so full we dare not venture out. It was the month of Tisri, and the third feast this month, Tabernacles, was to begin in days.

  “And what is that?”

  He laid his woolen mantle over my shoulders. “My greatest secret.” He disappeared into the back room and I heard a lock turn and the opening of a chest. He returned with a ring of keys.

  He led me down to an underground room deep below the palace, his torch held high above us. From these subterranean chambers we had snuck into the tunnels and beneath Jerusalem’s walls on more than one occasion. Surely he didn’t mean to leave the city; the surrounding valley was carpeted with pilgrims!

  But this time he led me to a passage opposite the treasury, beyond the storeroom and cellars. At the end of the passage, we came to a locked and unmarked door.

  “Through that tunnel, I can enter the temple,” he said, gesturing to the dark hole that yawned opposite us. Did I imagine it, or did I smell the faint waft of incense?

  “To appear as a magician in time to oversee your rites?”

  He chuckled, the sound echoing in the dank underground. I held the mantle closer around me, the cold here below nearly matching that of outdoors.

  He unlocked the door after some difficulty, cursing the key and then the lock and finally the smith who had fashioned them both as I laughed, holding the torch above him.

  “You asked me once what was in the temple.”

  “You said you could not show me.”

  “I cannot. But I can show you this.”

  He took the torch from me and led me into the chamber. Shadows leapt out at us from the walls, dancing over a collection of hefty items: footed lamps, golden cauldrons, incense burners nearly as tall as I, and what appeared to be a lion exactly like the gold ones on either side of the steps to his throne. Several chests inlaid with ivory and precious stones lined the side wall covered with what I assumed to be bolts of fabric wrapped tightly in dusty linen. He handed the torch to me again as we came to a covered object of strange shape along the farthest side of the room, which was truly no more than a man-made cave.

  “You ask me often about the gods. About Yaweh, the unspeakable name.” He gathered the edges of the woolen coverlet and dragged it slowly to the floor.

  I stepped back with a soft gasp.

  Two gold cherubim, broad wings nearly touching over their bowed heads, knelt on a golden chest with fine filigree all along its top edge. With the cherubim atop it and their broad, spread wings, the entire thing was practically the same height as my own ark, if not as broad. I crouched down to study the faces of the cherubim, noting the design of the front panel, the chest’s tapered feet.

  “What is it made of?”

  The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Acacia wood.”

  I let out a short breath. “As my markab.”

  “We, too, carry the ark into battle.”

  Lying beside it were two long poles and I could see from this vantage where they fit inside the casings on either side of the box—not unlike my own palanquin.

  “Is this not supposed to be in the temple?” I said, glancing at him.

  “It is . . . and it isn’t,” he said with an enigmatic smile. “During the building of the temple I had a copy of the ark constructed in secret. In case that day ever came that the ark need be protected. It has been taken from us before, by the Philistines,” he said quietly.

  I st
udied it again, understanding only from its markab counterpart the notion of its significance. But while the markab was the symbol of my office and the ruling tribe that possessed it, here was the throne of Yaweh and identity of a people. God and nation, in one cultic seat.

  “My own ark is a copy of the one lost after my grandfather’s campaigns. But how are you certain that this is the counterfeit?”

  Solomon had been studying it over my shoulder and now he pointed.

  “They are exact replicas except in one thing. Here, the workman made an error.” He pointed out a slight aberration in the gold near the corner. “But I did not require him to fix it so that I would always know the difference.”

  My fingers found the place. Did my eyes deceive me, or did he flinch the moment I touched it? I drew back.

  “You would not do that and live,” he said, “were this the true ark and you were found unworthy.”

  I straightened. “No one touches it? Then how is it moved?”

  “Only the Levites, whom you hear singing in the temple, transport the ark.”

  “Are the other priests not jealous?”

  He shook his head, his gaze seeming to trail over the wide wings of the cherubim. “No. They fear it. All Israel and those beyond who understand what the ark is and know its history part before it like a sea and do not even look at it.”

  “Truly, that is an ark to be borne into battle, then,” I said with a soft exhale.

  “Now you have seen my greatest secret. Not one of my wives has laid eyes on this. And none will,” he said, looking at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant it—not only because of that, but because it was the closest I had come to any god. I understood, too, that if I stayed, I would never have laid eyes on it at all. This was a secret that could not be known, anywhere, but least of all within the boundaries of this nation.

  Later that night, he was very still as we lay within the light of a single lantern. Outside, the sounds of the city had died to a quiet commotion of barking dogs and crying infants, the buzz of low voices in sleepless rooftop conversation.

  “You are very quiet,” I said at last.

  “I do not think I have ever been so at peace and so much in turmoil at once,” he whispered. “My kingdom threatens to break apart. Today I was all but taken to task by two of my brothers before my council.”

  “Over what?”

  “The north. You. The fact that Assyria is gaining in strength as, they say, mine wanes. The lack of rain. The moon and very stars.” He gave a soft laugh that was more a weary sigh.

  I realized it was the dark moon. I had not even thought of it until now. Every month since my arrival, the drums of Almaqah’s ritual had pulsed outside its wall. I thought of my camp halfway to the Red Sea port and half expected to hear them.

  “They say that I am losing the faith of my people, that I have not honored my pact with Yaweh.” He closed his eyes and I laid my arm around him.

  “I was enraptured with Yaweh those first years, enflamed with holy fire. I barely slept, I was so possessed—such vision I had for this kingdom! For the legacy of my father. But more than that, for the approval of the god who set me on the throne, as though he were more father to me than the one who lay with my mother.”

  “You must remember what it was to feel that,” I said. But even as I said it I knew duty would never do for this king who thrived in the first flush of infatuation. This man left wanting when mystery ebbed from the world, leaving nothing so profound as the mundane.

  “Ah, from the woman who pursues the very gods. How you remind me of those first days. And I think a part of me would let my kingdom crumble to the ground rather than lose that. You.”

  As would I.

  How well we had pretended that we could run through the city streets and take to the gardens and the underground tunnels forever, even as we did it with a fervor that would never exist were our time not short. But I could not replace his god. And even I knew Yaweh would never stand to be loved second.

  For that reason, too, I must leave. But even as I said, “I leave in three weeks,” I wanted to hear him protest, to say that he forbade it, that I must not go.

  But neither did I want to become as Naamah, who had surely had roses in her cheeks once, until she grew austere and the light came only to her eyes when she spoke of her son. Or Tashere, with her elaborate and desperate banquets—any excuse to hold the attention of her king husband for even a few hours, because not to hold it meant to lose her place in this world. Was I any different?

  Who am I?

  Daughter, princess, victim, exile, lover, queen, priestess . . . all identities in relation to someone else—until that other person was gone.

  And Solomon, the voracious prince . . . I knew, had perhaps known all along, that I could never satisfy him. Not wholly, this man missing the first blush of his romance with God, who chased it with the concubines of wealth, wives, and treaty.

  He was weeping now and I held him, this man as strong as the Lebanon cedars he prized . . . and as fragile as words.

  “Sometimes I think my god will leave me. Moses saw Yaweh but never entered this land. And I, who have everything in this land, have not heard Yaweh’s voice in years. And if he has not abandoned me, how long will he dwell in this temple when I am gone? My prophet has seen that Israel will break apart. And what will become of us then?”

  He shook his head, as one who has wrestled for far too long with questions.

  “Are you not a friend of your god as your father was? Have you not loved him?”

  “What is love?” he said, helplessly. “Contract? Poetry? I thought I loved you and tried to possess you. I love you now, and I let you go. But I am not happy to do it. I know only that the god of Abraham and of Isaac falls in love with certain people. My father was such a one. And my kingdom will stand as long as I am faithful. But I cannot protect it and expand its security without doing the thing my prophet condemns me for doing. Perhaps I have held it too tightly, as you say. Perhaps I consume, as I would have consumed you, and I do not love it well. You were right,” he cried, “when you said I found myself in a trap!”

  I was very quiet.

  “Do you sleep, my queen?” he said softly after a time.

  “I am going to tell you something,” I said. “And perhaps you will come to hate me. But I tell you, because I feel compelled to it, though I would not have chosen to speak otherwise. There is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak. And this is the latter.”

  He lifted his head.

  “I know something of the tribal heart. My claim to the throne was the birthright of my blood, through mother and father both. Pure. Your children are born to foreign mothers. It is our stories that bind us, you said yourself. Every god of my youth is a story passed down by my forefathers to keep our blood pure. But yours will be poured in two directions. The day in the temple, I saw the twelve bulls of your tribe break away, and the cauldron spill to the ground.” At this, his eyes widened. “And so this is my gift to you, that I tell you: choose the successor of your blood carefully if you would keep the favor of your god. Because you have broken fidelity with Yaweh more than with your first wife.”

  He closed his eyes. “Then I will lose everything.”

  “Every time I have found that I have nothing left to lose . . . I have been free. There is a time to keep, but then there is a time to let go. And it always goes in that order. But if you cannot, if you will not . . . if the thing that drives you to hold tightly will possess you until you die, then drink your wine and make your poetry. Because perhaps that is, or will be, all that there is.”

  He tore at his hair. “How ill-timed your words! Only today Tashere encouraged me to take an Egyptian peace bride. A sister of Shishak.”

  Of course she did.

  “And I can see no other way around it, but that I must for the sake of my kingdom! How then am I supposed to do as you say, when the Libyans are practically at my door? And you and I—what of us, not knowing
if we will see one another again? How can we live with that, knowing what was lost?”

  I shook my head faintly. I didn’t know. My heart was already breaking. “I tell myself the story that I have always found a way. But this is a lie. Always the way has been laid before me the moment I surrendered the one thing I held precious. And there is something more precious right now to you than even me.”

  “I cannot surrender my kingdom,” he said, tortured.

  “Then,” I said softly, “I believe you will lose it. And so the Sumerian sages will be right when they say that all is in vain.”

  “What am I to do?” he cried. And I had no answer for him.

  I held him then, and wept for him and for us both. Because we do not know when we prophesy, but this time I knew that I did.

  THIRTY

  The next day Solomon rose early before dawn.

  “Where are you going?” I said, still tired, the melancholy air that had settled about the chamber lingering like a shade.

  “Many of my tribesmen have come in early from the north to meet before the feast,” he said, dressing. “They are concerned about unrest within the city. There was a riot in the lower city already this morning, and another outside the city walls.”

  I pushed up. “What?”

  I slept so soundly I had not even heard anyone come to the door.

  He came to the bed. “I love you. I love you. Wait for me.” He kissed my head, my eyes, my mouth. And then he was gone.

  I lay back and dropped my arm over my eyes, listening to the sounds of Jerusalem swelled to three times its population—so loud at this hour! How had I slept through that? I could hear their hymns through the shuttered windows, the strains echoing up through the houses stacked one against the other from the streets below. I imagined I smelled the incessant bread mingled with reek of urine, the animal market as far as the olive mount.

  Nine more days, the king had said, and the pilgrims would filter from the city.

  Ten more after that, I would go down to my camp, there to turn my face south, to the ports, and then home.