Queenmaker (21 page)

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Queenmaker
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“And David sent and inquired after the woman.
”
—II SAMUEL 11:3
 
I do not think that anything else I ever did pleased David as much as did that message. He did not come to me himself, or send for me, which was all I had asked or expected. But then, David was always one to make a great show even of small things. So now he sent a servant to me to say that whatsoever I desired, that I should be granted, even unto half his kingdom.
The man knelt at my feet before the gateway to my own courtyard and spoke David’s words loud and clear, a clanging bell that all must heed. Women came to their own gates to listen, and to look sharp at me.
A tiny harp upon a chain hung about the man’s neck. King David’s badge. A little thing of carved and gilded wood, to remind all men of how King David had been raised up from lowliness. I looked at the gilded token, not at the man’s face.
“That is good of the king, and generous,” I said. “But it is only a small thing I would ask. Something between a wife and husband only. Thank the king, and tell him I—tell him that his queen asks him to come to her.”
The man bowed his head low over his knee and went away again, obedient to my command. I turned slowly and walked back through the gate of ebony and ivory that guarded my courtyard. I did not look around to see which women had watched, and which had whispered. It did not matter; they all would know David’s
message and my answer by day’s end. It was what David had intended, after all.
“Close the gate,” I said, and walked on, into my rooms, to prepare myself for David’s coming.
 
 
“A captain! Uriah is to be a captain in the king’s host—captain of full fifty men! He sent me word, and this!” Bathsheba held out her left hand; silver chains circled her wrist. Then she looked at me, and blushed, and pulled back her hand. “But I am foolish—Uriah always calls me so—this bracelet is nothing, only—”
“Only a sign of your husband’s regard, which makes dross gold,” I said, and smiled at her. I did not deny that she was foolish, for she was. But there are far worse faults than loving folly. And I thought Uriah might have sent his wife a finer gift than a few silver chains.
“Uriah was right,” she went on, excited as if it were her wedding day. “The king himself must have seen him fight—or perhaps Joab did, he commands the host, you know—”
“Yes, I know.” I did not check her, only listened, smiling, as she chattered on. While she talked, I absently whirled my ivory spindle, drawing thread I knew I would never use. Still, I found the motion soothing; I had spun a league’s length since Phaltiel’s death.
I had known Bathsheba less than a month, and already she was dear to me. I watched her now, content in her happiness. Never would it occur to Bathsheba that my interest, and not Uriah’s merit, had earned her husband this honor. David had kept his word. I wondered, as I idly spun, what else I might ask, and be granted.
It took so little to please Bathsheba that I would do much for her. To come to the palace, to walk through its tiled halls and fragrant gardens, to run my jewels through her plump fingers as if gems were precious water—this was joy to her, and Bathsheba
made no pretense that it was not. She walked into my life all wide-eyed and trusting, like a kitten new-come into a house.
A maidservant paused in the doorway, waiting. I shook my head, and the maid went away again. My servants walked meeker now that I watched their steps.
Bathsheba had not even noticed the maid; she was too proud of Uriah and what he had achieved. “And the king—King David himself, Michal!—spoke to Uriah, and told him he had heard great things of him. The king himself!”
David had gone to the army in the field soon after I had asked my favor of him; he had not been back to Jerusalem since. I was glad of it. If David stayed always with his army, it would please me well. Then I would not have to face him, and see him smile at me, and know he thought that he had won.
“Well,” I said, when at last Bathsheba stopped to take a sip of cooled wine, “that is great news indeed.”
“Oh, you are laughing at me now. But yes, it is great news. Now—”
“Now you shall have everything you were promised,” I said, and laid aside my spindle and thread. “Come, and I will show you some new cloth I have—it is from a land far to the east, and never have I seen anything like it—it is like woven firelight. No, leave the spindle as it lies—I prefer tangles to be of my own making!” And I laughed as I said it; it was only a jest, and a small one. I forgot the words as soon as they were spoken. I did not know that our thread was already knotted past unraveling.
 
 
The summer that I first saw Bathsheba sitting on her housetop King David’s army was besieging Rabbah, chief city of the Ammonites. Another war—hardly worth a mention at the well. Bathsheba and I spoke of it only when we spoke of her husband Uriah, which was not often. He rarely sent her messages, and she seemed content enough without him.
“Oh, he is a good enough man, I suppose, Micha!—but—”
“But not what you dreamed of as a maiden in your father’s house?”
She shook her head. “I know he is a good man, but he never talks of love, only of war, and of the future. Always it is wait, and later it will be better, and then I shall have fine gowns and maids to wait upon me. But that is not what I want—well, of course it would be very pleasant to have such things too. But he is always away, always fighting—and of course he always wins, but—” She stopped, and for a moment she would not look up at me.
But suppose he does not? Suppose he is injured, suppose he dies?
That was what Bathsheba feared, and would not say.
Yes
, I thought,
and Uriah has spent the gold that was hers, gold meant to keep her all the days after her husband was dead. And she does not even think of that!
And then a thought flashed through my mind like crystal through water.
You are queen, Michal. If Uriah falls in battle, take Bathsheba into your own household. Does not David always swear he will give whatsoever you ask?
The thought flared swift and bright; it startled me.
At last Bathsheba looked up, and her eyes were very bright. And what she said was, “But why can he never speak to me of love?”
“I do not know.” To tell truth, I was still turning that new thought over in my mind, judging its merit as I would judge a melon in the market. “Who can say why men act as they do?”
Then she looked at me, full of hope. “Perhaps you can tell me what I should do, to make Uriah love me. Everyone says that King David kisses the dust beneath your sandals. I have heard the songs about him and you.” She said this last almost in a whisper, as if the songs were secrets that I might not have heard.
“Everyone is wrong,” I said. “That is not what life is like, Bathsheba. And from all you have said, Uriah loves you well enough. Hot love makes cold marriage, in the end. Uriah is kind to you, is
he not?” At least, from all I had heard, Uriah was not cruel—I thought it would be hard to be cruel to Bathsheba.
“Oh, yes, he is kind enough. But he is so
dull
.” Bathsheba sighed and her mouth drooped, and I laughed. Bathsheba was so young—no older than I had been when I first had married David.
“Easy for you to laugh,” she said, hurt. “You, who are married to King David!”
“Yes,” I said. “You are right—that is nothing to laugh at.”
She looked at me with eyes like a startled dove. She was sweet as spring-water; bitterness frightened her. So I smiled, and then we talked of other things. I had learned long ago that a kind heart is better than a clever tongue.
 
 
Bathsheba eased my heart more than she knew, or would have believed. She liked to hear palace-talk and bright tales—well, I told her what I could, and one day I spoke of Zhurleen. A Philistine concubine, I said, liking to see Bathsheba’s eyes grow round and eager.
“A clever woman who was kind to me when—when I was new-come to Jerusalem. She gave me much wise advice.” It was not Zhurleen’s fault that I had been too frightened and angry to heed her. Yes, and too foolish as well.
“A Philistine concubine—oh, Michal—what was she like? I—I have never seen one,” Bathsheba confided, as if such lack were a shame to her.
“All paint and silver bells—and she did not wear her hair braided, but in long curls falling down her back, like this.” I traced a ringlet down the air, spiral upon spiral. “And she dyed her hair with henna leaves so that it was red as pomegranate seeds, and when she walked her curls danced like snakes.”
“And did she worship strange gods?”
“I do not know, Bathsheba. We never spoke of gods, only of men.” I thought of Zhurleen laughing, and of Abigail’s sour triumph
when she had told me how Zhurleen was gone, and where. “But she is gone, now.”
“Gone? Where?”
I stared at my hands. “I do not know.” Nor did I know why I had spoken of Zhurleen at all; I could not tell sweet Bathsheba the truth.
“To another king?”
“Yes. Perhaps to another king.”
Bathsheba sighed happily. “So beautiful and so clever—and so wicked,” she added hastily. “Oh, Michal—I wish I might turn life about my fingers as I wished!”
And as I stared at Bathsheba, one of the weights pressing upon my heart eased.
So beautiful, and so clever
—for an instant I saw Zhurleen shape the air with her swaying hips and serpent hair. Yes, if any woman could twist life and men round her rosy fingers, it was Zhurleen.
Perhaps she now belonged to another king, as Bathsheba had said; perhaps she had found a better friend than I to aid her.
Perhaps
—hope only, but hope is better than despair, a lamp lit against darkness.
I smiled, and put my hands on Bathsheba’s shoulders, and kissed her. “You are better than wine for joy, Bathsheba. I swear I could not live content without you near to teach me wisdom.”
Bathsheba blushed, and stammered, and begged me not to be foolish—“For I am
not
clever, Michal—I have always known that. Why, even my husband says so. It is you who are as wise as you are beautiful.”
“No,” I told her. “I am a fool and a coward—and it is the malachite and kohl and lapis-dust that are beautiful. What you possess is worth twice all I have.”
Bathsheba did not believe me, of course. But she was pleased. So she laughed, and blushed, and promised to come every day, since I asked it.
Yes, it was very pleasant to have once more a woman whom I could call friend.
 
 
And it was twice pleasant to walk freely once more. That, too, I owed to Bathsheba.
“Come with me to the market—there is a new spice merchant selling the oddest things! Come see the new gate—there is a statue of a winged bull sent all the way from Asshur and the priests say it is idolatrous and so everyone has come to gaze upon it.”
But I would not; I did not wish to ask any more favors of David. Not for my own sake.
“Come to my house—it is a humble place, but you said you would come gladly—”
Ah, that was harder to refuse. What could I say? “I am the queen, but I may not walk where I wish.” “I am the queen, and a prisoner.” “No, Bathsheba, I cannot come to your house.”
I looked at Bathsheba and said none of those things. “Yes, I will come, and gladly, if I may. I will tell you tomorrow—and do not ask me any questions now.”
I had thought it would be hard, to ask David for anything. But I had done so twice already: once for Caleb’s sake, and once again for Bathsheba’s. The third time was almost easy. I did not even need to look into David’s eyes.
For when I summoned my courage and sent a message to David, David sent back a man bearing a fine jasper ring and the words that the king was too busy to see the queen. Perhaps that night—- but today the Ammonite war ate the king’s time—the king knew the queen would understand, and forgive—
“—and if you would send the king words now, O Queen, I can repeat them just as they fall from your lips. Each word, not one forgotten.”
I slid the jasper ring upon my finger without looking at the jewel. “Thank the king for his gift. And tell him that the queen would visit the house of the woman Bathsheba. That is all.”
And the king’s words came back to me from David, each word, not one forgotten.
“David’s queen may walk where she pleases within the city. Only ask, O Queen, and have it granted to you.”
 
 
Everyone is a little mad when the summer wind blows fire across the land. Then even air cannot be still and dances hot before the eyes. The summer wind had lasted a week, the last time it burned across Jerusalem. This time—who could say? It had begun three days ago, and even talk of wars and weddings bowed aside to give the weather pride of place.
I had gone to sit on Bathsheba’s housetop, hoping it might be cooler than my own. It was not, but at least
her
roof was shaded by the palace, and we had done what we could. We had piled our hair high and I had brought peacock-feather fans as wide as a cartwheel. They did little good, for the air was thick and damp as a bath sponge. Sweat ran down our faces and backs and breasts until our thin linen gowns clung wet to skin.

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