Queenmaker (23 page)

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Queenmaker
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Do not be a fool.
A man does not build up a fine house—or a great kingdom—only to fling his prize to owls and wolves. No, men build for their sons, and their sons’ sons.
And King David had many sons; one of them would rule after him. But which? They were all only boys still, unformed; Amnon, the eldest, not yet twelve. But boys became men; if the choice were equal between them all, what then?
The answer slid into my mind smooth and brilliant as a little viper. I smiled.
“To serve the queen is much,” I said to Narkis. “And how much more to serve the mother of the next king? A woman must think of her future. Do you wish to serve the future, or the past?”
As I spoke, I laid both my hands flat upon my stomach, and I smiled. I did not say I was with child; I was not so foolish. But I meant to make her think of that, and she did.
Now she bowed. “How may I serve you, O Queen?”
“Bring me words, Narkis. Bring me the well-talk and the market gossip. I would know what men say in the streets, and women on their housetops.” I had been blind, and deaf; now I wished to see and hear. I would try Narkis, and see if she might be trusted. “Tell me what they say of the king, and Bathsheba—but tell no one what I know. And twice do not tell Bathsheba.”
Narkis regarded me steadily and swore that she would do as I bade her. “All that you ask, O Queen—and I do not see why the king must turn to that woman when he has you to comfort him. She is only a silly girl, and everyone knows her husband is a Hittite!”
“That is no secret, and not Bathsheba’s fault. Now go, and remember, when you think to serve me, that Bathsheba is my friend, and that I love her dearly.” And I gave Narkis a brooch, hammered gold set with turquoise, to seal our bargain.
When Narkis had gone and I was alone, one thought beat in my mind, hard and steady as a smith beating out a new-forged blade. There was one son of King David’s who would surely be the king who came after.
Must
be king after; the king David had schemed for, had murdered for. My son.
The son David would never have.
I had told him, when first he had brought me here.
I am barren,
I had said.
You will get no son on me.
But David would listen only to himself and his desires. And for all his demands to Yahweh, my body remained as flat and barren as it had all the years I lay with my husband Phaltiel.
No, David would never hold up my son and claim him for his own. That at least Yahweh denied to the great King David.
“Ten years married and no child,” I told the air, as I had once told David; the air listened as well as he. “So much, David, for your house of kings!”
 
 
I was not the first to know of King David’s latest folly, but neither was I the last. David never cared to hide his light under a bushel, as they say on the farms—
“—and the woman Bathsheba’s eyes show all. She might as well embroider her secret upon her veil in scarlet and hang it from her house wall. A silly little girl playing at—” Narkis looked at me and shut her mouth over her next words.
I looked steadily at Narkis for a heartbeat, then smiled—but only a little. “So it is known.”
“And well known, O Queen—at least among her neighbors. But they will not speak—”
“Against the king,” I finished for her. No one would ever speak against David; all the world saw was the golden king. Yahweh’s beloved. “And I suppose half the palace knows as well.”
Narkis grew cautious. “He sends for her, O Queen. And she is brought to him.”
There was nothing else to say, then; I smiled upon Narkis, and thanked her, and sent her away again. And when Narkis had gone, I picked up my ivory spindle and twirled it. The soft rush and whirl soothed me and aided thought.
I could not stop David; I knew that. And I did not blame Bathsheba; she was young and he was the king, after all. I knew the silly girl was dazzled as if David were the sun, and she thought him all the world and all her heart. And I knew she was afraid that I would guess her secret; I could not tell her that I knew, and did not care. Bathsheba was too innocent of all that could be between a man and a woman to believe that truth.
Neither could I warn her against David. I had once been that young and hot for love, and would listen to no one. Words from me now would do no good, and much harm. For King David would tire of her, and her husband would return; then Bathsheba would need the queen’s friendship. I did not want her to be afraid to come to me and ask it.
 
 
“ … and the woman said, I am with child.”
—II Samuel 11:4-5
 
Narkis did all I asked of her, and more. She brought me the street-news and the well-gossip, as I had asked her; she also brought me the whispers and slanders of the women’s quarters. That was when I learned how Queen Michal was seen through the eyes of others.
“They say you are proud, and cold as ice, and hold the king’s heart by sorcery.”
“Who says so?”
Narkis lowered her eyes. “Need the queen ask?”
“Abigail,” I said. “She should know better; that will not please the king, should he hear of it.”
“Shall he hear of it, O Queen?”
I shook my head. “No; Abigail is unhappy, that is all, and through no fault of mine.”
“Perhaps he should hear, O Queen. Abigail says also that you keep the king’s desire hot by unnatural arts. That—”
I laughed. “Unnatural arts! What are they?”
“Abigail does not say.”
“Because she does not know, any more than I! This is not Egypt! What else does Abigail say?” I was angry, but I would not let Narkis see that I cared. Abigail did not speak to me; David had seen to that. But he had not stopped her venomous tongue.
“She says also that you procured the woman Bathsheba to
serve his lusts, flaunting her at him as a gift. And that you use unnatural means to deny the king a son.” Narkis twirled her bracelets; she was still uneasy with me, and thought to hide it so. “Abigail hints at other things as well.”
“Abigail seems to know overmuch of the unnatural for a good woman! I will not even ask what those means are, for fear she will tell me.” I smiled, and kept my voice even, like poured cream. I was two women now, as David had made me; one Michal lived fever-hot within the second Michal’s thick skin of ice. It was the second Michal that Narkis saw. It was the second Michal who laughed, and turned away, careless.
“Abigail says so-and-such! Well, and you may tell any who care that I spend half my days begging Yahweh to grant me the king’s son for my own!” I laughed and sent Narkis away, and then I sat upon my balcony and stared out, down at Bathsheba’s housetop. Bathsheba was not there; I had not expected to see her.
Abigail’s hissing was nothing; if others believed her, that belief was much. I was alone in this house, alone save for Bathsheba. And I did not see Bathsheba now; I knew she was ashamed to face me, and so I did not ask her to come to me. It would have been cruel. But I longed to see her, for I was lonely—
Do not be a fool.
How many women dwelt beneath King David’s roof? How many wives, concubines, handmaids? They were not all my enemies—and I was the queen. If I sat here alone it was by my own choice, not theirs.
If the palace women knew me only by the lies Abigail chose to scatter—well, that too had been my own doing. What else did they know of me, after all? King Saul’s daughter, King David’s queen, who for pride kept to her own courtyard and never spoke.
And so I left my balcony and went to sit beside the fountain in my courtyard. I had the ebony gate thrown wide to the open hall beyond. And when a woman passed by the gate, walking slowly and slanting her eyes to see in, I raised my hand and called to her, and asked her to come and bear me company.
 
 
Abigail stayed away from my courtyard, as did some of David’s other wives, out of spite and jealousy. But others did not. I was the queen, King David flung jewels before my feet. That was enough to bring some to me; others came because the gate to my courtyard now stood open. Some were curious, some were friendly. Some wished favors of David and hoped that I would speak in their favor. All were only women, no different from my friends in the little village of Gallim.
I invited them to my courtyard; I went to theirs. Their world was mine, now, and I must learn its ways as I once had learned Gallim’s.
And so I began, a stitch at a time, to mend the rent I had torn between myself and the other women. Visits and gifts and gossip. Little things, women’s things.
I did not suddenly beam upon them and chatter, and press gems into their hands. I went slowly; I was the newcomer still, though I had spent two years within these walls; I must take care. But I learned their names, and their joys and sorrows, and I taught them that I was not too proud to share in them. It was hard, at first—but then one of the concubines who was with child was brought early to childbed.
Narkis had brought me word, and I had gone to the woman. I did not listen to those who cried out in horror when I appeared; I had delivered babies enough in Gallim to be a comfort to those who labored in childbed. My hands had cradled a dozen children into the world. Now they once more held and urged and comforted; the child was safe born and the mother lived.
“Do not be foolish,” I said after, when I was praised as much as if I had raised the woman from the dead to breathe again. “In Gallim my neighbors said that I had good strong hands, and that is all birthing takes!”
That, and a calm voice, which many do not have.
“But you are the queen,” one protested.
“Does a queen not breathe and bleed? If ever any woman needs me, she has only to send word. Children are more important than crowns!”
 
 
The summer dragged on, hot long days and hotter nights. The war too waged on, and on, and David came and went between Rabbah and Jerusalem, balancing battle and passion.
I smiled, and kept my own council on both. I knew nothing of war, save how my father had fought it, hard and clean. I could not imagine Saul laying siege to a city that had never done him any harm, as David was doing at Rabbah.
Nor could I imagine my father risking all to lie with another man’s wife. As once Zhurleen had said, with a man like David there would always be a woman—but David had wives and concubines a-plenty. And if those did not satisfy him, well, there were always new brides to seal treaties, new pretty girls as gifts to seal favors.
Sometimes I wondered why David must have Bathsheba; I dared not ask. I thought perhaps it was the forbidden that first lured David that summer; perhaps it was the risk. Perhaps it was the pure worship in innocent eyes, as once, long years ago, the girl Michal had worshipped the shining youth who slew the Philistine giant Goliath. I was wrong. David had another use for Bathsheba’s love.
 
 
But it seemed that even risk and worship could not hold David long; as the summer waned, so did King David’s passion for Bathsheba. He loved her less, and less still, and one day Narkis murmured into my ear that it had been a week since he had gone to her. That Bathsheba wept, and waited for the king in vain.
The king’s lust for Uriah’s wife had ended, it seemed. David
left Jerusalem again, going to Rabbah, to the war that seemed endless as the summer heat.
And when King David returned from Rabbah, angry at that city’s long defiance, he came to me and never once thought of Bathsheba, who loved him with all her foolish heart. But while I stroked David’s pride with soft words and his body with soft hands, I thought of her, and rejoiced, for Bathsheba had come safe from the lion’s paw, with a wounded heart the only price paid.
I, too, had once been as wounded as she, and by the same man. I knew no words could heal that pain; even the kindliest eyes seemed harsh and uncaring. I remembered my cry to Phaltiel when he had sought to give me wisdom and comfort.
You do not understand!
Perhaps Bathsheba would fling those words at me; she would be as wrong as I had been. But I would do my best to spare her more pain. I would give her time to grieve alone—and then I would go to her and tell her that I knew all, and loved her still. I knew Bathsheba; she would weep rivers upon my shoulder, and then her grief would all be over.
And then I would have back what David had stolen from me; Bathsheba and I would be friends once more. I had missed her sorely all these weeks that shame had kept her away.
 
 
The lady Teshura was one of King David’s concubines; pretty enough, pliant enough, passionate enough to have pleased him for a time. She had asked for me, and so I had been there to hold her hand and wrap her child in fine linen. Now Teshura begged me to tell the king of his new daughter.
“Please, O Queen. Ask him only to look upon her. See—see how she resembles him. Do you see, the eyes?”
The baby was as any newborn, a miracle to its mother, small and wrinkled to the eyes of others. But I admired the child, and
promised to tell the king. “And surely he will see her—as soon as he has the time, he will come.”
“Yes—yes, when he can, he is very busy with the war, but he will come—” Teshura’s eyes pleaded with me, but I could not reassure her. We both knew David had forgotten her almost before her waist had thickened with his child.
“I will tell him. Now rest.”
I went away, more tired than I should have been from attending such an easy childbed. It was late morning, and I had been awake more than half the night. I wanted wine, and rest, and so when Narkis told me the lady Bathsheba wished to see me I was almost tempted to say that she was to go away again and come back another time.
But I did not; I said that she might come to me. And I was glad I had been kind instead of sensible, for when Bathsheba saw me she flung herself weeping at my feet. I could not understand a word she wailed, until at last I shook her hard and made her drink a cup of cooled wine.
“Now tell me, Bathsheba—and calmly—what troubles you, and I will help you.”
“Oh, Michal—I am with child.”
“And it is the king’s.”
She gaped at me as if I had turned into the Wise Serpent before her eyes. Bathsheba was good, not clever, and too frightened now to think at all. Of course half Jerusalem knew the king had gone to her by night—and by day, too, for a time.
“But no one knows—no one knew, save only you, now.”
“Does the king know?”
Bathsheba shook her head. “I have sent messages, but he does not come to me—he is the king, and he has much to do, I know, but—but soon it will be too late. My husband has been gone—”
“—too long,” I finished for her. “Yes, and even the dullest can count to nine!”
She flung herself down before me and clung to my knees. “And I can hardly clasp my girdles round my waist and my servant will guess and then everyone will know and then—my husband will
throw me out and they will
stone
me, Michal! Please, I must talk to the king! Hate me if you like, but please, please help me!”
I could not speak, for I could not draw a full breath. Nor could I move, even to touch her hair in comfort, for I saw now how Yahweh answered a woman’s prayers.
A stone to bring down King David.
At last Yahweh had sent me what I had once prayed for—what I had demanded. A stone to my hand.
A stone for vengeance.
With this I could bring David down as I had once sworn to do. The great king, the beloved of Yahweh, the keeper of the Law, seducing a humble soldier’s wife and getting her with child while her husband fought in the king’s war—oh, yes, that would make fine hearing at any time.
And such a tale would make better hearing now; it had been long months since King David had given the people a glorious victory to repay the blood and money spent on the Rabbah siege. Let the people see him as a despoiler of his neighbor’s flock, a thief who let other men fight and die while he stayed safe and lay soft behind Jerusalem’s walls—yes, let the people see David not as a great king but as a man who should be judged like other men, according to the Law he had so often broken.
Adultery, proven. Too many already knew of this sin. Neighbors, servants—too many for David to sing his way clear of this. The Law was clear: adultery meant stoning at the city wall for the guilty woman—and the guilty man. Ah, yes—King David could be brought lower than a dog in the gutter.
I could avenge my husband Phaltiel. I could avenge my brothers Jonathan and Ishbaal, and my father Saul. Yahweh had delivered the weapon I had sought into my hand; Yahweh’s weapon lay weeping and trembling at my feet.
The weapon was Bathsheba.
I need do nothing; I need only turn away. Bathsheba’s guilt would soon be plain—and David’s guilt plainer. Too many people knew, and Bathsheba would name David in all innocence, trusting the king to save her.
Turn away, and all would be avenged, and vengeance would cost me nothing. All my ghosts would sleep quiet in their caves, blood-price paid at last … .
“I am sorry,” I said, and the words were not said to Bathsheba.
For my prayer had been answered too late; I could not do it. I could not sacrifice Bathsheba. No, not even for Phaltiel’s memory could I give her into the hands of the judges and the priests.
I am sorry. Forgive me, I cannot.
I knew there would be no answer; the dead are not generous.

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