Reign (16 page)

Her words hurt. He had thought wrong. She wasn’t opening up to him; she was still his vicious bride who refused all tenderness.

He walked away from her, down the stone steps, past the temple and back toward his chamber in the palace. She threw her royal ring after him, and it thudded into the dirt near him as he walked.

“Take this to a concubine and bid her give you a child in my name. It would be an honor for her.”

“What is wrong with you?” he turned, shouting. “You are strong, but that does not mean you must be cruel. Everyone suffers, Jezebel. Everyone is disappointed by their god. But you and I can do something about our disappointment. We reign.”

He watched as his words sank in, and sank in they did, her face changing again as she listened, that strange softness returning. She needed to hear what he said, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he never would be; maybe all wives were mysteries.

He kicked the ring away with his foot and continued inside. As he walked, something troubled his spirit. It was a vague suspicion, like a growing darkness on the horizon, that Jezebel’s mysteries would not remain hidden forever. Whatever plagued her would one day burst open over them all.

Jezebel

Jezebel rose early the next morning, unable to sleep during any of the night’s watches. She dressed herself and went to the courtyard, where servants spied her and rushed out to bring her warmed barley and fruit. She brushed them back like irritating little birds and listened to the night.

Below the palace the villagers slept. She could hear donkeys dragging carts across the dirt paths sometimes—vendors moving to the open stalls before sunrise. She listened to the chants of insects in the distance, high and keening, and often she heard something stir the trees that was more than the wind. This was a land of unbreakable will.

She had been wrong; it would never be enough to only be permitted to worship as she pleased. Permission was not acceptance. She wanted acceptance, and, even more, she wanted her religion embraced. It was an odd irony, she realized, that men like Elijah were content to wander alone, convinced of their truth, while she needed people to believe as she did. She could not tolerate the dissenters.

She had to see that everyone embraced her gods. She had never been more convinced of that than she had been last night. The few who worshipped were not enough, and neither were the few sacrifices. She needed the people to believe with all their strength, to pursue Asherah and Baal with all their hearts. If they didn’t, if she was alone, she might never know if her gods failed everyone, or if they had failed only her. She had always been second, from the moment of her birth. Asherah and Baal were second to Yahweh in this land. She was second to Ahab.

The only way she would ever have peace was to do what no one else was willing to do. It had always been that way. Distasteful work had been her birthright. She wanted a crown that no man had given her, and so she would push these people to accept gods they had never known. She would encourage sacrifices that made their stomachs turn. She would win a lasting reputation, and that was a crown no man could give—or take away.

She motioned for a servant.

“At first light, call to me all the priests and priestesses of Baal and Asherah. Summon every sorcerer and magician in my employ. Find also one hundred men from the army who love gold more than honor. And tell no one.”

To kill a god, she would kill his prophets. In the silence that would fall, she would hear the voice of Asherah at last.

Obadiah

Obadiah refused sleep. He stood all night, weeping for the sins of his people. The Feast of First Fruits had been polluted, the sacred festival trampled. What good was the truth when no one listened? He tried to tell Ahab so many times, but when a heart is hardened, words cannot break it open. The greatest test of Obadiah’s faith was to be this: to bear witness in evil days, and yet believe that the Lord was good.

“But Ahab fought battles,” Obadiah whispered in prayer. “He has the ease of a man who has fought and won. He struck his enemies, and they fled. Give me something too, Lord. Do not ask me to suffer if I cannot fight.”

The night air was quiet, the golden light of dawn illuminating the horizon. Camels on the hills were lonely black silhouettes, the morning mist swirling around them in a peaceful haze. The day came, and there was no sign that the Lord had heard his prayer.

11

Jezebel

Jezebel slept much of that day, until night returned and insects once again blotted out the sounds of servants who ran to fetch little comforts for her. She joined her priests at Baal’s temple. Inside the temple, the last of the mercenaries entered as oil lamps were lit and set high on perches all around. The tables were swept clean of food, holding nothing but amulets, powders, and the mysterious hoards of the magicians. The mercenaries stared at the strange piles of feathers, bones and sticks until a sorcerer threatened to hex them all and covered the tables with the magician’s cloaks.

Priests swept the room to the edges and placed bowls at every corner, every crack in the walls, to catch spirits that might enter unbidden.

Priests held their thumbs, the most magical finger, and keened quiet prayers as Jezebel took the throne she had placed here. It had winged lions for feet, polished gold, and her purple robes made the lions flash dark, as if shadows invested them with her thoughts.

The priests whispered spells over water and doused the mercenaries, moving through them, making sure each was anointed on his body, his sword, and his armor. Jezebel stood, and a priest sprinkled the water over her hands in a blessing.

In a corner, minstrels played the lyre, a sad song, Jezebel thought, of a lover lost at sea. She silenced the singer, and the musician played the lyre more carefully. She moved away from the throne, waiting at the altar for the priest to finish his blessing of night and of darkness.

A priest stepped forward to wash his hands over a clay bowl, careful to catch the water for his spell. Jezebel’s womb ached, and she rested her wet palm against the altar for a moment of support. When she lifted it, she saw that it had left a dark imprint on the stone. She smiled to see herself embedded with Baal. Then it evaporated in the dry, waterless air, beginning at the edges until the air had consumed her entirely. Her mouth grew hard.

Standing at the altar, Jezebel surveyed the power of her name. She had summoned mercenaries to do her will, and sorcerers who would conjure the unseen world. She could command men with gold and bribe the gods with plunder. Ahab had wanted to drink tonight with his commanders. It was just as well. She alone wanted responsibility for the murders. Some deaths were necessary. The people would see that she alone had saved them.

“Behold!” she commanded, standing and spreading her arms like wings so that the purple sleeves of her robe draped below her. “A curse has been called down on the people of Israel. One man, with one god, has caused us all to suffer. He has called men to his cause. The women of Israel will burn with thirst, their children will die at the breast, and there will be no food because the fields will be dead. Is this what a good ruler should desire?”

The mercenaries looked at her and each other, not accustomed to speaking before an altar, even if a woman, and not a god, stood before it.

Jezebel continued, moving down to walk through them, exhilarated by the way they looked at her. They respected her, she could tell. Their eyes watched her as a beast recognizes a lion before its death. She moistened her lips with her tongue and ran her fingers along their shoulders, snaking between them, turning them different directions, keeping them from uniting in will just yet. She despised them for moving so easily beneath her fingertips. She was used to men who fought her.

“Ahab knows the power of this man Elijah and his so-called prophets. Yahweh is the god of Israel, and Ahab is its prince. Now, Ahab can’t go to war with Yahweh. But neither can he seek Yahweh’s favor as long as these prophets call down curses in Yahweh’s name. So we must be wise. To catch a rat we must think like a rat. Why does Elijah warn Ahab to worship no god but Yahweh? Isn’t it because Elijah would lose power? He resents that I have four hundred priests of Baal and Asherah who are fed and housed, who win the hearts of the people by performing acts of kindness and protection. Elijah’s days are numbered, and he seeks vengeance on us.”

One mercenary—the oldest, she thought, though attractive, his hair gray at the temples, his forearm still thick as a cedar—stepped forward. “What would you have us do?”

She stroked the muscle that ran down his arm, stopping when she got to the wrist resting on the hilt of his sword. She didn’t mind touching a man when he was prevented from touching her back.

“Find the company of prophets. Kill them all. The curse will be broken when Elijah and all who think like him are dead. Then we will gather the people to Samaria and let them choose the god they will worship.”

“What of Elijah?” a man called. “He does not camp with the prophets. He stays hidden.”

“As I would want him to do,” she replied. “I have sent a mercenary to kill him. Elijah will never be seen again in these lands.”

She nodded to two priests who stood near the altar, and they brought forth a chest. Lifting the lid, the soldiers saw that it was layered elbow-deep in silver and gold coins. She watched as greed leered on their faces and they passed the coins around, filling pockets and satchels. The priests wrote the names of each man on a strip of cypress, along with the name of Elijah and his men, and set the strips on fire.

As they did this, Sargon entered with a bundle in his hands. Jezebel watched, transfixed, as he peeled away the linens to reveal a pink newborn, squirming and blinking in the sudden light. He lifted it high in the air before offering it to Asherah and Baal, and then disappeared into a chamber in the back of the temple.

A few of the men ran outside, and Jezebel heard them retching. She remembered feeling that way, long ago. The feeling had passed. What had seemed so unnatural and evil the first time she had witnessed it had become good and right to her over time. All it took was education, a constant flow of reassurances from wise men who understood the gods. In time, Jezebel had accepted it. By the time she had learned her letters, she was also learning to embrace it. These men had not seen enough, had not been taught enough to embrace it. That would change.

The remaining men touched swords and bowed before Jezebel as they left. One door resisted them when they pushed on it, and Jezebel watched as they forced it open, nearly smashing it to the other side. She followed them out and ran her hands along its frame until she found it. A small scrap of fabric, a plain linen weave, had torn away against the iron pin of the door. She smelled it and looked into the courtyard before tucking it inside her sash.

“May the strongest god win,” she whispered into the night air. Silently, she worried that none of the gods really cared.

Obadiah

Obadiah was slow to move away from Jezebel’s temple. He had listened from outside the door, but his ears were not sharp and he had strained closer and closer to hear what Jezebel said. He realized almost too late when the last of her words had been spoken. The door began to open, and he shoved it back; a stupid instinct, he knew, but it confused the men just long enough for him to flee. He ran for the palace stables without stopping. The mercenaries would not be as fast, for they would stop and linger to taste the water from the spring in the center, or search for a forgotten grape on the vines that ran from the timbers. The mercenaries, their pockets filled with coins, would linger to experience this place and imagine that they owned it. After all, if the most natural law, the love of life, could be broken here, any law could fall. And these were men who knew what to do when laws fell.

Once these men, mercenaries like Ahab, had been his heroes. He had dreamed of being like them and living their lives. Now he would battle them though they would never know it. The Lord had granted Obadiah not strength but a quick mind, and he prayed it would be enough.

Obadiah found the horse he needed and rode hard for the lands beyond the valley. He had to move the prophets to safer ground by morning, then return to find the evidence he needed. Ahab would believe him, if he, too, held a bone.

The next morning, Obadiah walked through the remains at the temple with a clenched jaw. Ahab, hungover, had wanted to practice his sword fighting this morning, so Obadiah had to oblige him. Thankfully, Ahab’s reflexes were terrible after a night of hard drinking. Obadiah beat him. After that loss, Ahab wanted to be left alone to sulk, and also to practice, as Obadiah knew he would. When the wound was to his pride, Ahab nursed the wound for ages.

Walking through the temple, he was relieved that no one else was there. His eyes went to the chamber inside the gated doors in the back of the temple, inscribed with the image of the great bull El, the form Baal was said to take when he prowled the earth among men. The handles of the doors were bronze horns, and Obadiah tested one to see how easily they swung on the hinges. The Phoenician workers had excelled at this, too, and it moved as loosely as a bead on a wire. The floor was a mosaic of ivory cut into shapes and laid into black stones. Every step showed a new wonder: sparkling images of coins falling into an open lap, pregnant women, pregnant animals, men rising from sickbeds, children laughing. There were the Egyptian gods, too, even Osiris’s eye, and the Greek gods, and the gods of all the Levant as well. Jezebel had taken pains to honor all gods except Yahweh.