The Queen's Handmaid (20 page)

At the mention of Egypt, Lydia’s heart pounded an irregular beat. A longing that was physical wrapped around her and squeezed. Almost five years. Could she not slip out of the city and make the journey home with them? Would Caesarion recognize her, even remember her? He would be twelve now—the age of David when they first met in Alexandria. Becoming a man, like David and Ari. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and focused on the task.

“It will be light soon.” She extended an arm to the wagon. “We should make ready.”

Aristobulus shook off his sister’s and mother’s grasping hands. “All I have seen of Cleopatra’s actions since Herod took the throne tells me she wants only to restore her Ptolemaic kingdom of old—including Syria and every bit of Judea. Look at all she has convinced Antony to grant her already—the rights to collect bitumen tar from the Salt Sea, the date-palms and balsam of Jericho—”

“The wealth of Judea, yes.” Mariamme’s voice was earnest, and she lifted her pleading eyes to her brother. “Antony appeases his Eastern plaything with our wealth. But not our
land
, Ari. The land of Israel is our own, always. Antony sees that. He knows it must be this way.”

Lydia eyed the lightening sky. They must be off before there
were questions. Herod had kept Alexandra under guard since she began actively seeking the help of Cleopatra and her influence over Antony. If the guard discovered the woman’s absence—

“My lord”—she touched Ari’s arm and felt the tension—“the day will soon be upon us.”

He turned an affectionate eye on her. “Lydia understands, don’t you, Lydia? Cleopatra is no friend to Israel.”

She did not answer, could not, for the conflicting emotions that warred with logic.

Mariamme’s plea to her younger brother was silent now, just a tearful biting of her lip. She kept one hand on her swollen belly, as if to remind him that more Hasmoneans were to come, that he must do this for the sake of their family, if not their nation.

Aristobulus smiled sadly and touched Mariamme’s reddish-brown hair, a gesture that spoke of nostalgia and a profound sadness at their parting. He blinked away the emotion and dropped his hand.

They were a matched pair in age to David and her, these two. While she had spent the years attending to Mariamme, David had served the brother. It was David who had helped them get past Alexandra’s guard and even now did his best to delay their discovery.

She felt Ari’s repugnance. To crawl alive into a coffin somehow seemed a worse fate than simply hiding under woven blankets or within a chicken cage. But it was their best chance. Few Jews would insist the coffins be opened for examination upon leaving the city.

Alexandra had been subdued since slipping from her chamber, but she climbed into her box with her usual muttering venom. “The filthy Idumean thinks he can control my family. We shall see. We shall see.”

Aristobulus took to his coffin without a word, only a final nod to Mariamme.

The driver lowered the lids over both, ran a hand through his greasy hair, and shrugged. “That ought to do it.”

Mariamme started forward. “You know where—”

“Aye, mistress. I’ll get ’em there.”

There had been no good-byes, no embraces.

Lydia stood at Mariamme’s side in the cold morning air as the cart rolled into the darkness, with all the hopes of the Hasmonean dynasty interred within.

Mariamme spoke without turning. “You served Cleopatra, Lydia. You’ve met Marc Antony. Do you think she can convince him?”

Lydia did not answer at once. It was a difficult question. “Your mother’s first letter was effective. Cleopatra persuaded Marc Antony to invite Aristobulus to Egypt.”

In truth, it had been quite the scandal. Antigonus had been declared both king and High Priest by his supporting Parthians. When Herod took the throne, he would have loved to become High Priest as well. But he was not a Jew. He would never be permitted by the Sanhedrin to take the priestly office. Instead, he recalled the aging Hyrcanus, Mariamme’s grandfather, from his exile in Babylon and restored him to his Temple duties. The poor man’s mutilated ears prevented him from having the title, so Herod appointed his friend Ananel to be High Priest—a man with no claim to royal blood, who would not be a danger.

In a fury at her son’s being passed over, Alexandra wrote a letter to Cleopatra, along with portraits of her son and daughter to show to Marc Antony, urging her to persuade Antony to favor Aristobulus. Such a beautiful person was surely destined
for greatness. And perhaps Antony would be interested in Mariamme?

Antony requested that Aristobulus come to Egypt and Herod panicked. The boy was the age Herod had been when Antony first became enamored of him. Would Aristobulus steal the Roman’s favor, convince Antony that he should rule Judea?

Herod refused Antony’s request. The boy was too popular in the city. It would cause riots if he were to leave. To keep Aristobulus in Judea and away from Antony, Herod made him High Priest, deposing Ananel, who had been appointed for life. His Jewish subjects now hated him all the more.

But their animosity did not extend to Aristobulus. No, everyone loved the boy. And the two women were counting on Antony’s agreement in the matter. Three women, if Lydia included herself.

“I still do not know how your mother got that second letter out to Cleopatra while under Herod’s strict guard. Sohemus takes his role as captain of Herod’s guard very seriously.”

Mariamme said nothing.

“But now they are on their way. And she will help you if she finds it in her best interest.”

The two turned back toward the stable, Mariamme walking slowly. She had picked up a piece of straw and twisted it in her fingers as she walked.

Lydia glanced again at the purpling sky as they entered the stable. She needed to be on the Temple steps by dawn, fruitless as it might be.

“How has it come to this, Lydia?” They took the silent tunnels slowly now. “My two grandfathers—brothers—squabbling over the throne thirty years ago. Did they not see that their rivalry left a foothold for Roman intervention? Once Rome tasted Judea,
how soon it became occupation and then domination. And now—now we have Herod, a king who would murder forty-five Sanhedrin members with all the cold-bloodedness of a lizard.”

The Sanhedrin purge after Herod took the throne had been a dreadful thing. Only twenty-six members were spared, those who declared loyalty to Herod. Those who still claimed ties to Antigonus, even though he had been tortured and beheaded by Marc Antony, found themselves with the same fate as their former king.

“You must have faith, my lady. Faith that your One God holds the future of Israel in His hand.”

Or perhaps strapped to her chest.

Mariamme sighed. “How oddly you speak, Lydia. After all this time, I still cannot determine whether you think of yourself as a Jew or not.”

Lydia’s hand strayed to the cord around her neck that hid the pendant under her tunic. “Nor can I.”

“But it is the Day of Atonement, and I know you have your strange and secret tradition. I will let you go to it.”

A surge of warmth for Mariamme, who had grown so dear to her, brought a smile in the darkness. “Thank you, my lady.”

Minutes later Lydia was hurrying out of the south end of the Antonia palace. It had been Baris when Antigonus ruled, but Herod had wisely renamed it during its extensive renovations, and now the royal residence and fortress of Antonia was a grateful salute to the man who had helped Herod gain the throne. The lavish palace was Herod’s primary residence, though he had been constructing another in Jericho and was even somehow building something grand on the cliffs of Masada.

In her two years in Jerusalem, Lydia had seen little more
than the palace, which, though staffed with Jewish servants, was entirely Greek in its culture to please its king.

It was still early. There was still time. She wrapped her mantle tightly against the morning chill and headed for the Temple steps for the third year of waiting. Since Rome, she had given up fretting that those who had come after the scrolls and killed Samuel would find her. She was alone in this, for better or worse.

That first Yom HaKippurim, when the smoke rose thick from the city and the bodies lay even thicker in the streets, she had known the Chakkiym would not come. One year ago she had come again. Perhaps a replacement would have been found. But no one had come.

This year she expected nothing.

She reached the outer steps, outside the Temple enclosure walls, and found her usual spot. She still could not be certain if the appointed place was these steps or those within the courtyard, but if she watched every person who came and went, she could not miss him.

The sun rose on another Day of Atonement. Mariamme and her mother had chosen this unlikely day for the escape, for they feared the people’s acclaim of Aristobulus during his duties would result in some kind of attack in the crowd, contrived by Herod. But the two would need to be well away before the High Priest was missed.

Mariamme’s earlier observation returned to Lydia. Was she a Jew or was she not? The mysterious pendant proved nothing. But if she were a Jew, she would have cause to worry. The One God demanded this yearly sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. He had many requirements and laws, some of which were in the written Law and some added over time by the Pharisees, who
sought to please Him with their whole lives. She could understand this desire. If pleasing God were the goal, then it only made sense to work as hard as one could to please Him better. What would it mean for the High Priest to be missing on this holiest of days?

She longed to close her eyes against the unending flow of people. To examine each one as they passed was exhausting, and the warmth of the early autumn day made her drowsy. An old woman picked her way toward the Temple, leaning heavily on a stick. Her slow, steady tread was like a soft heartbeat, lulling Lydia to sleep.

Would she come every year? Probably. But only out of duty. Not because she believed the Chakkiym would ever appear.

She would be an old woman someday too. Still sitting on these steps, hunched and bent and waiting.

And would that old woman have a family? Anyone who loved her? Or would she still be in service to Mariamme? An aging queen and her aging servant.

Her thoughts strayed to Simon as they often did, despite their short acquaintance. To the fiery national fervor in his eyes and the tight set of his jaw. Since the victory in Jerusalem two years ago, she heard that Herod had made Simon the manager of his newly constructed winter palace in Jericho. No doubt he ran it better than the Jerusalem palace, which always seemed to be lacking something.

From commissary soldier to palace manager, Simon’s fortunes were increasing while she remained in the same position of lady’s maid to the queen and, at twenty-three, quickly grew too old to be marriageable.

She returned to the palace slowly that night, the weight of the
coming years, empty and purposeless, pressing against her lungs as firmly as the undelivered scrolls.

The palace was not a refuge, however. A furtive buzz of servants and angry shouts from the throne room greeted her entrance.

A passing kitchen slave saw her enter and could not wait to share the gossip.

The queen’s mother and brother had been caught sneaking from the palace.

And Herod was in a rant.

Lydia ran for the throne room, her heart keeping time with her pounding sandals.

Nineteen

L
ydia slid into the crowded throne room and took a quick measure of the uproar. Did Herod know who was involved in the attempted escape?

He paced the head of the room, punctuating angry words with furious gestures. His dark, oiled curls swung with each upraised fist, and torchlight reflected from the gold band across his forehead like a third eye. Salome stood alongside, arms folded over her narrow body and her dark features pulled into a contemptuous scowl.

What Herod’s throne room lacked in the colorful carved beauty of Cleopatra’s palace, it made up for in severity. He copied the Greek- and Roman-style pillars, with their sharp fluting of marble that shot upward to a lofty ceiling lost in darkness at this hour. On the north side of the chamber, the coppery fabric at open windows snapped in the evening breeze like the crack of a whip over the gathered crowd. Torches blazed at fixed intervals in sockets along the wall, their scarlet flames bending in obeisance to Herod’s rage.

Lydia sought out Mariamme, where she stood near the
throne. Best to keep her distance. No need to let Herod put all the faces together of those who had been complicit.

Alexandra was on her knees before Herod. Aristobulus stood straight backed, with all the defiance of a youth before a tyrant. Good man.

“And I must hear it from a eunuch!” Herod’s face purpled and he jabbed a forefinger into the wine-colored tunic of a nearby servant.

Mazal, the eunuch who had apparently spoiled their plot, bore a satisfied smirk. He had been a stableman in the palace since Lydia arrived. But there were whispers that he had once been cupbearer to Herod’s father, until Antipater was poisoned to death and the pall of suspicion had fallen on Mazal. He had the slight build and unusual height typical to his situation. Perhaps it was his height, but he seemed always to be leaning toward Herod, as though trying to bow and scrape his way back into the family’s favor. It would appear he had found a way.

David emerged from the shadows to stand beside her, and she gave him a sideways glance. He was taller than she now, handsome and strong, and his sharp-cut features were fixed, focused on the drama.

She pressed an arm against his, silent communication of the anxiety they must share. Would Herod learn of all who had helped in the botched escape? The salty smell of a fearful crowd invaded her senses. Perhaps they all wondered if blame would fall on the guilty and the innocent.

But Herod’s wrath poured toward Mariamme. “You were part of this!”

She shrank away, eyes wide but lips silent, covering her belly with a bare forearm.