The Queen's Handmaid (21 page)

Herod stalked at her, closing the gap. “You think
he
should have my place, yes? Rule over Judea?” He leaned in. “Always the Jew, always the Hasmonean, never my wife!” His voice dropped, but the intensity, laced with a note of pain, carried it across the crowd. “Where is your loyalty? Have I not loved you better than anyone?”

She dropped her gaze to his feet, still silent.

“Bah! You and your precious bloodline.” He waved a hand at the mother and son, then in the direction of the palace’s courtyard beyond the throne room. “Building your ridiculous booths to hide in, still clutching at the traditions of the past, as though something new has not come.”

The harvest’s Feast of Tabernacles was upon them tomorrow, and all week palace servants had been constructing the traditional stalls to commemorate the booths that had sheltered their people when God had brought them out of slavery in Egypt.

Aristobulus spit at Herod’s feet. “Scoff at our customs if you must, Herod. But leave us to them.”

Do
not
go
too
far, Ari. It is not safe.

Herod’s face contorted, but perhaps he sensed that in matters of religion, he was outnumbered even in his own palace. He tried to take Mariamme’s arm gently, but she pulled away. He dismissed the crowd with a harsh curse and a rude gesture, and all who had gathered fled the throne room.

Lydia breathed her relief as Mariamme and Alexandra hurried Ari away.

Lydia kept busy with holiday preparations, and when the Feast of Tabernacles drew to a close seven days later, the people of Jerusalem who gathered in the Temple courts for the final sacrifice
would never have known what animosity the king bore toward the new High Priest. Smiling and waving at his subjects and surrounded by advisers, Herod entered the Temple enclosure from the palace side, weaving his way through the crowd. A tittering drumbeat from unseen musicians accompanied his entrance.

Lydia assembled with the rest of the palace staff, lined along the outer gate. Riva stood at her side, still trying to gain Herod’s attention. Did he still call for the girl, even though his heart seemed only to belong to Mariamme? Lydia did not want to know.

Herod ascended the steps to the first doors to the Temple courts, then turned to smile over the crowd, but their attention had already shifted.

From the south side of the hill, a row of priests in white tunics ascended, appearing over the rise and followed by the High Priest, Aristobulus.

A hush fell over the crowd to see the tall young man. He was already so striking without his robes, but now he was arrayed in the garments of glory and beauty, the pride of Israel. Smiles and wide eyes greeted his appearance. The linen ephod, woven in threads of gold and blue, purple and scarlet, hugged his muscled chest, and the jeweled breastplate with its grid of twelve stones shone with the inner light of emerald and sapphire, diamond and amethyst, turquoise and onyx—twelve stones, each engraved with the name of one of the tribes so the people would ever be before HaShem when the High Priest entered the Holy Place. Beneath the ephod a blue robe hung past his knees, and the tinkling of golden bells stitched to its hem played over the hill.

Lydia’s heart soared to see him so exalted. He should have the scrolls. The thought came unbidden, but was it not right? As High Priest and hopefully their future king, would he not be the perfect
one to entrust with her secret? The One God she was beginning to know through David’s patient teaching had given her two younger brothers to fill the void in her heart left by Caesarion. Was it not fitting that one of them be the answer to her prayers over the scrolls?

The silent awe of the crowd at Aristobulus’s resplendence broke, replaced with wild shouts of admiration and upraised arms and fists. The masses parted, allowing him entry through the mob like Moses through the Sea of Reeds. To his credit, Aristobulus accepted their frenzied praise with a mature smile and a dip of his head, and the engraved gold plate fastened to his turbaned mitre winked in the morning light.

Lydia pulled her gaze from Aristobulus to his brother-in-law, the king, still standing upon the steps before the wooden doors with his sister beside him, both with a hatred so pure, it seemed to swallow the light that radiated from the High Priest.

In a flash, the drumbeat sounded more like a funeral dirge. The acrid scent of burning sacrifice coated Lydia’s tongue and the pressing flesh of the crowd grew claustrophobic. When Salome leaned to speak into Herod’s ear, Lydia could almost hear the hiss of her whispered malice.

Aristobulus’s gold-plated mitre and jewels continued to wink over the riot of the crowd, as if passing a traitorous message to those who cheered. On the other side of Herod, Mariamme’s gaze went from husband to brother. She saw it too. The dangerous acclaim.

Lydia’s pulse skipped over a drumbeat. A darkness fell over the crowd.

No, it only surrounded Salome and Herod, as though they had shadowed in the glory of Ari.

Lydia frowned, glanced left and right to see others’ reactions to the strange shifting of light.

But though the crowd watched the royal family, no one seemed to notice anything amiss. She blinked. Was it only a trick of her eyes? And yet, she
felt
the darkness more than she saw it—felt it pressing and growing from the brother and sister, reaching, clawlike, toward Ari.

And in that moment, Salome’s gaze jumped to Lydia. The darkness shot into Lydia’s eyes and all grew dim. She blinked again, returned Salome’s stare, and the strangeness lifted.

“Powers of darkness will come against you . . .”

She had not thought of Samuel’s warning in years. She looked to Herod, chilled at the danger to Aristobulus.

But already Herod’s expression was clearing. A passive smile fixed itself to his face, no less frightening for its blandness.

What would Alexandra have thought if she had seen all this? She was not present, since Herod had ordered her kept under the guard of Sohemus in the palace since the traitorous attempt to escape to Egypt.

The ceremonies proceeded as planned, closing out the Feast of Tabernacles as the Jews had done for centuries. Herod seemed all good spirits and generosity, and by the next morning proclaimed that the royal staff would head north, down the steep descent to the winter palace of Jericho, some 150
stadia
from Jerusalem.

The news found Lydia where she worked in the palace courtyard, tending to Mariamme’s quilled brushes and ivory combs, and it heated her limbs like the sun blazing from behind a cloud.

Jericho.

How often had she thought of the winter palace? Wondered
how its chief staff member fared in his duties? She took a deep breath at the thought of seeing him again, surprised by a flutter of nerves.

Two days of frantic preparation and they were off—a caravan of over a hundred, including the royal family. Herod seemed eager to prove that Aristobulus’s attempt to escape to Egypt was forgotten, that only brotherly love existed between the two, and insisted the young man join them on the holiday.

Horse-drawn chariots, pack-loaded donkeys, and attendant slaves on foot circled the Mount of Olives, and from Lydia’s perch in Mariamme’s private chariot, the Temple gleamed gold and white in the distance, like the first time Lydia had seen it.

She turned her face toward Jericho, heart beating in anticipation, though they still had hours of dusty travel ahead.

The route took them past Bethany, then descended sharply, bouncing over an arduous yet well-rutted road taken by pilgrims, merchants, and soldiers for centuries. The dramatic change in altitude thinned the vegetation, first to straggly trees, then to nothing but shrubby growth, and finally to only the hardiest of desert succulents. They navigated a narrow pass of red rock and Mariamme mentioned its name—Ascent of Blood.

The road to Jericho was often beset by bandits, and anyone traveling alone took the chance of a beating or worse. Lydia eyed the rocky crevices, searching out the shadows. Chariot wheels crunched over dun-brown dust that rose to coat the skin and invade nostrils and mouth. A bath would be most welcome when they finally reached the palace.

Would she get the chance to wash before greeting the Jericho staff? It had been two years since she had seen him. Perhaps covered in dust and vastly aged, she would not even be recognized.

The Jericho palace appeared as an oasis in the desert, lavishly supplied by the astounding aqueducts Herod had built across the oft-dry Wadi el-Kelt, irrigating the plains around the city into forests of date-palms and balsam plantations.

Lydia had the opportunity to wash, the chance to explore, the time to wonder if she would even find Simon in the vast palace. Finally, hungry and frustrated, she wandered to the kitchen complex, a warren of connected rooms with stores, cook fires, and tables for preparation.

And there he was.

With his back to her she knew him still, in large part because of the clipped Persian accent that attached itself to his barking commands.

“You there!” Simon waved a hand at a passing servant. “Where are you going?”

Lydia drifted to a table along the wall and eavesdropped on the reprimand. In this, he seemed unchanged. Still hounding his inferiors into working harder, faster, and better with the force of his will, uncaring if they rolled their eyes and curled their lips at his back.

She reached for a chunk of goat cheese from a platter on the table, put it to her lips without thought, fingers trembling. Why did her pulse pound at merely having found him in the kitchens? Surely he would not even remember their brief meeting years ago.

As if she had shouted a greeting, or perhaps only sensing her pilfering, Simon whirled on her where she stood near the wall.

He glanced at her face, the cheese in her hand, the platter of
delicacies. “Does the royal family require something we have not provided?” The tone was annoyed, almost resentful.

“What? No.” Lydia reached to replace the half-eaten cheese, then held it to her side as though he would forget the theft.

“Palace kitchens are not typically frequented by the queen’s handmaid.”

Lydia swallowed. Heat flooded her face and she cursed the blood in her veins.

The activity in the chamber had slowed, with attention pinned to their conversation. Simon scowled at the entire room, then marched toward her, took her elbow, and kept moving. “Come. There are tables spread in the courtyard.”

Lydia dropped the cheese and stumbled after him. She glanced over her shoulder at the staring faces of the kitchen slaves, then pulled her arm from his grasp and followed him to the courtyard.

He stopped beside the fountain and indicated a table set with cooked lentils, flatbreads, and onions. “I trust this will satisfy your appetite?”

She glanced numbly at the food. “Yes, thank you. It looks—the whole palace—looks wonderful.” Foolish, childish words.

He bowed his head as though flattered, but the compliment had clearly meant little to him. “Nothing like the splendor of Egypt, I am certain.”

So he did remember.

“But then you have been in Jerusalem all these years, I suppose. Perhaps by now the pretty Egyptian who pleases everyone has forgotten her homeland.”

“Never!” Lydia drew herself upright, found her courage, and returned his hard glare. “But I have learned what good
management looks like, and I wanted only to commend you on your fine work here.”

Simon’s mouth twitched. “Even if it was accomplished by a man only half human, with the head and manners of a bull?”

Even this he had remembered? He had brushed it off back then, yet he had remembered. The vulnerability she had glimpsed under the harsh exterior had not been an illusion.

She hid a smile and drifted to the fountain to dip her fingers into the cool water. The dust of the journey still seemed to cling to her skin. “I suppose even bulls have their place.”

He touched her elbow again, turned her to him. “You are changed, little Egyptian.” His gaze roamed her face, her hair, her dress. “Still elegant, still beautiful, but the charms rest more easily on you now. The maturity of a woman who knows herself.” He tilted his head and frowned. “You have enchanted the entire palace with your mysteries by this time, I suspect.”