“My lord, the priests of Yahweh have killed the Egyptian cat.”
“Killed her cat?” Solomon immediately realized the seriousness of the situation. “Why … How?”
“It was unfortunate. The cat escaped and ran to the temple area. The priests say he was running away with part of the holy sacrifice. There was nothing to do but kill him.”
“And now?” Solomon wanted to learn as much as possible before he faced the accusations and recriminations he knew were inevitable.
“I knew at once the problem was serious. I quickly had the cat washed and wrapped in fine linen. I sent a messenger to warn her of the tragedy, then I myself brought her the cat.”
“And?”
“It’s as though her only child had died. She’s sitting beside the lily pond rocking back and forth holding the cat and weeping.”
“I must go to her,” Solomon said as he grasped Jeroboam’s arm in grateful approval.
“Stay here,” he ordered his men as he turned and went through the ornate arches into the darkness of the fresco-decorated entryway. In spite of his agitation and concern, he was immediately aware of the delicate scent of jasmine in the air and the wailing seemed to be accompanied by the beating of great hollow drums that made the very air vibrate with some high tragedy.
The moment the princess had moved in, this palace had taken on the aspect of a small segment of Egypt. Everything he remembered from the trip he had made as a young man was captured here in miniature. The walls had been painted meticulously with hunting scenes of the delta and bordered with lotus blossoms. Her bed was of teakwood inlaid with ivory, while on a small tray sat a marvelous array of delicate boxes holding the secret beauty ointments she used to produce the eternal illusion of health and youth.
He paused for a moment at the doorway leading out into a courtyard. Here a fountain usually splashed and behind it fitted into the far wall rather unobtrusively was the shrine encasing the ebony cat goddess. Solomon looked through the gauze curtains and saw the doors of the shrine hanging open, and the great cat image seemed to glare down in anger at the scene around the pool.
The princess sat by the lily pool and clung to a swaddled bundle. Her cheek rested on it as though she were comforting a crying child, while her ornate wig of shoulder-length hair fell down on one side obscuring her face. It was impossible to tell if the princess was crying, as the noise of the drums and screams of her maidens and priests were deafening.
Solomon had never quite gotten used to the unabashed nakedness of her serving girls. Their breasts were always exposed, and now in their anguish some wore nothing but a woven girdle.
Solomon squared his shoulders and pulled aside the gauze curtain, and immediately the drums were silent. The frantic whirling of the priests slowed and stopped while the young serving girls froze in place as though they had seen an apparition. Only the princess didn’t notice the king and now her sobs could be clearly heard.
“Leave us,” Solomon ordered. “Leave us alone.” Quickly the priests left through the side door to the shrine and the maidens vanished leaving only the sobbing princess and her linen-wrapped cat god.
“Come, my love,” Solomon said, bending over her and speaking tenderly. “We’ll bury your cat with full honors.”
He got no further. The princess flashed him a look of scorn as she flung back the thick, black hair of the wig, revealing red, swollen eyes and full, parted lips. “Bury him, never! He is a god. He must be embalmed and the killer found and beheaded.”
“Beheaded! A priest beheaded for killing a cat that steals the holy sacrifice?” Solomon was for the first time aware of the enormity of the problem. He had thought it could be simply solved with enough ceremony and a few nights of his undivided attention. Now it was evident much more would be required.
The immediate crisis was averted by Solomon’s ordering Jeroboam to leave with the body of the cat the next morning for Egypt. He assigned him a division of his bravest soldiers and arranged for the cat to be carried in a golden box with silver trim. Jeroboam was instructed to take the cat to the temple at Bubastis, where it would be properly embalmed.
In the meantime the princess declared a month of fasting and mourning to be observed by her maidens and priests.
At first she had insisted that all Jerusalem fast and mourn, but Solomon had dissuaded her. However, he had not been able to divert her from the determination to have the head of the priest who killed the cat nailed to the temple gate. When Solomon procrastinated and made excuses, the princess regaled him. “How is it that my lord cares more for one of his priests than for the princess of Egypt?”
The month of mourning was at last over, and Jeroboam had returned with news of the cat’s reception by the priests of Bubastis. The cat had been embalmed and after much ceremony was buried in the sacred cemetery. Jeroboam also brought gifts for the princess from her brother and some secret parchments sealed with the pharaoh’s own seal.
It was evening several days later when Solomon accepted the princess’s invitation for a meal cooked with her own hands beside the lotus pool and then a game of senit. He had loved these times of quiet relaxation. She always had some new delicacy to tempt his taste buds or an array of silly stories that made him laugh. Tonight there had been no laughing, and as she moved her conical pieces against his spool-shaped men on the rectangular board, he sensed some real hostility.
Finally he brushed his pieces off onto the floor and stood up. “Is there to be no end of this trouble over the cat?”
“My lord, it is the custom in my country …”
“I know, I know—if one of the sacred cats is killed the ‘murderer’ is beheaded. You have told me that, but this is Israel. The cat dared go into the sacred area of the temple and desecrated the holy sacrifice. You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of what the cat did.”
She stood up and with a look of hauteur drew from her girdle a parchment. “There, it is written by the pharaoh, my brother. He says the man must die.”
Solomon took the parchment but didn’t read it. “It has been a long time since a pharaoh could give orders to an Israelite,” he said. “We are no longer slaves nor are we his vassals.”
She snatched the parchment back and with tears of anger blinding her eyes proceeded to read the message. “The exalted pharaoh, son of the golden orb and ruler of sky and sea and land on which it shines, orders that his most honored sister and her cat god be avenged speedily. Apologies must be made for slights and injuries and the priest who killed the Bubastis cat beheaded. If this is not done speedily the princess will move to the city of Gezer and claim it as her own.” She again handed the parchment to Solomon and stood glaring at him in a way he had never seen before.
Solomon was appalled. This was serious. He could see the great seal of Egypt hanging loosely at the bottom of the parchment. It was obvious that when she had to choose between a cat and him, she was quite ready to choose the cat. He thought fast. He couldn’t execute the priest. He didn’t want to execute the priest. In fact, the priest was at that very moment being honored for his quick action in the situation. “My dear Tipti,” Solomon said gently, “remember all that has passed between us, the love, the laughter. Is this nothing to you? Does this cat mean more to you than my love?”
There was no softening in her stance. She simply glared at him. “If by tomorrow at this time the priest is not executed, I will leave for Gezer.”
“You are my wife, my queen,” Solomon said with sudden cool dignity.
“I am also sister of the great pharaoh and he has ordered me to take back the dowry his troops won for me when I became your bride.”
Solomon hesitated. Despite his plans for a sea route, he still needed Gezer. It was not as essential as it had been in the past, but it was the key city in his trade route up the coast. He had been so proud of his agreement with the pharaoh that had given him this lovely, flowerlike woman and the city of Gezer. He must stall for time. With time anything could be accomplished.
“My dear,” he said, “I will consult with my counselors. I can’t endure the thought of losing you.” He tried to take her in his arms as he had done many times before when she had been upset, but she resisted him and turned her head away. He knew his words had sounded dull and lifeless. There was no passion in them. He was once again doing what he had to do, and it sickened him.
He turned and walked through the sheer draperies and out into the moonlit night where his men were waiting for him. He hurried on ahead of them, not knowing where he was going, just wanting to be alone. He’d like to talk to his brother Nathan, but he knew just what he’d say and he didn’t want to hear it tonight. Nathan really thought Tipti was a spy. He had even tried to prove it to him on several occasions.
Probably all his wives were spies. Certainly Naamah had been found guilty enough times. In spite of this she was his queen, the mother of Rehoboam, the son that would inherit the throne of Israel. He had known from the beginning that she was a manipulator. There was always some plan or plot afoot that disrupted the whole order of things. She kept the other wives in tears and even his mother, Bathsheba, intimidated. She was ruthless and everyone feared her.
He came to the marble steps that led up into the temple area, hesitated, and then on impulse walked up the steps and through the double arches into the court of the women. Ignoring the guards and his men, he walked briskly over to the pinnacle that looked down on the Kidron Valley.
The moon was high, and though the olive groves on Mount Olivet were dark and shadowed, the small villages gleamed mysteriously in the pale moonlight. Down at the end of the valley, where it turned and went up the Hinnon, he could see a dim light and figures moving back and forth in its glow.
So they were sacrificing again tonight. Hopefully it was a lamb. Too often these days the sacrifices were young children. He tried to shrug it off. It was difficult to ignore. Naamah’s priests insisted that because of these sacrifices, Israel was protected by Moloch. “There have been no wars since the idol’s altar was erected,” they bragged.
Solomon cringed. Naamah had forced him into letting her erect the altar to Moloch. “I have promised my firstborn child to Moloch,” she had insisted when the midwife placed the newborn babe, Rehoboam, in her arms. Her eyes had been hard and calculating. There was something almost sinister in her look, and he had realized the child was not safe even for a moment in her care.
He had told her that in Israel the firstborn was never sacrificed but instead a ransom was paid, but she wouldn’t listen. “I have promised Moloch my firstborn and if I don’t keep my promise great evil will come,” she had said over and over again when he tried to reason with her.
Finally he had taken his son from her and had allowed the temple to Moloch to be built in exchange for him. He had paid dearly for his firstborn son, and it frustrated him to see that the boy was soft, easily influenced, and a lover of luxury. How he wished he had fathered a son like the young Jeroboam or Mattatha, his brother Nathan’s son. He had often noticed how these young men stood tall, were courageous, and at the same time had a penchant for learning.
Now he saw that so much of what he had worked for and even struggled for was meaningless. “Even the things that are of value,” he thought, “will pass to my son. Who knows what he will do with all I will leave him.” A black feeling of hopelessness and despair engulfed him.
“It’s late. What can be of such importance that my brother is out here alone?”
Solomon whirled to face Nathan. “How did you know I was here?”
“It is impossible for the king to go anyplace without a flock of followers.” He pointed back toward the steps, where guards, counselors, and finally various relatives of Solomon’s numerous wives stood waiting for the king. It was obvious they hoped to catch his attention as he passed back down the stairs.
“I was going to call for you,” Solomon said.
“Then,” interjected Nathan, “you decided against it because you don’t like my answers and warnings.”
Solomon smiled. How well this brother understood him. “You might know I have a problem. A serious problem.”
“I can guess that it involves the Egyptian princess and her cat. Am I right?”
“You’re quite right. She’s demanding that I have the priest who killed her cat beheaded or she’ll take back Gezer. She even threatens to move there.”
Nathan drew in his breath sharply. “That’s a real problem. Of course you can’t have the priest beheaded nor can you afford to let Gezer go. Undoubtedly Pharaoh is using this as a ploy to get his hands on Gezer.”
“Even more serious. Can you imagine what would happen if the pharaoh decided to march up and defend his sister’s honor?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him if it served his purpose.”
“My chief builder, Jeroboam, has just come back from Egypt, and he reports that the pharaoh still encourages my enemies to take sanctuary in his palace. He loves to hear of my plans, my wealth, and sometimes of my wisdom.”
“He is undoubtedly furious about your plans to bypass him altogether with ships on the Red Sea.”
“I can’t believe Tipti would side with him.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. You have always had such a way with women. Somehow you’ll manage to charm her.”
“This time it’s something different. She’s no longer the soft, gentle Tipti I fell in love with. She’s suddenly grown cold and distant. Short of some miracle, there’s nothing I can do.”
Nathan didn’t answer. Solomon turned and without a glance at the golden altar with its glowing coals or the lovely temple with its glimmering doors, he walked with Nathan to the little knot of men that had been waiting for them. They went down the steps, past the darkened house of the Egyptian princess, and into the great Common Room of the palace. They would be up most of the night discussing their options and determining at length that this was indeed a crisis of growing proportions.
That night Solomon tossed restlessly and found he could not sleep. He pulled back the curtains of his bed. A soft glow splayed out onto the rough stones of the wall and the polished tiles of the floor from a single oil lamp left sputtering in the wall niche. A breeze sprang up from somewhere outside, setting one of the latticed shutters to banging softly against the wall.
In the dim light he could just make out the blanketed forms of his steward and dresser along with his guards, who slept in a far corner.
The door to his reception room was standing ajar and he could see two of his house guards sitting cross-legged on the floor playing some game to keep them awake.
A wave of gray loneliness swept over him. He’d not wanted anyone of his many wives tonight. They all seemed suddenly frivolous and impersonal. Most of them had some petition for a relative or some plan of their own to promote. Now suddenly he feared they only pretended an interest in him to gain their own ends.
He’d not wanted to sit with his friends either. They were too eager to please. His family was too critical and his children were so in awe they never spoke their minds.
He ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his eyes, and searched around in his bed for one of the parchments he had been writing on earlier in the evening. Now as he thought of it his whole existence seemed to be an experiment. Other people seemed to live from day to day without trying to wring some meaning or profound wisdom from their experiences, but for him this was impossible. It had always been impossible. He wanted desperately to understand what life was all about and how it should best be lived. He had been on a quest of sorts. For a time he had lived by his father’s rules, and then without entirely discarding them, he had determined to try everything, to drink deeply of every experience.
He ran his hand along the edge of the parchment, making it lie flat so he could see the words he himself had written. “Vanity, all is vanity.” That was the last thing he had recorded. In all of his searching for happiness, there seemed to be nothing but emptiness. Once, only once, in his l
ife had he felt whole, complete, and satisfied. Now looking back it was the only time he had been really happy. Strangely enough it had been when he was very young and in love with his little shepherdess, Shulamit.
Her death had marked the end of love and the end of real living. Later he had cluttered his life with women. Women from every country and from every prominent family. He had found most of them provocative and alluring for a time, but always he tired of their full pouting lips, their too-eager smiles, and their constant demands. He now realized that with each new bride he had hoped for a return of the heady effulgence he had experienced with Shulamit. It never happened. He was always disappointed.
“Vanity, all is vanity.” The words burned in his brain and he pushed the parchment down into the folds of his fur cover. That was a statement of poetic melancholy. In the past there had been a strange pleasure derived from such anguish, but now it was all too real. Tipti with her demands had destroyed his peace of mind. For the first time he was willing to consider seriously that she might be a spy for her brother. If it were true, it would be devastating. He had come closer to loving her than anyone since Shulamit, and he could not endure the thought that she did not mean all the charming things she had told him.
He thought again of her eyes looking at him with adoration, her lips hungry for his kisses, and her eager, responsive young body. She had taught him to experiment with strong drink, to dance, and to laugh at the risqué jokes of her jugglers. She more than anyone had urged him to forget Israel’s law and enjoy the freedom of fulfilling his own selfish desires.
He pulled the curtains of his bed closed, flung his arm up over his eyes, and deliberately tried to will himself to forget her. It was impossible. He couldn’t sleep. He rose again and paced the floor until the first cock crowed announcing the dawn. Only then was he able to fall across his bed and sleep for a few troubled hours.
All during the early part of the month Bilqis spent time in preparation for the night of the full moon when she would be brought to the god’s pavilion. At first she had enjoyed the look of awe on everyone’s face, and then she had been excited by the mystery of Ilumquh. But now, as the day approached, she was apprehensive.
Queen of Sheba Page 5