Solomon had planned all of this so that instead of just asking questions and getting answers, she would see his kingdom and how it prospered. He tried to refrain from joining her and enjoying her company, since he was determined to forget the madness he had experienced in Jericho. Instead he found that he thought about her all the more. Her face, her gestures, her way of smiling all conspired to make him even more anxious to see her again and to experience the lighthearted happiness he had known at their first meeting.
Against his better judgment he planned to meet her for a few days in Jericho. He reasoned that she would soon be returning to her country and then this strange attraction would be ended. However, at the very thought of her leaving he felt such pain that he was ready to throw all caution aside and arrange the meeting earlier than planned.
When Bilqis finally arrived in Jericho and met Solomon at his winter palace, she was speechless with wonder at all she had seen. There was no longer any misunderstanding between them and it seemed that once again they were to enjoy the carefree, relaxed relationship they had shared at their first meeting. “Have all your questions been answered?” Solomon asked as they sat in the cushioned retreat on one of the balconies and ate from a tray of fruit and dried dates.
“Most of them. But you never did tell me what was in the golden box behind the woven curtains and golden doors of the Holy of Holies.”
Solomon laughed and reached for another cluster of lush, sweet grapes. “And what do you think is in the chest?”
Bilqis grew pensive. “I’ve thought about it all the way to Mount Hermon and down the Jordan and I’ve decided it must be the most important thing you or your people own. It must be something you and your God value very highly.”
“Yes. And so what do you think it is?”
“I have thought it might be all the images you’ve collected in battle with other nations. Think of the power you would have if you could lock all those gods up in a chest and hide them away in your temple.”
Solomon frowned. The very idea of pagan images in the temple was a terrible thought. “No, no, you’re wrong. Guess again.”
“Perhaps you have some of the evil Jinn locked up in the box so they can’t harm your people.”
Again Solomon was astounded by her thinking. “Never, impossible, the Jinn would pollute God’s holy hill.”
“Then it must be the heads of your worst enemies.”
“No, no, no. It is blasphemous even to think such thoughts. I can see you’ll never even come close to imagining what it is.”
“You’ll have to tell me. It must be the most guarded secret of your happy kingdom.”
Solomon blushed. He was ashamed that he had been so reluctant to tell her all she wanted to know of his faith. Actually it was just that she was, after all, a woman and usually women weren’t supposed to think about such things. “I suppose there’ll be no peace until I tell you,” he said. “I hope you aren’t disappointed. It’s two tablets of stone given to us by Moses who led my people out of slavery in Egypt four hundred eighteen years ago.”
“Two stone tablets?”
He could see she was very surprised. “They have writing on them,” he said.
“Oh!” Her eyes were wide with wonder.
“They have laws carved into the stone. Rules to be obeyed if a people are to be happy and wise.”
“Ah, the laws that your trader Badget said even you must obey. I thought it very strange that even a king must obey laws. In Sheba whatever I say is the law. How awful to have laws that must be obeyed.”
Solomon struggled to find a way of explaining. He could see that it would be very difficult for her to grasp what even the youngest child in Israel would take for granted. “The law is our greatest treasure. We love the law.”
“Love laws? I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps you can understand if I explain it this way: if the sun obeyed no laws, we would never know when it would come up, and if the moon did the same, planting and harvesting would be impossible. If the seeds didn’t obey the laws of their kind, we would have no crops, and if the birds no longer followed their laws, they wouldn’t migrate to warmer places. Everything but man has laws and rules to obey. Most of the time these laws are built into the very nature of things. It’s only man that thinks he doesn’t need laws.”
“And where did you get these laws that are in the golden box?”
“Our God gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai.”
“All of them are written on just two tablets?”
“The basic ones are on the tablets. There are others that have been added out of experience. But God gave Moses only ten.”
For what seemed like a long time Bilqis looked out at the stars and the rising moon. “How happy your people, your servants, and your wives to live in such a country with such a king.”
“Have all your questions been answered now that you’ve seen my kingdom, talked with my people, and at last learned what is in the golden box in the Holy of Holies?”
“Only one thing I can’t resist asking. You have seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. You are obviously a man who has loved many women. How does it happen you have never tried to take me to bed or asked to marry me?”
Solomon was startled by her frankness. For a moment he was confused. He had more than anything wanted to marry this woman, to make her his in every sense of the word. And now he knew that she had sensed this and was wondering why he had held back.
“If I had asked to marry you, what would your answer have been?” He was now very serious, and he looked down at the golden wine glass he held and waited for her answer.
“I wouldn’t marry you. I’m a queen. No one must control me. But I do need an heir, and I’ve decided I would like a child.”
“So you would like a child, and you’ve discovered it’s impossible by the law of things to get one without a man.”
“Yes.”
He seemed to be pondering the whole state of affairs. By the look on his face he found some aspects of the situation amusing, but when he spoke he was serious. “When I was very young,” he said, “I made a vow that I would take no woman without marrying her. Now I have added to that vow. I’ll take no woman who’s a pagan worshiping a pagan god.”
“Then we have come to a hopeless impasse. I can gladly accept your God. Mine was destroyed long ago. But to marry is utterly impossible.”
Solomon was deeply moved. “You can accept my God and my people?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. I see that everything I’ve learned is true. Your God is not something your priests have invented or one conjured up by drugs. He is one your people have actually experienced. You know Him by what He has done and the ways He has shown Himself to you.”
He reached out and took her hands and looked at her with such love she was tempted to respond. Just in time she remembered his wives and the control a man could exert if he was the husband. She pulled her hands away. “You must understand, I can never marry anyone. Why do you insist on marriage!”
“Must you always ask questions?” Solomon said. He sounded impatient, but he knew that she was only doing what he himself had done all his life. In fact, he was secretly delighted to find someone who was as curious about the world and life as he was.
“I see no need for marriage. For most women marriage means the father gives his daughter to a man who agrees to take care of her in place of the father. Marriage also means the father is losing a piece of property he has invested much time and expense in raising. The benefits will now go to the husband, and so the father must have a payment of some kind. I have no father. I make my own decision.”
Solomon was amazed at her clear thinking. It was hard to refute. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I have many wives and concubines, but I’ve exchanged a formal commitment with each of them. I’m responsible for them now.”
“Responsible, what do you mean by responsible?”
“They belong to me and I must see that they hav
e food and clothing and a proper place to live.”
Bilqis smiled and reached out for his hand. “I have no need of someone being responsible for me. I myself provide everything I need.”
Solomon was puzzled. This beautiful, desirable woman was offering herself freely to him but at the expense of one of his fundamental beliefs. He had the feeling that this same kind of thing had happened to him before. It all sounded so right and yet it could be so wrong. In fact, this was the only strongly held principle he had never compromised on. Would this be a compromise? He didn’t know. He wished Nathan were here. Nathan was wiser in these things than he was.
He quickly turned the subject to plans for the next day. He wasn’t ready to toss over his values without more thought.
Badget was also in Jericho on this same night. He had left a day early on his trading venture up to Damascus and was staying in the same inn he and Terra had stayed in when he first brought her to Israel. He had left Terra and Yasmit back in Jerusalem, both with small babies. Babies that cried and disrupted the peace of his house in a way he wasn’t used to. He had to admit to the innkeeper’s wife that after all these years he was a bit surprised to be blessed with two boys, born only days apart.
The innkeeper’s wife remembered the incident when Yasmit had appeared unexpectedly at the inn and had caused such a scene. She was interested in hearing more of the details. “Your young wife confided in me that she was expecting a child, but the other wife seemed to be too old.”
“Is anything too hard for the Lord? That’s what our ancestor Sarah said when she heard that she was going to be a mother. Strange things can happen, and Yasmit definitely had a child.”
“You were there when these children were born?”
“Well, yes and no. I was at home when Terra had her baby, but I was gone when Yasmit had hers. She evidently had a bad time of it right from the beginning. Being older, Yasmit had no milk. She finally had to get her sister to come and feed the child. That seems to have worked out.”
“You dare to leave them alone together?”
“Why not? Terra’s a sweet little thing. Why, she’s mothering both babies. Yasmit is depending on her for everything.”
“I can imagine,” the innkeeper’s wife said. “Being a mother must have been quite a shock to the older woman.”
“Not a shock; just an inconvenience. She’s not used to children.” The innkeeper’s wife nodded knowingly, and Badget could see that she was speculating on just what was really going on between women who were so very different.
As it turned out they were to know within the hour of both tragedy and hopeless enmity that had broken out between the two women. Badget was just leaving the inn to manage the last minute details before leaving the next morning with his caravan when the news reached him by runner. “One of your children is dead,” the messenger said. “I’ve been sent to bring you home.”
“Dead? One of my little sons?” It was incomprehensible. He had left them both healthy and growing the day before. Then thinking of his wives, Terra who had waited so anxiously for this child and would be almost suicidal if it died, and Yasmit who definitely was far too old to expect a second miracle, he became terribly distraught. “Which child died? Whose child?” he asked.
“That’s the trouble,” the messenger said. “They don’t seem to know. They’re both claiming the living child. The neighbors have come in and are trying to settle it.”
“Who has the child now?” Badget was almost frantic. He could picture the scene.
“Why, your wife Yasmit. She’s taken the child and has locked herself into one of the rooms and won’t come out.”
Badget didn’t wait to hear more. In a terrible frenzy he himself ran down and unhitched his donkey, mounted, and was off on the road to Jerusalem before the astonished messenger could say more.
When he approached his gate he saw a crowd gathered outside and curious neighbors were on their roofs looking down into his courtyard. He had to push his way through the crowd to get to his door. He could hear screaming and shouting on the other side. At first no one seemed to hear his frantic pounding on the door. Only when neighbors on the roof called to the servants to open for their master did the door finally open.
The sight that greeted Badget was terrible beyond belief. In the courtyard, on a cold, stone slab lay the dead child. In horror Badget realized the dead child couldn’t be buried until it was decided whose child it really was. How was it, he wondered, his two wives didn’t know one child from the other? He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Terra, where is Terra?” he shouted. Some instinct told him that Yasmit would fend very well for herself but tender-hearted Terra could be totally crushed. He pushed his way into the crowded house. Remembering how Terra had loved the child, he became even more distraught. If it was her child out there on the cold slab, she would be grief stricken but if it wasn’t…. The total horror of the situation gripped him.
“Where are my wives?” he shouted in frustration and to his relief people melted back making a way for him to pass. Then he saw it. The door to his own private room with Terra almost unrecognizable with her hair unbound, and barefooted, pounding on the door and begging Yasmit to open it. Hearing his voice, Terra turned, and he saw her eyes terror stricken, her mouth twisted in pain, and tears streaming down her face. “My darling,” he said as he gathered her into his arms. “What’s happening?”
Terra could hardly speak. “My child. It’s my child Yasmit has in there. She says it’s hers.”
Badget always liked to be in control of any situation, and this was beyond anything he had ever tried to manage. “Don’t you women know your own children?” he thundered.
Terra pulled away from him with a cry of real pain, and hiding her face in her hands fled to the cook room outside, off the courtyard. She slammed the door and locked it from the inside.
Badget was frantic. He could see he’d added to her pain, and he didn’t know what to do. He looked around at his servants and neighbors, and they lowered their eyes not wanting to see their friend and master in such circumstances.
As the complexity of the situation began to dawn on him, Badget realized there was no quick solution. It was obvious the dead child must be buried, but it couldn’t be buried until this dispute between his wives was settled. “Where’s Solomon?” he asked. “It’s not going to be easy to figure this out.”
“He’s in Jericho,” several people volunteered.
“Then we’re going to Jericho,” Badget decided. He ordered the servants to wrap the dead child in a winding of fine linen, then he ordered some of his men to break down the door to his room. There was cursing and swearing as Yasmit, clutching the baby, was brought out and forced to mount the donkey for the trip to Jericho. When that was done, Badget with apologies and soft words, was able to get Terra to come out from the cook room.
As people in Jerusalem heard of the tragedy they dropped their work and rushed out to follow Badget and his company down to Jericho. No one wanted to miss the drama. They couldn’t imagine how, if the two wives couldn’t seem to tell the children apart, and Badget, the father, couldn’t decide, Solomon could possibly sort it out.
When Solomon heard that it was his friend Badget at the gate of his winter palace and that tragedy had struck the trader’s family, he ordered his guards to bring them into the courtyard. The scene was a strange one. Badget was obviously beside himself with frustration and grief and the two wives told the rest of the story. One of them held the child. She looked slightly familiar. Solomon struggled to place her. He felt he should know her from some time in the past. The other wife was shy and grief stricken.
“These two women each had a child and one died.” Solomon was assessing the facts. “Where is the dead child?” the servant came forward and unwrapped the dead child and placed it on the floor before Solomon.
Solomon remembered that the queen of Sheba knew Badget, and his small, plump wife was from the queen’s own country. He quickly se
nt a messenger to invite her to participate in the judgment.
When she came she was told the details and Solomon asked what her decision would be if this were in her country. She quickly came to a decision. “First,” she said, “if this were in my country I would side with the small woman because she is is a native of my own country. However, since I am not in my own country I would be tempted to side with the older woman because she is the man’s first wife and should have more consideration. Also she is too old to have another child while the other woman can have many more children.” She turned to Solomon. “Now, tell me how you will solve this impossible riddle. Undoubtedly you will go about it in an entirely different way and for different reasons.”
Solomon smiled. He was genuinely surprised at the way she went about solving the problem. “You’re right. In this case I wouldn’t go by any set rules or customs, but I must try to determine what is the truth of the matter, who the real mother is.”
“But that seems too difficult. Even if the women themselves know, it won’t help because neither one will admit she is lying.”
“I have been studying the women. It’s obvious to me that between them they know who the real mother is. One of them is lying. All I have to do is find out which one is telling the truth.”
Bilqis was amazed. “That’s impossible. How can you find out such a thing?”
“I can only try.” He turned to the two women and asked them to tell what happened. Yasmit stepped forward holding the child. “Your majesty, we both have children born within days of each other. We were together in the same room with our children sleeping. When we awoke her child was found to be dead, but she insisted it was my child that had died.”
Then Solomon signaled for Terra to speak. It was obvious that she was frightened, but when she spoke it was with assurance. “Your majesty,” she said bowing to the ground and kissing the hem of his robe, then standing she said, “we both were in the same room sleeping with our children. Her child had been sickly, and in the night it died. She evidently discovered this and took my child and placed her dead child in my arms. When I awoke I found the child I held was dead, and it wasn’t my child. She was holding my child and claiming it was hers.” Terra began to cry and wipe the tears with her mantle.
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