The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen

by Tosca Lee

  “Yes, the labor is conscripted. Mostly from the north, which they deserve. Always opposing him—one can’t afford to have them all conspiring at once. Even the king’s administration is run in the Egyptian way.”

  I was surprised at her knowledge of the king’s government. This was not my impression of treaty wives at all.

  “And yet Egypt rejects the idea of a single god and the king embraces it.”

  “That, yes. But look to the mount just east of the king’s temple. There you will find high places to Chemosh, the grim god of Moab. And Molech and Asherah and Au and a half dozen others. The place is populated with their altars, carved pillars, and priests.”

  “I did notice. But the tales I had heard of the jealousy of this god . . .”

  “We women are difficult to please. And a truly wise man keeps his wives happy. The midwives say they conceive better in sweetness than in bitterness,” she said and laughed then. “At any rate, Israel is inexorably tied to Egypt. But you, Makeda. Do you have sons?”

  “No. Much to the chagrin of my chief minister.”

  “Ah, the pity. You must soon rectify that. But you are not married, either, I hear. Why do you not marry?” She asked it lightly, a date in her hand.

  “Whom should I marry?” I said with a smile.

  “Why, a king, of course. My husband.”

  I choked out a chuckle. “My kingdom is far away. I do not think I would get many sons that way.”

  “You want to know how any woman gets sons here. How I call him ‘husband’ at all when he has so many wives—and that is not counting the nondowered peace wives, the concubines.”

  “I had wondered that,” I admitted.

  “They don’t all live here. How could they? Some of them have spent only a single night with the king.” She paused, her gaze drifting off. “It isn’t the marriage brides dream of, is it? But you and I know the serenity of nations takes precedence over a woman’s dreams. Even a queen’s. But those who leave are wives of a king and receive many gifts and status in their homelands. And those who live here are safe and comfortable and want for nothing.” She smiled a quiet smile. “But you . . . you may have any man. Saba’s ways are not Israel’s ways—or Egypt’s. Who is to tell you to stay or go? But you should consider the proposal of the king. He is building a fleet of ships and you would not have to make this terrible overland journey to return to his house—or mine.”

  “Truly, it is not a consideration. There is no proposal.”

  Tashere lifted the date to her lips, forming a perfect O around it as she bit it in half. “I can only guess at the negotiations between your kingdoms, but I know my husband very well. The proposal will come. If not for Saba’s wealth, then for the beauty in your exquisite face should you ever let him see it.”

  I thought again of the invitation to the garden.

  She smiled. “But enough of that. Have you tried the king’s wine?”

  The night the Sabbath ended I went out to my camp to preside over the sacrifice of the dark moon. I did not do this every month even in Saba—had, in fact, less and less of late—but I had made it my excuse and so must be seen going out of the city.

  I stayed within my own tent that night, which had been erected in the center of camp with my standards. It was far less comfortable than my apartment in the palace but lying on my blanket that night, I felt more myself than I had since our arrival.

  The next morning as the smoke rose over the temple, I sent for Tamrin but was told he had gone on to another city on business.

  Short hours after my return to the city, new gifts arrived at my apartment: delicate sesame cakes, brined capers and fresh goat milk for my bath.

  The next day I received the softest leather I had ever touched, with a promise that the sandal maker would attend me at my leisure. Again, with the compliments of the king and accepted by me without a word. Later, two of the king’s wives arrived at my apartment—one from Edom and another from Hamath. I received them with food and welcomed them as guests, though it was obvious they had been sent to attend me.

  The day after that, Tashere sent the Egyptian girl who had come to me before as a gift for the duration of my stay. I welcomed the girl, who brought with her an ebony and ivory Senet game set that stood on carved legs like an animal with the tokens stored in a drawer of the body.

  The next day, the king’s Ammonite wife, Naamah, sent one of her servants to tend me as well.

  Now I knew Tashere’s chief rival among the women.

  The gifts continued: wine from the northern mountains. Olive oil and oil of mint. Cucumber and citron, rings for my toes and fingers, wool rugs woven in elaborate patterns. Rose oil for the baths that I seemed to enjoy so much. Finely carved instruments for my musicians, who came to play on my terrace in the afternoon.

  This went on until the fifth day. The morning of the sixth, I put on my purple robe and jewels, ready to begin negotiations. I waited all day for the summons to meet.

  None came.

  Three more days came and went after that.

  TWENTY

  I was by now livid. I sent for Niman and Khalkharib, whom I assumed had been wasting in a state of impatient and divine boredom as much as I. But instead of my advisors, one of the steward’s men arrived at my apartment to say they had gone with the king’s brother Nathan to tour the city of Gezer.

  “Without taking leave of me?” I demanded.

  “The king assured them that you were occupied with matters in the city, and that they must go on your behalf and report all that they saw with their own eyes to you,” the man said. This, from not even the king’s steward himself!

  The moment he was gone I stormed out to the terrace. The girls played endlessly at Senet, obsessed with the morbid game about the journey of the dead. The Egyptian girl, whose name was Nebt, seemed to put near-religious faith in the game as a practical indicator of the gods’ favor—and apparently they favored Shara, who won consistently as soon as she had learned it. Yafush, who knew how to play, would not take part as he stood with crossed arms, though he was not beyond raising a brow or pursing his lips when one of the girls looked to him for direction.

  “Ah, the House of Three Truths!” Nebt cried after throwing the sticks.

  I knew three truths, I thought sourly. One, that the king was trying to shun or aggravate me into meeting him in the most compromising manner. Two, that my trusted advisors were conveniently gone, having ridden off like boys at first mention of forts and horses. Even Asm had said that he intended to seek out the priests of Asherah, whom he said some regarded as the consort of the Israelite god. Apparently he had become a scholar since our arrival, set upon studying the divining methods of others.

  Three, that I would not be outwitted.

  I looked out on the city’s myriad rooftops, comparing options like the houses around me. I could confide in Tashere. But even though I liked her and she had proclaimed as I left that she knew we had been destined to be friends—“perhaps even sisters”—I knew that any court was like the ocean: smooth and blue on the surface, its depths filled with monsters conspiring to devour one another.

  I could try to befriend one of the king’s advisors and enlist his advocacy. But who was I to them but one more queen within the king’s walls with foreign gods outside it?

  I could send for Namaanh, Tashere’s rival. Nebt had openly confirmed that Namaanh had a son a year younger than Tashere’s, favored by the king. I found that interesting—wasn’t the dread child eater Molech Namaanh’s god? But I was not eager to be drawn into their schemes against one another. Nor could I afford to lower myself to it.

  Behind me, Shara groaned as she lost a pawn. A stick throw later, she had won.

  I was left with only one option.

  Below on the street just then, a man in mean clothing stopped beneath the terrace. Looking up at me, he shouted, “Foreign queens! Foreign gods! In the holy city of the anointed one!”

  I drew back, astounded at this. Had the man just th
reatened me? Even when I fell out of sight I could hear him ranting as one mad.

  I leaned out over the balcony again to find the man staring directly up at me. Our gazes locked, his filled with righteous fury. And then he began to mutter again and went on toward the temple. I watched him go all the way to the gate and turn around. This time when he passed beneath my terrace, he seemed to have forgotten me. But neither did he go back down the street the way he had come, but disappeared, ostensibly, into the palace below.

  “Shara,” I said, summoning her to the terrace.

  She got up reluctantly, Nebt having already called for a rematch.

  “Make me beautiful,” I said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I would be a liar if I said I hadn’t paid attention to the corridors as I had traveled the laughable distance to Tashere’s apartment. I had seen the guards standing at the foot of the narrow back passage. It had haunted me every day since.

  I brushed past the guards outside my chamber, Yafush in my wake, and walked down the corridor as one entitled. And why not? I was the queen of Saba.

  And yet it felt like a shame-filled walk, as though I skulked through shadows. I fastened my veil more tightly.

  When I came to the narrow passage I stopped before the two guards. They looked past me as though not seeing me. I stepped beyond them and looked back. They did not acknowledge, let alone challenge, me.

  “Do you know who I am?” I said, moving back to confront one of them.

  The man looked away.

  “Do you know who I am?” I said again.

  The guard blinked, looking somewhere over my head.

  “The sun is in my eyes,” he said. “And at night, the moon.”

  “And so you do not see me. How clever. Did your master bid you say so?”

  “The sun is in my eyes,” he said again. “And at night, the moon.” And then he looked at me. “The queen goes where she will. She is a ghost. Or I am.”

  I pitied him then. I did not know the penalty for armed men who disobeyed in this land but suspected it was quite universal. I slipped a ring from my finger—the smallest one, a thing of the tiniest consequence—and gave it to him.

  “You are right,” I said.

  I laid a hand against Yafush’s arm then.

  “You cannot follow me,” I said softly.

  He frowned. “Say that only when you are prepared to cross into the afterlife, Princess.”

  I leaned over and touched my cheek to his.

  And then I confronted the stair.

  I took them slowly, pretending for the sake of the guards to be weighted down with the train of my gown. In truth, the last eight days had been longer to me than the six months it took to get here. I glanced back once at Yafush standing broadly across the bottom stair, all but blocking it, his eyes on me.

  Earlier this afternoon when Shara brought out my gowns, I had chosen one the color of rubies. The fabric had come with the ships from Hidush just last year. Ruby. A hard and unyielding stone, my mother said once.

  I needed ports. A share in the ships. I donned the gown.

  But I would not sell myself for them even though I had ascended the stair behind me, alone and as furtive as a harlot.

  Fearless or reckless . . .

  Almaqah, I was certain, had long abandoned me—the moment I left Saba’s borders, if not in Saba itself. But any god must recognize me if he were a god at all. And so I prayed silently to the gods of this place, including the Nameless One.

  I expelled a breath and turned the latch. It moved easily. I pushed open the door.

  The sun was setting, bloody against the west. Almond blossom and rose filled my nostrils.

  I strode out onto the terrace and a vista of verdant green unfolded before me—a high garden before an apartment perhaps three times larger than my own. Lamplight glowed through carved limestone window screens. Sheer drapes, illuminated from within, billowed softly with the wind in its open double doors.

  There was no sound. Nothing but the hiss and sputter of torches in the late twilight of encroaching summer.

  Was the king within? It didn’t matter; I would not risk the scene I might come upon there or be discovered waiting in his chamber like a wanton.

  I angrily turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  The voice startled me—I had not seen any figure. And because it was not the voice of a king.

  It was his voice. But there was nothing of the king in it.

  I turned back slowly in time to see the figure rising from the shadows in the farthest corner of the garden.

  “What game do you play with me?” I called out, chin lifted. “How will this appear to your courtiers, should they come to your apartment? To your new wife, to anyone who sees my eunuch on the stair?” My anger, contained all this time, came out at last.

  He moved toward me and I could see now that he wore none of the finery he had the first time—the only time—I had set eyes on him. Only a simple linen tunic and mantle, and a gold ring upon his finger.

  Now I knew who had inspired Tamrin in his tastes. And so this king influenced everyone around him in even the littlest matters.

  “Call for your eunuch,” he said quietly.

  “You said I was to come alone.”

  He came within an arm’s length of me.

  “Woman of mystery,” he whispered. “You filled my hall the moment you entered it. You towered over the shallow pool. And yet I find you are a tiny thing. Will you let me touch your hand before you call for him?” With a slight smile, he said, “He seems a formidable fellow.”

  “It doesn’t seem the custom for your men to touch women except for their wives,” I said. “Why do you make these unseemly requests?”

  “It is unseemly before the eyes of others. A custom to give no scandal to the one who sees it. But we are not seen. I would only touch the hand that penned such words to me. The hand of the Riddle. I would count it greater than any gift you carried here across the sands.”

  “Is it not enough that I came from the edge of the world? That I stand here alone on your terrace, against all judgment, after you have keep me waiting all these days?”

  He looked down.

  “I thought . . .” He shook his head. “I’m foolish.”

  “You thought what?”

  “I thought you would return a message to me. Anything—even a note of thanks for my gifts. I waited.”

  “Why, when I am here? For what have I come if not to speak face-to-face?”

  When he lifted his head, his eyes were stark. “Do you truly not know how your words have brought me to life? How they have revived me—yes, with the echo of my own? Or are you so fresh upon the throne and to the rigors of kingship that you know nothing of loneliness?”

  I looked away.

  “Ah.” He came a step closer. “Why do you think I commanded you to send your emissary? You, who rebuff kings with silence?”

  “Because against all logic, provocation wins more regard than flattery.”

  He laughed softly. “So you see, I am a boy, tugging your hair. And in return you slashed me. Hauteur, flattery, flirtation—any one of these I would have tossed aside. Instead, you slay me with a story of a garden.”

  I dare not say that writing those words had nearly broken me. After a long moment I lifted my hand between us.

  A soft sigh escaped his lips as he took it by the fingertips—carefully, as though it were a bird that might, at any moment, fly away.

  He touched the hennaed nail of one finger with his thumb, seemed to read the design on the back of my wrist. He brushed his thumb over these, too, as though he had never seen such a thing before.

  I drew my hand away and he stood staring at his, empty, where it had been. At last he dropped his arms to his sides and said, “Call your eunuch, if it will put you at ease.”

  I went back to the stairwell and pulled open the door to find Yafush standing exactly as he had been. At sight of me he took the stair with swift, great strides.


  “Peace,” I said. “All is well.”

  I returned to the garden, not wanting to admit even to myself that I felt more settled as Yafush closed the door behind him.

  The king walked a little ways away, and I followed with him. When he did not speak, I said, “What were you doing here, sitting in silence?”

  He placed his hands on the terrace wall and looked out over it. “I have come here every night since your arrival. I told you, I was waiting.”

  “What does your newest bride think of that?”

  “She is, I am certain, glad to be relieved of my company.”

  I almost asked if he was so bad at the bed arts as that, but bit it back.

  “Why have you sent my nobles away without a word?”

  “Because,” he said sighing, not looking at me. “Because I know what you have come for.”

  He came to me then and it seemed he would reach for my hand again, but he stopped himself.

  “I want to show you my kingdom,” he said earnestly as a boy.

  “As you are showing my nobles your prize city of Gezer?”

  He waved this away.

  “Your man, Khalkharib, is loyal but shortsighted. Your kinsman Niman is ambitious. I see it very well. I have no use for them. But you, Lady Riddle . . . you remain a mystery to me.”

  “To the great wise king? I am no mystery. I am Saba, and your new fleet threatens my future and my caravans. But if we could negotiate together, for the building of p—”

  He lifted his palm.

  “Time enough for that. There are things I want to know of you.”

  “In my country that is the posture of petition.”

  “Then I petition you,” he said with soft urgency. “There are things I want you to understand. Tomorrow I want to show you my city. And the night after, I will throw a banquet for you and your retinue.”

  “I wasn’t informed of this banquet,” I said, feeling my irritation rise again, realizing that each time it did, it was more out of a sense of helplessness than true anger. I was accustomed to deciding the timing of everything I engaged in. But with this king, I felt as though I butted up against a wall.