The Queen's Handmaid

by Tracy L. Higley

  When the afternoon waned, Lydia leaned over to whisper to Simon. “I should return. Mariamme’s birth pains could begin at any time. I do not want to be far when that happens.”

  They took leave of the huge family, Esther and Lydia hugging with promises of more visits and the children reminding Simon to bring them fruit very soon.

  The walk back to the palace was slow and silent. Simon could not say what Lydia was thinking about the poverty-born generosity of his friends, nor the newest subversive activities she had discovered about him. He only knew that seeing her with his friends, with the children, had threatened all the resolve he had brought with him from Jericho.

  The baby did not come, not that day or the next, and Lydia kept busy with the palace renovations, checking only occasionally on the queen and being scolded out of the room to return to her work.

  A week had passed and she had not gotten a chance to seek out the learned men of the synagogue whom she had identified during her visit, nor had Mariamme mentioned the pendant again. But Esther had come to the palace once, ostensibly to bring pottery that Simon had ordered, but the two women had gotten a chance to sneak away for conversation.

  Exhausted from a day of tedious stitching, Lydia sought out the roof again, wrapped in a heavy mantle to ward off the chill. Standing at the roof’s edge, she rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck against the tightness that had built there through the day’s work.

  From this height and in the darkness, only the beauty of the city could be seen. But Simon, and even Esther, had shown her otherwise. The city was suffering an agonizingly slow death, but it would not be defeated without one final fight. And she had a part to play in it, somehow.

  It was not David who found her on the roof tonight but Simon. He eased to her side and studied the city in companionable silence. It was like they had known each other for many years, grown comfortable and familiar with each other’s unspoken thoughts.

  After some minutes he sighed. “We have accomplished a great deal in a short time.”

  He spoke of the palace project. But the words were true between them as well. A dangerous closeness was developing. Oddly, she no longer felt the suffocating tightness in her chest in his presence.

  Dangerous, indeed.

  She wrapped the mantle more tightly against the cold.

  Seemingly without thought, Simon’s arm went around her shoulders and he pulled her to his warmth.

  She closed her eyes with the forbidden pleasure of it and dared not move lest he realize what he had done and step away.

  A sense of coming home enveloped her. But how could coming home also be so foreign? The tension in her neck and shoulders melted, the frayed and roughened edges of her spirit smoothed. She sighed and allowed her head to rest against his shoulder.

  At the small gesture, his arm tightened around her and his face turned downward against the top of her head.

  “Well, isn’t this interesting.”

  Lydia jerked away from Simon and whirled.

  Riva stood with perfect lips in an amused pout and skinny arms jutting out, hands on her hips. Behind her was her servant boy of the day, following like a pet.

  “I had heard you were no longer serving Mariamme. It looks like I’ve discovered your new master.”

  Heat raced from Lydia’s feet to her hairline, then drained away. She fought against the pressure in her chest, which, though absent in Simon’s embrace, now came rushing back to remind her of why it never paid to get close to someone.

  Riva’s admiring gaze fell on Simon, as though she would trade her servant boy for the palace manager in a heartbeat. But when she looked at Lydia, it was with only malice.

  Riva would tell Mariamme what she had seen.

  Of that, Lydia had no doubt.

  Twenty-Five

  Mariamme could no longer stand the sight of her bedchamber.

  For all its improvements under Lydia’s touch, it had still become a prison since she began her confinement. When the crumbs of her late breakfast were cleared and pale sunlight trickled through her window, she rose from the cushioned bed, waved off the slave girl who jumped from her seated place in the corner, and reached for a beige robe to cover her tunic.

  “I am only going to take a little walk in the corridor, Despina. No need to raise the alarm.”

  In truth, she had been thinking of Lydia, and of the strange pendant she wore, hidden under her clothes. It had been days since Mariamme promised her maidservant that she would question her mother.

  She took the hall slowly, her eunuch, Leodes, following in her wake. There was no sense in arousing the attention of anyone else who would force her back to that odious bed.

  Outside her mother’s chamber, Sohemus personally manned his duty rather than one of his men. She passed him with only a meeting of the eyes, furtive and quick.

  Alexandra was finishing her own breakfast when Mariamme wandered into her chamber. The nearly empty, colorless chamber her mother preferred. The contrast with her own was severe.

  She looked up from the tray across her bed with surprise. “Mariamme! You should not be—”

  “Oh, hush, Mother. I am well enough for a stroll down the hall.” She crossed slowly to her mother’s dressing table. “Look, I will sit down immediately.”

  Alexandra’s lips puckered. “A little bored, are we?”

  “Dreadfully.” She reached for the jewelry box, her movement casual, and opened the lid.

  “Yes, well, it is only nature’s way of preparing you for the biggest battle of your life. You will see. Soon you will be longing for boredom.”

  Mariamme hooked a finger around a string of ivory beads, lifted them from the box, and draped them around her neck. “Remember when I was a little girl and would beg to wear your jewelry?”

  “And now you are to have a child of your own.” Alexandra swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Though of course we pray it is not a girl.”

  A bird chirped outside the window, a single monotone that somehow sounded hopeless rather than cheerful. Mariamme dug deeper in the box until she spotted the bronze discs and pulled them out. “I always wished these had been made into pendants. What are they, Mother?”

  Alexandra stood and brought the tray to her dressing table. “You look pale. Are you eating? Have an apple.”

  Mariamme bit into the fruit obediently, if only to keep her mother from being distracted by her refusal. The flesh was mushy and tasteless. She held up the discs again, a question in her eyes.

  Alexandra took one in her hand and ran a finger over the raised embossing. “It is your great-grandfather’s royal seal.”

  Mariamme pointed to a nearby chair. “Tell me a story, Mother. Relieve my boredom.”

  Alexandra’s eyes narrowed. “And what story would you hear?”

  Mariamme palmed the seal and held it to the window’s light. “What was he like, Alexander Janneus? And why do you have his seals?”

  “He was a hard man, as I remember, but a strong one.”

  A trait that had passed to his granddaughter.

  “He was a conqueror, was he not? Took Gaza? And Egypt?”

  Alexandra huffed. “You give him perhaps too much credit. The Gaza victory was a coup—it opened the Great Sea to the Nabatean trade routes and brought great revenue to Judea. And he did do a bit of maneuvering in Egypt. As I remember, he struck a false friendship with Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s grandfather, though he was really allying with Ptolemy’s mother against him.”

  Mariamme took another bite of the apple. “What happened?”

  “Ptolemy discovered the treachery and there was a brutal slaughter here.” She shook her head and inhaled deeply. “Not only troops, but a small village. Ptolemy’s soldiers strangled women and children, then boiled their bodies in cauldrons and ate them.”

  Mariamme set the half-eaten apple aside, barely able to swallow the bite she had taken.

  “Alexander Janneus returned to find those treacherous Pharisees aligned against him.
Of course the noble families of the Sadducees backed him. It was the start of six years of civil war here.”

  “And what of Ptolemy?”

  Alexandra waved off the Egyptian ruler like a bothersome fly. “Oh, he was dead by the time our civil war ended. His son, Cleopatra’s father, was put on the throne of Egypt. And when he saw which way the war here was going, he understood he could not follow in his father’s footsteps.”

  “Alexander took back Judea?”

  She came and retrieved the disc from Mariamme’s hand. Her eyebrows lifted and she smiled. “Oh yes. And took his revenge. He was a man who knew how to intimidate his enemies.” She turned the two discs over in her palm and her voice was gleeful, triumphant. “I was only a little girl, but I remember it well. He had eight hundred rebels brought here to Jerusalem, forced them to watch as their wives and children had their throats cut, and then crucified the lot of them.”

  She reached for the ivory beads at Mariamme’s throat.

  Mariamme drew back as if struck.

  Alexandra laughed and pinched Mariamme’s arm. “Don’t be so sensitive, dear. It was war.”

  “And what of Egypt? Did he take revenge there as well?”

  Alexandra shrugged and regained her seat. “There was no point in it. Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy, was ready for an alliance. His brother had been made king of the island of Cyprus, and Ptolemy knew Cyprus was too close to Judea, too tempting with all that lovely wood for shipbuilding. The two men agreed on a marriage treaty. My grandfather gave the king of Cyprus his daughter to wed.”

  “His daughter!” Mariamme sat up. “I thought he only had two children—your father and uncle.”

  “Ah yes. You would think that, since all of the history from that point is about those two bickering brothers. But no, I had an aunt as well, married off at a young age to the king of Cyprus.”

  Mariamme took it all in, tried to fit the pieces together in her mind, drawing the family lines and intersecting them with those of Egypt. So Cleopatra’s uncle had been married to Alexandra’s aunt. How strange that she had never known this.

  “But you have not told me of the seals, Mother.”

  Alexandra sighed. “Simply a bit of nostalgia, I suppose. My grandfather gave one to each of his children, your grandfather Hyrcanus and his troublesome brother, who was of course your other grandfather. When your father died and my father was exiled, I inherited them both.”

  “But Hyrcanus has returned from exile. Does he not wish to have it back?”

  Alexandra laughed, without humor. “My father’s mind did not return with him. He barely remembers what it means to be a priest.”

  “What about the daughter—your father’s sister? Did she receive a seal as well?”

  Her mother shrugged and set the seals on the dressing table. “I suppose. I don’t remember what came of her after she was married.” She clucked her tongue. “But enough of stories. If you are going to give this family an heir, you should return to your rest.”

  Was she little more than a brood mare? But her thoughts strayed far away, to Egypt. The possible implications of her mother’s story were so astounding, she could not take them in.

  A figure at the doorway started forward when she turned.

  “Joseph.”

  Salome’s husband-uncle had been watching her carefully since Herod had been called to face Marc Antony in Syria. Herod must have given him the assignment. Hopefully Herod would not return, and old Joseph would forget.

  “My lady, I must request that you return to your bedchamber. Your husband has no wish to see you overtired.”

  She growled. “My husband cares only about the child I carry, Joseph.”

  The old man shook his gray head, his watery eyes red-rimmed with age. “How can you say that, dear? I have seen the way he dotes on you. Why, he told me himself that he could never bear to be parted from you, in life or in death!”

  Behind her, Alexandra’s chair scraped the floor and she circled Mariamme. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Joseph’s lips parted slightly at Alexandra’s approach.

  How could the old fool be afraid of her mother when he was married to a witch like Salome?

  “I—He gave clear instructions that Mariamme was to be kept safe in her chamber—”

  “Yes?” Clearly there was more, and Alexandra was not going to let it go. “And what else?”

  “I am certain he will return and all will be well.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Mariamme was standing now, a chill of dread seeping into her bones. After all their talk of Egypt, Joseph’s strange words reminded her of the Egyptians’ old practice.

  “He cannot live without Mariamme, he says. Nor can he die without her. She is to join him in death if he does not return.”

  Mariamme reached for the back of her chair, but her grasping hand found only empty air. A wave of nausea attacked and her legs trembled.

  “What?” Alexandra’s shriek bounced from the chamber walls.

  Mariamme found her chair at last and sank into it, breath coming in short gasps.

  The tedium of her confinement evaporated like a mist. All her life she had been watching a violent play from the safety of the audience, but it was as if the play had suddenly shifted and enveloped her, making her part of the drama, part of the danger.

  The Egyptians of old, before the Greek Ptolemies had come to rule, would bury wives and slaves with their dead pharaohs.

  Images of Egypt, of Lydia and her pendant, of her mother’s unknown aunt married off to Cyprus with Alexander Janneus’s seal strung as a pendant around her neck, swam and blurred before her eyes.

  Her chair lost its solid feeling, turned to water underneath her, and she melted with it toward the floor.

  Lydia awoke early, washed at the jug and basin in the corner of the private chamber she had been given as Mariamme’s handmaid, and hurried toward the kitchens. She would venture into the city again today, this time alone, to find Rabbi Phineas who had spoken in the synagogue and ask him questions about the prophet Daniel’s writings. She dared a short prayer to the One God that Phineas would look favorably on her even though she was a woman and give her something that would help her find the Chakkiym.

  The kitchens were buzzing already, the day’s cooking well under way. Even with Herod gone, there were always guests, and even when only the four women—Herod’s sister and wife and their mothers—were the only diners, a lavish meal would be spread.

  Lydia grabbed some bread from a basket on a side table and glanced around for Simon. She should explain her absence from their morning work.

  She found him in his office chamber, bent over his everlengthening lists. “Have you need of me right away this morning, Simon?”

  He half turned and raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t you arranged it so I am always in need of you, Lydia?”

  The tone was teasing, but the words inched closer to that dangerous place between them and her heart skipped over a beat or two.

  “I am going into the city for a few things again this morning. I will be back before the midday meal.”

  He frowned but did not press her for details. “Come, I want to show you something first.”

  In the courtyard, he pointed upward to a stone lintel above one doorway. A hairline crack had appeared, snaking down toward the frame. “Can you use your clays to repair it?”

  Lydia stood on her toes for a better look. “I think we would be better served to have David’s men shore it up first. Then I can worry about the cosmetic repair.”

  “Will you see to it right away, then?”

  She glanced at him. “I told you, I am going out—”

  “How are we supposed to finish this project, Lydia, if you are always running about the city?”

  She said nothing, only cocked her head.

  A pair of slaves slowed to observe their conversation, then hurried away when Simon scowled their direction.

  He sighed, then shook his head.
“Perhaps I do not want to share you with the city. At least go and tell David about the door frame before you go. He is in the storerooms, I believe, seeing about some supplies for the kitchen garden.”

  “I will find him.”

  She took to the underground storerooms, wandering past several, her thoughts on Simon’s outburst. At times he seemed angry with her, but she sensed the anger was born of some frustration. She felt it herself.

  Only a few torches were lit and set in sockets at this early hour, and the murky corridors did not allow her to see far.

  The sound of footsteps following turned her around. “David?”

  But it was not David who rounded the corner to face her.

  A flash of apprehension rooted her to the floor. Why would Salome come to the storerooms?

  The king’s sister walked toward her slowly, her high cheekbones hollow and sculpted in the flickering torchlight.

  “Enjoying your freedom, I hear.”

  “My lady?”

  Salome’s lips pursed into an amused smile. “Mariamme has given you a reprieve from her constant neediness, and now you spend your time enjoying the company of men.”

  “I do not—”

  “Riva has told me everything, Lydia. Do not deny it.”

  Riva. Lydia’s teeth clenched against the girl’s name.

  Salome was circling her now, her sandals scraping against the paving stones, eyeing her up and down like a market purchase.

  Lydia raised her chin. She did not need to defend herself to Salome.

  A draft of cold air from an unknown source slithered around her feet, and the nearest torch flickered and bent.

  Salome’s scrutiny was more than that of a noble for a wayward slave.

  It was there again, the pressure Lydia had felt in Salome’s chamber, suffocating and dark.

  She was a curiosity to the woman for some reason. What had she done to create such antagonism?

  You bear the scrolls.

  The words whispered through her from somewhere outside her mind. The same voice she had heard in the synagogue.