Queenmaker: A Novel of King David's Queen

by Edghill, India

  She rose up graceful as a willow in the wind, and spread her skirt carefully so that the embroidery was displayed to best advantage. A pleasing pattern; suns and moons worked in bright thread. I asked if it were the work of her own hands, and she said that it was.

  “And the design is my own as well. I have been well schooled in all a woman’s arts, O Queen.” She spoke with a proper pride, neither too much nor too little.

  “In all a woman’s arts?” I asked, and smiled upon her.

  “Oh, yes—I can do anything you ask of me!” She was all eagerness to please. All eagerness to live in the palace and serve the queen—or so it seemed.

  “Then I ask an answer. How is it so fair a maid is unwed, and unspoken for? Tell me truly, Abishag—is there no man who makes your heart beat hard and fast?”

  “I am unwed and unspoken for. For the rest, that is not for me to say.” But she blushed hot as she spoke the words, and for the first time seemed as uncertain as any young girl.

  “Then I will say it. It is Prince Solomon who has taken your heart. Oh, come, child—I am as a mother to him, and he has already spoken of you. Do you think I gossip with any maid chance brought to me as if she were my daughter?”

  “What did the prince say of me?” Eager words, eager spoken, and cheeks red as poppies; yes, Abishag cared. Well, and how could she not? There was no prince like Solomon for wisdom and beauty in all the land. No, and no man either.

  “Why, he said that he had met at last a sweet and clever maid, one fair as a queen.” And I watched Abishag close as I spoke, and was satisfied with the wisdom of Solomon’s choice.

  For Abishag was a clever girl, and ambitious, which was not a bad thing. The queen’s finery I wore, the hint of a crown for her brow, warmed her eyes. But Solomon’s name was the spark that kindled fire there.

  And so I smiled upon Abishag, and kissed her hot cheek, and lifted a twisted braid of pearls and coral from my own neck and hung it about hers. “So take this, with my love—it was brought by a trader from Tyre, and he said it had come farther yet. But traders cannot tell true to save their throats from slitting! And this jewel was meant for a young neck, child—yes, that is the setting it should have. Solomon was right to praise you so highly—it is long since I have seen a girl as lovely as you.”

  Abishag was flattered, of course, and blushed again, and stroked the necklace and coiled the sea-gems about her plump fingers. “The queen is too kind. There are many more beautiful than I. All men know that true beauty lies only under King David’s roof, and that the queen outshines all others as the moon outshines the stars.”

  “Pretty words,” I said, and smiled. “But I have a mirror, and a board to tally the years that have passed since I was born. Now tell me truly how you reckon your beauty.”

  Abishag looked at me, and her sloe-eyes were shrewd. “It has caught a prince,” she said at last. “Or at least I am told it has. So either my beauty is great indeed or Prince Solomon has deceived me.

  Solomon had made good use of the ‘short time’ he had spent with Abishag. And so, no doubt, had she. I pressed my lips together, firm, and did not laugh.

  “Prince Solomon has not deceived you,” I said, and took her hand. “So you have caught a prince, Abishag. Will you dare ensnare a king?”

  Abishag would dare; of course she would dare. To care for an old man and bring me news of what he said—that seemed to her little enough. And the reward was great.

  “I will make King David like me,” Abishag told me, firm as a cat. “I tended my grandfather, when he was ill before he died. I shall tend the king as carefully and well, O Queen.”

  “Yes—but do not tell the king about your grandfather, Abishag!”

  Abishag swore she would not, and listened close as I spoke to her of King David, and of what he liked, and did not. “And I know you go a maiden to the king, Abishag, and I think you will go to Prince Solomon still a maid. But I may be wrong; will that trouble you?”

  Abishag looked down at her fingers; she touched a turquoise ring that I knew had been a gift from Solomon. “If it will not trouble Prince Solomon,” she said at last, “then I will not let it trouble me.” She lifted her head and looked at me straight. “Is that a queen’s answer, O Queen?”

  “Yes, Abishag,” I said. I curled my fingers in the thin chains of the brass-and-crystal bracelet Bathsheba had given me so long ago. “I am very much afraid that it is.”

  Abishag was good to David. She stayed close by him always, and slept beside him in his bed, and tended to him most faithfully. But she lay with him chastely. So she said, and I believed her.

  Still, David valued Abishag highly for her youth and warmth, and for the way she would listen for hours to his tales, sitting still as a cat while he rambled on about long-past battles and long-dead men. He thanked me often for my gift, and swore I was worth any dozen other women.

  “Have I not always said so, and have you not proved it forty times over?”

  “The king is too kind, and I cannot take praise that belongs to another. It was your son Solomon who thought a young maid would please you, and warm you in the night.” I thought it time to show David how Solomon cared for him, before Adonijah came whining to him with the tale that Solomon had sought out Abishag and brought her to me.

  “A kind thought,” David said, and patted Abishag’s hands as they lay folded and quiet in her lap. “Yes, a kind thought. Solomon has always been a good boy.”

  “He is a boy no longer, David. He is a man, and a good one. He is almost what you were, at his age.”

  David was never too proud or too old to lap up flattery like honey from the hand. “Well, if that is true, Michal, then he will be a fine man indeed. Yes, a fine man.”

  “A fine man,” I said, “who would make a fine king, fit to follow the great King David.”

  But I had gone too far. David became sullen and suspicious, and said that I wished to see him dead.

  “You have always wished it. You are a hard woman, Michal, and your heart is stone. You were always too proud—you never loved me truly, as your brother Jonathan did.” And he began to weep, for his own words had always had the power to touch his heart. The old are frail, and David seemed very old, now.

  He groped for Abishag, who came forward onto her knees and put her arms around the king’s thin shoulders. “Jonathan—have I told you of Jonathan? King Saul’s son, he was, and we loved each other well—have you heard the tale?”

  “Tell it to me,” Abishag said, and stroked his white hair. She gave no hint that she must have heard the tale a dozen times. As King David’s life faded, that early friendship with my brother Jonathan grew stronger in his mind, truer with each telling of the tale and singing of the song, until even David thought their love outlasted time and death.

  I knew that he no longer saw me sitting there; he lived again in his glorious youth, embraced in youth’s arms. And so I rose, and smiled over his head at Abishag, and went quietly away. If anything was said that I should know, Abishag would come and tell it to me later.

  Soon. All men knew it would be soon. King David could not outlast the year. So ran gossip in the city I did not think he could outlast the summer.

  Soon—and King David still would not say either ‘It will be Adonijah’or ‘It will be Solomon’.

  Many thought Adonijah would be king after. Adonijah was the eldest prince, now that so many others lay dead; he was Absalom’s full brother, and David had always loved him for that, if for nothing else. The high priest Abiathar favored Adonijah as well, and so Adonijah walked meek before him; Abiathar could anoint Adonijah truly as king. And many of the war-captains thought Adonijah a fine prince, who would make a finer king.

  But the man whose support Adonijah desired above all other men’s was Joab, for Joab could bring half the army as dower to the next king.

  Prince Adonijah had always held his head too high to see Joab when he walked by—now Adonijah courted Joab, wooing for his favor. But Joab kept his face s
mooth as stone; Joab would say nothing, save that he served David and David’s kingdom.

  I knew better than to spread false coin before Joab; I was not his friend, nor he mine. I could only hope that when Joab looked at Adonijah, Joab remembered Absalom.

  Solomon had his own supporters. Nathan, of course, and the high priest Zadok too. And Benaiah, the commander of the palace guard; perhaps that was why Joab would not yet smile upon Solomon.

  An almost even match, the two princes, as the king’s life ebbed. Either might gain the crown, and we all waited and hoped.

  All save Adonijah. Like his brother Absalom, he was overproud and impatient. He grabbed too soon for the crown.

  And so in the end, Solomon had only to stretch out his hand and catch it as it fell.

  After all the watching, and the waiting, and the scheming, the end rushed upon us oddly sudden, like a long-threatened summer storm. The end began when Abishag came to me where I sat with Bathsheba in the queen’s garden and told what Adonijah had done now. This time it was no mere matter of princely arrogance.

  “Prince Adonijah gives a great banquet—he has asked all the princes, save only Prince Solomon. And he has said that his house will be open to all men as well, to feast as they will.” Abishag knelt at my feet and spoke quick and clear. “And he asked King David to come and feast with them and the king would not, but he laid his hands on the prince’s head and gave him his blessing. It is said that Prince Adonijah has asked Abiathar, and Joab, and all the other great men to this feast—but he has not asked Benaiah, nor yet Zadok, nor the prophet Nathan.”

  As all men knew, Benaiah and Zadok and Nathan favored Solomon. Bathsheba gasped and would have spoken, but I waved her to silence. I drew a deep breath before speaking. “Has Abiathar said he will go?”

  Abishag nodded. “Indeed, he is there now, and has with him the sacred oil. I had that from one who saw it with his own eyes—or so he swore, for what that is worth in the market.”

  All the great men, and the princes, and Abiathar the high priest with the sacred oil—I knew what Adonijah must plan. Adonijah was risking all on one throw for the crown.

  One more thing I must know. “And has Joab gone to this great feast as well?”

  “Yes, O Queen. Joab sits beside Prince Adonijah even now.”

  And is Joab’s sword drawn to strike? I drew Abishag up and kissed her. “You have done well and more than well. Now go back, before the king knows you are gone and wonders where. And make haste.”

  Abishag pulled her veil close and fled away; she was soft and quick as a shadow in the sun. I sat there in the queen’s garden and looked at Bathsheba, whose eyes were wide.

  “What does Adonijah mean by this?” She did not truly question; she too knew the answer.

  “Adonijah means to be king,” I said. “And he means to be king now. That is why Abiathar went as high priest with the sacred oil—Adonijah must have convinced him to anoint a new king while King David still lives.”

  David himself was the precedent for such an action; nothing but grief could come of it. For an instant I forgot all else in anger at Adonijah, as if I were his mother rather than Solomon’s. “It is sheer folly; King David is all but dead—oh, why can none of his blood ever wait?”

  Bathsheba clutched at my sleeve. “What are we to do? Adonijah king! Oh, Michal—what will he do to Solomon? You know what Adonijah is—”

  “He will do nothing,” I said. “I love you dearly, but you are sillier than a day-old rabbit! Now stop weeping and let us think.”

  Bathsheba dried her eyes as I bade her and looked at me hopefully. Bathsheba’s eyes were as sweet and trusting as they had been the day I first had seen her sitting lonely upon her housetop; I had kept her safe all the years since then. I would not fail her now.

  And so I thought—hard and fast. A man’s weapons are sword and spear; a woman’s her wits. I had learned to use my thoughts as David once used his warriors.

  Adonijah wished to be king, and would not wait. He had Abiathar the high priest for his shield and it seemed he had Joab the war-chief for his sword as well; he had the people too—or at least he had those whose eye could be caught by gold’s flash. But Adonijah did not have Benaiah, the captain of the king’s guard. He did not have Zadok, who was also high priest. He did not have the prophet Nathan, and Nathan still counted for much.

  Nor was I as certain as Adonijah must now be of where Joab’s loyalty was given. So long as King David lived, I thought Joab would strike only at David’s bidding—and King David was not yet dead. So Adonijah might not yet own Joab’s sword.

  And Adonijah did not have King David’s pledge. I knew that as surely as I knew my heart beat. If Adonijah were King David’s choice, Adonijah would shout it from the housetops. There would be no need for hasty feasts and squandered gold.

  “King David has not named Adonijah,” I said.

  “He has not named Solomon either. Oh, Adonijah is Prince Absalom all over again!”

  “Yes, and look at Prince Absalom now. He was a fool and Adonijah is the same. And so is David, to let his sons act so.”

  “Oh, no—but—but he is—” Bathsheba was never one for flint-edged truths; now she wept, rather than utter them.

  “King David is old,” I said flatly. “He is old, and his mind wanders—even he does not know anymore what he has said, and what he has not.”

  “Yes,” said Bathsheba. “And once he was so beautiful, and he made such beautiful songs, Michal!” She bowed her head; tears slid down her cheeks like rain down a wall.

  “Yes, and believed them, too—” And then I stopped, on a gasp of breath so sharp and hard that Bathsheba put an arm about me and stopped weeping.

  “Michal? Are you all right? Do you have a pain?” She put her hand over my heart.

  I shook my head. “No. No pain.” No pain, but instead a hard beat under my skin; triumph, hard and fierce, for I had the answer.

  Many years ago David had told me that I must learn a king’s ways. And so I had. David himself had taught me with his sweet lying songs. I had learned his lesson. And at last I held the future in my own hands.

  “Michal?”

  I put my arms around Bathsheba. “I am a fool,” I said, and made myself laugh. “All this time and all this worry—when David himself swore Solomon would be king after him!”

  Bathsheba stared, her eyes as round as full moons. “He did? But when? He never said so to me, or to Solomon—”

  “But he did to me! Oh, it was long ago, when Solomon was still sucking at your breast—David looked upon him and swore that Solomon would be king next, for the great love he bore you—and me. He had had a dream, David said, that the next king would—would be born twice, and have two mothers—and who else could that be but Solomon?” I spoke swiftly, clutching at Bathsheba’s plump hands. The future would be what I desired; I would shape it myself with words and deeds as David so often had.

  “King David said that? Truly?” Bathsheba’s cheeks were pink as summer roses; I told her what she wished to hear, and so she believed.

  “Truly, he said that. And see—it has lain hidden in my mind all these years—now Yahweh has let me know it again.”

  “But—why has not the king spoken?”

  “He is old; he is tired. I will go and tell him what it is that Adonijah would do now. And I think that when King David hears that, he will remember what he once promised me.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Didst not thou, my lord, O King, swear unto thine handmaid … ?”

  —I Kings 1:13

  I left Bathsheba there in the queen’s garden and went to the king’s rooms, where David lay. Abishag was there before me, as if she had never left; she sat beside David and rubbed his cold hands with her warm young fingers.

  “Go,” I said to Abishag. “Leave us.” And when she had slipped past me and away, I walked across the room and stood looking down at David.

  “Abishag? Where are you—I am cold.” His voice quavered and wai
led, winter-thin.

  “Abishag is not here, David. I am Michal. You know me. I am your wife.”

  “King Saul’s daughter.” His hand crept over the blankets, searching. “Jonathan’s sister.”

  “David’s queen.” I watched his hand move, seeking the comfort of other flesh. His hand was as thin as his voice; the ring he wore, the king’s great seal-ring, weighed heavy against the bone.

  “Michal.”

  “Yes, Michal. I have come to tell you a tale, David.” As I thought of what I would tell him a fierce pleasure awoke, and I smiled. “It is only an old tale, oft told, but it made me laugh. Perhaps, when you have heard it, you too will laugh.”

  He looked up at me, then. He was dying; his body old, his voice and his hands thin and frail. But he was not yet dead, for his eyes still gleamed clear and cunning. King David still lived in his bright eyes.

  An ancient serpent stirred against my bones; for the first time in many years I thought of my nephew Meribaal’s eyes, and of my husband Phaltiel’s. I had never seen Bathsheba’s first husband; I had never seen Uriah’s eyes. I had only seen David’s on the day he had made me choose who should live and who die … .

  “What tale?” David’s voice was weak; fretful. The voice of a helpless old man.

  “An old tale,” I said again. “Your son Adonijah proclaims himself king, as his brother Absalom did before him. He gives a great feast, and the high priest Abiathar anoints him with the sacred oil.”

  “He dares—”

  “Of course he dares; why should he not? What will you do to stop him?”

  “I have not said Adonijah will be king!” A flash of the old lion; weak, but fierce still.

  “No,” I said. “You have said that Solomon will be king.”

  David stared up at me. “No. Never have I said that.”

  “Oh, but you have.” Deep beneath my heart the serpent woke from years-long sleep. “You have sworn it on your knees before Yahweh. You had a dream that the next king would be a twice-born son with two mothers—who else but Solomon? He was born dead; I saved him. Now do you remember?”