Daughter of the Nile

by Jill Eileen Smith

  I stood, filled with too much energy. “We will not wait. We will go to King David’s palace and do what we can do.” I hurried to gather my clothes after Akila tied a strip of blue linen around my head with the ends hanging down my back—a symbol of mourning among my people. “Have the servants burn incense to their god in the queen’s honor as well.” It was the least I could do.

  The cry of mourners greeted me long before the old king’s palace came into view, despite our speed. I had commandeered a chariot for Akila and myself rather than the slower, more leisurely litter. Though Ra’s bright rays had yet to return to the land of the living, people lined the streets, clothes torn, ashes on their heads. Bitter weeping grew louder the closer we came, and my heart raced with each clomp of the horses’ hooves.

  My Egyptian chariot driver stopped at the back entrance, as close as we could get to the queen’s rooms, and I fairly ran up the steps and into the brightly lit halls. Servants scurried here and there, and women’s voices buzzed like the high-pitched thrum of bees. I made my way past the rooms that housed Solomon’s wives and concubines, not stopping until I came to Bathsheba’s door. I paused, though the guard barely paid me notice.

  I peered into the room, saw Naamah and Abishag and Tirzah huddled together in one corner of the sitting room while servants stood with basins and ointments near the queen’s bedchamber. Suddenly I felt like an outsider in this place, for though Naamah was an Ammonite, she embraced Israel’s god. Abishag was Hebrew and had held the faith of her people all her life.

  I glanced at Akila, who nodded encouragement. I was Solomon’s wife, after all, and one who ranked high among his many women. I belonged here, I told myself, though my heart slowed in uncertainty as I stepped over the threshold. I walked, head high, toward Tirzah and the other two favorites of Solomon and Bathsheba.

  Tirzah rushed forward and took my hand. “Siti. How good of you to come.”

  Emotion filled me as I glimpsed the tears in the old servant’s eyes. I pulled her into a warm embrace. I had never considered myself so above such women that I could not show kindness. Had I been born to a different family, it could be I who stood in her place. “I am so sorry for your loss,” I said when Tirzah pulled back and tugged me closer to the huddled group.

  I glanced at Naamah first, then Abishag, and my heart stirred for them. “What do you know? I just spoke with her yesterday. How can this be?”

  Naamah lifted her chin, and for a brief moment I sensed the old jealousy that she had exhibited when I first moved to Jerusalem as Solomon’s bride. I couldn’t blame her, really. Not when she had been his only wife for those first few years.

  “She has not been well.” It was Abishag who spoke, easing the tension between us. “It is not like the sickness King David had suffered. But I could tell she had grown weary, as if life had become too much to bear.” She looked beyond me, and I turned at the sound of footsteps. Solomon approached, his dark eyes swollen from weeping, his gaze distant, as one who dreams.

  I stepped aside and allowed him to approach us, longing to take his hand, to comfort him. But I waited. Naamah deserved to be the first to comfort, if he would allow it. She moved to close the gap between them.

  “My lord.” She knelt before him and clasped his hand in hers.

  He looked down, and it seemed he knew he should speak, but no words came.

  Naamah kissed his ring and stood. She touched his face, brushed the hair from his eyes. “Please, my lord, come and sit. Let us get you something to drink, to soothe you.”

  He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “Soothe me?” A hardened look swept through his brooding eyes, like the flame of buried anger. “My mother is dead. There is nothing that can soothe that.” He looked from one to the other of us, his gaze resting on Tirzah.

  “Oh, my boy,” she said, coming toward him, her arms outstretched.

  His dark eyes softened, the hardness crumbling. He pulled his old nurse into his arms and wept.

  Despite Solomon’s greater height and strength, it was Tirzah, bent and aging woman that she was, who led Solomon to a couch and coaxed him to sit. She sat beside him, and he rested his head on her shoulder, an action I had never seen from him. Not like that. I had never seen my husband grieve.

  “What will I do without her, Tirzah?” Solomon’s voice cracked, and I wished there were not so many servants milling about to hear the sorrow, the weakness of their king.

  “You will rule Israel as you always have, my son,” Tirzah said, her voice strong, though it carried a slight tremble. “And you will do the things you know she would want you to do. Obey the Lord and walk in His ways, as your father David did.” She spoke other words, softer now, that I couldn’t hear.

  I glanced at my rivals, but they were caught up in watching Solomon, tears drawing lines down their cheeks. “Is there anything we can do?” I asked them when at last Solomon straightened, tore his robe, and took ashes from a pot a servant brought to him and poured them over his head.

  “As the king has done, we will do,” Abishag said, glancing my way. The two of them walked closer to the king, sat on the floor, and did as he had.

  I stared, trying to make sense of this custom, but decided now was not the time to show my foreign ways. I walked toward them, grateful I had thought to pull a Hebrew robe over my narrow shift, grabbed its collar and ripped it as I had seen the others do, and then sat among them farthest from Solomon.

  He did not look my way, nor at anything in particular for the longest time, until I thought my feet would go numb from my cramped kneeling. But despite the quiet among us and the wailing in the other parts of the palace, I found something sacred in this moment. A son who grieves his mother so profoundly is a son who loved her well.

  I wondered if he would grieve for me, for I was certain beyond all doubt that he did not love me as he had loved Bathsheba. If she had feared the direction of his choices while she lived, what would become of him with her gone?

  Hours later, Solomon stood dressed once more in royal finery at the head of the largest crowd I had ever seen. Gone was the grieving boy Tirzah had held in her arms. Returned was the king whose tears and bitter cries the people of Israel expected to see when we reached King David’s tomb. It was the nature of royalty, which I knew far too well.

  Bathsheba’s body was not mummified as bodies were in my country, but rather laid on a gilded bier, lifted above the heads of the mourners, and carried before Solomon.

  I followed, dressed in the garments of the Hebrews, to honor my mother-in-law, though I did not stand as close to Solomon as Naamah and Abishag and their children did. Tirzah wept quietly beside the king, a great privilege for her that I was grateful to witness. Perhaps his old nurse would fill the role his mother had carried, as I often turned to Akila for comfort. But something inside me did not think so.

  The heavy doors of King David’s tomb squealed as they were pried open, and the crowd silenced as Solomon, tears still dampening his beard, turned to face them.

  “Many among you once thought my mother an adulteress and a woman unfaithful to our God, to Yahweh. But I am here to remind you that not one of us who walks the earth walks it in complete integrity. There is no one righteous before our God, not even one. And though my mother stumbled and my father sinned against her, our great God granted them both grace and mercy. And in His kindness, He set me upon my father’s throne, the secondborn son of my mother, who devoted her life to teaching me to observe all of Yahweh’s commandments.” He paused as though the words were too difficult to say, and I saw his Adam’s apple move. He looked over the crowd.

  “I charge you, by the grace of the I AM, our mighty God, to remember my mother with kindness. To preserve her memory for the good she has done. And when you pray for me, for yourselves, do not forget that our God is a forgiving God. My mother knew that better than I. Better than any of us. May we learn from her life and know it too.”

  He turned and nodded to the men who still held the bie
r aloft. Silence fell as the men carried the body of the queen into the tomb. But in the silence, my heart still beat to the tune of Solomon’s eulogy. His words were nothing like the words of the priests of my people. He did not say all the right prayers to guide his mother to a place of rest. It was as if he already expected her to be there, without the gods to guide her.

  I struggled to understand. When he turned once more to dismiss the crowd, his gaze caught mine, and I could not keep the questions from my eyes. If only he could make me see. He had tried, I know, but I could not grasp this strange thinking. There should be far more rituals involved, far more rites invoked. His mother did not even take her jewels with her into the tomb.

  Solomon said something to Tirzah, then approached Naamah and Abishag. His children wrapped their arms about him, some of them already grown men and women, others still barely reaching his knee. And I stood watching, alone in my beliefs. Alone in my confusion, wishing I had someone besides my maid to hold me close and love me too.

  12

  A week passed, and I spent little time outside of my bedchamber. I felt listless, lifeless, and wished I held Solomon’s drive for projects. I could remake the rooms in my palace, call in new designers to rearrange or re-create new tapestries and pottery. Perhaps a trip home would help, if Solomon would allow it. To see the Nile again, to gaze upon my mother and father one last time.

  I petted Abdukar, whose once young, soft fur hardly rippled when I stroked him. He had thinned, and his fur had grown coarse in these past years. I would lose him soon. I looked at my faithful furry friend, Bathsheba’s loss too close to my heart. Abdukar would be buried with the same dignity Lapis had been. But I could not do so here. He should be buried in Bastet’s temple at Bubastis. The thought spurred me to finally move from my couch. I called Akila to join me.

  “I want to go home,” I said, stiffening at her raised brow. “I wouldn’t stay, of course. But I want to see my parents one more time before they take the path Bathsheba took.” I looked down at my aging cat, then met her gaze. “And I want to secure safe passage for Abdukar when his time comes. I just need to get Solomon to allow it.”

  “That could be difficult, my lady. They say he has shut himself up in his palace and won’t even attend court. He is still buried in his grief.” Akila moved about the room to straighten things I had tossed about in my boredom.

  “True. But that should make him understand my request all the more.” I stood. “Gather my finest clothes. I am going to see if he will allow me into those rooms.” My gaze glanced off her skeptical one. “If nothing else, perhaps I can comfort him.”

  Gaining entrance to Solomon’s palace was far easier than I expected, though I am not sure why I thought it would be so difficult. I was a king’s wife. Surely that allowed me some privilege. But when I stood before the doors to his private chambers, saw the lion’s head carvings, so different from my Bastet yet so similar, I felt the old questions rise in me again. But I could not ask them now. Not after he had suffered such a loss.

  The guard knocked and spoke with a servant inside Solomon’s rooms. The door shut again. I waited, fearing he would deny my visit. But sometime later, after I thought to turn around and return home, the door opened and Solomon himself greeted me.

  He extended his hand and I took it, but once the door closed behind us, his arms came around me so fast it took my breath. He held me in silence, as though he were clinging to something he dared not lose.

  “Siti,” he whispered against my ear. “I am glad you came.”

  He drew me into his expansive sitting room, and in the next few hours he fed me sweet fruits and wine, spoke of his mother, and told me stories of his youth like he had never spoken before, filling in with greater detail the time when they were all forced to flee Jerusalem to escape his brother Absalom.

  “Your kingdom has suffered much in the years of your youth,” I said when that last story ended.

  “Much of it due to the hatred of the previous king’s kin, some of it the consequences of my father’s sin.” He looked beyond me. “I am sure one day I will suffer for my sins in a way my father did not.”

  “What sins, my lord?” I came and knelt beside him, but he pulled me up next to him instead.

  “Was it not you who accused me of breaking the laws of my God?” His brow lifted in curious thought. “You know what sins, Siti. And many more since, I am sure. No man is completely pure in heart.”

  “Then how can they pass through the underworld? For if they cannot pass the test of a pure heart, they will be lost forever.” The question came before I could stop it. I had not planned to speak of such things today. But by his look, he did not seem offended.

  “Clean hands and a pure heart come from knowing when we have failed our God’s standards and repent. As my father repented when he took my mother, who at the time was married to another man.” He looked at me. “Repentance brings a pure heart, Siti.”

  “So it does not matter if one knows the right things to say to the gods as we pass through the underworld?” But I already knew what he would say.

  “Nothing we can say or do aside from ‘forgive me’ will give us safe passage with our Maker.” He stroked my hair, and I loved the way he sifted the strands from my face. He leaned close until I felt his breath, his lips brushing mine. “Can we not speak of loss just now? I am weary of tears.” He kissed me then, gently, fully, as he had in the early days of our marriage.

  I wrapped my arms around him and let him lift me into his. Our love was better than wine, and I gave myself to him with all my heart.

  Surprisingly, I stayed with Solomon for the next three days, as though I were a new bride and this our wedding week. And I sensed, though I dared not believe it, that life had quickened at last within me. I do not think I have ever loved any person more than I did Solomon in those moments.

  I said nothing of my suspicions, of course, because there was no way to prove such a thing for months to come. But as our time together came to its natural end, as all things do, and Solomon set to return to court, I finally found my courage to speak the words I had come to ask in the first place.

  “My lord.” I took his hand and gazed up at him, my smile soft, warm. “I would like to take a trip—with you, if you will have it—to visit my homeland, to see my parents once more.” I kissed him lightly, then stepped back to watch his expression.

  He stroked my cheek, his gaze kind. “You are homesick, my love? After such a time as this?” He glanced around the room, then searched me with that intense gaze of his.

  “Israel will never be like Egypt, my lord. And to be completely honest, I want to prepare a place for Abdukar when he passes, if you will allow it. He should be enshrined in Bastet’s temple in Bubastis.” I squeezed his hand, intertwining our fingers.

  “Abdukar still lives, does he not?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but he is not long for this world.”

  His brows drew down, a look I had seen often these past few days. “I am sorry to hear it. But does this mean you will take Abdukar with you and wait until he passes? You could be gone years, my love.”

  I had not considered that, nor how long I might stay. “I will bury him here then. I will simply buy the things I need for my servants to mummify his body when the time comes. But please, let me visit my family one last time.” I hated to beg, but I knew that once I left these rooms, I would not be back for a long time. Solomon had too many other obligations, too many wives, too many foreign dignitaries coming from all corners of the world, too many building projects in Megiddo and Gezer and the Millo, and a fleet of ships the likes of which I had never seen. Not to mention his other palace in the forest of Lebanon, where I hoped he might bring me to stay with him one day.

  He cupped my cheeks, looked intently into my eyes, but I did not flinch. “You will accompany my men when they make the next purchase of horses and chariots from Thebes. You may stay six months but no longer. The next group of men will bring you back.”

 
My heart beat lighter at his words, and I threw my arms about his neck, kissing him soundly. “Thank you, my lord! Six months will be plenty of time.” I tilted my head. “But you will not join me at the first?”

  He shook his head. “I cannot get away just now. Perhaps I will join the men who bring you back.” He kissed my forehead, and I knew our conversation was at an end. “Give your parents my greetings.”

  “I will,” I promised, smiling. I turned toward the door, for I recognized a dismissal when I saw one, and walked to the hall. Akila would return to gather my things when Solomon left for court. In the meantime, I hurried along the corridors to my waiting litter. I was going home.

  Postlude

  My visit to Egypt lasted the full six months, and at first I felt giddy to be back among my people. My mother wondered why I had come, but my sister showed joy to see me. My father plied me with questions about Solomon’s kingdom.

  As the months passed, and I realized that I truly did carry Solomon’s child, I recognized that Egypt was not home to me as it once was. Whether Solomon saw much of me or not, my place was in Israel, supporting him in whatever way I could.

  I secured the canopic jars I needed for Abdukar’s future passing, which I prayed was a long time coming, and enjoyed many a barge ride on the winding Nile. I watched Ra’s rays dip below the Nile’s edge like a flame and saw him rise again each dawn.

  But as I walked about Thebes in the company of Salama, listening to her talk about the many festivals and offerings to one god or another, I realized that I did not miss these things. Suddenly our many gods confused me more than Solomon’s Yahweh.

  Yahweh. That name always made me shudder with a kind of dread I could not name. As though it was a name a man should not speak aloud. I began to worry that I had offended Him, and somehow that seemed worse than offending Bastet.