Game of Queens

by India Edghill

  “—was so delighted the Great Daniel had actually been wrong for a change he’d have granted whatever you asked for,” Arioch finished.

  “But I wasn’t wrong,” Daniel said.

  “You told the king it was a dragon,” Samamat pointed out.

  Daniel thought about this for a moment. “Oh,” he said at last.

  Elu-ki turned and pressed her face against her dragon’s neck. A sun-scarab adorned the base of her spine. Arioch stared at the tattoo as if memorizing it.

  “Come with me, Elu-ki, and I’ll find you something to wear,” Samamat said firmly. “And you men go find a place for the dragon, and something for it to eat.”

  “Bel,” the dragon’s priestess said. “Her name is Bel.”

  Smiling sweetly, Elu-ki handed the dragon’s leash to Arioch and followed Samamat.

  Arioch stared at the dragon; the dragon stepped delicately over to Arioch and with one swift movement of her snakelike tongue, licked his neck. “Ahriman’s hells!” Arioch said. “Here, you take it.” Since Daniel was bent over laughing, Arioch dropped the leash over Daniel’s neck. “And stop that stupid laughing,” Arioch added.

  * * *

  Samamat had managed to find a garment to cover Elu-ki; Daniel thought he recognized one of his own tunics. Since the priestess was small-boned and delicate as a child, the linen tunic more than covered her. Samamat tried, vainly, to belt in the tunic. Too much fabric; the cloth bunched up, and the little priestess looked like a badly packed bundle.

  “I’m sorry, Elu-ki,” Samamat said, “but there’s nothing here to fit you. We can go to the marketplace tomorrow and buy cloth. My maid can make you something to wear.”

  “I know I’m going to regret asking this,” Arioch said, “but why can’t your maid alter what our pet priestess has on right now?”

  “I gave her the day off to watch the parade of the guilds.” Samamat regarded Elu-ki critically, and sighed. “Elu-ki,” Samamat began.

  “No.” Elu-ki spoke gently but Daniel heard the iron beneath the soft voice.

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” Samamat protested, and Elu-ki smiled.

  “No, I will not cover my head with a wig or veil. I will not hide the marks of my office as priestess.”

  Samamat sighed; Arioch laughed, and said, “She reminds me of you, Daniel.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—because she answers questions no one’s asked? Because she’s got a dragon as a pet? Because she’s just plain strange? Because she’s—”

  “Egyptian?” Samamat finished sweetly.

  “Absolutely. Egyptian.”

  “Arioch, that’s ridiculous. We’re nothing alike.”

  “Of course not. You’re not … Egyptian,” Arioch said.

  Samamat stared at the priestess as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re Egyptian!” Samamat ran off; they heard her dashing up the stairs to the roof. Elu-ki raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ve learned not to ask,” Arioch told her.

  A few moments later Samamat dashed back carrying a piece of papyrus and a reed pen. “Elu-ki, have you ever seen something like this?” With swift strokes of the reed, Samamat drew the curves of the broken stone arch they had stumbled upon the day of King Nebuchadnezzar’s hunt.

  Elu-ki stared, then smiled—or at least she showed her teeth. “Oh yes. The gods come through such gates, when they deign to speak with mortals. It is good that you did not touch it.”

  “I told you,” Arioch said.

  “Never touch that which belongs to the gods,” Elu-ki agreed.

  “Always good advice,” said Arioch. “Now if Daniel here could only manage to keep out of matters that belong to kings—”

  “The dragon wasn’t my fault,” Daniel insisted plaintively.

  “It never is, Daniel,” Arioch said. “But somehow we’re now saddled with a dragon. I’m just pointing this out before the next time you decide to bring home a little something from a temple.”

  Daniel glared at Arioch. “There isn’t going to be a next time.”

  Silence. Skeptical silence. Priestess Amunet-Nefer-Setmut-Elu-ki smiled very sweetly and stroked Bel’s long supple neck.

  “And Bel’s a very small dragon,” Samamat pointed out.

  “Somehow that’s not a very great comfort to me,” Arioch said. “I just hope that King Darius, may he live forever, won’t give Daniel any more gifts.”

  * * *

  But it wasn’t any royal whim that had carved Daniel’s reputation for wisdom in stone.

  It had been a desperate husband’s plea. And for once, Arioch’s accusation that Daniel sought out trouble was right, for Daniel had deliberately involved himself in the affair. Oh, it was the woman’s husband who had begged Daniel’s help, but it was Daniel himself who had sought the man out. Even now, Daniel hesitated to speak of what had sent him, unbidden, to judge between lies and truth—not because Arioch and Samamat would scoff, but because they would believe. And Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to carry the burden of that belief.

  All Daniel knew was that God had sent him to save Susannah. And that was all he needed to know.

  He could no longer remember the words that had commanded him, nor the sound of the voice—if voice there had been. Once that troubled him. How could he not recall what the Most High had said to him, or how? Later he realized that wasn’t important. What mattered was that the Lord had intervened to save a virtuous woman …

  … and if Daniel had not proven Susannah’s innocence, thousands of lives would have been lost many years later. Daniel tried very hard never to think of the future that would have come if Susannah had perished.

  * * *

  The three of them had been peaceably occupied at home when Daniel heard the summons. Between one breath and the next, time ceased, and Daniel became the still center of a silent world. He waited, while beyond him, Arioch and Samamat moved slowly, as if through clear honey instead of air. He saw Samamat’s lips move as she spoke, but he could hear nothing but the beating of his own heart.

  A voice echoed within him, commanding, pressing him to act. Act now. Act against falsehood. Against evil. Seek it and destroy it. Where? Daniel asked the silent voice. You will know. Go. Go now.

  The force released him as suddenly as it had seized him. Daniel stumbled and Samamat steadied him; for a breath he clung to her arms, drew in the scent of her hair. “Daniel?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  He pushed himself away from her. “I have to go.”

  “Where?” Samamat looked at him as intently as if he were a new star in the night sky.

  “I’ll explain when I get back.”

  “Oh, no, Daniel.” Arioch moved to block the doorway. “You’ll explain now.”

  “There isn’t time. Stand aside, Arioch—I have to go now.”

  For once Arioch hadn’t argued. He’d stepped aside, and Daniel had fled into the street, following the Lord’s command.

  * * *

  The voice had been right: Daniel knew at once which way to run. As he hurried through the gate into the Jewish Quarter, a man ran hard into him, and only luck kept them both upright. Daniel found himself gazing at a man whose youthful good looks were marred by ashes rubbed over his skin and hair, and the long tears through his fine linen tunic.

  “I’m Daniel. You must be why I’m here.”

  The man stared at him, then clutched at his arms. “Daniel? You’re Daniel, the wise man? Praise the Lord!”

  “Yes. And you?”

  “Come, come quickly!” The man grasped Daniel’s garment, pulled as if to lead him in the direction Daniel already knew he must go. He went with the frantic man, moving swiftly through the streets as he heard why he had been sent here so suddenly.

  The desperate man was Joakim, a wealthy Jewish merchant whose most precious jewel was his wife. “My beloved wife—you must save her, Daniel, you must, these are lies, foul lies—never, never would she do such a thing—my perfect wife�
�”

  Susannah.

  Susannah, prized for her absolute virtue—and her absolute beauty. Noted for her piety and modesty, by her husband’s order she did not wear the all-concealing veil she herself would have chosen, but one that covered only her hair. A wife’s duty is to obey her husband, and Susannah’s husband enjoyed displaying his most valued possession: his beautiful and untouchable wife.…

  “Now that’s a really bad idea.” Daniel heard Arioch’s acid comment as clearly as if he stood beside him listening to Joakim’s tale. And Arioch would be right. Joakim’s a fool.

  Susannah, beauteous and perfectly formed as a pagan goddess. Hair black as deep midnight, skin as smooth and pale as cream, lips red as roses. Eyes violet as the sky at twilight. Susannah, full-breasted and slim-waisted, hips swelling in a perfect arch. Neither too tall nor too short: her hands slender and her feet small and high-arched …

  “Please, Joakim, I don’t need to know all that,” Daniel said hastily. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just—you must help! The Lord put it into my mind to come to you, surely you can right this wrong and save my wife!”

  “I will try. We must have faith in the Lord, Joakim.”

  “I do. I do. This is my fault, mine—I was too proud. But Susannah—she is so beautiful, so pure, so devout. I gloried in that. Whenever a man asked, ‘Who can find a virtuous woman?’ I always thought, I can. Yes, I can.” Joakim bowed his head and buried his face in his hands.

  Daniel sighed. “Now, tell me what has happened that your wife must be saved. What has she done?”

  “Nothing! She has done nothing!”

  “Someone did something, Joakim, or I would not have been sent here. What?”

  The story Joakim told didn’t exactly surprise Daniel, although it did disgust him. How could men do such things and live with themselves after? Two older men, respected elders, judges, of the Jewish community, had watched Susannah in the marketplace and coveted her.

  “They spied upon her in her mikvah. I built one for her in our garden, so that she might purify herself in private. How could she know they would watch her in her most private moments? Unclothed, innocent of their vile gaze?”

  Daniel didn’t bother to ask how the two men had gained such a view of the virtuous wife. They probably climbed the wall, or even drilled a hole through it. What matters is that they can describe every mark on her body.

  Watching Susannah bathe incited even more lust in the two men. Knowing they had no chance of gaining her by any other means, one day they entered the garden while she was bathing and demanded she lie with them—or they would accuse her of adultery.

  “She refused, placing her faith in God, and cried out for help.”

  But when the servants ran into the garden, her would-be rapists shouted that they had caught Susannah in the arms of a young man. The young man had fled, but they had prevented Susannah from doing so. And as they had threatened that if she denied them, they would accuse her of adultery. Jewish law called for death by stoning.

  But stoning was more than merely a sentence of death. Stoning was death by slow torture. The stones were chosen carefully; stones the size of a man’s fist. Men would hurl those unyielding stones at her until she died. Unless a man took pity upon her, and threw his stone hard and true and smashed the thin bone at her temple, it would take a long, long time for Susannah to die.

  And they will make her husband watch. They will make him hold a stone in his hand. They will make him throw it at his wife. And if he does not … Daniel knew what happened when a crowd transmuted into a mob. Joakim, too, would die. And those so-called judges will claim his wealth.

  Daniel grabbed Joakim’s arm, making the other man stop. “So, Joakim, these two men accuse your wife of adultery and you did nothing? You let them take her away?”

  “I did not! They dragged her to the synagogue and told their lying story again there. When I came home, my servants and slaves were weeping so hard it was hard to draw from them what had happened. As soon as I knew, I ran to claim her back, but they would not release Susannah to me. I swore I did not believe the accusation, I swore there is no more chaste and faithful wife in all the empire than my Susannah. It was no use. All I gained was half an hour alone with my wife. And she asked—she asked me to…” Joakim’s voice faltered.

  “I can guess what she asked of you. Did you agree?”

  “I told her I would not let her die. I swore I would reveal her accusers for the false, evil men they are, and bring her safely home.”

  “That is a great deal to promise, and she asked only one thing of you. Did you agree to do as she asked?” Daniel waited, and at last Joakim said in a voice so low Daniel barely heard him,

  “I promised I would not let her suffer.”

  Daniel looked deep into Joakim’s eyes. “Tell me, Joakim, do you believe your wife with all your heart? Does any doubt, however small, trouble your mind?”

  “No! No, I do not doubt her. Never would Susannah be unchaste in heart or mind or body. And even if I doubted, even if I thought she had done what they accuse her of—” Joakim drew in a deep breath. Suddenly he looked old and weary. “Even if she had, I would never give her into the hands of men who seek only to kill by slow torture.”

  Daniel stared down at the dusty bricks under their feet. “What would you do? If she truly had played the whore?”

  Joakim sighed. “I would beat her, I suppose. No one would blame me for that, least of all Susannah.”

  At last Daniel lifted his head. “Come, then. I will—”

  “Speak to Susannah?”

  “To Susannah?” Daniel smiled and shook his head. “No. No, Joakim, I am going to talk to those two pious, virtuous, God-fearing men who uncovered an adulterous wife by spying upon her in her bath.”

  * * *

  “Do you realize how fatally easy it is to gain a reputation for great wisdom?” Daniel asked when he returned home to find Arioch and Samamat rather grimly waiting for him.

  “Yes,” Arioch said.

  “Daniel, you look exhausted.” Samamat put her arms around him. “When did you eat last?”

  “I—don’t remember,” Daniel said apologetically. “What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

  “I mean, yes, I do know how easy it is to get a reputation for great wisdom, Daniel. Why? Was I unclear?”

  “Oh, stop taunting him. He’s tired.” Samamat put a cup of wine into Daniel’s hands. “Drink this. Now. Then you can have some lamb stew.”

  “The word was clear enough,” said Daniel, “but what did you mean?”

  “I meant all you need is common sense, which is anything but common. The average man has less sense than the average sheep,” Arioch said.

  “And the average woman?” Samamat asked, smiling.

  “Has twice the sense of either,” Arioch said. “Except in this case, in which none of them have the brains the Wise God gave a new-hatched minnow.”

  Although Daniel expected Samamat to object, she nodded agreement. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. It’s as if Susannah was gifted with so much beauty there wasn’t room for brains as well.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Susannah,” Daniel said, and Samamat smiled rather grimly.

  “I saw her in the marketplace once. I think she’s the most beautiful creature I ever saw. And of course everyone knows about her now. The story flew through the city like—like—”

  “Like scandalous gossip?” Arioch suggested.

  “Oh. Well, then you know all about it already,” Daniel said. “Sama, may I please have some more wine?”

  “Later. We don’t know all about it.” Samamat smiled and patted the bench. “Come, Daniel, tell us how you knew those men were lying about the most beautiful and most virtuous lady in all the Jewish Quarter—”

  “Aside from the fact that their lips were moving,” Arioch said, and Daniel laughed.

  “Aside from that? It wasn’t difficult, really.”


  No, not difficult, only pathetically ridiculous. And if Susannah’s foolish husband hadn’t been fond enough of her to seek Daniel’s advice, she would now be dead, victim of two men’s rejected lust and her iron virtue.

  The most beautiful and most virtuous lady in all Babylon … Susannah held her beauty cheap compared to her faith, her virtue, and her husband’s honor. It would have been better had she prided herself on her perfect face and figure …

  “Daniel? You’re thinking again.” Arioch waved his hand in front of Daniel’s eyes. “Men? Lying? Remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, you heard about the accusation?”

  “All Babylon heard about it.” Samamat frowned. “As if the Most Virtuous would actually lie with a man not her husband—and in her own garden.”

  “Yes, that did sound odd, didn’t it?” Arioch said.

  “Especially since her husband’s young and handsome and utterly besotted with her,” Samamat finished, and Daniel nodded.

  “Very odd.” But with two venerable elders both swearing that they had seen Susannah seduce a young man into her garden and then into her arms; two men able to describe every beauty mark upon her body, Susannah was doomed. Of course they could describe her in loving detail; the two men had spied upon the lady as she bathed. “Clearly more than once,” Daniel added.

  Susannah’s only defense was to state that she had not sinned and to call upon God to witness to the truth of her words and the purity of her body. Against her two accusers, her words weighed nothing. But at least Susannah’s husband possessed some sense, for he had urgently sought out Daniel.

  “So I went, of course. First I spoke to the Most Vir—to Susannah, and I took each of Susannah’s accusers aside and spoke to him alone.”

  “By the way, could these reputable elders of yours describe the young man our virtuous lady supposedly risked her life to embrace?” Arioch asked.

  “Actually, they could. Of course, one said he was tall and dark, and the other that he was fair like a Greek.”