Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba

by Edghill, India

  Horses and hounds and harlots. When I turn this voyage into a tavern tale, no one will believe me. He only hoped that when the Tarshish fleet at last docked at the port of Ezion-geber, the city governor there would be put to even half the effort and expense Hodaiah himself had been.

  And that King Solomon found the Queen of Sheba’s visit worth its cost.

  Nikaulis

  So much water. Until now, the greatest expanse of water Nikaulis had ever seen had been the Goddess’s Mirror, the lake that lay at the feet of the Shining Mountains. The Mirror was pure and cold as ice, a daughter of mountain streams. Nikaulis had grown to womanhood beside the Mirror, played games of the hunt and the quest upon its shores.

  But the Mirror was a small thing; even a child standing upon the Mirror’s edge could see the far shore across its smooth water. The sea was different.

  The ship floated upon water as changeable and restless as clouds. Water rippled about the hull, flashed phoenix-bright as wavelets shifted and danced in the sun. To the east, Nikaulis could watch the land as the ship slid past, but to the west, water covered all the world, shimmered and glinted to the far horizon. She knew there was land beyond this sea; the kingdoms of Cush and Egypt. But staring out across the expanse of restless water, it was hard to believe.

  “A pomegranate seed for your thoughts.”

  Almost startled—the water’s constant slap against the wooden hull, the creaking of boards and rustle of canvas hid lesser sounds; she had not heard Khurrami approach—Nikaulis swiftly turned, her fingertips just touching her knife’s hilt.

  “Peace, Nikaulis,” Khurrami said, “it is only I.”

  Nikaulis inhaled slowly. “I did not hear you, that is all.” I am too tight-drawn. I must ease myself, or I shall snap as hard as a dry bowstring.

  Khurrami moved closer, smiling, and put her hands upon the rail. “What do you think of the sea? Is not so vast a quantity of water a miracle? And salt too—I tried a mouthful, and the water truly is salt enough to poison one. I wonder how the fish survive it?”

  “Doubtless they are accustomed to the salt.”

  “Perhaps they find it pleasant.” Khurrami stared down into the lucid water. “So many fish, and so pretty; do you think the queen would like some for the palace fountains?”

  “They would die there.” Nikaulis watched a school of fish swirl past. Blue and red and yellow—an invisible signal sent the fish flying back the way they had come, dashing beneath the ship. Forward and back, side to side, a pattern as explicit as dance … .

  “Perhaps.” Khurrami leaned forward; a bead slipped from her braids and fell into the sea below. A dozen fish broke ranks, converging on the sinking bead. An instant’s flurry, then the fish merged into the larger group once more. “Do you suppose they ate it?” Khurrami asked.

  “Perhaps.” Nikaulis glanced sidelong at Khurrami. The queen’s handmaiden was teasing another bead from her elaborate braids, plainly willing to lose a second bauble for the pleasure of teasing the hopeful fish. Khurrami freed the bright bead and tossed it overboard; again a small group of fish flashed toward it, tested the offering, abandoned it as inedible, vanished among their brethren. Then Khurrami said in a low, steady voice, “What think you of our queen’s quest, Nikaulis?”

  Is this a test? Everyone knew Khurrami was the queen’s eyes and ears—So even she must know her idle queries carry much weight. And test or no, courtesy demanded an answer.

  “It is not my place to think anything. It is my place—”

  “To guard and to obey. Yes.” Khurrami’s fingers twined in the end of her long plait of beaded braids, fretting the prisoned hair free. She glanced sidelong at Nikaulis. “Nothing more than that, Queen’s Guard?”

  Something in Khurrami’s tone—a subtle undertone of mockery, barely sensed—rasped harsh as salt on skin. “What more should there be? The Queen of the Morning commands we journey to a far land so she may face the King of Wisdom. We journey.”

  “Our Mother commands.”

  Khurrami’s correction pricked light but sharp; Nikaulis countered with a query of her own. “And you, Queen’s Lady? What do you think of this venture?”

  “I?” Khurrami’s painted eyelids swept down like glittering green wings, hiding her cat-pale eyes. “Oh, I think nothing—save the journey is long and the sea wide—and the men from the north coarse and strange. I wonder what their king is truly like; his servants are uncouth, unsubtle. Can their king be better?”

  “Even if he is not, Ilat Herself has commanded our queen to seek him out.”

  “Yes.”

  “To ask his aid?” Nikaulis heard the question underlying her words, betraying the fears that troubled her dreams. It is time to ask plainly. Odd how speaking out could be the greatest fear of all. “My lady Khurrami—do you think this journey wise?”

  To question her queen’s command, her goddess’s oracle—Truly I am uneasy in my heart. Danger lies ahead. Am I the only one who foresees evil at journey’s end?

  Apparently enchanted by the water dancing below, Khurrami did not move. At last she said, “Do you think it folly, that our queen should obey Ilat’s will and court the King of Wisdom?”

  “And when we enter the realm of this wise king? What then?”

  Without looking up, Khurrami shrugged; sunlight rippled over her skin, supple as the water below her. “Why, then the queen will do as she must, and so will we.” Then she glanced slantwise at Nikaulis. “Do you think I know the goddess’s mind, or the queen’s?”

  “I think you know.” Nikaulis stared into the crystal water. Fish flashed bright, fleeing a larger shape; danger lurking in the shadow of the ship. “And I think you will not tell.”

  Bilqis

  Until she stood upon the ship’s wooden deck and looked out upon the sea’s glass-smooth surface, Bilqis had remained the queen, had refused to listen to her own longing heart. Always, always since she was ten years old, always she had obeyed the dictates of duty. Duty to blood, duty to land, duty to temple. Never had she wavered from that narrow pathway; never had she hesitated over a choice.

  Duty, always duty. Such devotion had not come easily to her; she had been the youngest of three royal daughters, late-born, a true love-child, born to the man her mother had taken only for pleasure. Born when her two sisters were already women grown.

  She had been the favored child, the indulged and pampered child. The daughter my mother could claim as all her own. The daughter who could choose her own way in life. The eldest for the throne and the second for the temple, and the youngest—the youngest for freedom.

  Such indulgence had seemed safe enough; her mother’s duty to land and to heaven had been done. Both her sisters had already chosen consorts, already begotten children for Sheba. Indeed, her eldest sister had already bestowed two girls upon the royal family. The ancient line of queen’s blood assured, her mother had taken pure joy in her last-born daughter, rearing her with all the liberty any Sheban child might know. Chains bound her sisters, invisible bonds of tradition and honor—

  “But you, my Bilqis—you will fly where the winds blow wild, swim where the sea swirls high. The Sun of our Days has promised you a bright life, a life that shines forever, shines like the Morning Star—”

  But her mother had been wrong. Plague had swept over Sheba, death on silent wings. And when those dark wings lifted, her sisters and their children lay dead, and all that remained of the bloodline of the ancient queens was a ten-year-old girl. Between sunset and sunrise, death bequeathed Bilqis an unsought crown.

  “You are my heir now.” Her mother’s words fell flat against her ears, like blows. “You must learn new skills and put away old. And I—I must—” Her mother had not finished; her words faltered and she fell silent. But Bilqis knew life had forever altered. Wild winds could not carry one bound to earth by a crown’s weight.

  From that moment, she no longer ran free; duty lay before her, and she had accepted the burden. As had her mother; a queen with only one heir t
o offer the land placed the future at risk. So, despite her age, Bilqis’s mother had devoted herself to conceiving another daughter—a hard task and one that, in the end, cost her life.

  But she succeeded in providing a sister to Bilqis. Sahjahira. In duty and love, Bilqis had raised Sahjahira to womanhood, only to see her younger sister, in her turn, die in the attempt to grant Sheba a daughter.

  My poor ’hira. She did her best—as did I. For as soon as permitted, Bilqis had chosen a consort and striven to create security for Sheba, daughters for the crown. Daughters she had conceived and borne—only to watch them die before they cut their first teeth. Only Ilat Herself knew what it had cost Bilqis to persevere, what deep unhealed scars marred her heart. But she endured and persisted, and at last she had borne a daughter who cut her teeth, and walked, and learned to say “Mother.”

  Allit. Oh, my dear child—

  Allit, born of a full moon spent at the Temple, of a father never known. Goddess-child, golden and perfect; reared to follow proudly in the footsteps of all the queens before her. She, too, had enslaved herself willingly to her duty—

  More willingly than I wished to let her. Fearful, Bilqis had been reluctant to permit her only daughter to take a consort, to risk herself in childbirth. But she had consented at last, forced to bow to necessity. “For how will you ever have a granddaughter, Mother, if I never bear a daughter? You worry too much over me; trust Ilat, as I do.”

  Allit had lived and died in that trust; Bilqis had sat beside her, holding her hand, as Allit’s life bled away, and lied to ensure her daughter’s faith never wavered.

  “Don’t cry, Mother. I’ve given Sheba a girl. I told you to trust our Lady Ilat,” Allit’s fingers squeezed hers, a pressure soft as a butterfly landing upon a flower. “Is she all right?”

  Bilqis smiled at her daughter. “Yes.” She bent and kissed Allit’s cold forehead. “Your daughter is perfect, Allit. Perfect.”

  “I knew she would be. Baalit … my goddess-child. Sheba’s queen, Mother … .”

  Allit died never knowing her newborn daughter had gone before her into the night beyond the sunset. Bilqis prayed that Allit’s shade would forgive her for the lie.

  With Allit dead, only two remained who carried the royal blood of Sheba in their veins: Sahjahira’s son, Rahbarin—and Bilqis herself

  We hold the future in trust, Rahbarin and I. We will not fail those who will come after. So Bilqis had vowed.

  But now, as she stared out over the slow rise and swell of the pale green water, a weight seemed to lift from her heart. As if the waves wash away my years, the sea-wind blows away my burdens. For the first time in many years, she permitted herself to remember her dream as a girl: To wander the wide world, seeking wisdom—

  But duty had bound her; she had set such girlish hopes aside, locked them deep within her heart as she had laid her toys within a wooden chest and closed the lid upon them. And now, at last, she had been bidden to unlock her heart and follow her long-buried desire.

  So much water. So much sky. Stare at either—sea or sky—for long and the eyes dazzled, the mind shattered into a myriad jeweled infinities.

  So much sky. So much water. So much temptation. But always she dragged herself back from the edge of the abyss; sea or sky enticed, promised sweet unending rest, in vain. I cannot. Whatever temptation lay before her, she must cleave to her covenant with her land and her people. I am their mother, their queen. I cannot abandon them. I must give them their next queen; their future. Without a queen to come after me, what is Sheba? Nothing! Another kingdom of the weak, prey to those who watch with greedy eyes.

  For the Land Beyond the Morning, the Kingdom of Spices, was a prize beyond the riches of kings. Only strength kept that prize safe. Let but a single crack show in the wall that kept out the world, and Sheba’s treasures would be ravaged by the fierce, the savage.

  A hundred generations of queens have not held Sheba safe only to lose all through my weakness. No matter what I must do—

  No matter what she must do to bring the next queen to Sheba’s throne, she would do it.

  I do not care what I must do; if I must walk barefoot to the world’s end; if I must humble myself before King Solomon and all his court; if I must lie to my people and my gods. Whatever the test, that I will do.

  She would pay the price for Sheba’s future without flinching. She would live without love, without joy, without hope. She would pay with her life, if that were the sacrifice she must make. Only one thing was unthinkable, only one fate unendurable.

  Failure.

  PART TWO

  The World’s Wisdom

  Abishag

  In Shunem, I grew from child to girl to woman. True to her laughing vow, my mother refused all men’s offers, remained a modest widow. All her efforts centered upon raising me—raising me, although I did not know it then, to tread safely along a jeweled path.

  She taught me what every girl learns, to spin and to weave, to sew and to bake. “How well your Abishag sets her stitches! You teach her well, Zilpah. She will make a good wife.”My mother smiled modestly at such praises, murmured that I was a clever, biddable girl, and pretended not to understand hints that a son, a nephew, a cousin sought such a clever, biddable bride—and one so well-dowered, with no sisters to diminish my inheritance.

  “You will not marry here in Shunem,” my mother told me.

  “How do you know that?” I never doubted her words, for everything my mother wished seemed to come to pass.

  “Because I know my past, and so I see your future. And it does not lie here.”

  “Where, then?” I asked, and my mother only smiled, and said that I would learn that in the world’s own time.

  “Never seek to hasten the stars in their courses, Daughter. What is the chiefest virtue for a woman?”

  “Patience,” I said, mindful of her teaching.

  “Be patient then. Now let us see what the cloth merchant has to show today.”

  Baalit Sings

  When I was a child, nothing in my father’s court seemed strange to me. For my father was Solomon the Wise, king of Israel and Judah, and kings are not bound by the laws that rule lesser men—or so my grandmothers taught me, each of the three in her own way.

  I did not think it strange I had three grandmothers when other children owned only two, just as I did not think it strange I had so many stepmothers—for kings must marry widely and wisely. I saw the world through the shining veil of a much-indulged childhood until the day my father wed the Colchian princess. That marriage did more than seal another treaty; it set one too many weights in the scales my father fought to balance.

  And it unbound the veil of childhood from my eyes. After that day I could no longer see and not understand. And after that day, I was no longer content to be only my father’s pampered daughter. But what else I wished to be, even I did not yet know.

  The Colchian princess was late; the royal women had waited half the morning in the gallery that overlooked the great throne room, and still King Solomon’s newest bride had not arrived. Restless, I drew out a ball of linen thread and began to play at cat’s-cradle with my handmaiden Nimrah. King David’s City truly held the wide world within its walls, for Nimrah’s family came from some land so far to the north that snow covered the land half the year. Her northern blood shone in her straight pale hair and her wide pale eyes; winter sunlight, winter ice.

  All about me, my stepmothers waited, the queens in the front of the gallery and the concubines behind them. Each passed the slow time in her own fashion: some gossiped, some fidgeted with their hair or gems or gown. One or two played games, as did Nimrah and I. The Egyptian queen, Nefret, listened as her maidservant read softly to her from a scroll. Queen Naamah sat smooth-faced, refusing to disturb the flawless drape of her veil or the elegant coils of her hair. Queen Melasadne caressed one of her tiny white dogs, ignoring the affronted glares from those of my father’s wives who followed the laws of our own god, for whom dogs were unclean
beasts. Queen Makeda sat dark and still as deep night, her thoughts shielded behind her gilded lids. Lady Leeorenda sat serene, motionless save for her fingers, which gently stroked the blossoms she held; from time to time she moved one flower, trying its color against another. Lady Dvorah spun, making me wish I had brought my own spindle to occupy my restless hands.

  Nimrah lifted the tangle of red silk from my fingers again; I looked down from the queens’ gallery to where my father sat upon the Lion Throne. The court was full of men richly clad, but my father outshone them all. As befit a royal bridegroom, he wore scarlet and purple fringed with gold. The wide crown of Israel, gold set with flawless emeralds, circled his head. In his hands he held a lion-headed scepter, a gift from the Scythian king.

  The high priest Zadok sat upon a stool beside my father’s throne. Zadok had been high priest long before I was born; he was an old man now, and standing long was a hardship to him. It was a measure of my father’s generous heart that he thought of Zadok’s comfort, and permitted him to sit when he held court. All the rest must stand—the king’s general and the king’s guard, the ambassadors, the other priests, the courtiers and the princes. Even my brother Rehoboam, who was my father’s heir, must stand before him. And even at this distance, I saw the scowl marring Rehoboam’s face; the crown prince was bored and didn’t care who knew it.

  My eyes did not rest long on my brother; gazing down like a hunting falcon, I sought more enticing prey. Ah, there he was, leaning against one of the polished cedar pillars, half-shadowed by the sham forest my father had created to ring the great court. His hair twined down his back in long curls; a ringlet coiled over one shoulder, spiraled down his half-bare chest, ebony against honey. He wore a kilt of soft blue leather sewn with golden bees, and a gilded leather belt two handspans wide clasped his waist. Upon Amyntor of Caphtor, such old-fashioned garments seemed oddly dashing. In contrast, the nobles of my father’s court appeared overburdened in their layers of rich cloth. And where they held scrolls, or tablets, or goblets of gold and silver, Amyntor held in his hand only a Damascus rose, red as blood.