Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba

by Edghill, India

  To be king is not so easy a task as rebels think, when they grumble and boast around their fires.

  Queen Michal had sought to mate fire with ice, a heartbreakingly impossible task. Sometimes Solomon wished that she had never tried; that one of his elder brothers had grasped the crown instead. But innate honesty, even with himself, forced him to admit that he had been the best choice, the only one of King David’s sons not dazzled by the prize …

  “Zadok, do you ever wonder what the kingdom would be like had my brother Adonijah become king rather than I?”

  “No,” said the high priest, “for I dislike thinking of unpleasant things.”

  “You think King Adonijah would have been unpleasant?”

  “If the Lord had meant Adonijah to be king, then he would be. But you are king, so you must be meant to be king.”

  “You are hard to refute, Zadok; there is no profit in arguing with you.”

  The high priest looked relieved, and Solomon felt a pang of guilt at mocking the old man, even though he knew Zadok had not understood the gibe. Zadok did not regard the world cynically, nor did he endlessly question his own beliefs and values.

  “You are a fortunate man, High Priest,” Solomon said.

  “Yes, I know, O King, and I give daily thanks for our Lord’s bounty—and for the king’s benevolence,” Zadok added hastily.

  On the other hand, the old man knows which cup his wine is poured in!

  Although the day had already stretched long, Solomon sent messengers seeking Ahijah throughout the city. By sundown, Solomon knew they had failed to find the prophet; a failure he accepted with mingled relief and dismay, for delaying a confrontation with Ahijah only increased the prophet’s wrath against the world and its sinful flesh. And if Ahijah had heard Amyntor and his mocking laughter on the day of the Colchian wedding …

  If Ahijah heard, then I can expect a scolding to make the Lord Himself weep. Solomon sighed inwardly. I wonder if my father endured this hectoring from old Nathan? King David would have known how to cozen the prophet to sweetness, sing him to silence; King Solomon’s only weapon was reason, and reason failed against Ahijah’s furious faith.

  In a way, Solomon felt sorry for Ahijah, a man of stern morality and harsh pride railing against the changing world. As well command the west wind to cease blowing. But Ahijah could not be permitted to destroy what Solomon had spent so long creating.

  And if I send away all my wives and tear down all foreign temples, who will thank me? Not the merchants who can no longer trade with all the world. Not the farmers who can no longer sell their harvest. Not the soldiers, or the priests—For the empire Solomon now ruled had been built by trade and by marriage—and by tolerance.

  But that truth Ahijah would never see.

  Duty commanded a king’s days; a king’s time was not his own to squander. Upon days that stretched long, Solomon sometimes wondered why any man would wish to rule. The question seemed particularly insistent when he held open court, judged between one man’s truth and another’s. Upon such days, it was with relief that he retreated to the calm of the Lady Nefret’s chambers.

  Although Nefret was Pharaoh’s Daughter, she held no higher title than queen—ruthlessly fair, Solomon granted all his wives that royal title, just as he allotted each an equal set of rooms, an equal wealth in fine array and in precious gems. And as he allotted each a night to be spent with her royal husband; he kept no favorite. Once he had thought this meticulous equity would keep peace in his vast household—a vain hope, he now knew. Oddly enough, the harem had run more peaceably when Abishag lived, and reigned as undisputed queen of his heart.

  But Nefret was the nearest Solomon now permitted himself to a favorite among his wives, perhaps because she cared least for his heart. Pharaoh’s Daughter had been reared in the rigidly sophisticated court of the oldest kingdom upon the earth; what the Lady Nefret did not know about civilized behavior was not worth knowing. Solomon found her cool manner restful. Now she smiled at him over the playing-pieces.

  “My king is troubled tonight?”

  “My lady Nefret has keen eyes, for it is a small trouble only.” Conversation with his Egyptian wife was a delicate sparring with words; tonight Solomon enjoyed the minor challenge.

  She moved a hound. “No matter that troubles my lord is small to me.”

  “My lady is kind as well.” Solomon moved his fox two holes, out of danger.

  “Not so kind she will grant her lord the game, does he not deserve the victory.” Nefret reached over the board and lifted another hound, sent it after his fox. “Will my lord permit his wife to banish his small trouble?”

  “It is nothing; only that—Nefret, do you never tire of being a queen?”

  Nefret gazed at him steadily, her long-painted eyes calm and inscrutable as her cat’s. “No, my lord. But then, I was most carefully bred and raised.”

  The insult was so beautifully phrased it forced admiration rather than anger. Solomon laughed, softly, and Nefret smiled.

  “My lord suffers a common illness. He is bored.”

  Startled, Solomon accidentally dropped his fox into the wrong hole. Bored? With all I must do, all I must accomplish, all I must supervise, my wife can call me bored?

  “The hounds have won the game,” Nefret said, flicking Solomon’s misplaced fox with one gilded fingernail.

  “Do you really think me bored?” Solomon abandoned formality, addressing her as he would any other woman.

  “My lord shows every symptom of that disease.”

  “Nefret, I am never idle.”

  “Your wife did not say that her lord husband was idle, but that he was bored.” Nefret stroked the sleek-furred cat curled upon her lap; the small beast purred, long whiskers quivering. Solomon found its intense sun-gold stare disconcerting.

  “True, my lord is never idle—but my lord never takes time for unalloyed pleasure, either. Even a king requires rest.”

  “Perhaps, but even a king cannot add hours to the day.”

  “But he can carve years from his life.” Nefret’s hand continued to caress the golden-eyed cat. “My lord must not deny himself pleasure and rest, lest his health suffer.”

  “My lady must not trouble herself.” Solomon smiled. “Here I find both rest and pleasure.”

  “Then my lord stays this night?” Nefret’s voice carried no hint of her emotions. For all Solomon could tell from her smooth face and quiet voice, she felt nothing.

  “Alas, he does not.” Solomon watched her closely, but Nefret’s face revealed nothing. She said only “Does my lord wish to play another game before he leaves?”

  Never once has she protested at anything I have chosen to do. Never once has she complained. She deserves more than I can give her. Solomon smiled.

  “Yes. Let us play one more game.” It was not much to offer, but it was all the king had to give. He wondered, as he watched Nefret’s long fingers set the playing-pieces back into the board, if Pharaoh’s Daughter were truly as content as she seemed.

  Perhaps she is. Truly, she seems as easy to please as her cats. Yes, I think Nefret is happy. Solomon smiled, and waited for his Egyptian queen to make the first move in the new game.

  Nefret

  After Solomon had gone, Nefret sat motionless, staring at the ivory and lapis gameboard. Her lord the king tried so hard, and there was so little she could do to comfort him. She understood him, but King Solomon could never understand Pharaoh’s Daughter, not even if he lived a thousand years.

  How could he? True, he had been born a prince, just as she had been born a princess. But she had been raised to be a king’s wife. Solomon had been King David’s youngest son, far from the throne, unschooled in power and protocol. He had achieved kingship by means that shocked Nefret.

  But then, this entire gods-forsaken country had abandoned ma’at. Truth and balance.

  Instead, the empire Solomon ruled commanded such wealth and power that even Pharaoh sought alliance, had for the first time in Egypt’s m
emory offered up a Daughter of the Two Lands in exchange for trade concessions. As if I were a bale of linen, or a tusk of ivory. As if Pharaoh’s Daughter were trade goods to barter.

  Marriage to King Solomon had banished her to a crude, rough land. A land without elegance or art, literature or grace. Its dances lacked symmetry, its music lacked charm.

  Worse, they had no manners.

  Only Solomon himself made her exile bearable. “Neither one of us is a fool,” he had said to her upon their wedding night, “and so we both know that I am greatly favored—and also that Pharaoh needs Israel’s goodwill now, or you would not be here.” Then he had smiled and said, “But I will try to make you happy.”

  He had kept his word; her courtyard and her rooms had been built in the Egyptian style. She kept her own servants, and her own fashions, and her own gods. In exchange, Solomon owned her perfect fealty, and all her talents. He did not have her love, but then, he did not desire it. She offered him quiet comfort, and respect, and friendship.

  And King Solomon offered Pharaoh’s Daughter the same courtesies in return.

  Slowly, Nefret gathered up the slender ebony and ivory playing-pieces. Slowly, she began setting them back in their holes upon the gameboard: fox, hound, fox again, until each piece stood neatly in place once more.

  Respect, and friendship. She was not even the mother of a child. Considering the fratricidal nature bred into the House of David, Nefret counted herself blessed that she lacked children, rather than cursed.

  I have my lord the king’s regard, and his affection. I have my own occupations. Nefret painted, an alien skill in this backward culture. For her own amusement, she kept a record of life in Solomon’s Court, painting daily life in bright colors, storing the papyrus rolls in precisely labeled jars. And she gardened, another skill only half-known here. To design a courtyard garden, to experiment with its flowers and fruits, provided civilized pleasure. Nefret cultivated lilies.

  Yes, all in all, my life must be regarded as satisfactory.

  Nefret placed the last fox into its hole. The board now stood as it had before the latest game.

  Then she rose to her feet and walked calmly to her bedchamber. The room was ornamented in the Egyptian style, its walls decorated with images of a lush riverbank, its reeds teeming with birds: ducks, ibis, geese. She stopped before her favorite among the painted memories: a family of swallows soaring high above the reeds. There she stood, serene as a painted statue, while her handmaiden Teti gently unpinned and undraped her pale linen gown, unclasped her wide necklace of lapis and carnelian, lifted the heavy beaded wig from her head.

  At last Teti took a soft clean cloth, dipped it into water scented with lemon, and gently wiped Nefret’s face clean of its saffron, malachite, and carmine. Teti, as well-schooled and as tactful as her royal mistress, did not comment on the dark smears of kohl spreading beneath the Lady Nefret-meryt-hotep’s tear-damp eyes.

  Benaiah

  This is no life for a warrior. No life for a war-chief. But he was no longer a war-chief; he was the king’s general, head of all King Solomon’s armies.

  And so he had spent most of the morning listening to his scribe read lists of provisions and equipment; the afternoon discussing the logistics of regarrisoning half-a-dozen border towns, an activity interrupted for an hour by the urgent necessity of soothing the wounded vanity of a royal captain of a thousand who had lost precedence when a cousin was promoted to a sinecure coveted by both men. Now the shadows stretched long, and still Benaiah had not been able to claim one moment in which to set foot beyond the confines of his office.

  Sometimes this place seems more a prison than a palace. For what was a prison but a place one could not leave at will? It was not like this in the old days, in King David’s time. Then a war-chief ’s sword found work. Now—

  Now the king’s general sat and listened to the deeds of other men. Sat and listened to the recitation of lists by men with soft voices and softer hands. Sat and rotted.

  Listen to yourself. You sound like an old man. Benaiah sighed, and rubbed his eyes; the lamp oil smoked—another detail I must put right. Benaiah made a mental note to tell his manservant Eben to see to the matter.

  He knew what Eben would say: that Benaiah needed a wife. But Benaiah had been wedded to his sword too long; it was too late for him to succumb to softer lures. And I am no prize for a young woman. Marriageable girls dreamed of young heroes. Heroes such as King David had once been, beautiful in body and eloquent in wooing.

  Girls do not dream of hard old men with scarred hands and graying hair. Benaiah shook his head and smiled, rueful. No one would believe that the king’s general brooded on such matters. Not Benaiah the clever, the strong, the endlessly-loyal sword arm of kings. But time served men as a whetstone served blades—sharpened them, honed them to keen use. And in the end, wore them away to nothingness.

  “Truly, Benaiah, you sound like an old man—one as morose as a lion with toothache.” Voicing the words lightened them, turned his glum thoughts to grim jest. Benaiah knew he was not old—not yet. But life in a king’s court pressed men into strange, uncomfortable patterns. Luxury and indolence—no life for a fighting man.

  Ah, yes, that is the stone in my sandal. I am not a fighting man. Not anymore. Now all I am is the king’s general. A man who orders other men into battle and danger.

  Now he was a man who led a life too easy, too lavish. A man who had lost his keen fighting edge.

  But it did not matter, for the king Benaiah now served had no need of such a man. King David, now—King David had required men of stone and iron to serve him. King Solomon prized peace; wished to wield his army not as a whip forcing compliance, but as a shepherd’s staff urging cooperation.

  Yes, things have changed since King David’s day. In King David’s reign, Benaiah had commanded only the palace guard, the king’s new-formed corps of foreigners, mercenaries. Benaiah had accepted the post reluctantly; it put him at odds with Joab, the king’s general, commander of the army. And those who opposed Joab did not prosper long.

  Nor had Benaiah liked the sight of foreign warriors pacing the halls of the king’s palace. But King David had smiled at him, and spoken soft words. “You are a good man, Benaiah, I need good men about me, men I can trust with the safety of my wives and my children.” When King David had spoken, Benaiah had felt the intensity of the king’s need. How flattering to a young soldier, to be raised high and told that the king trusted him. That the king needed him. Benaiah had bowed and taken up the charge King David had laid upon him.

  Commander of the king’s guard—never before had there been such an office in Israel. But after Prince Absalom’s rebellion, and the revolt of the northern tribes, Benaiah had understood King David’s fears for his family’s safety.

  Or thought he had. Gradually he came to see the guard he commanded for what it truly was: a weapon, a counterweight to the unruly army.

  An army commanded by the king’s nephew Joab—and while Joab’s loyalty was beyond question, his methods were harsh and brutal. Joab would do anything that he thought good for King David. Anything, including murder.

  Abner, Absalom, Adonijah. Those were only three of the deaths laid at Joab’s door. Abner, who had been King Saul’s war-chief. Absalom, who had been King David’s treacherous, rebellious son. Adonijah, who had been King Solomon’s too-ambitious brother. All had sought power from David; all had received death from Joab’s hand.

  But Prince Adonijah was the last of Joab’s kills. For Adonijah grasped at the crown as King David lay dying—only to be thwarted by his father’s sudden proclamation of Prince Solomon as successor. Adonijah had not been wise enough to accept defeat with grace; instead, he had stood before his brother and demanded possession of the king’s maiden, Abishag, to console him for the loss of the crown he had so coveted.

  Abishag had been chosen by King David’s chief wife, Michal, as a gift to bring heat to the aged king. The maiden served as King David’s bed-warmer during the
long months it took the king to die; that service alone made her a royal bequest, a legacy for the next king. And everyone with eyes to see knew that Prince Solomon had already chosen Abishag for his own queen.

  Prince Adonijah’s arrogant folly had earned him death, death Joab dealt him as King Solomon watched in horror. Joab merely shrugged and wiped his sword blade clean on Adonijah’s scarlet cloak. It had been Benaiah who had come forward and quietly ordered his guardsmen to carry out Prince Adonijah’s body; who had surrounded King Solomon with men of the palace guard; who had escorted Queen Michal and the king’s mother, Bathsheba, safely back to the women’s palace. It had been Benaiah who had ensured that before King Solomon again set foot in the throne room, the steps of the throne were washed clean of his brother’s blood.

  Benaiah had done those things not to win favor in the new king’s eyes, but because his task was to protect the king and to ensure peace within the king’s house. But King Solomon did not forget Benaiah’s quiet support—and with Great David dead, it was Solomon’s will alone that counted. Solomon lifted the burden of command from Joab and gave that power into Benaiah’s hand.

  Knowing what was due a man of Joab’s rank, Benaiah had gone to tell him of Solomon’s decision before the change was announced in the king’s court. To his surprise, Joab took the news unflinching.

  “I thought as much. I am old, and have been David’s man these forty years.” Joab’s eyes seemed to look past Benaiah, into a past the young could never share.

  Benaiah shifted, uneasy; more than once, Joab had taken bad news well, then struck down the man who stood in his way. “I did not seek this office, Joab. It is King Solomon’s will.”

  “No need to tell me; I’ve known you since you were a boy. Deceit isn’t in you. Rest easy, Benaiah. Adonijah was the last. My sword days are over.”

  “I am sorry, Joab.” Benaiah studied the impassive man before him. “You are not surprised.”