Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba

by Edghill, India

  “It was not your fault,” I began, and my father laughed, a sound harsh as a hoopoe’s cry.

  “When you are queen, my child, you will learn that all that passes is your fault. I am king—it is my duty to know, to care. But I did not know; I accepted unquestioning what the Horse Lord sent—a dozen fine stallions and a hundred finer mares. And a princess to seal the bargain. I inspected the horses with great care.”

  Now I stared, my mouth slack with surprise; never before had I heard my father speak with such bitterness. “You did not know,” I managed to say. I could have wept at the anger I saw in my father’s eyes. Anger at himself.

  “I should have known. Her oath-breaking lies at my feet; she is guiltless. As the Lord lives, Baalit, I am at fault and should beg her pardon upon my knees in the palace gate.” He sighed and set his fingers to his brow; I saw the skin whiten beneath the pressure of his fingers.

  “You did not know,” I repeated, unwilling to see him take such a burden upon his heart. “It is not your fault. But she is unhappy here, and I—I shall need my own captain, in Sheba.”

  “She may go; of course she may go. And with all honor, as befits a king’s wife and a Sword Maid.”

  “And the treaty with the Horse Lord?”

  “Will stand. If I order my wife to accompany my daughter to her new home, where is the disgrace in that?” A pause, then he added, “I am king, after all; who is to say me nay?”

  I felt my face grow hot, for I knew I had forced him to my will—we both knew it. Someday I hoped he would forgive me. But now I must plead on another’s behalf, and so pretend I noticed nothing.

  “There is one thing more.” I wished with all my heart that I could remain silent, but I knew I must tell my father the whole truth. “Helike is with child. That is why she came to me. Oh, Father—she swears her goddess told her the child is a girl, a girl to redeem her own broken vows. She wanted me to take the child to Sheba, to dedicate her to the Horse Goddess. She swore that if I did not, she would slay the child herself.”

  “And did you swear to do so?”

  “I swore that I would send for her daughter and raise her as my own. But that I would not vow any child to a god without her own consent.”

  “And the Lady Helike agreed to this?”

  “Yes,” I said, “she agreed. She asked for nothing for herself, only for her daughter. It was I who thought of taking her for my own captain. Helike knows nothing of this.”

  “Nothing for herself.” My father seemed to stare beyond me, into some world only he could see. Then he returned from whatever realm had briefly claimed him; his eyes looked into mine, and I saw a glint, brilliant as crystal, as if my father, too, must battle tears. “Nothing for herself,” he said again, and then, “Princess Baalit, the king grants your petition. When you ride south with the Queen of the Morning, the Lady Helike rides with you. I am losing my own daughter; I will not force Helike to lose hers.”

  I would have bowed to thank him, but my father caught me up in his arms and held me close, as if I were a small girl again. Now I did not fight my tears; my eyes were damp as I hugged him hard. “You are not losing me, Father. You are gaining the best of allies.” But my words were muffled by the thick wool of his tunic, and by my tears, and I do not know if he heard me or not.

  Helike

  For her daughter’s sake, she had dared hope, dared dream. But not for herself; Helike accepted despair for herself, dared desire nothing more. It was enough that Princess Baalit had sworn to save her daughter; Helike clung to that promise as she clung to a horse’s back—with all her strength and skill.

  And the princess had kept her oath; she stood before Helike smiling, speaking words that seemed to ring like sword blades in the garden’s closed sullen air. “My father frees you, Helike. You are to come with me to Sheba. And more—you are to be captain of my guard. Captain of the heir’s guard, just as Nikaulis is of the queen’s guard.”

  As Helike stared at her, Baalit held out the parcel she carried in her arms, a large bundle wrapped in a crimson cloth. “Here, this is for you. Take it, Helike.”

  Something is wrong; I feel nothing. No joy. Nothing. It is too late—

  The princess tried to push the bundle into Helike’s hands. “Take it, open it. Here, let me help you.”

  She is blind; does she not see she tries to touch a ghost?

  As Helike stood there, cold and still, Baalit pulled back the parcel and set it upon the ground between them. Swiftly, the princess stooped and unwrapped the cloth that covered what she had brought. She rose and took Helike’s hand, pressed an object into her palm. Helike looked down and stared at a dagger, long-bladed and sharp. Upon the hilt a gilded leopard snarled. The leopard’s eye glinted green; emerald-set.

  “The leopard is Sheba’s beast. You see? You are captain of my guard. You are a warrior again, Helike.”

  The princess closed Helike’s fingers over the dagger and stepped back. Helike turned the knife over in her hands, ran her fingertips along the blade, but her hands shook so she fumbled and the leopard dagger fell to the floor; the iron rang against the tiles like a bell.

  “The Queen of Sheba’s captain told me what you should have, to ride by my side. All is here, ready for you to don—and I had the garments made in my own colors.” Princess Baalit smoothed her hand over scarlet leather, traced flames embroidered in golden thread. “My own colors, marked with my own seal. See, I have had a phoenix stitched upon the tunic. Do you like it?”

  The princess smiled hopefully, and suddenly Helike saw that the girl was tentative, unsure, her pride a shield. The phoenix. The bird born again from fire. What clearer sign could I ask?

  All doubt fled, all pain and anger burned to ash. Helike bowed her head, silently acknowledging her Lady’s mercy. Then she reached out and accepted the leather tunic from Baalit’s hands.

  “Yes, Princess.” Helike closed her fingers over the fire-bright leather. “Yes, I like it very much.”

  Bilqis

  The day she was to leave, she went to him one last time, climbed the long stairs up the tower to the paradise he had created for them upon the palace rooftop. Her heart told her he awaited her there; her heart did not lie. When she walked into the honey-light the sun poured upon Jerusalem’s rooftops, Solomon stood before her. He held out his hands, and she walked into his arms.

  They stood there until her slow-pounding heartbeat and his seemed one, until their breath mingled the perfumes of rose water and of myrrh. At last she knew it was time to speak.

  “Solomon,” she began, and he said, “No. Let me speak,” and she bowed her head, knowing what he would say, and knowing, too, that his words would bring only pain to them both.

  But it is his right to say them, and my right to hear them. It is all we will ever have.

  Solomon slid his hands up, cradled her face between his palms. “My love, my heart—stay with me. You want it; I want it. You are queen and I am king, who is to say us nay?”

  Who but we ourselves? For a breath, a heartbeat, she let temptation flood her like hot wine. Then she forced herself to smile, and laid her hands over his, curled her fingers about his. She brought their hands down from her face, but she did not release him yet.

  “Oh, Solomon, what you want and what I want do not matter, not in this. And even if they did—my love, you who are called the Wise, you must know I am old enough to have borne you as my own son. I am too old to bear you a princess—a prince, here. A barren foreigner—twice folly, and that is truth.” She closed her eyes against the future he offered, the future she saw.

  “And if I embrace folly? If I say, Live with me, my beloved, my dove of the rocks? Do not leave me, my sister of spices and myrrh?”

  “You know the answer already, you know what lies as a sword blade between us, Solomon the Wise—truth.”

  “No.” He turned and set his fingers over her lips; they lay cool over the words she had spoken. “Do not speak truth to me, my love. For this moment, for this hour, n
o truth between us. Tell me what I want to hear, beloved. Tell me lies. Tell me beautiful lies.”

  Shaken, she coiled her fingers about his wrist; his fingers slipped from her lips to her cheek. “What shall I tell you? What would it please my beloved to hear?”

  “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you; I have always loved you. I loved you before you were born and I love you with all the years I have left to me. That is truth. Is that not enough?”

  “No. Tell me that you love me more than—”

  “My crown?” She leaned her cheek into the curve of his hand. “That is a shackle, not a treasure.”

  “More than your honor. More than your duty. Tell me—tell me that if you were young enough to bear me a child, you would stay.” He coiled her hair about his wrists. “Tell me,” he said, a king’s command.

  She looked steadily into his eyes. “To please you, my king. Yes. To please you, I would stay … .” She moved into his waiting arms and laid her head against his breast. Beneath her ear, his heart beat a low, hard rhythm, endless and patient. His breath warmed her forehead, his lips brushing her skin.

  “My king,” she said. “My beloved. Ah, yes, if I could give you a child—yes. Yes. If you asked it, I would stay with you.”

  His arms tightened around her. “I am a king. I could change my mind, and no one could deny me. I could keep you here with me.”

  “But you will not.”

  “I could keep my daughter.” His words were muffled by her heavy hair. “Bilqis, I cannot give you both up. I cannot give her up. She is all that is left to me of my yesterdays.”

  “She is not yesterday, Solomon; she is tomorrow.” For a moment, she closed her eyes against the pain in his. “You must free her to rule the future.”

  “Must. Always a king must. So much for a king’s power.”

  “Power belongs to the gods, O King.”

  “Then what belongs to man, O Queen?”

  “Love, and wisdom.”

  “Love, and wisdom,” he repeated, as if weighing the words in an iron balance. Then he smiled, awkwardly, as if the movement of his lips pained him. “And you would have me sacrifice both.”

  “As I would, because I am a queen. As you will, because you are a king. And because, for us, there is a thing greater than wisdom, and greater than love.”

  “And what is that? What is so great that I must renounce all I have? All I am? All I desire?”

  “You know already. Honor, my love. Honor, and duty. Without those, we are nothing.”

  “Honor, and duty.” He bowed his head; sunlight gleamed gold upon his hair like a crown. She reached out and placed her hand upon his head.

  “That is all there is, in the end. Now kiss me, my beloved and my king, and say good-bye. And think of me, sometimes.”

  He took her hands, his fingers closing over hers so tightly it hurt. He bent and kissed her palms; she pressed her hands hard against his mouth. Then he stepped back and set his hands upon her shoulders. “Whenever I smell roses, and cinnamon, I shall think of you.”

  She reached out and touched the tips of her fingers to the corner of his mouth. “Finish your song, Solomon. Sing it often. And when you smell cinnamon and roses, think of love.”

  He leaned towards her; she closed her eyes. His lips brushed her forehead, soft as smoke from a dying fire.

  When she opened her eyes again, she stood alone among the roses and lilies of the tower garden. Solomon was gone.

  Nikaulis

  With Princess Baalit beside her, the Queen of Sheba had ridden out the great Horse Gate, followed by her handmaidens and her eunuchs. The rest of her court came behind, brilliant as peacocks and noisy as jays, pleased at last to be turning south again, towards home. The queen’s soldiers rode ahead of the queen, and behind, safeguarding not only Bilqis herself but the treasure that traveled with her. King Solomon sent his daughter south dowered well enough to ransom an empire.

  Nikaulis watched the caravan ride past her out the Horse Gate, watching and judging; nothing must go wrong at this last critical moment. Soon we will be gone; soon Jerusalem’s walls will be behind us, and only the road home ahead.

  The last of the servants and provision carts rolled past; the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon ended. Now. It is time. But Nikaulis remained motionless upon her patient horse, waiting. He will come. We must say good-bye, and wish each other well. Then—then we can forget.

  “Nikaulis.” Benaiah stood by her horse’s shoulder. He laid a hand upon her mount’s side, a hand’s breadth from her knee.

  “So you ride away.”

  “I serve my queen.” She looked down into his impassive face. “So you remain.”

  “I serve my king.”

  Benaiah lifted his hand, held it out to her, a comrade’s gesture. Nikaulis clasped his hand, and for an endless heartbeat their fingers touched and clung. Neither spoke. Time’s sands had run out for them, and there was nothing more to say. Not even good-bye.

  Benaiah released her hand. Nikaulis gathered up her horse’s reins and rode away, following after the Queen of Sheba.

  On the far hill, Nikaulis reined in her horse and looked back at the City of David. So many people; so many walls. So many reasons to ride on and never once look back …

  … and one reason only to stay.

  Benaiah. No, not even the man. The love.

  She laid their love upon the scales, and knew that love weighed heavier than all the reasons she could summon to balance against its power.

  If I stay, I will grieve for all I lose once I am behind those cold stone walls. But if I go, I will grieve for Benaiah, and for myself. And for the future we will not live together.

  The choice was hard, hard as bare stone. But the choice was hers.

  And now, at last, Nikaulis knew which goddess she would serve.

  Abishag

  So for all the years I lived as King Solomon’s wife and his queen, I never again spoke of the time when I had belonged to King David. Never would I say what I knew Solomon would never ask of me.

  “Did you lie with my father as a woman does with a man? Did he teach you love?”

  Unspoken, the question shadowed us. Unspoken, the words forever bound us. Never would King Solomon cast Queen Abishag off, never would she be less than his favorite—for if he did cast her off, he would always wonder if it had been for that which he had sworn did not matter.

  Silence was hard. Sometimes, lying beside him as deep night paled to dawn, I longed to rouse him with kisses and confess the truth, no matter the price. But always something stopped me. Perhaps my mother’s goddess whispered in my ear. Perhaps it was my own fear.

  Or perhaps it was Solomon’s iron faith in himself that closed my lips over the truth. Let my beloved think himself as great in generosity as he was in wisdom.

  Bilqis

  One last look, and then I go on. She owed Solomon that; owed herself that last indulgence. And so Bilqis paused, waiting, as her caravan continued slowly on, and stared back at King David’s golden city. Jerusalem gleamed untouched as crystal upon its hilltop, safe within its massive walls. Temple and palace glowed sunfire bright, twin beacons.

  She could not see King Solomon at all. But he watches. I know he watches. Only when the dust my leaving raises settles to the road once more will he abandon his post.

  A shadow fell across her hands; she looked aside to see who had broken her vision. “Nikaulis,” she said, acknowledging her captain, and was surprised when the Amazon bowed her head in petition.

  “Great Queen, if ever I have served you well, hear me now.”

  “Of course, Nikaulis. Speak.”

  “Release me from my vow, O Queen.”

  Bilqis stared, at first unable to summon words. At last she said only “Why?”

  “Because I cannot go with a whole heart. And I will not serve half-hearted.”

  “All or nothing. Yes.” For Nikaulis, that was the only way. No half measures. “You go to the king’s c
ommander, then?”

  “Yes. I go to Benaiah.”

  “Think well, Nikaulis. Israel is hard and cold, its ways strange and its laws cruel.” She tried to keep her voice level, to keep envy from tainting it. “Benaiah now swears to anything to have you; will he keep those vows once you have given yourself into his keeping?”

  “I will be not in his keeping but in my own. And yes, Benaiah will hold to his word.”

  “You are sure enough of him to walk into that cage, to close that door upon your freedom?”

  “No one can take that from me. My queen, Benaiah is an old man. I will give him whatever years he may take of me. If our Mother wills it, I will give him a son, and he will give me a daughter. And when Benaiah is gone from this life, so I will be gone from Jerusalem, I and my daughter.”

  “Nikaulis, why do you do this thing? Because Benaiah asked it of you?”

  “Because he did not,” Nikaulis said. “Let me go, my queen.”

  She is free to follow her heart; do not punish her because she may do what a queen cannot. Silent, Bilqis held out her hand; Nikaulis clasped the queen’s hand and kissed it. Sheba laid her hand upon Nikaulis’s cheek and smiled. “Go with the Lady’s smile upon you. Go back to the man you love, and be happy”

  Nikaulis nodded, and turned her horse, and rode away down the road that led back to Jerusalem’s great gate. Sheba watched until the warrior-maid had ridden halfway up the hill, until a man who could only be Benaiah walked through the city gate and down the hill towards the rider. As they met in the road, Nikaulis pulled her horse to a halt and dismounted.

  There was no passionate embrace, no clasp of hands. Benaiah and Nikaulis merely walked up the road, side by side, and through the city gate. When they could no longer be seen, Bilqis urged Shams forward. She did not look back again until she reached the crest of the first hill.