Reign Page 12

  Asherah’s tribute was outside, a slender statue of a tree of life. Artists had worked hard at the beautiful deception. Gone was the makeshift altar.

  The statue of Baal rested on a throne, with his ugly head of a horned beast and his body of a man, but no man Obadiah would ever see. Baal had the body of one of God’s great messengers, like the angel of the Lord. Obadiah shuddered at the thought. Whatever sat upon the throne, it was not from the Lord.

  Outside the city gates, he heard the prophets of Yahweh wailing, tearing their sackcloth and smearing ashes on their faces, warning the people to flee. The people kept their faces down as they hurried toward the temple.

  Obadiah wondered who would sacrifice their infant tonight. He understood the appeal now; to be free of a burden or a mistake, to pray that the future would be brighter. And when the priests promised it was a freedom they had long deserved, the women believed it. Sentiment was growing, Obadiah knew, that Jezebel had brought the future to Israel, and the future was the delusion of freedom for women.

  Obadiah alone knew what this freedom would cost them, the cost of this night of feasting and the drought ahead. He not only read the past records, he kept the records of present and saw the prices driving up every week, quantity and quality growing less. He sweated at night as he reviewed the scrolls, trying to feed the court plus the four hundred priests of Jezebel, plus one hundred artisans. Ahab was in grave financial danger. Ahab was in every kind of danger, though, and Obadiah knew that Ahab didn’t care. Didn’t care, or refused to speak of it. Obadiah was abandoned with his scrolls and his knowledge and all his fears.

  The priests lit the incense in the heavy gold bowls, and its sharp, thick smoke rose, snaking through the air. Obadiah closed his eyes in prayer that the fire pit would stay cold and dark tonight.

  He watched as Jezebel smiled and held Ahab’s hand while people arrived and bowed before them, laying gifts of gold and fruits at their feet. The tax law required these offerings, yet many were slow to release their goods from their hands. Obadiah understood. The people were bringing the best of what they had left, and what was left was not much. They offered it to please Ahab and Jezebel, to please the gods, to urge whatever powers ruled Israel to send rain.

  Obadiah’s heart burned. There were children in those homes, children who would not eat because their parents gave their food away. Those were the lucky children, though. They had a chance to live. They would never know the terror of resting in the hands of Jezebel’s gods.

  The people wandered through the open room of the temple and ran their hands along the smooth walls of the Chamber of Dreams. They admired the Asherah pole that stood outside the temple, the carved tree of braided limbs and wooden fruits. It looked pleasant to the eye. Obadiah watched as Sargon surveyed the temple and blessed it, then retreated into the shadow far away, as Jezebel received the attention.

  She and Ahab presented the infant Athaliah and spoke of the future. Obadiah had not yet seen the infant close up; she was always carried about by a milk nurse or servant. Never with Jezebel, though, he noted. The darkness that had always hovered around her now seemed thicker, malevolent, as if birthing a child had brought something else with it for her too. Something disturbed and hungry.

  A young girl he had seen many times in the market, a sweet girl who helped her father sell herbs, came and bowed alone before Jezebel and Ahab. She looked up at them with admiring eyes, seeing those jewels she had heard tell of, he was sure, probably smelling a perfume too rich for her means. He saw that she was dazzled, and it grieved him further. She was lovely in every way, too lovely for this nonsense.

  “I have no offering, save my devotion,” she said.

  Jezebel extended her hand and smiled at her priests. “The throne is pleased to receive you,” she said.

  The girl’s father soon came beside her, presenting a modest gift of wine at the feet of Ahab. Ahab nodded his acceptance, and the man stood to walk away.

  “Nothing for your princess, not even a kind word?” Jezebel asked.

  The man hesitated and turned back to face her. “I am afraid,” he replied.

  “Of what?” she asked. “I do not wish harm to you or your god. I only ask that mine be allowed too.”

  “It sounds good to my ears, princess, and I mean no disrespect, but it is wrong. I hear what the women whisper. They say your gods allow every pleasure, but I worry that that brings suffering. I cannot honor them.”

  Obadiah’s heart jumped a little. He was not alone! Someone else saw as he saw and dared speak.

  Jezebel spoke. “This land will not be ruled by ignorance.”

  He bowed to Ahab. “I am not an ignorant man, as Ahab knows. Let me tell you a story of Israel.”

  The man turned and faced the people, clearing his throat. His daughter shifted from one foot to another and caught the eye of a certain priest.

  “Long ago, in a cruel land, we were ruled by one who said there was none to worship but himself. He was Pharaoh, and we were his slaves. We made his bricks and built his shrines, and he took our strength and our children. We cried in the silence of our hearts for our God. Did He not see the one who claimed to displace Him? Was He not angered that one claimed His throne? But the years passed and our fathers died under the sun, until one day when Pharaoh provoked God for the last time. God answered then, blanketing the land in darkness, frogs, pestilence, blood, locusts, flies. That is why I fear this temple, for His love rages as fiercely as His anger, and He will not suffer long one who leads His children into danger. I would rather face a man’s wrath over my own wrongdoing than a father’s wrath for having wronged his children. He moves among us and will not long be silent.”

  The people were motionless, only exchanging glances.

  Jezebel stepped down toward him and moved to hold her hand out to him, to silence him perhaps. He backed away.

  “You are unclean,” he said. Obadiah cringed. That was true, but who would dare say that to a princess?

  “We call our gods by different names, but do we not all want the same thing?” Jezebel said. She spoke like there was an unreasonable child before her.

  The man backed out of the temple, shaking his head. “No. No, we do not. Forgive me, Ahab. I honor you as prince, but I cannot honor her gods.”

  Jezebel clapped to signal for the feast to begin, cutting Ahab off from further dialogue with the man.

  The musicians began, and plates were passed among the people, plates of sweets and cakes, wines and soft stewed lamb. The priests passed between them a great goblet of offering wine, taking long red drinks before pouring the rest of it out at the feet of the Asherah tree.

  Obadiah retreated to an empty, dark spot just outside the temple, trying to catch his breath. The man had spoken truth plainly. Why did Obadiah struggle to do the same?

  The priests began dancing and fell into a trance, cutting themselves and begging for a vision of the new year. Would Asherah send rain and harvest? Would there be life in the wombs of all those who loved her, the women and the cattle, the sheep and the goats who grazed on her goodness abounding in the fields?

  Obadiah moved to keep an eye on the young girl who had blessed Jezebel. She followed the priest she had watched, seeing him cutting himself across the chest, receiving supposed divine words he could not utter. The priest saw her through his trance and reached for her. Obadiah felt his face flush.

  When the priest reached for her robe, she hesitated.

  The priest leaned near and whispered in her ear.

  She turned her head and kissed him, removing the robe.

  Obadiah put his hand over his mouth and turned away.

  Ahab

  Later that evening, Ahab found Jezebel wandering along the temple’s gate, having climbed to the guard’s post and plank, watching the lovers below as they enjoyed the night air. He was glad to see her spirits so light. He could barely remember
the last time she had smiled.

  “It is pleasant here, is it not?” he asked. An odd little moth flew near, called from the desert by the flames beneath them. It flew near and alighted on Jezebel’s cheek. She cursed, swatting it away.

  “It stung me!” she said. A welt rose beneath the spot from which it had fled. Ahab cursed the air around him and tried to comfort her. He stroked her other cheek and softly kissed the one bitten. She turned away. He wrapped his arms around her and waited for her anger to soften. After a moment she eased into his grasp and looked up at him.

  “You have done well to lead the people tonight,” she said.

  “Some will resent me,” he replied. “They want me to choose.”

  “If a healer listened to the pleas of his patient, no one would ever be cured.”

  Ahab kissed her. She pushed him away, her hands running over the royal insignia of his robes. She was no longer as hostile to his advances, but she did not desire him in this moment. She had grown to trust him a little, that was all. She had begun to see something in him that made her soften when he reached for her, and for now, that was enough.

  “Jezebel,” he said, “you know how different our kingdoms are. Our daughter is beautiful. We can marry her into any kingdom we choose, but she will never rule Israel. I need an heir. A son.”

  She removed herself from his reach, as if repelled by the thought of what must happen again.

  “Are you not inspired by the worship beneath us?” he asked, leaning against the stone wall with an easy smile on his lips. He reached for the sash of her robe, and she brushed his hands away. “I thought you believed in Asherah,” he teased her. “I thought you believed in her gifts.”

  Her easy expression turned almost instantly to sorrow, and she slapped him. Through the sting of his cheek he saw an unbelievable sight. She had tears, real tears that were welling up in her eyes.

  “I did believe! I did everything I was supposed to. Even when I came here, I did everything I was supposed to. And what has it gotten me? A mewling stinking daughter and a husband I did not want!”

  Her words hurt. He had thought wrong. She wasn’t opening up to him; she was still his vicious bride who refused all tenderness.

  He walked away from her, down the stone steps, past the temple and back toward his chamber in the palace. She threw her royal ring after him, and it thudded into the dirt near him as he walked.

  “Take this to a concubine and bid her give you a child in my name. It would be an honor for her.”

  “What is wrong with you?” he turned, shouting. “You are strong, but that does not mean you must be cruel. Everyone suffers, Jezebel. Everyone is disappointed by their god. But you and I can do something about our disappointment. We reign.”

  He watched as his words sank in, and sank in they did, her face changing again as she listened, that strange softness returning. She needed to hear what he said, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he never would be; maybe all wives were mysteries.

  He kicked the ring away with his foot and continued inside. As he walked, something troubled his spirit. It was a vague suspicion, like a growing darkness on the horizon, that Jezebel’s mysteries would not remain hidden forever. Whatever plagued her would one day burst open over them all.

  Jezebel

  Jezebel rose early the next morning, unable to sleep during any of the night’s watches. She dressed herself and went to the courtyard, where servants spied her and rushed out to bring her warmed barley and fruit. She brushed them back like irritating little birds and listened to the night.

  Below the palace the villagers slept. She could hear donkeys dragging carts across the dirt paths sometimes—vendors moving to the open stalls before sunrise. She listened to the chants of insects in the distance, high and keening, and often she heard something stir the trees that was more than the wind. This was a land of unbreakable will.

  She had been wrong; it would never be enough to only be permitted to worship as she pleased. Permission was not acceptance. She wanted acceptance, and, even more, she wanted her religion embraced. It was an odd irony, she realized, that men like Elijah were content to wander alone, convinced of their truth, while she needed people to believe as she did. She could not tolerate the dissenters.

  She had to see that everyone embraced her gods. She had never been more convinced of that than she had been last night. The few who worshipped were not enough, and neither were the few sacrifices. She needed the people to believe with all their strength, to pursue Asherah and Baal with all their hearts. If they didn’t, if she was alone, she might never know if her gods failed everyone, or if they had failed only her. She had always been second, from the moment of her birth. Asherah and Baal were second to Yahweh in this land. She was second to Ahab.

  The only way she would ever have peace was to do what no one else was willing to do. It had always been that way. Distasteful work had been her birthright. She wanted a crown that no man had given her, and so she would push these people to accept gods they had never known. She would encourage sacrifices that made their stomachs turn. She would win a lasting reputation, and that was a crown no man could give—or take away.

  She motioned for a servant.

  “At first light, call to me all the priests and priestesses of Baal and Asherah. Summon every sorcerer and magician in my employ. Find also one hundred men from the army who love gold more than honor. And tell no one.”

  To kill a god, she would kill his prophets. In the silence that would fall, she would hear the voice of Asherah at last.

  Obadiah

  Obadiah refused sleep. He stood all night, weeping for the sins of his people. The Feast of First Fruits had been polluted, the sacred festival trampled. What good was the truth when no one listened? He tried to tell Ahab so many times, but when a heart is hardened, words cannot break it open. The greatest test of Obadiah’s faith was to be this: to bear witness in evil days, and yet believe that the Lord was good.

  “But Ahab fought battles,” Obadiah whispered in prayer. “He has the ease of a man who has fought and won. He struck his enemies, and they fled. Give me something too, Lord. Do not ask me to suffer if I cannot fight.”

  The night air was quiet, the golden light of dawn illuminating the horizon. Camels on the hills were lonely black silhouettes, the morning mist swirling around them in a peaceful haze. The day came, and there was no sign that the Lord had heard his prayer.

  11

  Jezebel

  Jezebel slept much of that day, until night returned and insects once again blotted out the sounds of servants who ran to fetch little comforts for her. She joined her priests at Baal’s temple. Inside the temple, the last of the mercenaries entered as oil lamps were lit and set high on perches all around. The tables were swept clean of food, holding nothing but amulets, powders, and the mysterious hoards of the magicians. The mercenaries stared at the strange piles of feathers, bones and sticks until a sorcerer threatened to hex them all and covered the tables with the magician’s cloaks.

  Priests swept the room to the edges and placed bowls at every corner, every crack in the walls, to catch spirits that might enter unbidden.

  Priests held their thumbs, the most magical finger, and keened quiet prayers as Jezebel took the throne she had placed here. It had winged lions for feet, polished gold, and her purple robes made the lions flash dark, as if shadows invested them with her thoughts.

  The priests whispered spells over water and doused the mercenaries, moving through them, making sure each was anointed on his body, his sword, and his armor. Jezebel stood, and a priest sprinkled the water over her hands in a blessing.

  In a corner, minstrels played the lyre, a sad song, Jezebel thought, of a lover lost at sea. She silenced the singer, and the musician played the lyre more carefully. She moved away from the throne, waiting at the altar for the priest to finish his blessing of night and of darkness
.

  A priest stepped forward to wash his hands over a clay bowl, careful to catch the water for his spell. Jezebel’s womb ached, and she rested her wet palm against the altar for a moment of support. When she lifted it, she saw that it had left a dark imprint on the stone. She smiled to see herself embedded with Baal. Then it evaporated in the dry, waterless air, beginning at the edges until the air had consumed her entirely. Her mouth grew hard.

  Standing at the altar, Jezebel surveyed the power of her name. She had summoned mercenaries to do her will, and sorcerers who would conjure the unseen world. She could command men with gold and bribe the gods with plunder. Ahab had wanted to drink tonight with his commanders. It was just as well. She alone wanted responsibility for the murders. Some deaths were necessary. The people would see that she alone had saved them.

  “Behold!” she commanded, standing and spreading her arms like wings so that the purple sleeves of her robe draped below her. “A curse has been called down on the people of Israel. One man, with one god, has caused us all to suffer. He has called men to his cause. The women of Israel will burn with thirst, their children will die at the breast, and there will be no food because the fields will be dead. Is this what a good ruler should desire?”

  The mercenaries looked at her and each other, not accustomed to speaking before an altar, even if a woman, and not a god, stood before it.

  Jezebel continued, moving down to walk through them, exhilarated by the way they looked at her. They respected her, she could tell. Their eyes watched her as a beast recognizes a lion before its death. She moistened her lips with her tongue and ran her fingers along their shoulders, snaking between them, turning them different directions, keeping them from uniting in will just yet. She despised them for moving so easily beneath her fingertips. She was used to men who fought her.

  “Ahab knows the power of this man Elijah and his so-called prophets. Yahweh is the god of Israel, and Ahab is its prince. Now, Ahab can’t go to war with Yahweh. But neither can he seek Yahweh’s favor as long as these prophets call down curses in Yahweh’s name. So we must be wise. To catch a rat we must think like a rat. Why does Elijah warn Ahab to worship no god but Yahweh? Isn’t it because Elijah would lose power? He resents that I have four hundred priests of Baal and Asherah who are fed and housed, who win the hearts of the people by performing acts of kindness and protection. Elijah’s days are numbered, and he seeks vengeance on us.”