Reign Page 20

  Ahab dragged Ben-hadad out into the streets. None of Ben-hadad’s men were seen. Ben-hadad’s knees were shaking, and Ahab understood.

  Yahweh reduced kings to this.

  Ahab reached out a hand and rested it on Ben-hadad’s shoulder. “I will make the terms.”

  Ben-hadad nodded.

  “There can be peace between us, between you and my God, but you must do as I ask. In exchange for your life, you must return all the cities you stole from my father long ago. You must swear to never again attack us, never again cost us even one life.”

  Ben-hadad embraced Ahab like a brother and wept for his army. Ahab left him standing in the dusty streets of Aphek to search for survivors. A messenger ran to him, pale and with stuttering speech. Ahab saw the fear in the young boy’s face and remembered how death seems to the very young. He squatted down to look into the boy’s eyes, not caring how such indignity reflected on him as prince.

  “Do not be afraid, my son,” he said. “What is your message?”

  “Your … father,” the boy said, holding Ahab’s gaze steady as if for strength, “he is … dead.”

  18

  Ahab

  Ahab ran for the battlefield. Where was his father? Blood covered the earth in a flood unseen since the days of Noah. Wasted, blood poured through the valley, poisoning the flowers with the salted memory of life. Bodies littered the earth in all directions. Every face was covered with blood so that men of all nations looked like brothers. Death wrote the final treaty they would keep, and keep forever. As darkness fell on the land, the moon revealed the unnatural plain.

  He found Omri slumped over in a chariot. The king had no wounds, and his face was slack, his eyes open. Ahab held his father in his arms and did not know if he should weep.

  When he was a child of eight, his mother had died. Omri cried every day, drinking himself into a stupor at night, drinking his way through the last of their money. Omri had been a good soldier, a respected man of valor, and it was not a small sum that he drank up. But an offer came from the lord of the city of Ashdod to put down a small rebellion. Ahab’s mother had been buried for two months, and Ahab had refused to leave, wanting to stay in that land to the east with her bones.

  But Omri accepted the work, then drank until he passed out over his wife’s grave. Ahab woke him the next day, frightened by the smell of death that rose from the ground and clung to his father. Ahab did not want to lose his father. At last, toward noon, Omri stood, scowling at his son’s tears. Ahab licked them away and tasted sorrow. They left their home that evening, forever.

  In Ashdod, Ahab discovered this wonder called the sea. The waves crashed and broke over sharp rocks, mesmerizing him with their relentless beauty. He found a path down to the water and followed it, and when he waded in to a quiet pool guarded by a formation of rocks, he lifted one hand to his mouth. The water was salted and bitter, stinging his throat, still raw from the dusty journey. It stunned Ahab, to think beauty could taste like tears.

  Choking on the water, he was hurt by his father’s laughter behind him.

  “Come with me,” Omri had said, grabbing Ahab and forcing him into the rough water.

  Though Ahab cried, his father held him by the arms, pinning the boy in front of his own body. Waves taller than a horse swept down on them both. The waves would strike Ahab in the face, salt burning his eyes, as the brunt of the wave struck the air from his chest. He gasped between waves as his father yelled at him, “Which of us is stronger?”

  At first, Ahab thought his father wanted him to be brave, to declare that Ahab the boy was stronger, but that was not so. The waves were going to kill him.

  Finally, he yelled between rolling assaults, “You are! Omri is stronger than his son! Omri is stronger than them all!”

  Omri released him and walked back to shore. Ahab stumbled through the surf and collapsed against a rock. Omri stood above him, not looking at his son but the horizon, nodding to himself as he repeated his son’s words. “Omri is stronger than them all.”

  Ahab never saw his father grieve for his mother. He never saw Omri grieve or weep for anything.

  And so Ahab refused to grieve for him.

  Jezebel

  Jezebel had Ahab’s chamber supplied with fresh fruits: lemons, ripe and fragrant, bowls of them set around the chamber for perfume, and apricots for color. She had dishes prepared of spinach and meats seasoned with fennel, and wine brought in from the storehouses. She made sure the palace kitchens were ready to feed the returning troops, and feed them well, with the best dishes planned for a private meal for Ahab in his chamber. Finally, she had warned the royal nurses to be ready for Ahab’s return, too. Clean clothes needed to be ready at all times and the children freshly bathed and perfumed every day until his return.

  When the army was spotted on the horizon, the servants cheered for joy, everyone scampering to their tasks.

  Lilith worked quickly to help Jezebel bathe and dress in a fine new linen she had imported from her father’s household. Jezebel asked Lilith to braid her hair, hoping it would remind Ahab of their first days together, before the gods had fought over Israel, and before they had fought as husband and wife.

  Jezebel watched from her window as the army entered the gates, to judge their timing. She wanted to be on the steps of the palace as he arrived, with Ahaziah and Athaliah at her side.

  But it was not as she expected. The men moved slowly, a boy marching in front, playing the tambourine and singing a dirge. Women from the city emerged from their homes, and slowly a loud wail rose from the streets. Death had come to Samaria.

  Jezebel felt the blood drain from her heart. Searching the gathering crowd, she saw Ahab’s flag bearer. The flag rode high, Ahab behind it. Jezebel slumped forward and exhaled. She did not understand her relief that he was alive. Was that what it meant to love someone, that she would fear his death? But she had given him an heir. His death could do no harm to her now, as long as she remembered not to love.

  Ahab scowled as he rode through the wailing crowd. He dismounted at the palace steps and went inside, without even looking at Jezebel or his children. His face was dark and clouded, an expression she had not seen since the drought. His men riding in after him looked no better, though they looked more confused than angry or afraid. The streets began to buzz with the questions. Jezebel grabbed a guard walking past, on his way to attend Ahab.

  “Who is dead?” she asked.

  He sighed and hesitated before answering as if her reaction might be unpleasant.

  “King Omri,” he said at last. “He died in battle, but not by the enemy’s hands. It was old age.”

  “You won, though, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered and went on.

  Jezebel

  Ahab went straight to his chamber that evening, and Jezebel was refused entrance.

  The guard was young, though, and he did not know what to do when she shoved him out of the way and entered the chamber. She was the queen now, after all.

  Ahab sat on the bed, staring at the floor. Blood stained the edges of his tunic, as if he had walked through a sea of blood. His hair hung in thick tangles around his shoulders. He smelled of mud and smoke. When he shifted his weight on the bed, he groaned as if sore, as if thinking he was just a man. He was not. He was a king. Jezebel marveled that he allowed himself to feel anything but that. She had been spared so many useless emotions.

  “You need to address the people,” she said at last.

  “I have shown mercy to my enemy, but none was given to me,” he said. “We defeated Ben-hadad, just as the Lord said we would. Ben-hadad had insulted the name of our God, angered Him. That is why we were given favor. Because the Lord was angry with him. It did not mean the Lord was pleased with me.” He sighed, and Jezebel waited for him to continue.

  A tear ran down his cheek as he spoke again. �
��It was a battle deep in blood. I heard the groans of his men dying and knew they had been punished for his sin. It could have been my men dying were it not for the mercy of the Lord on me. The Lord gave me mercy, allowed me and my men to live, but that did not mean He was pleased. What more did I owe Him?”

  There was no crown prepared for a queen mother of Israel. One would need to be made immediately. She had too much to do to sit with Ahab like he was a child.

  Jezebel slapped him. It had no effect.

  “I offered terms of peace to Ben-hadad,” he said. “And while I mourned the news of my father, a prophet of Yahweh came to me and told me he had a word from the Lord for me. I was eager to know what it could be. But he said, ‘Because you had mercy on the man I had marked for destruction, your life is forfeit. Your life for his life. Your people for his people.’” Ahab groaned. “Punishment. For giving mercy.”

  Jezebel could not speak. The shock was too great. Ahab had done wisely and acted with shrewd intent. He offered a covenant of peace with a powerful enemy, and the enemy had accepted. The Lord had promised Ahab victory and said he would strike down Ben-hadad, but Ahab had found a better way. Ahab’s plan was good by any moral, human standard.

  His god was insane.

  Dipping a linen in the basin of water on her nightstand, she held his face in her hands and wiped away the grime. When she finished, he rested his head against her bosom. How heavy he felt, weighted by grief.

  “Should I call a concubine?” she asked. She didn’t want to spend her evening holding him. Those women served a purpose. But he did not seem to hear her.

  At last, he released her, and she helped him into bed. That night she rested with her face against the wall, unable to bring herself to comfort Ahab any longer in his weakness. He had to break free of this god. If he did not, how could he ever rule?

  Obadiah

  Two days later, Obadiah stood before Ahab, holding the royal crown, a thick band of gold set with the stones of Israel’s tribes. Like Ahab, Obadiah had been a boy when this crown was placed on Omri’s head. How large the crown had seemed then, as if a giant could wear it. Obadiah felt the cold weight of it in his hands. It was smaller than he remembered. He placed it on Ahab’s head and turned to the court, who shouted, “Long live King Ahab! May his kingdom endure to a thousand generations!”

  Behind Obadiah, a steward stepped forward holding the royal warrant, a scroll containing the covenant between God, king, and people. Modeled after Solomon’s oath and God’s commands to him, Obadiah prepared to read it, his heart aching with anticipation. At last the words of the Mighty Lord would ring out before the people, and the court, and even Jezebel herself.

  Obadiah caught himself and returned to his business, preparing to lift the tie on the scroll and read it. Ahab shook his head against it. He accepted the scroll, still bound, with a curt nod, his eyes looking straight out over the people gathered below him, just beyond the palace steps. Obadiah grieved that Jezebel long ago had requested the tombs of Omri and Ahab be moved. When she came here, they had been black gaping boxes on either side of the main entrance to the palace, built into the platform it sat on. She requested they be filled in with stone and moved. But graves would have reminded the court to put no faith in man. Faith was for sure things, like the word of the Lord. It was a bitter thought, just another truth he could not share.

  Next, Obadiah held a horn with a stopper in one end, which he removed as Ahab knelt. A silence came over the people. The sun was glorious in its attendance today, and a cool breeze made all lift their faces up and close their eyes in pleasure as Obadiah began to pour the oil over Ahab’s head. It dripped down his temples onto his shoulders, and Obadiah saw the change in his eyes. He was free of his father, and he was king.

  Ahab turned to Jezebel then, extending his hand, as protocol would have him do. As Ahab took her hand in his, Obadiah set the new queen’s crown on her head, forcing himself to focus. She had allowed craftsmen no sleep until a crown was made that exceeded even Ahab’s in beauty. She had more gray in her hair than he had realized. That bed of ashes she had made had worked its way into her blood and changed her. Obadiah willed Ahab to see it too.

  Ahab looked haunted. He faced the crowd as they played tambourines and danced. In the distance, the sky was white and hazy as clouds hung low over the hills, spilling toward them, concealing the distant lands.

  Obadiah shuddered and wondered what might be waiting just beneath.

  Jezebel

  After two months, Jezebel grew impatient. The move to Jezreel had not brightened Ahab. He was still withdrawn and drank himself to sleep many nights. He had not brought his box of gods and amulets, the ones he had saved from all those past battles. If he was trying to reform himself for the Lord, she doubted he was telling the Lord much about the drinking.

  She wondered what Sargon would have said. Jezebel knew what Asherah would say, and that was nothing. Asherah had not made herself known since her priests had died calling her name. Perhaps if a child were to be offered, though. A newborn would be best, but where to get one? The Israelite women didn’t want to do that anymore. Jezebel couldn’t offer one of her children, of course. People knew their faces. They had names.

  Ahab and Jezebel had sat on the balcony overlooking Naboth’s gardens, an attempt to enjoy a pleasant morning. A pink sunrise had flooded the valley with light. Ahab had stood without warning and left.

  “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “I want to see how Naboth’s gardens have done since last year.”

  Jezebel retreated to her chamber for several hours, working on a letter to her father. She could no longer make sacrifices here and be assured of the gods’ blessing. Perhaps her father would see that some were made in her name. Lilith entered the chamber, frowning, motioning for her to be quiet, gesturing toward the hall.

  Jezebel heard Ahab’s voice, a groan of abject misery escaping him.

  Jezebel rolled her eyes. “Is he drunk?”

  Lilith shrugged. “He went out. He came back in. Obadiah thought he was hungry, so he sent food up, but Ahab refused it.”

  Jezebel ran through all the possibilities in her mind. Ahab had gotten hurt or taken an embarrassing fall in front of his men. He had become ill after yesterday’s ride—any number of things that a man might not want to discuss. Or maybe he was having romantic difficulties with another wife. Jezebel would not counsel him on that. But he could not live like this.

  She would not allow it.

  19

  Ahab

  Ahab had wandered from the palace into the gardens of Naboth. He found peace there, as if it were a fruit that Naboth grew. His father would have broken his nose for admitting this out loud, but Ahab thought nature tried to teach him.

  Sometimes, when he had ridden in a chariot, the horse would take him into rough fields, and a weed, a thorny vine, would get caught up in the wheel. The horse would not slow. Ahab knew the animal didn’t even notice. Not until the animal went further and further, his eye only on the destination ahead, and turn by turn, the vine worked its way through, knotting and twisting, until the wheel slowed and threw the chariot off balance. Ahab would be forced to stop and cut through layer after layer of thorns, bloodying his hands as he pried the vine free. If he had caught it early, the work would have been light and less painful. It wasn’t the vine that caused such damage, but the combination of vine and distance traveled.

  That was what Ahab felt, sinking regret, consternation that a simple task had turned into a painful rebuke. Nothing to be done but cut. How could he? How could he cut Jezebel loose, deny his children by her, and now another one on the way? Oh, by the Lord, if he had only said no to the marriage. If he had never kissed her and known how soft she could be.

  He couldn’t please the Lord without cutting away so much. He had come so far. Had the Lord ever made sense to him, ever explained why the sea must be salt and what he l
oved must die? God was stronger than man; why did that not satisfy Him? It had been enough for Omri.

  Ahab was startled by the quiet approach of Naboth, who bore a bucket of vegetable scraps. Naboth was a short man with graying brown hair that grew thinner as it reached his shoulders. He had deep lines around his mouth and eyes, suggesting a man of great laughter. His nose was the most prominent feature of his face, too large for it seemingly, but even that just made him merry. Ahab had met him several times and knew him to be a devout man of the Lord, so he was not surprised to think of him as a happy man. Most of them laughed a great deal, for reasons Ahab never understood.

  “Ahab!” Naboth called, setting the bucket down and embracing him with a brisk hug. “I was grieved to hear of your father’s death.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are well?” Naboth asked, studying Ahab’s face, seeing something there. Ahab felt himself blushing, as if embarrassed, as if caught. By a gardener, no less.

  “I have known trouble,” Ahab confessed.

  Naboth smiled, a generous and kind smile. “Well, since you are obviously not here on official business”—he gestured to make clear that no one had accompanied the king—“come and help me in the garden.” He picked up his bucket and started walking toward a shady area where his herbs grew. “I need to work these scraps into the soil. Makes the soil richer.”

  Ahab had not moved. Naboth turned and called to him. “Come on. Soil is good medicine for troubled men.”

  Ahab followed, and he worked with his hands, the hands that had held a sword now wielding a small trough. Making the soil richer for new things to come. Naboth was right. It was good medicine. Ahab felt himself able to breathe deeply, as if he hadn’t taken a breath, a real breath, in years.

  “All this waste, it makes the next crop better?” Ahab asked.

  “Stronger, I’d say,” was Naboth’s reply. “What we wasted yesterday prepares the soil for tomorrow. But only if you put it to work.”