Reign (15 page)

He judged by their faces that they were considering his words. He continued.

“This feast will appease Elijah. It will give our people cause to stay in Samaria for the event and not travel to the temple in Jerusalem as they have in the past. Their money will remain within our borders, which is good. We need every resource right now, including Elijah’s goodwill.”

Mirra’s father stepped forward. “We must conserve our food. I am loyal to you, Ahab, you know that, but I believe Elijah. If he says the drought will last, it will.”

“Do not be troubled, Amon,” Jezebel said, placing her hand on Ahab’s arm. “My priests have made an offering to my gods, who control the rain. They say Baal is well pleased at the construction of a temple in his name here. His wife, Asherah, has accepted our gift. It will rain.”

Ahab leaned in to her and whispered, “You cannot promise rain. If you don’t deliver, they will be at your throat.”

Jezebel turned to face him before speaking. He wished she would keep her voice lower. “This is your kingdom. Not Elijah’s. It doesn’t belong to a wandering band of prophets, either. You should never have let any of them live. And you have to make bold promises if you want to keep the throne.”

Ahab took her hand. “I can’t speak for gods I don’t believe in.”

“The time will come, Ahab, when you will have to believe in one. Life forces everyone to that moment.”

Ahab crushed her hand in his and pulled her to him. He pinned her other hand, and he wrenched her closer yet to whisper in her ear. He saw out of the corner of his eye that the elders noticed this display of displeasure with his wife. Her eyes went dead as he touched her like this. She did not seem to stay in her body when handled roughly. He had spent more than a year now trying to unlock her secrets, to discover what she hid and what she loved, but if he ever pushed her too far, her soul evaporated before his eyes.

He paid no attention to anyone else, not caring what they saw.

“Listen to me,” he said. “All my life I was forced to worship a man ten times as big as me, ten times as bitter as a scorpion. When he handed me the crown, there was a sneer on his lips. He knew it would be too much for me, that I could do little but bear its weight and suffer. And yet I have built new cities. I have filled the treasuries and brought to my land a princess of Phoenicia. I have done all this, and I have done it without god or man. Do not tell me I will be forced to do anything. I will never be forced again.”

He let go and saw that she was breathing hard, her eyes alight again, lips parted. She looked as if she felt desire for him, but how could that be? He had admitted a weakness to her, and she was not a woman who respected weakness. What did she see in him in these moments of confession?

She faced the court with a face like stone, betraying nothing of what she felt.

He turned and addressed the court once more. “I will amend my plans. Let us invite all people, from all provinces, to celebrate the birth and the feast at the temple of Baal and the shrine to Asherah, which are almost complete. After all, Athaliah does not belong to Yahweh. She does not even belong to me. She belongs to the nation.”

Jezebel reached for his hand, and a flush of warmth came over him.

Obadiah

Obadiah grieved to see the priests of Baal and Asherah moving through the new temple, preparing for the Feast of the First Fruits. The temple was an abomination. Built for Baal, it had two columns in front, leading to an open area. Along one side was an archway opening into a room of tile mosaics, with couches lining the walls.

Straight through the main room was a smaller three-walled chamber where a stone altar rested. Tonight it had two bowls for incense. Beautiful, ornate bowls with ivory designs of flowers and vines, Obadiah noted, meant to distract the new worshippers among the Israelites. Behind the altar was a fire pit that went down deep into the earth. It was above this that Baal’s arms extended as if to hear the prayers of his people. Obadiah noted how close the hands were to each other, slightly cupped. Here, he knew, they would place an infant. He had read too many accounts to have any more doubts that such evil could be embraced as good and necessary.

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!”