The Strength of His Hand (7 page)

He was impossibly thin, as if all his flesh had melted away, and his face looked gray beneath his dark beard. As he tossed in a delirium of fever, his random thrashing caused him great pain, and he moaned in agony. The burn on his leg was the source of the stench, a blackened, oozing sore that turned Hephzibah’s stomach.

He was dying. There could be no doubt. She cried out in horror.

“Hezekiah!
No!

” Without thinking, Hephzibah pushed the servant aside and sank to her knees beside the bed, seizing Hezekiah’s hand in both of hers.

“Please don’t die hating me,” she begged. “Please let me explain.”

His hand felt hot with fever. His waxy blue nails and fingertips looked like a dead man’s. The servant clutched her around her waist, trying to pry her away from him, but she fought him off.

“Please, Hezekiah! You can’t die. You can’t!”

Hezekiah’s eyelids slowly opened, and a dazed look of pain filled his unseeing eyes.

“So … thirsty …” he mumbled.

With a surge of desperate strength, Hephzibah freed herself from the servant and grabbed a cup of water from the table beside the bed.She held it to Hezekiah’s lips. They were tinged with blue around the edges like his lifeless fingers.

“Hephzibah?” he whispered.

“Yes, my love. It’s me.”

“Hephzibah … I …” Then Hezekiah’s face twisted in pain, and he let out a terrible moan. “Oh, God … help me …”

He began to shiver, the spasms shaking his body convulsively, and Hephzibah never felt so terrified or so helpless in her life. If she could have seized the life in her own body and forced it into his, she would have done so.

Someone grabbed her and hurried her out of the room. The ter-rible sound of Hezekiah’s moans followed her into the hallway.Eliakim stood outside the door.

“What have I done? What have I done?” she sobbed. “He’s dying—dear God, he’s dying!”

“Hephzibah, stop it,” Eliakim said.

“Is he going to die? Please don’t let him die!”

“The physicians will do everything they can to save him.”

“Let me help … let me do something… .” The servant had to support her, or she would have collapsed to the floor.

“Take her back to the harem,” Eliakim told him. “This time make sure she stays there.”

“But I want to take care of him,” she pleaded. “He’s my husband.”

Eliakim shook his head. “No. He isn’t your husband. Not anymore. And don’t try to come here again. There’s nothing more you can do for him.”

Nothing more she could do.

Hephzibah knew she would never see Hezekiah again.

5

H
EZEKIAH DRIFTED INTO
consciousness, slowly becoming aware of his surroundings. Instantly the relentless pain overwhelmed him, and he wanted to slip away again. But if he did, he might never wake up.

Was he dying? Was this what dying felt like, growing weaker and weaker each day while the pain grew stronger and stronger? The sickness that had spread through his body consumed his life like fire licking up straw. He fought to stay conscious in spite of his agony.

He turned his head and saw Eliakim sitting beside the bed with his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. Hezekiah licked his dry lips and tried to speak.

“Eliakim …”

He bolted to his feet. “You’re awake?”

“I’m so thirsty.”

Eliakim put his hand behind Hezekiah’s neck and raised his head to help him drink. The water tasted good and surprisingly cold. How did they keep it so cold when the room felt so hot? He drank all that he could, even though most of it ran down his beard and soaked the bandages on his chest.

“I dreamed that Hephzibah came,” he murmured when he finished. “I dreamed she gave me a drink.” How long would it take until he could forget Hephzibah completely? How long until he could erase from his mind the memory of what she had done?

“Can I get you anything else?” Eliakim asked.

“No, sit down. Talk to me.”

“All right.” He sat down hesitantly, as if poised to run for help.He looked distraught.

“Where’s Shebna?”

“He left to eat dinner. Would you like something to eat, Your Majesty?”

Hezekiah couldn’t remember when he had eaten last, but he wasn’t hungry.

“Just more water.” Eliakim gave him more.

“We’ve been so worried, Your Majesty. I’m glad you’re awake.You seem a little better.”

No, Hezekiah knew how weak he felt, how hard he had to struggle to hang on to consciousness. He had lost all track of time as day and night ran together in a haze of pain. Was it just a moment ago that Shebna had read to him?

“How long have I been sick?”

“Your fever started two days ago.”

Two days had passed without his awareness. The thought terrified Hezekiah. This was a rehearsal for death, the end of conscious thought. He licked his lips again and tried to talk.

“Once … when I was traveling through the Negev, I spent the night in a shepherd’s tent … a sturdy little thing … protecting me from rain and sun. But in the morning the shepherd yanked out all the stakes … one after the other … and just like that, all the life went out of it, and it collapsed in a heap. It wasn’t a tent anymore …only a pile of lifeless cloth. Then he folded it up and packed it away … and only a square of flattened grass could prove it had ever existed.” He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “Is that all there is to life, Eliakim? When our lives suddenly end and we’re gone … is there nothing left to show that we ever lived?”

“You’ve accomplished a great deal, Your Majesty. You’ve restored Judah’s covenant with Yahweh and brought great prosperity to our nation and—”

“But what happens when we die?”

“The Torah says we are gathered to be with our fathers and—”

“No. Not with my father.”

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I … I meant father Abraham and Isaac and …” Eliakim fell silent.

Hezekiah felt the fever burning all through his body. Sweat poured off him and made the bedcovers stick to his skin, but he was too weak to lift his hand to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, too weak to kick the stifling covers aside.

“Do you want to know what it feels like to die, Eliakim? It’s as if a lion has me in her jaws. She has broken all my bones, and now she’s toying with me. I’m waiting for her to finish me off—but I don’t want to die. Not now. I’m in the prime of my life … and I don’t have a son to take my place … to finish all that I’ve started.”

“You aren’t going to die,” Eliakim said fiercely.

“I wish I could believe that. But every hour it feels as if I’m slipping closer and closer to Sheol’s gates, and there’s nothing to grab on to to stop my fall.”

He remembered how his brother had fallen headlong into the flames. Eliab had tried to grab Molech’s shining arms to stop himself, but the metal had been too hot, too slippery, and he had fallen to his death.

“You will beat this sickness, Your Majesty. Yahweh won’t let you die.”

“Yahweh seems very far away, Eliakim. I’m watching the horizon, waiting for Him to come, longing to see Him, but my eyes are tired of looking for Him … and still He doesn’t come … doesn’t help me …”

“God has never left your side, Your Majesty. He has always been right here with you. Sometimes when He seems the farthest away from us, He’s really the closest. He uses these breaking experiences to strengthen our faith, and the difficult times to draw us nearer to His side.”

“ ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you… .”’

“Yes, that’s right, Your Majesty.”

“My grandfather showed me that verse the day he died,” Hezekiah mumbled. “But I don’t want to die.”

Suddenly he went cold, as if someone had opened a window, bringing in a blast of wintry air. He began to shiver.

“ … for you, Your Majesty?”

He realized that Eliakim had asked him a question, but he didn’t know what it was. The delirium was trying to take control again, leaving him confused and disoriented.

“What’s happening to my kingdom?” he asked. “Don’t I have work to do?”

Eliakim’s answer was a jumble of random words, disconnected from each other.

“Nation … officials … daily …”

Hezekiah closed his eyes, feeling weary and cold. Eliakim piled more blankets on him, but they didn’t help. He needed to rest, to sleep, to escape from the pain, but he was afraid he would never wake up. He opened his eyes again, and a dark stranger stood over his bed. His beardless face was shiny, and he wore an unusual robe that wasn’t Judean.

The angel of death.

“Who are you?” he shivered.

“This is your new physician,” Eliakim said. “He’s trained in the Egyptian healing arts. Shebna sent for him when the boil appeared.”

The Egyptian lifted Hezekiah’s arm and pinned it tightly between his own arm and body. “I must drain some of your blood now, my lord. It is filled with poison.”

The stranger’s mouth moved, but Shebna’s voice came out. Something sharp stabbed Hezekiah. The physician had slit his arm open, and blood pumped out of the wound. Hezekiah thought of the sacrifices at the Temple as he watched his own blood pouring into a basin. Would they sprinkle it around the altar? Would Yahweh accept this offering and heal him?

“Don’t …” he moaned.

Pagans performed these rituals. They shouldn’t do this to him. Blood was sacred.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man … I will demand an
accounting… .”
Life was in the blood. They were draining his life away.

“Stop …”

No one listened to him.

When he had filled the bowl, the Egyptian tied a tight bandage around Hezekiah’s arm. “Now I must drain the poison from the boil and change the dressing on your leg,” he said.

“No! Don’t touch my leg!”

Whenever they touched his leg it brought agony, then nothingness. He didn’t want to return to the darkness. He didn’t want to die. Hezekiah tried to move away from him.

“Hold him still,” the Egyptian said.

“No! I order you to keep him away from me!” He was the king. They had to obey him. But a moment later he felt strong hands gripping his shoulders and ankles. He struggled to break free, the same way he had struggled as a child to break free from the soldier’s grip. But he was helpless, just as he had been helpless back then.

Hezekiah felt a stab of pain in his leg, the worst pain he had ever known. It shuddered through his entire body, and he cried out. Then darkness fell once again.

Shebna was sitting alone in his room, his supper untouched in front of him, when Prince Gedaliah arrived. He hadn’t seen the prince in several years—since the night Gedaliah had planned to assassinate his brother—and he wished he didn’t have to see him now.

“I received your urgent summons,” Gedaliah said. “What’s so important that I had to drop everything and run up here to Jerusalem?” The prince looked gritty and ill-tempered after his journey from Lachish. He stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips, glaring angrily.

“Close the door, Gedaliah, and sit down.”

“It must be awfully serious if I have to sit down.”

Shebna watched him sink onto the pile of cushions and wished, as he had wished for days, that Hezekiah had an heir. Any son, no matter how young, would be preferable to this arrogant prince. Why had the king been so stubborn about taking another wife? It was obvious to everyone that Hephzibah was barren. Shebna cursed Yahweh’s laws for leading to this impossible situation.

“Where are all your servants?” Gedaliah asked, looking around. “I could use a drink.”

“I sent them away. I did not want anyone to hear our conversation.” Shebna got up and poured Gedaliah a drink, then set the flask of wine on the table beside him. “Here. Drink all you want.”

“Aren’t you having any?”

“No.” He wanted to get this meeting over with. He had already delayed it as long as he dared. “I summoned you because your brother is gravely ill.”

Gedaliah swirled the wine around in the goblet, studying it. “Oh? What’s the matter with him?”

“I will be blunt. The king is dying.”

Gedaliah sat up, suddenly showing interest. “Dying? Really?”

Shebna watched several emotions play across Gedaliah’s face, but as they transformed from surprise to slow comprehension to delight, Shebna had to look away.

“Well!” Gedaliah said after a long pause. “Well! I don’t know what to say. This is quite a surprise. My brother’s dying, is he? Why didn’t you send for me sooner? I could have used more time to—”

‘‘We did not believe he might die until a few days ago when the boil appeared. His condition has deteriorated very rapidly since then.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” But Gedaliah’s face betrayed him; he was overjoyed. Shebna lost control.

“Curse you, Gedaliah! How dare you sit there and pretend you are sorry. You have waited all your life for this opportunity!”

“All right, Shebna. You don’t have to shout at me. I’ll admit it. I’m delighted.” Gedaliah smiled, and Shebna fought the urge to slap his face. “But wouldn’t any man be pleased to hear that he’s about to become king?”

“Perhaps some of your joy will be tempered when you see what an agonizing death your brother is suffering.”

Gedaliah poured himself another drink. “Mind if I help myself?”

“No. But try to refrain from celebrating for another day or two.”

“Only a day? Is he that close?”

Shebna’s fists tightened. “Yes.”

“You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with him.”

Shebna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There was a fire in the harem. The king was badly burned trying to put it out.”

“Was anyone else hurt?”

Shebna read Gedaliah’s thoughts. “No. Hephzibah was unharmed. You will be able to inherit your brother’s wife along with his throne.”

Gedaliah broke into a broad grin, which he tried to disguise by lifting his glass and draining the remainder of his wine.

“This is good stuff, Shebna. Are you sure you won’t have some?”

“I must also tell you that King Hezekiah has not named a successor.”

‘‘Which means… ?”

“It means that any of Ahaz’s sons has a right to claim the throne.”

Gedaliah sat up straight, his brow creased in a frown.

“Have you notified my brothers that Hezekiah is dying?”