The Chronicles of the Kings Collection

by Lynn Austin

  “We have a hundred reasons to kill him,” Joshua shouted. “Do you have any idea how much innocent blood he has shed, how much evil he has done?”

  “Yahweh is Manasseh’s judge, not us. We should wait for Him to bring justice.”

  “We’re Yahweh’s instruments of justice! That’s why He sent us here to be trained as soldiers. Remember your disbelief when Pharaoh first told us we’d all have to serve in his army? Can’t you see how God’s plan is finally coming together? I’ve waited a long time for this chance!”

  “No,” Amariah insisted, “this is wrong. I don’t want any part in Hadad’s plan. I’m the island’s leader, and I refuse to condone it.”

  The stubbornness in his voice surprised Joshua. He signaled to Amariah’s servant. “Go get me a Torah scroll,” Joshua told him. “I need to show Prince Amariah something.”

  They all waited uneasily while the servant went on his errand. When the man returned with the scroll, Joshua rolled through it until he found the passage he wanted. He read the words aloud: “‘If your very own brother . . . secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” . . . do not yield to him or listen to him.’”

  “I don’t care what it says, we can’t—”

  “‘Do not spare him or shield him,’” Joshua continued, cutting Amariah off. “‘You must certainly put him to death . . . and then the hands of all the people—’”

  “No! I won’t listen to this.” Amariah turned his back.

  Joshua raised his voice to a shout, drowning Amariah’s protests. “‘Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God. . . . Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.’” He shoved the scroll into Amariah’s hands. “Here. Read it yourself.”

  “He’s my brother. Could you kill Jerimoth if he—”

  “We’re not talking about Jerimoth, we’re talking about Manasseh—the man who murdered my father and my grandfather, the man who tortured God’s prophet to death, the man who raped your wife and murdered her child!”

  “I know, but—”

  “You told me yourself how Manasseh tried to force you to participate in his pagan rituals—Asherah poles, divination, witchcraft, sodomy. How much more will it take to convince you that he deserves to die? This is a God-given opportunity. How can we refuse it?”

  Amariah thrust the scroll back into Joshua’s hands. “I’m telling you I can’t do it. I won’t do it!”

  “You don’t have to,” Joshua said softly. “I’ll kill him myself.” He glared at the prince in silent confrontation while Hadad leaned against the window ledge, watching them.

  “So do we have a deal?” Hadad finally asked.

  Joshua nodded, his eyes still riveted on the prince, daring him to contradict. “We’ll need a squad of commando fighters to draw the guards away from the king. Help me choose the best men, Hadad. Help me train them.”

  “Are you sure you trust me with a weapon?”

  When Joshua looked at Hadad and tried to read his face, he couldn’t. Once again Joshua felt the chill of uncertainty. He hesitated, carefully weighing his suspicions about Hadad’s motives against the opportunity for revenge against Manasseh. His hatred, his burning need for vengeance, won the battle.

  “I need your help, Hadad, so I’ll have to trust you. We’ll only have a few months to prepare.”

  “All right,” he said quietly. “But this island isn’t very big. It will be easier for me if I could live here without seeing your sister.”

  Joshua understood. He often saw Yael, the woman he had loved, with her husband and year-old son. Yael was pregnant again. “You can move into your old rooms in the barracks,” Joshua told him. “Dinah lives . . .” A whisper of doubt stopped him again. He shrugged it aside, remembering his goal to kill Manasseh. “Dinah lives on the other side of the island.”

  Hadad’s brief smile lacked emotion. “If everything goes according to plan, we’ll all be living in the palace in Jerusalem again, won’t we, my brothers?”

  6

  Amariah paced across the main room of his house, exasperation pushing his patience to the limit. “No, Joshua. I already told you. I don’t want any guards lurking around here. This is my home. Either you trust Hadad or you don’t. And since you’re going ahead with your assassination plans, that obviously means you’ve decided to trust him.”

  “The guards would be for Dinah’s sake,” Joshua began.

  “She’s my wife. It’s my job to protect her!”

  Joshua raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry.”

  But Amariah knew by the cold expression on Joshua’s face that his refusal to order extra guards had angered Joshua. He might as well risk angering him further. “Before you leave, Joshua . . . I’ve been thinking. I’d feel better about this assassination business if you’d ask the priests to consult the Urim and Thummim about it.”

  Joshua took a step toward him. Amariah recognized the move as one Joshua always made when he wanted to intimidate an opponent. The maneuver didn’t surprise Amariah, but his pulse quickened all the same. Joshua was not as tall as Amariah was, but the barely controlled anger that had ruled his life these past two years frightened everyone who knew him. His dark eye patch and rugged scar gave him an added ferocity.

  “In the first place, we don’t have the Urim and Thummim,” Joshua said. “We left it behind when we fled Jerusalem. And in the second place, we wouldn’t need to consult it even if we did. The Torah makes it very clear that your brother deserves to die.”

  “Then why not trust God to deal with him instead of avenging him yourself? According to the king’s chronicles, David had two opportunities to kill King Saul, who was just as guilty of disobeying God as my brother is. But David refused to lay a hand on God’s anointed king. And in due time, God took Saul’s life and placed David on the throne.”

  “You’re right, Amariah,” Joshua said coldly. “David didn’t need to kill Saul. God sent his enemies, the Philistines, to do it.” His voice rose to a shout. “And I’m Manasseh’s enemy! God is sending me to kill him!”

  Amariah saw that it was no use. He couldn’t compete with Joshua’s agile mind and bitter tongue. “I have one more question, then,” Amariah said quietly. “How do you know that Hadad isn’t leading you into a trap?”

  The question seemed to take Joshua by surprise. He paused, stroking his ragged beard. “I suppose it’s something I ought to consider. . . .” But before Joshua had time to weigh the possibility, Dinah interrupted, hurrying in from the courtyard to embrace her brother.

  “Joshua! I thought I heard your voice. What brings you here?”

  Amariah held his breath, silently hoping that Joshua wouldn’t tell her the truth or try to convince her to surround their house with guards. She already knew that Hadad had returned; he didn’t want her to live in fear of him.

  “Oh, nothing important,” Joshua said with a shrug. “But as long as I have you both together, we need to talk about your heir. Dinah, it’s vitally important for you to get pregnant within the next few months. Before our mission, if possible.”

  Dinah nodded her head, murmuring apologetically, but Amariah was too stunned to speak, outraged that Joshua would dare to interfere in his married life. As Joshua continued to explain the urgent need for an heir, Amariah finally found his voice.

  “Get out of my house!”

  “What?”

  Dinah laid her hand on his arm. “Amariah, please . . .”

  “I want him to leave. Now!”

  Joshua stared hard at him for a moment, his anger smoldering like banked coals. Amariah braced himself for an explosion, but it never came. Joshua simply shrugged. “Whatever you say, Your Majesty.” He kissed his sister’s cheek and strode away without another word.

  But Amariah couldn’t shrug it off that easily. Joshua’s demands had infuriated him. How dare he interfere in their married life, violat
ing their intimacy, commanding them to produce a son? Amariah was so angry that it took him a moment to realize Dinah had been speaking to him. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “What did you say?”

  “I said the servants have your evening meal on the table.”

  But Amariah couldn’t eat, sickened by Joshua’s audacity. Was this the way the rest of his life would be, with Joshua giving all the orders, dictating his every move? Amariah had longed to escape from Manasseh’s authority and live his own life, make his own decisions. But he had merely exchanged one taskmaster for another.

  “I’m not hungry,” he told Dinah. “I need to get some air.” He left the house and started walking—anywhere, nowhere.

  The worst thing about living on an island, he quickly discovered, was that he couldn’t walk very far without coming to the end of it. And the worst thing about being that island’s leader was meeting people who wanted to talk when the last thing in the world he felt like doing was talking. After barely an hour, he gave up the search for solitude and returned home.

  As the evening wore on and the servants retired to their own homes for the night, Amariah found himself dreading the moment when he would have to go to bed with his wife. He sat in the main room of his house alone, watching as evening faded into night and the room’s familiar furnishings disappeared into the shadows, wishing he could disappear along with them. His life was not his own. He wondered if it ever would be.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting in the dark when a beam of light flickered in the gloom and Dinah entered, carrying a small lamp. He shaded his eyes with his hand, shielding them from the lamp’s glow and from her scrutiny.

  “Oh . . . I wondered if you’d fallen asleep out here,” she said.

  “No. I’m awake.”

  “Why don’t you come to bed?”

  Amariah sighed and rubbed his eyes. “All right.” He slowly pulled himself to his feet and started to follow her, then stopped. Joshua had demanded an heir and she was determined to obey him. The thought sickened Amariah.

  “Dinah, wait.”

  She turned to him. The light was between them, and she studied his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s supposed to be an act of love,” he said softly, “but it’s not. They’ve turned it into an act of vengeance.”

  She lowered her head, and her dark hair fell around her face, hiding her eyes. Amariah took the lamp from her and set it on a stand, then reached for her hand.

  “Come with me, Dinah.”

  “Where?”

  He led her through the door and out into the narrow street without answering. A transparent moon bathed the warm night with light and formed pale gray shadows beneath their feet. He walked with her toward the river, to a sandy stretch of shoreline where he knew there was little danger of crocodiles. An abandoned rowboat lay upside down on the beach, and Amariah pulled Dinah down beside him on the warm sand so they could lean their backs against it.

  “Look,” he whispered, pointing. At the end of the beach where the marshlands began, a crane poked its head from among the reeds, then ventured cautiously forward. A moment later his mate followed, tottering on stick-legs almost too fragile to support her. Their gossamer feathers glowed in the moonlight.

  “They’re beautiful,” Dinah murmured.

  “I wish we were like them,” Amariah said. “They’re free.”

  They watched the cranes wade farther into the river, away from the marsh; then the birds suddenly took flight, soaring magnificently toward the mainland, wings outstretched. Amariah longed to do the same, to open his heart like wings, to freely soar.

  “What’s your favorite color, Dinah?” he asked when the birds were out of sight.

  “My favorite color? Why?”

  “Because I need to know.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and began again. “When we lived in my brother’s palace in Jerusalem, our lives weren’t our own. We belonged to Manasseh. He controlled where we went, who we saw, what we did . . . and I realized tonight that he still controls us. We married each other because of him. I’m supposed to rule this island because of him. You’re supposed to have a baby because of him. Our lives still aren’t our own, Dinah. No one ever asks us what we want.”

  He tossed the weathered piece of driftwood he had been toying with into the water. It washed toward him on the waves several times, bobbing in the moonlight, before floating out of sight.

  “I have my father’s blood in my veins—King David’s blood. According to Joshua, that means I’m obligated to stop Manasseh. Obligated to father your son. Obligated to be king. But I’m more than Hezekiah’s son, more than Manasseh’s brother, more than David’s heir. I’m a man—Amariah. I’m myself, separate from everyone’s obligations and expectations. Why do I have to define my life in terms of filling a need? Can’t I have a purpose of my own choosing?”

  He put his hand to his face, pressing his fingers against his closed eyes. Then he looked at Dinah again. She had unpinned her hair for the night before they’d left the house, and the breeze blew wisps of it across her face.

  “And what about you, Dinah? Are you merely the means by which I claim my brother’s throne? Are you only Manasseh’s concubine? Amariah’s wife? The mother of the future king?” He brushed her hair away from her eyes in a gesture of tenderness that he seldom dared to express. “You’re a woman—a flesh and blood person, with real feelings and needs. Don’t you have any dreams and hopes? Or is revenge the only one?” He saw confusion and pain in her eyes, and he turned away from her to stare into the water again.

  “I know you didn’t marry me because you love me. The real Amariah doesn’t matter to you. I never did. I’m Manasseh’s brother, your means of revenge. That’s all our marriage is based on, do you realize that? Revenge. What was meant to be the most tender act of love between a man and woman is merely an act of vengeance for us.”

  Dinah shuddered. He wondered if it was from the cool night air or from his words. “I’m sorry,” she whispered after a moment. “But what else can we do?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I don’t expect you to ever love me, but can’t we at least . . . ?” He stopped, unable to find the words he wanted.

  She turned his face toward hers. “Tell me.”

  “Can’t we at least be ourselves with each other? Can’t we give each other that one gift, even if no one else does? Everyone else might think of us as ‘Manasseh’s brother’ and ‘Manasseh’s concubine,’ but I can let you be just ‘Dinah’ to me. And you can let me be ‘Amariah.’ Maybe someday you’ll fall in love with the real Amariah, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I’d be happy just to know . . . to know that you liked me for myself.” He took her hands in his. “No matter how everyone else defines us, we need to hang on to the small haven we can create for each other and not let them take it away from us.”

  She let go of his hand to wipe her tears. “How?” she whispered. “How do we do that?”

  “We’ve already begun. We’ve left their bedroom, left their expectations for us . . . and we’re here—on a sandy beach, with warm water and starlight. When we were watching the cranes a few minutes ago, we weren’t thinking about Manasseh or revenge or anything else except how beautiful they were, how perfect they looked in the moonlight. We need to forget about everything else when we’re together. Forget the past and all that Manasseh has done to us, forget the future—producing an heir, governing the nation. We can live right now—in the present. I want that to be the only thing that’s real to us.” He waited until her eyes met his. “What do you want to do now, this very moment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I know what I want to do.” He stood and kicked off his sandals, then shrugged off his outer robe and waded into the river in his tunic. “The water’s warm, Dinah. It feels like silk. Come on, try it.”

  He held out his hand to her and waited. After a moment, she untied her sandals and waded out to him, lifting her skirts above her knees. They walked together alo
ng the shore, the water lapping around their ankles.

  “I want to learn the names of all the birds and all the trees and all the stars,” Amariah said. “I want to play the lyre again and compose songs like I used to do. Maybe I’ll sing one of them for you sometime.”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  He stopped walking and faced her. “What’s your favorite color?”

  Dinah’s eyes met his, and it seemed as if she finally saw him for himself. “Green,” she said softly.

  “That’s my favorite color, too.” He smiled. It felt good to smile. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had. He took her hand in his, twining their fingers together. “Green . . . like the trees and the fields and the grass.”

  7

  The sound of clashing swords rang in Joshua’s ears as he stood in the courtyard of the fort watching Hadad drill his troops. The men revered Hadad and had welcomed him back with great enthusiasm. He was an excellent commander and always eager to join in with their sparring. As each day passed, Joshua felt less suspicious of him.

  When Hadad spotted Joshua watching, he quickly ordered his men to form ranks, then strode to where Joshua waited. “I weeded out all but the best,” Hadad said, still breathless with exertion. “Here’s our top sixty men.”

  “Do they know about our mission?”

  Hadad shook his head. “I’ll let you tell them.”

  Joshua straightened his eye patch as he stepped in front of the assembly. The murmuring quickly fell silent. “I’m told that you’re the best,” he began. “And for the mission Colonel Hadad and I are planning, we’ll need the best. But this is a volunteer assignment. Like Gideon’s small, elite corps, we’ll be up against much greater odds—some would say impossible odds. So I’ll tell you the same thing Gideon told his troops: Anyone who is uncertain, anyone who has commitments to his family or spouse, anyone who is uncomfortable with this mission for any reason is free to go. No one will think any less of you. This may not be your battle, that’s all.”