King's Shadow: A Novel of King Herod's Court

by Angela Hunt

  For betrayal and having divulged the king’s request, Herod had Soemus executed immediately. So inflamed was his temper, he would have immediately executed Mariamne as well, but Pheroras and I urged him to wait and grant the queen a trial for the sake of the people. We knew how the people of Jerusalem loved Mariamne, and she would always be the mother of the king’s heirs.

  Reluctantly, Herod agreed.

  I attended the trial but remained in the shadows, determined to keep out of sight. I never wanted to do anything that might lead people to think I was jealous of my sister-in-law. Though she was beautiful, I was attractive in a different way; though she was Jewish, I was proud of my Idumaean heritage.

  I must admit that I never cared for Mariamne’s constant name calling and harping on my background. After years of marriage to my brother, she persisted in calling me “common,” her way of implying my family did not deserve the throne. How could she forget that my brother, her husband, was highly favored by Rome? And was he not king of Judea? Was he not more talented and more clever than the Hasmonean kings who had squandered and rioted and murdered on their path to power?

  Yet, truthfully, I wanted Mariamne to vanish from our lives. Her children were still young, but I could not forget what Mother had warned against—at some point, Alexandra could find some reason to discredit my brother. She would then proclaim Alexander or Aristobulus king, and she would reign as regent until they were old enough to rule. Such things had happened before. Such things could happen again.

  Mariamne stood alone before the members of Herod’s court at her trial. No one defended her. No one spoke on her behalf.

  Herod stood before the members of the court and repeated the long list of charges: she hated him, she planned to poison him with love potions and drugs of divers types, and she had been unfaithful to the king. Herod’s voice rose in volume and pitch as passion made him tremble, and by the time he had finished, every member of the court knew they would be committing a grievous folly if they decided against the king.

  To a man, they voted to execute the Hasmonean queen. Later I learned that some of them had entered the chamber thinking they would imprison her indefinitely, but clearly the king wanted her to disappear. The cause of a Hasmonean queen unjustly accused and imprisoned could fuel a rebellion, so Mariamne would have to die.

  I sat in a back row as Mariamne walked calmly to the stand where she would meet her fate. Some would later describe her as a queen distinguished for her continence and magnanimity of character, but they would never be able to deny that she was also excessively quarrelsome. She had beauty, grace, but a saucy, sharp tongue. Lacking the power to control it, she would never be able to please the king or be the wife she should have been. She treated her husband imperiously, one judge stated, and tended to forget she lived under a monarchy. In the end, she had succeeded in making enemies not only of me, my mother and Pheroras, but of Herod himself, the person she should have trusted to do her no harm.

  After the panel of judges rendered their verdict, Mariamne lowered herself to her knees and pulled her hair over one shoulder, baring her neck. The executioner stepped forward, lifted his sword, and swung. The blow neatly severed her head, but the sight of the bloodletting did not rattle me nearly as much as the feral howl that lifted the hair on my arms as the head rolled onto the floor.

  The king—my brother—had come undone.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zara

  I settled into a chair at the back of Herod’s throne room, content to linger in the shadows where I could see but would not be noticed. Upon greeting my mistress earlier that morning, Salome had let me know she would be spending most of the day with the king, so I should go to court in case something unusual happened, something that deserved the king’s attention.

  “I know you find it difficult to sit and do nothing.” She gave me a distracted smile. “But the king has not been well, so I need to help him. Today Pheroras will receive the king’s visitors, so you may take a bit of sewing or other quiet work to occupy your hands. If anyone disturbs the proceedings or attempts to take control, come to me at once. I will be in the king’s chamber. Or, if he will not let me inside, I will be waiting outside his door.”

  Everyone in the palace knew how badly the king had reacted to Mariamne’s death. I could not understand how a man could accuse her of unfaithfulness in one hour and grieve her loss in the next, but I had never been married. Marriage appeared to hold a great many mysteries, and the only royal marriages I had closely observed were Salome’s. Her marriage to Joseph seemed more like friendship than love. Her marriage to Costobar brought her great pleasure for a while, but he often seemed distracted when they were together.

  Yet I was a maid of only fifteen, so what did I know of men?

  I opened my sewing basket and took out a bit of embroidery, then threaded my needle the way Ima had taught me. In truth, I did not mind long hours at court. I had grown familiar with the faces of the king’s friends, and newcomers always interested me. Foreigners often came to visit the king of Judea, while merchants vied for Herod’s interest in their wares. Some presented him with fabulous gifts in hopes of winning his approval or even his notice. The last time I visited, a man from Lebanon had brought airy glass spheres and presented them to the king with a great flourish. Herod was transfixed, as was Mariamne, and the visitor explained that they were created by heating the glass until it could be blown into almost any desired shape. A pity Mariamne’s character could not be shaped into a form the king would find more pleasing.

  A pain squeezed my heart whenever I thought of our queen. Some said she was not guilty of the deeds for which she had been accused; others said her arrogance toward the king was more than enough reason to put her aside. But kill her?

  I focused on my embroidery in my lap lest someone spot the tears in my eyes. We servants had been instructed to carry on as though nothing had changed, when in reality Mariamne’s death had shaken everyone.

  Especially the king.

  On this morning, Herod remained in his chamber while Pheroras supervised the grand reception hall, sitting not on the throne but on a bench several feet away from the king’s gilded chair. Word of the king’s illness must have been made public, because in the back of the room I saw no merchants or foreign dignitaries, only a group of dark-robed Temple scholars. I had never been terribly interested in listening to boring interpretations of Torah teachings, so I considered taking my basket and retreating to the silence of Salome’s chamber. But because I had promised to fulfill this duty, I kept my head down and my eyes and ears alert for any unusual circumstance.

  A moment later, the king’s brother stood to greet the scholars. They walked forward, the oldest of them moving as if weighed down by the dignity of his vast learning. Their long gray beards flowed over their robes, and their eyes seemed frozen in a perpetual squint, the result of years spent peering at ancient texts.

  The oldest scholar, who apparently had been chosen as spokesman, stopped in the center of the room and announced that they had come to voice their objection to Mariamne’s execution.

  Pheroras sat on his bench and sighed heavily. “Let us hear it, then.”

  The spokesman unfurled a manuscript and began to read. His manner of speaking reminded me of an old and dusty scroll, and his message contained references to several sections of the Torah and the Law of Moses.

  Of course the scholars would object. To remain silent would imply approval, and these men would never approve the execution of a Hasmonean princess. Their appearance here would be recorded, their message saved in a bin, and tomorrow they would return to their work. Nothing else would change.

  I might have been able to put the scholars completely out of my mind, but movement from a man in the back row caught my eye. He was one of the younger teachers, for his beard was still black and his skin unlined. I found myself studying him, for whether he knew it or not, his body drew attention to itself with constant motion. As the elder scholar conti
nued reading his statement, this tall, thin man bounced on his heels, his head bobbing above the other Torah teachers. When the men folded their hands to wait for Pheroras’s response, the young man laced his fingers too, though his knees moved beneath his tunic, animating the fabric. He would tip forward, as if trying to see over the men in front of him, and then he would sigh and tip backward as if exasperated by having to wait.

  Was no one else noticing this odd man?

  I scanned the room, searching for a familiar face. Finally I spotted Mava, who sat by the back door with red-rimmed eyes and a somber countenance. And no wonder—since the Torah teachers were discussing the execution of her mistress, she had likely come here to support them.

  I picked up my embroidery and basket and moved quietly to her side, then reached out and touched her arm. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed, acknowledging her grief. I leaned closer and nodded toward the fidgety man in the last row of scholars. “Have you ever seen that Torah teacher before?”

  She shook her head. “I do not know him. But I am glad he came. I am glad they all came. While their words cannot bring her back, at least the world will know a great injustice has been committed in the king’s court.”

  Knowing it would not be proper to carry on a conversation in this place, I waited until the Torah teachers had finished and left the reception hall. Only a handful of visitors remained, who had come to pay their respects to the grieving king.

  When Mava slipped out of the chamber, I followed her into the vestibule. “I am sorry,” I repeated, giving her a sad smile. “I can only imagine what you must be feeling.”

  “Can you?” Her tone had gone chilly and her eyes cold. “I should not even be speaking to you. Your mistress and her mother conspired together to destroy our queen.”

  I gasped. “My mistress? I will admit there was no love between her and Mariamne, but Salome had nothing to do with the way your mistress behaved.” I lowered my voice as others entered the vestibule, then grabbed Mava’s arm and drew her into the courtyard.

  “My queen was not unfaithful!” Mava hissed. “I would have known if she had entertained men—any man—in her chamber. She never did, not while she was in Alexandrium, and not before.”

  “Did she not insult the king? Did she not insult his family? She alone is responsible for her death, Mava. If she had been more gentle, if she had been kind, she and Salome might have been as loving as sisters.” I caught her arm again and softened my tone. “What happened between them has nothing to do with you and me. I suppose it is natural we should defend our ladies, but we are not royals. We are only servants, and I am glad of it.”

  Mava closed her eyes as her expression darkened with unreadable emotions. Then she drew me into a tight embrace and burst into tears. “I have no one to talk to,” she said between sobs. “They have set me to work for Cypros, but I cannot serve her. She acts as though nothing has happened, while our queen, our beloved Mariamne, is dead, leaving behind four children . . .”

  I patted her back and made shushing sounds, leading her to a bench beneath a tree. The poor girl needed to release her grief, and she certainly could not do so in the presence of the king’s mother.

  “We do not know why HaShem allows such things to happen,” I said when she had calmed herself. “Still, we can trust Him to have everything under His control. He has purposes we cannot understand.”

  She sniffed. “Is that what some Torah teacher told you?”

  “It is what my father always said—what I learned when he died and my mother was injured during the war for Jerusalem. And when I found myself working in the household of the same king who brought that war.”

  I dropped into a well of memory so deep that at first I didn’t realize I had left the present. I was nine again, standing alone in a palace corridor, terrified of a scolding or worse, horrified to find myself lost in the twisting hallways where Israel’s kings and high priests had walked. I wanted my father, but he was gone; I wanted my mother, but she had sent me away. And why? So I could find my future, a husband, a life in a palace rather than a hovel.

  Mava sniffed, and the sound brought me back to my present self. I squeezed her arm, not to comfort her so much as to anchor myself in reality.

  “It was difficult at first,” I admitted. “My mother told me it would be. But when I cannot understand, I must trust HaShem all the more.”

  Mava swiped her tears away. “I’m sorry I—”

  “I know it has been hard for you. These past few days have been hard for all of us, but especially for you.”

  She drew a quivering breath and looked toward the doorway. “Why did you ask about the man in there? The jiggly one?”

  I laughed. “I do not know. I just thought he was . . . different.”

  “My friend has a brother in the Sanhedrin; he knows everyone. I can ask about him, if you like.”

  I bit my lip. “I . . . I am curious to know why he cannot stop moving.”

  “Perhaps he sat on a bed of ants,” she said, and we leaned on each other, convulsing with silent laughter. When we finally regained control of our emotions, we stood in time to see Cypros walking through the courtyard and heading toward the throne room, a frown on her austere face.

  “There goes my mistress.” Mava sighed and gave me a wavering smile. “I will see you later.”

  “You will,” I promised. “And we will talk again.”

  “His name,” Mava told me when we met in the hallway a week later, “is Ravid.”

  I frowned. “Who?”

  “The wiggly worm who caught your attention when the Torah teachers visited the palace. You asked me about him.”

  “Oh. I’d forgotten.”

  “Liar.” Grinning, she drew me aside so we could converse privately. “What else do you want to know? My brother told me more.”

  Despite my awareness of the vast difference in our ages and situations, something in me wanted to know everything about the young man. “How much more do you know?”

  “Much more. Though Ravid is young, he is a Torah teacher. He is from the tribe of Judah and spends most of his time at the Temple. He teaches Torah to the younger boys—as soon as they leave their fathers’ knee, they go to study under Ravid.”

  I closed my eyes, imagining a roomful of active six-year-olds in the care of this young man. In that context, his mannerisms made sense. “Is that all you learned?”

  Mava shook her head, a smile ruffling her mouth. “Are you sure you want to know? If knowledge will only make you yearn for the impossible?”

  “I am not yearning, I am only curious. Please, speak.”

  She gripped my hands. “Ravid married young, a girl from his village. She was pregnant when Jerusalem fell to Herod and the Romans. Ravid fought with those on the wall, so he was not home when the Romans killed his wife and unborn baby. Ravid survived the battle, but barely. He could not teach for many months, so burdened was he by his wound and his grief.”

  I blinked away fresh tears. Even after eight years, memories of that battle still elicited a pain deep inside. “I am sorry to hear it. I . . . I lost my family, as well.”

  “Many of us carry scars from our introduction to the man who now calls himself our king. But though Ravid teaches the young boys, he is most interested in the teachings of the Essenes. When he is not at the Temple, he often visits with them in meetings scattered throughout the city.” She lowered her voice. “They keep their meetings secret so as not to attract attention. They do not know how Herod feels about the Essenes, and they do not want trouble.”

  I frowned. “I do not think the king dislikes the Essenes. I have seen him dine with Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.”

  “He is cordial to them, yes, but Ravid and several other scholars are concentrating on a particular teaching from the Prophet.” She lowered her voice again and moved closer to whisper in my ear, “It concerns the coming king.”

  I blinked as my throat went dry. “Coming king?”

  She shook her head. “I w
ill say no more. If you are still curious, perhaps you can meet with my brother and Ravid. My brother says Ravid is passionate about this future king and constantly searches the prophetic writings to uncover clues about his coming.”

  In a sudden burst of insight, I understood why Ravid and his friends met secretly. Herod and his family were constantly worried about maintaining his position. He feared opposition from the people, from Rome, from rivals, even from his wife. Herod did not seem to mind HaShem sitting on the throne of heaven, but if for one moment he thought Adonai wanted to sit on the throne of Judea, Herod would mount a war against heaven itself.

  Yet the prophets had long written about a coming king, a Messiah, and a priest from the order of Melchizedek. This king had not come, however, and surely he would not arrive anytime soon. For what sort of king could step onto the scene with Herod in power and Rome ruling from the west? How could such a man fight them both? He couldn’t. So this king, whoever he was, was certainly not coming in the foreseeable future, no matter how much Ravid and his friends longed to welcome him.

  I smiled, grateful to have a new topic to discuss with Salome on the morrow.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Salome

  My brother had executed dozens of men and women, but none of those deaths affected him like Mariamne’s. In the days following her burial he remained locked in his chamber, drinking. Neither banquets, parties, hunting, nor other women could entice him to shake free of his melancholy and grief.

  Mother came to me several weeks after the funeral, and even though she tried to maintain her composure, I could see how worried she was. “He keeps telling the servants to fetch the queen,” she said, her voice trembling as she sank onto a chair. “And today he could not get out of bed. I sent for the physician, but he could find nothing wrong, though he is clearly worried. Herod will not eat or drink, and if we press him, he asks for his sons. But none of us want him to see his sons right now—I do not believe Alexander, Aristobulus, and Herod know their mother is dead.”