by Marc Graham
“Yetzer,” he again heard, this time accompanied by a stroke on his cheek. He turned toward the voice and his heart seized.
Ameniye.
Pharaoh’s daughter smiled as their eyes met. She stepped back from him and Yetzer’s eye drank in the view.
Framed by lustrous black hair, Ameniye’s face had been expertly painted to accentuate her doe eyes, high cheeks, and full lips. Yetzer’s gaze descended past slender shoulders to where the straps of her gown crossed between her small, flawless breasts. Below her waist, the thin linen did little to conceal the dark pattern of womanhood at the base of her flat belly.
Yetzer forgot his weariness and rose from the bed. He took Ameniye in his arms and pressed her to his chest. His lips found hers, their passion as water for one who had been too long in the desert.
“How are you here?” he said, the words muffled by kisses.
Ameniye giggled and pulled away from him. “You have passed your trials,” she said, her eyes alight, “and I am your reward.”
Yetzer squeezed her hands between his. “Your father knows of this? He has approved?”
Ameniye’s eyes darted away for an instant. “He will. All has been arranged. But is it Father you’ve been thinking of all these months? I’ve thought only of this.”
She removed the clasp that fastened the straps of her gown to the bodice. The sheer dress slid down her body, and Ameniye unhitched the towel from Yetzer’s waist. As his linen joined hers, she pushed him back onto the bed and lay atop him. “Now, sage,” she said in a low, throaty voice, “take your reward.”
Yetzer wrapped his arms about her, but Ameniye spun away when three sharp raps sounded from the doorway. A pair of guards entered the chamber followed by the line of priests. Ameniye pulled up the bedclothes while Yetzer tried to cover his arousal.
Huy stepped forward. His eyes turned to Ameniye, and his expression flashed from confusion to recognition to rage. With visible effort, he restored his neutral mask.
“Yetzer abi-Huram,” he said, “you have passed the threshold of the initiates and have completed the trials of the four base elements, of water and fire, air and earth.”
Yetzer nodded but wondered—with no little annoyance—why the acclamation couldn’t have waited until after he’d claimed his reward.
“You have failed, however, the trial of the fifth element, of your own nature.”
“But I passed all the tests,” Yetzer objected. “My reward was—”
“The candidate will remain silent,” Merisutah snapped. The rat-faced priest could scarcely contain his mirth as he added, “I beg the hierophant’s pardon. Continue, Master Huy.”
The high priest did not acknowledge Merisutah, but kept his sad eyes focused on Yetzer. “You came to these chambers in search of what?”
“More light,” Yetzer answered, defiance draining from his voice and from his heart.
“And you were instructed to remain steadfast in your quest until you had attained that goal,” Huy reminded him. “Have you attained it?”
Yetzer’s eye misted as he recognized his failure.
“Answer the hierophant,” Merisutah commanded him.
“No,” Yetzer said, his voice tight.
“No.” Huy’s voice was tinged with regret. “No, you have not. And you have been well apprised of the cost of failure.”
Yetzer looked to Ameniye, her face as lovely and expressionless as a statue. He turned back to Huy and nodded his acknowledgment.
Merisutah gestured to the guards. They hauled Yetzer off the bed and pinioned him between them. Five of the priests stepped forward, each with a bronze band. Yetzer offered no resistance as they fastened them around his ankles, wrists, and neck.
Bile rose in Yetzer’s throat as Merisutah revealed a mallet and a handful of pins, knelt before Yetzer, and hammered the pins into the hasps of the shackles. Yetzer clenched his teeth against the pain, resolved to accept his fate—his failure—without complaint.
“You are now counted among the nameless ones,” Huy intoned as Merisutah attacked Yetzer’s wrist bands. “For you there is no longer name nor remembrance, none to remind you to the gods when you stand before the scales of judgment.”
The metal collar struck Yetzer’s chin as Merisutah drove in the final pin. Blood trickled along Yetzer’s jaw and neck, but he made no sound, took no effort to wipe it away.
“So shall it be unto all who vainly seek to climb the mountain of the gods,” the hierophant continued as the last stroke of the mallet sealed Yetzer’s fate.
Huy stepped aside and the priests formed lines on either side of the passageway. One of the guards prodded Yetzer with the butt of his spear. As Yetzer moved to go, he caught the unmistakable gleam of triumph in Merisutah’s eyes as he cast a wink toward Ameniye.
Yetzer’s stomach churned as he finally understood. He wanted to turn back, to see the truth in her eyes, to curse her. But what right had a slave to look upon a princess? Instead, he lowered his gaze, passed the gauntlet of priests, and stepped into deepest darkness.
15
Bilkis
At Auriyah’s command, his men and the remnants of Eliam’s party left rock-hewn Sela. The warrior rode beside Bilkis as he had along the desert trail. Before Sela. Before he’d shown her what marriage truly was. If he noticed her unease, he showed no sign of it. The prince joked and laughed and regaled his bride with stories, as though nothing amiss had passed between them.
“My father charged me to bring him the foreskins of a hundred raiders,” Auriyah told her, “as the blood-price for my brother.” The exiled prince spat, then patted the reeking, blood-soaked bags tied behind him. “I bring him two hundred phalluses,” he gravely pronounced. “Let us see what that buys me.”
Auriyah kept apart from her during the nights, standing watch with his men. Still, Bilkis slept poorly, afraid that any little sound might signal her husband’s approach.
Each morning she mounted her donkey. Each evening, the caravan made a new camp, its ranks increased by the Habiru who flocked to Auriyah’s banner. Fewer than a score had left Sela. More than a hundred now rode in celebration toward another great city.
“Ebiren,” Auriyah said as they approached the stone walls. “Where our ancestors are buried, and where our kings are made.”
That news meant little to Bilkis, but she rejoiced when the prince told her they would tarry there a fortnight, until the new moon. Her backside would not miss the donkey.
Over the next several days Auriyah met with Yisrael’s priests and tribal elders. By night the people reveled at their prince’s return. After one such night of feasting and drinking, Auriyah again forced himself on his bride, though without his men present.
The next morning, as the slender crescent of the new moon faded, Auriyah knelt with one hand on an altar of stone, the other on the head of a calf. The senior priest—a lean, bent-framed man called Abdi-Havah, with one eye milky white, the other black as onyx—slaughtered the calf, mixed its blood with olive oil and spices, and anointed Auriyah’s head and the stone. The cloying scent of olibanum from Saba fouled Bilkis’s nostrils even as it tugged at her heart and memories.
She had little time for homesickness, however. With the sounding of rams’ horns and shouts of acclamation, Auriyah was proclaimed king over Yisrael. Bilkis, as his first wife—Of how many to come? she distantly wondered—was named Queen, and the pair were paraded around the tomb of the patriarchs in a canopied litter.
Auriyah came to her bed again that night, this time sober. Though Bilkis at first resisted, Auriyah cajoled her as a rider with a skittish horse. She discovered that her husband, when not corrupted with wine or beer, could be a generous lover. Throughout the long night they explored and pleasured one another, and Bilkis at last learned the bliss that every bride should know.
Bilkis shifted uncomfortably. The fibers of the donkey’s blanket stabbed through her silk robe, pricking her backside. The lumbering gait made matters worse, adding new stings and jarrin
g her bladder with each step.
But she could only smile and nod. Hundreds, thousands of peasants lined the road, cheering and waving palm fronds. Auriyah’s men separated the caravan from the crowd on either side of the road, but they couldn’t shield Bilkis from the noise or the stench.
Auriyah’s father had captured the city and made it his capital more than twenty years before. He’d invited settlers from all the Habiru tribes and the neighboring peoples, and now their crumbling hovels lined the hillside of Urusalim, outside the walls of Tsion, the king’s city.
King Tadua. Bilkis looked toward the north, the horizon marred by the dust raised by the king and his court as they fled the city. The cheers of the people and Auriyah’s laughter took Bilkis’s attention from the cowardly Tadua. “What is it they’re shouting?” she asked Auriyah, who again rode beside her. “What does it mean?”
The new king’s grin widened. “Hoshiahna,” he repeated. “Literally, it is a prayer for deliverance, but here—” he gestured toward the crowd.
“It means their savior has come,” Bilkis finished the sentence.
Auriyah nodded. “Their excitement will fade in a few days’ time, when the fields must again be tended. But while the people celebrate, they are full of love for their king and queen.”
“As they loved their old king and his queens?” Bilkis asked with a smile.
Auriyah’s face darkened at the jest. Bilkis laughed and placed a hand against his cheek.
“A jest, Husband,” she said. “I’m certain your people will love you until the sun no longer graces the noonday sky.”
Fury bled from the king’s cheeks, and his good humor returned. Auriyah took Bilkis’s hand and squeezed it. “I have indeed chosen well in my queen. Who else could learn my humors so quickly, or so easily tame them?”
He leaned over to kiss Bilkis. The cheers of the crowd redoubled in approval. Auriyah raised Bilkis’s hand in his and waved with his other.
“They do love us,” the young king said, so softly the words might have been only for himself. “And they will continue to love us. We will give them feasts. We will fill their shrines with olibanum. The fragrance will perfume the highest heavens. Yah will draw near to his people, and they will bless the king who restored their god’s favor.”
He released Bilkis’s hand, spread his arms and leaned back, his face toward the sky. The crowd’s voices grew louder still at their king’s display. As the sun brightened his features and his oiled skin shone with the radiance of red gold, even Bilkis felt a reverent awe.
Yes, Auriyah was a man, and a flawed one. But were not all men flawed? And did not the gods still choose flawed men to enact their will?
The procession rounded the last turn before the city’s gate. The entrance to Urusalim was wide enough only for two donkeys abreast. Auriyah’s Hatti guards slowed to scan the walls before hurrying the king and his queen through the gates.
The hovels of wood and mudbrick gave way to stone houses. The crowd, too, transformed from malnourished peasants in rough woolens to well-fed gentry wrapped in dyed linens and silks. The reception from this new crowd struck Bilkis with its politeness, formality and—fear?
Unlike the rabble outside the gates, the people who lined the streets of the upper city must have fared well under Tadua. Not so well to have felt the need to flee with their old king, but well enough to worry how the new one might affect their comfortable lives.
Bilkis smiled. The peasants would love their new queen, of that she was certain. The poor were ever satisfied with beauty and novelty and little more, so long as that little was enough to fend off starvation. Yes, the poor of Urusalim would cherish their handsome new king and his beautiful queen. They would bless them before their gods for the gift of scraps from the royal table.
But Bilkis’s smile was not for the adoration of the poor. It was the uncertainty of the wealthy that brought the curve to her mouth. These—the merchants and landholders, priests and scholars—these were the ones whose fortunes relied on stability, and they would give much to retain enough.
Bilkis nodded reassuringly to the plump, half-hearted celebrants. These were the hearts and the purses she would win. While Auriyah secured his kingdom, Bilkis would secure stability for these, her people. In return, they would keep food on her table, roses in her bathwater, and silk in her wardrobe. She would be their queen, and they would learn to love her.
As if sensing her benevolence, the crowd cheered more heartily. Soaking in their adoration, Bilkis spread her arms and, in imitation of Auriyah’s display before the peasants, raised her face to the heavens.
A cloud passed before the sun, shielding Bilkis from the harsh glare. Her throat tightened and her heart filled with gratitude at the omen. She had never given much credence to the tales of the gods. Nevertheless, here in a strange city of the far-distant north, the sun goddess Shams showed her blessing to the daughter of Saba. The young queen sat up straighter as her donkey passed through a second gate into the palace of Tadua. Now Auriyah’s palace.
Soon to be the palace of Bilkis bat-Saba.
A SONG OF BECOMING
16
Yetzer
Stinging flies darted about the quarry. Their drone underscored men’s grunts, accompanied by slaps and curses as the pests alighted on exposed flesh. Yetzer swung his pick with the other men, but there was no common rhythm among them. Two years had passed since he’d last seen a quarry, but his muscles retained the memory of his father’s steady pace.
Upon the snow-capped Leban mountains, he sang, then drove his pick into the rock. Where earth-mother meets sky-father. Swing.
The impact of copper on limestone coursed up Yetzer’s arms and into his chest but could not dislodge the shame from his heart.
Even where heaven stoops to the ground. Swing.
Ameniye’s betrayal. His inability to resist her, to stay his path. Merisutah’s glee at Yetzer’s failure. These and a hundred other evils pulsed through his blood like venom.
I met my love among the cedars. Swing.
“Faster!”
The incongruously high voice of the overseer was followed by the toneless whistle of his flail. Slave-laborers moved just fast enough to avoid earning the lash. Yetzer thought to look for whoever had fallen short but had only enough strength to focus on the stone beneath his pick.
Knotted lashes tore into his shoulders. Claws of white heat raked down his spine as a cry escaped his lips. The pick fell from his hands. Another whistle announced a lancing pain across his lower back.
“Take up that pick,” the overseer shouted. “Work, dog. Keep up the pace.”
Yetzer’s temper flared, but he forced himself to remain calm, to remember his place. This was no lodging of free masons like his father had led. He was a slave, a nameless one, no longer a man but an animal to be treated as his masters saw fit. If he chanced to forget, his chafing, burning skin beneath the sun-heated manacles was a steady reminder.
He stooped to retrieve his pick. Bright spots shot through his vision as he swung the tool. The overseer’s curse and another stroke of the lashes across his thighs made it clear that Yetzer must endure the pain or be slowly flayed, strip by bloody strip. He clenched his jaw, squeezed his eye shut to clear his vision, then heaved his pick.
Again and again, he swung the blade through its arc toward the rock. Sweat streamed down his back, seeped into his wounds, but Yetzer ignored the salt-sting. He ignored the flies that lapped at his blood, ignored the spittle from the overseer’s curses. There was only copper and stone, with Yetzer in between. His failure had shaped his destiny. His fate was to shape this rock.
And so he raised the pick and swung again.
Respite came as the sun settled on the horizon. With the sounding of a ram’s horn, the picks fell silent, and Yetzer joined the stream of nameless ones as they spilled out of the quarry. He left his pick along with the others in the closely guarded racks, then trudged along to a field of dirt encircled by sheaves of thorns and
straw. At the entrance of the enclosure sat a small cart loaded with the slaves’ dinner.
Yetzer ignored the ache in his muscles and the fire of his wounds as he awaited his reward, a shallow clay bowl containing a gruel of chickpeas and a piece of coarse bread with bits of grinding stone among the weevils.
The meal seemed scarcely enough to feed a scribe, let alone a laborer. Yetzer took the food without complaint, stepped into the holding pen, and found a clear patch of ground upwind of the latrine scratched into the earth at one end of the corral.
“The singing quarryman,” a thin voice said.
Yetzer looked up to see a wraith, as grey and bony as the skeleton in the temple’s Hall of the Body. He blinked, but the apparition refused to fade as any well-behaved specter should. It simply stood there, a chipped-tooth smile beaming from a wizened face wreathed by wispy white hair. Its eyes were sunken almost as deeply as the hollow cheeks, but shone with curiosity and compassion that told Yetzer this was no phantom.
“Fresh from the temple, are you?” the old man said.
Yetzer hesitated before nodding.
“Reckoned as much. Too well fed to be a debtor. And you don’t have the look of a criminal about you. That leaves the temple or Pharaoh’s court. Don’t mind if I sit.”
The old man settled to the ground with surprising grace.
“How do you know I’m not from court?” Yetzer said. He took a bite of bread and carefully chewed around the stones.
“I suppose it’s possible,” the old man said with a shrug. “We’ll get them from time to time. A baker who cooks like this.” He rattled his bread against his bowl. “A wine steward who spills in some noble’s lap. A courtier who stares too long at the wazir’s lady, hmm?” He waggled his hairless brows. “But, no, you’re not pretty enough for court, and you know how to work. That leaves the temple.”
Yetzer couldn’t fault the man’s reasoning. He grunted and sipped at his gruel. The talk of court sent his memories chasing after Ameniye. He could almost hear her laughter, smell her perfume, taste her lips. See the knowing smirk on her face as he was shackled and led away.
