Song of Songs

by Marc Graham

  “My love,” she said, “my morning and evening star.” Tadua cocked his head at the pretty speech. His countenance brightened. “Abdi-Havah is not your enemy,” Bilkis continued. “He has been a friend to me and was of great comfort during your absence, when your son kept the throne. It was in part Abdi-Havah’s good counsel that opened the gates for your return.”

  “Which is why he yet lives.” The king’s voice came as cold as the wind that beat upon Bilkis’s shuttered windows.

  “He is now no king, but a priest. As he is high priest of the mother goddess, I have especial need of his prayers this day.” She took the king’s hand and placed it atop her swollen belly. “Surely, goodness and mercy are stronger in your heart than base rivalry.”

  Tadua’s expression softened.

  “Never,” he said in a low voice.

  Bilkis started to renew her argument, but the king laughed and stroked her cheek.

  “Never shall Abdi-Havah come into my house, but that I will prepare a table before him.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Bilkis said, and brought his hand to her lips.

  A sudden pain squeezed Bilkis’s womb. Her grip tightened about Tadua’s fingers, and he gave a gasp of his own.

  For the span of some twenty rapid heartbeats there was no air. There was no light. There was only the demon’s spawn within her that slashed long claws inside her belly. Could she have breathed she would have cursed Auriyah, cursed all men, all the gods for creating so vile a means of populating the earth.

  The pain faded and Bilkis managed a few breaths before realizing she still clutched Tadua’s fingers. She released her grip, and the king withdrew his hand, flexing and massaging the joints.

  “My lord, forgive me,” Bilkis said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Hush, child,” Tadua said in his kind voice. “These hands have torn apart lions and bears. I think they will survive this.” He shook his fingers, safely out of Bilkis’s reach. “Though I fear I may never again play the harp.”

  Bilkis laughed with the king and fell back onto her pillows.

  “Would you mock the gods?” a stern voice said from the doorway.

  Bilkis looked up to see a small woman, no taller than Rahab and thin as a spear. A black veil covered her hair, and a robe of the same color stretched from her narrow shoulders to the floor.

  “A birthing chamber is no place for laughter,” the woman said in a voice as soothing as a crow’s. “Nor for men. Your part in this was done with the sowing, my lord. Now begone.”

  The woman approached Tadua and had the audacity to grasp his elbow and pull him up from his stool. Bilkis opened her mouth to chastise this peasant, but Tadua soothed her temper with a wink and a smile.

  “As you say, Keren.” He offered the woman a slight bow. “You have birthed enough of my children for me to know there is but one sovereign within these walls. I leave you to your labors.”

  Tadua swept a lock of hair from Bilkis’s brow and kissed her forehead.

  “I shall add my prayers to those of Abdi-Havah, child, that all may be well.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Bilkis said, true affection in her words.

  The king nodded to Rahab, who struggled with a cumbersome box, and he left the room.

  “Set the chest over there, girl,” Keren ordered Rahab, and pointed to the corner of the room nearest the bed. “Open those shutters and sweep out the hearth.”

  “It’s too cold out,” Bilkis said. “Rahab, keep the shutters closed.”

  “Do as I say,” Keren snapped. She turned to Bilkis and, with slightly more civility, said, “You’ll be plenty warm by the time your work’s done here. I’ll not have foul spirits bound up in this place. You may have your fire—”

  Rahab let out a frustrated groan, as she had just shoveled the ash and embers into a copper pail.

  “You may have a fire,” the midwife continued, “but it must be of cedar, not of dung. And it must be kindled from a sanctified flame.”

  “Rahab, go find wood,” Bilkis pleaded, the chill air already raising gooseflesh on her sweat-dampened skin. “It’s so cold. Try the kitchen. The king always prefers his venison roasted over a wood fire.”

  “And take that filth away with you.” Keren indicated the pail, now filled with ash and smoldering dung.

  The girl’s face contorted, her lips twisted. She said nothing but left with the bucket.

  Keren offered a satisfied grunt then turned her attention to the crate. She unstopped a pair of oil-filled jars and set them on the windowsill. The breeze took up their scents and carried them to Bilkis. Her nostrils flared and fire coursed deep into her skull and down her throat, carrying the spirits into her lungs. She coughed, and the midwife turned to her.

  “Purifying oils,” Keren said, “to drive any unclean spirits from this place, and to keep any others at bay.”

  The midwife then drew out a fleece and spread it on the floor. On this she set a silver basin, along with a second pair of jars and a spice box. She sprinkled spices into the basin, followed by oil from one of the jars. She opened the second jar and poured what appeared to be plain water.

  “From the mountains of Hermon,” she explained, a reverent tone to her voice. “Taken from virgin snow.”

  “Snow?” Bilkis hadn’t heard the word before.

  “Snow, my lady. Frozen water that falls from the heavens like manna.”

  “Frozen?”

  “Mind you not,” the woman replied with a shake of her head. “Know only that it is the purest water in all the nations.”

  Keren stirred the concoction with a silver stick, then took a sprig of hyssop, dipped it in the basin, and proceeded to sprinkle the mix about the room, all the while muttering to herself. When she’d completed her circuit, Keren wiped the hyssop over the seat of the bedside stool. Some scarlet silken threads went into the basin, then the midwife unrolled a set of bronze instruments whose use Bilkis did not want to imagine.

  The clatter of falling logs announced Rahab’s return.

  “They only had kindling of cedar,” she told the old woman. “The logs are oak.”

  “It will serve,” Keren said, her tone almost gentle.

  Rahab stacked the logs and set the kindling underneath, then looked helplessly about the room.

  “What do I do for fire?”

  Some flame was always kept burning in the palace, whether candle or lamp or hearth. Bilkis glanced around the room and realized that Keren had extinguished the few burning tapers during her round with the dripping hyssop.

  “I told you,” the old woman said. “Fire kindled from a sanctified flame. Made by a virgin, at the new moon following the new spring sun, the sign of rebirth. Our queen, of course, cannot fulfill the role, but you, my child … ”

  Keren held out a bow drill.

  “Me?” Rahab said, her face drained of color. “I am to make the holy fire?”

  “Even so,” the midwife said.

  Bilkis was about to ask the significance of this holy fire when the unholy pain again grasped her womb. She had strength enough to scream this time as her fingers dug into the mattress.

  Rahab rushed toward her, but Keren intercepted the girl and sent her back to the hearth. The old woman supported Bilkis at her lower back with surprising strength. She breathed in Bilkis’s ear, and the queen found herself following that rhythm, taking in rich, cleansing air and exhaling the pain.

  By the time Bilkis could again breathe normally, Rahab had kindled the fire and the hearth’s warmth began to chase back the cold. Keren took a chalkstone from her seemingly bottomless box. The midwife traced out a circle upon the floor then drew a five-pointed star within it. She placed the stool in its center, and the basin and her set of tools on either side of one point.

  “Help your lady undress,” she told Rahab, “then bring her to the stool.

  While Rahab attended Bilkis, Keren set five small lamps outside the circle, one near each point of the star. She sprinkled the purifying water over
the queen’s belly and between her legs. The midwife looked expectantly at Bilkis and smiled.

  “You may begin.”

  Untold hours, days, weeks passed. Weeks filled with agony like no other. Weeks during which the fire burned down but little, during which the lamps never went dry. Weeks upon which the sun never rose to mark the days. By what magic the witch Keren conjured to slow the natural passage of time, Bilkis knew not. She knew only that the vile wretch must have been in league with all the demons of the Pit who feed upon human misery and suffering. When the foul viperess spoke, her voice was disguised in tones of joy and encouragement.

  “A hand,” Keren said as Bilkis felt a queer sensation between her legs. “The time is near.”

  The midwife drew a scarlet thread from the basin. Deftly and quickly, she looped the string about a tiny wrist and knotted it before the hand withdrew into Bilkis’s womb. Keren pressed her hands against Bilkis’s swollen belly, prodding and manipulating the creature that writhed within.

  The queen leaned back against Rahab, who wiped Bilkis’s brow and held a cool sponge to her lips.

  “Brave sister,” the girl cooed in her ear. “You are doing well.”

  Bilkis wanted to tell the little bitch just how well she was doing, when pain beyond measure once more wracked her womb. She grasped Rahab’s hands and screamed, though it came out as little more than a sigh.

  “This is it, my lady,” Keren said. “Do not fight it. Let the spirit of the goddess flow through you.”

  Too exhausted to struggle any longer, Bilkis relented. She relaxed the muscles that held her body together. If her belly burst with the lapse, then so be it.

  Something shifted within her, a sensation at once unnatural and perfectly right.

  “There you are, Lady,” the midwife encouraged her. “Almost ready. Wait. Now, push.”

  “I cannot,” Bilkis whispered. “I dare not.”

  Rahab leaned close, slid her arms about Bilkis and interlaced their fingers.

  “Would you make all this effort for naught, Sister?” she said. “Your labors are almost finished. Now breathe with me and do as Keren says.”

  Bilkis nodded and forced back tears. She drew a pair of tentative breaths, then filled her lungs and bore down. The movement resumed, slowly at first and then with unsettling speed.

  “Well done, my lady. Well done,” Keren said.

  The pain subsided, followed by some tugging sensations. A light smack produced a feeble cough that turned into a wail.

  “You have a son, my queen,” the midwife said. She placed the naked, squirming, squalling thing in Bilkis’s arms. A look of concern flashed across Keren’s eyes.

  “What is it?” Bilkis asked as the baby latched onto a teat.

  Keren smiled and shook her head. She took up the infant, who screamed in protest at being taken from his first meal.

  “How would you call him, Lady?” the old woman asked.

  “Yahtadua,” Bilkis said. “After his father and his god.”

  The midwife nodded and swaddled the boy in a blue-and-white cloth. She held the child out to Rahab, who tentatively took him in her arms.

  “Present him to the king,” Keren told her. “Announce the arrival of Prince Yahtadua.”

  Rahab gave a silly grin and held out a finger for the prince to suckle. She kissed Bilkis on the cheek then left to find the king.

  Keren sighed and settled to her knees before Bilkis.

  “What is it?” Bilkis insisted. “What’s wrong?”

  “All is well, Lady,” Keren said, and offered an encouraging smile. “It is simply time to bring forth the next one.”

  24

  Bilkis

  “Next one?” Bilkis placed her hands on her stomach. “How many are there?”

  “Only the one more,” Keren said hopefully. “Yahtadua did not wear the scarlet thread. His brother or sister tried first to break through, but he somehow gained the advantage.”

  “Perhaps it simply came loose.”

  The midwife offered a patient smile as she pressed and felt about Bilkis’s belly.

  “Only if it grew a head and legs,” she said.

  A fresh surge of pain rolled through Bilkis, though it paled against the earlier agony.

  “That’s the way,” Keren said as she manipulated the latecomer. In only a short time, and with far greater ease than Yahtadua had offered, another boy—scarlet thread securely about his wrist—came forth. The midwife set the child upon the fleece, cut the cord, then helped Bilkis into her bed.

  “Is he breathing?” the queen asked as Keren simply stood over the flailing infant, his face turning a sickly blue. “Do something.”

  The old woman sighed, picked up the child by his legs and smacked him firmly on the backside. The boy gave a startled cough, then made smacking noises with his lips.

  “Give him to me,” Bilkis insisted, then repeated herself when the midwife hesitated.

  “You should not nurse him, my lady,” the midwife advised as she put the child in Bilkis’s arms. “And you would be wise not to give him a name. It would have been better for me to have strangled him on his cord.”

  Bilkis stretched out her hand to slap the old fool but managed only to clip the top of her head.

  “Mind your tongue, witch. You speak of the king’s son, a prince of Yisrael. If one heir is good, then two make the throne doubly safe.”

  “In all our people’s history,” Keren said with a shake of her head, “it has never gone well with twins.”

  “What do you mean?” Bilkis asked as she stroked the boy’s pale cheek and looked into soft blue eyes that gazed deeply into hers.

  “I mean that two backsides cannot fill the same throne, nor two heads share but one crown. Heartbreak, strife, and war spring from the seed of twins opposed.”

  “But why must they be opposed?” Bilkis pressed. “Yahtadua is firstborn, and will have primacy. His younger brother will love and support him.”

  “This child has King Tadua’s temperament,” Keren observed. “Already, he is fair and of an easy disposition. He will have clear thoughts and draw all people to him.”

  The old woman stretched out a slender finger, which the young prince promptly grasped.

  “Yahtadua,” she continued, her countenance darkening, “bears more a likeness unto Prince Auriyah.”

  Bilkis recoiled at the mention of her dead husband’s name, but Keren’s face gave no sign that she noticed or suspected the boys’ parentage.

  “That one was as a firebrand in a granary, quick to temper and slow to reason. Beg pardon, Lady,” she added, “I do not intend to speak ill of the dead, only to tell you what I know. Yahtadua will win the loyalty of his people, but this one would win their hearts. Should he ever get the notion to supplant his brother, what do you suppose would happen?”

  Bilkis considered the woman’s words. Before she could frame a response, Rahab returned bearing a fussy Yahtadua.

  “Oh, Sister, King Tadua is fairly alight with joy. Abdi-Havah was—” She stopped mid-stride when her eyes settled on Bilkis and the nursing infant. “What child is this?” she exclaimed.

  Bilkis glanced at the midwife, whose eyes blazed with dread. A sharp pain in Bilkis’s heart told her the old woman was right. Bilkis had risked all on this scheme, for Tadua to believe Auriyah’s child was his own.

  If the plan was to succeed, if Yahtadua was to usurp the position of his uncles—his elder brothers, if the lie were true—Bilkis could ill afford to split Tadua’s affection between two sons. A piece of her heart fell silent and still as her will asserted itself.

  “This is a child of Havah,” she told Rahab.

  The queen plucked her breast from the infant’s grasp. He protested briefly then contented himself with gnawing on his fist. Bilkis handed the child to Keren, then reached out to take Yahtadua from Rahab. With the young prince hungrily suckling, Bilkis turned to Rahab.

  “You will take that child and go by the secret way to the high place, to
the shrine of Havah. When Abdi-Havah returns, you will give the boy into his keeping, to be raised as a servant of the goddess.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rahab said as Keren placed the boy in her arms. “Who—”

  “Do as I say,” Bilkis snapped.

  Both infants looked up at her. The prince cast a scolding look while the priest-to-be fixed her eyes with a placid gaze. Bilkis turned her head away.

  “Go,” she said, the strength sapped from her voice. “Speak to no one of this but Abdi-Havah. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Rahab answered.

  The girl moved to the corner of the room and released the hidden latch. Bilkis longed to call after her, to hold and kiss her son once more, but she stoppered her heart. Keren sealed the door behind Rahab, then looked at Bilkis and shook her head gravely.

  “What, crone?” Bilkis demanded. “Speak.”

  The woman bowed low then looked up and smiled.

  “In all my years, I have never beheld so natural-born a queen.”

  25

  Bilkis

  Not a month passed before Keren was called back to the palace, then again a few days later. Auriyah’s young widows—the red-haired Pudu-Estan, and the flaxen-headed Taniri—had both become pregnant during the rebel’s short-lived reign.

  “Strange.” Haggit, Prince Baaliyah’s mother, looked up from her spindle when Bilkis came to look in on them. “Tadua got a child on you a month after Auriyah planted his seed in these two, yet your son came a month sooner.”

  Bilkis kept her expression neutral, save for one eyebrow that pricked up.

  “My southern womb is much warmer than yours of the north. Does not bread rise faster in a hotter oven?”

  A few of the other women laughed, but Haggit sneered at Bilkis and turned back to her spinning.

  The queen went to where the young mothers lay nursing their children. Taniri, the princess of Alassiya, bore a golden-haired infant of fair skin. The Hatti princess, Pudu-Estan, held a child of ruddy features with a mat of dark hair. The pair of young women looked up as Bilkis approached, their expressions shifting from the bliss of mothers giving suck to the anxiety of interlopers in the palace.