Jezebel

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Those should not have been my first words to him after all this time, not after our child’s birth.

‘You always were astute for your age.’

‘It is no more than is necessary for the Queen of Israel. We are honoured by your visit, though it is unexpected.’

Jehu shrugged. ‘My father thinks my skills of diplomacy in need of development.’

In that moment, seeing him so lost, so put upon, she had to fight to stop herself descending the stairs and taking him in her arms. Instead, she found herself uttering banalities.

‘So now you are son to a king.’

Jehu stiffened. ‘I hear a son has been born to Ahab also. Yahweh has seen fit to bless this marriage after all.’

Jezebel fought to keep composure in her expression. His words sounded bitter and yet he looked at her with that familiar intensity that burned right through her. Anyone who saw them together would surely know what they had shared, and there were bound to be officials near at hand, no doubt with the explicit instructions of Obadiah to eavesdrop on their conversation.

‘I would say that all the Gods have been kind to us.’

Jehu moved to the balcony and looked out across the gardens towards the south-west. ‘Even though only Yahweh is acknowledged here.’

Jezebel followed his gaze which was fixed on the roof of her Temple.

‘Your Gods have a reputation for being malicious and fickle,’ he continued. ‘I hear that even on the day of Ahab’s departure for Gilead the skies opened and drowned twenty of his troops. Was that not also the day you gave birth?’

‘If it is Yahweh who has blessed me with a child then presumably He could have protected the men of His own nation from a force of nature,’ said Jezebel.

Jehu glanced at her, and for the very briefest of moments Jezebel could see just how much he still yearned for her. Somewhere in a room behind them their child cried out. For a moment, Jezebel’s hopeful spirit imagined leading Jehu by the hand to greet his son.

‘You shouldn’t have accepted Ahab’s gift of a temple,’ said Jehu.

The spirit of the past vanished in a haze of disillusionment. ‘Considering little love is lost between Israel and Judah at the present time,’ she said, ‘you are well informed as to events in Samaria. Of course, if you knew Ahab as I do, you’d know that he retains a more open mind than many.’

‘Such an open mind that he himself executed some of the priests whose only crime was to uphold their own faith in the face of an unbeliever. Your influence is remarkably corrupt.’

Jezebel was so shocked at his accusation, she was about to ask Jehu whether he thought himself corrupted by her too, when Obadiah appeared in the courtyard below, looking up at the balcony.

Behind her, the baby’s cry had turned to a constant wail.

‘I won’t keep you,’ she said in a hollow voice.

Jehu peered in the direction of the sound. ‘My time here is brief,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to escort Leah back to Judah.’

‘I see. Is Esther going with her?’

‘No. She’s chosen to stay with her father. And her new friend,’ he said, drawing his attention back to Jezebel.

‘Does Ahab know of Leah’s departure?’

‘I believe not.’

Jehu seemed to be about to add something, but instead he turned away and loped down the staircase to join Obadiah. Jezebel could not watch him leave, but went into the nursery and took her son from his crib. Had Ahaziah sensed his father’s brooding presence? And what would Jehu have said if she had led him into this room and told him the truth? For while her cheeks flamed with raw anger and loss, her head rattled with everything she could have said but didn’t. Such a course of action could only create discord and chaos. By the time the child had stopped crying, all that remained was a dull ache in her heart.

Chapter Seventeen

From the roof of the Palace, Jezebel could see the dust kicked up by the advance rider, and behind that the steady brown cloud of men and horses that moved across the plain. Before long the rider was driving hard up the steep mountain road and she heard his triumphant shout even before the gates were opened.

‘Victory,’ he yelled. ‘Victory to King Ahab of Israel and his army!’

The bugle call went up as news surged through the city and soon the streets rang with cheering and shouting. Citizens jostled to get the best view of the army’s ascent. But Jezebel stood for a long time alone on the roof in the cool autumn sun, watching the army approach, eager to see Ahab but terrified of what he would see in her child.

‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Beset behind her. Jezebel glanced at her maid, who was holding out a cloak of ochre wool. ‘Don’t get cold.’

‘How is the baby?’

‘He has suffered an endless stream of visitors, mostly the Palace priests, since the rider was first sighted. He received the first few in good humour, but when Enosh arrived he started screaming and even Daniel couldn’t calm him. Raisa chased them away in the end. But they all had to see for themselves that the baby was still fit and well to meet his father.’

Jezebel nodded and turned back towards the sight of the approaching army. They’d be here soon and she could already make out Ahab in the lead from his distinctive black horse beneath him.

‘I keep telling myself that if he doesn’t notice it the first time he looks at the child, he won’t see it at all,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Beset, arranging the cape around Jezebel’s shoulders.

‘But if the resemblance is as strong as I’ve come to think it is then—’

‘Do you love him?’

‘Ahab?’

Beset smiled. ‘Yes, Ahab.’

‘I missed him much more than I thought I would, and his letters brought me great comfort. I know he didn’t tell me much of significance, but it mattered to me that he was thinking about me, even when he was far away with a war to fight. He is the only one who welcomed me from the start.’

And does he love me? Could any man with more than one wife truly love any of them? She turned away from the parapet. Certainly, they seemed to have found a fondness for each other. He had her loyalty too. There were times in this dark and complicated city when she thought that mattered more even than the son she’d given him.

Beset stopped at the head of the stairs. ‘It’s been less than two months, but you have grown so much older since he went to war.’

‘Is it the baby that made me grow up?’

Beset shrugged. ‘You will make a good mother, I’m sure of that.’

Jezebel squeezed her maid’s hand in gratitude. ‘If I’m wiser too, then perhaps the baby will be the last mistake I make.’

Her stomach churned as she processed with the Palace priests down to the city gates to wait for Ahab’s arrival. She was wearing the Queen’s gown and headdress, formally given by Raisa after the baby was born, and the baby lay in her arms wrapped in a cloth edged with gold beads. Perhaps he sensed the significance of the occasion for he had not stopped wailing since the priests’ visit.