Eleanor Jong - Jezebel

At the far end of the gardens was a small wooden gate in the high wall which he opened to reveal a tangle of lanes sprawling down the gentle slope into the city. Ahab put his hand over Jezebel’s eyes then she felt him turn her gently to the right before lowering his hand again.

‘There! A little piece of Tyre in Samaria.’

A stone’s throw from the Palace walls, nestled among wooden huts was a tiny round building with an angled roof, built entirely out of the white stone she knew from Tyre, not the local yellow rock. Above the entrance a star within a circle had been carved out of the stone, and around the pillars that flanked it were endless engraved doves in flight. Inside she could see a pristine white altar decked with stone sculptures of all Astarte’s icons, the horse, the lion, the sphinx and the dove. Even in the morning light it sparkled as though Astarte herself had begotten the Temple from the night sky and Jezebel thought it the most beautiful building she had ever seen. It was a perfect size for her and her small cadre of priests to worship in and seemed to reflect the presence her father wanted her to establish in Israel – contained and discreet but still elegant.

‘When I saw the shrine in your room last night,’ said Ahab, ‘I knew that I had been right to build this for you. I set the top stone myself. It has a hole carved through it so that your Gods may always look down on you.’

Jezebel’s eyes grew wet and once again she wrapped her arms around herself, not in fear this time, but to contain the extraordinary surge of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her.

‘I thought wives were expected to take their husband’s Gods,’ she said.

‘And abandon their own?’ said Ahab. ‘Perhaps for some people this is true, but my father never succeeded in doing so with my mother, and he was the wisest council I know.’

‘And how will your subjects take this?’

‘They are your subjects too. You are a long way from home,’ said Ahab, ‘not in distance but in difference, so I want you to know that this will always be yours, just as this city is now yours, and the Israelite people are yours too. They will learn to know you and love you just as you will them. But this is my personal gift to you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

She didn’t mention the soldiers who had passed her in the garden and who now stood on guard at the Temple entrance, spears in their hands and swords in their belts. Ahab was clearly not so confident of universal approval as he made out. They are your subjects too. It hardly answered her question. But voicing any further reservations would seem ungrateful, so instead she accepted Ahab’s arm. As they walked back up to the Palace in silence, she prayed inwardly for Astarte’s protection to reach this far into hostile lands.

A few days later, Jezebel stood in front of a polished obsidian panel set into one of the walls of her chamber, pulling her dress tight across her belly. In the reflection she could see Daniel fiddling around in his medicine chest, and Beset brushing an outer robe. Both were fully engaged in their business but the room was full of their silence and eventually Jezebel could stand it no longer.

‘I wish one of you would just say something.’ She saw Daniel look across the room at Beset.

‘Are you sure you feel well enough to go out?’ asked her maid.

‘Of course,’ said Jezebel. ‘I always feel better by the middle of the morning.’

Daniel and Beset exchanged glances once more, then they joined Jezebel in front of the mirror-stone, all three of them staring at the reflection of Jezebel’s abdomen. ‘It barely shows,’ murmured Beset.

Daniel didn’t say anything, and not for the first time, she wondered if he disapproved. Since their time on the desert road, he had stayed close to her, giving her salts to overcome her sickness. But his face wore a permanent crease of anxiety, as though reflecting on the magnitude of their shared secret.

‘I feel terrible lying to Ahab,’ said Jezebel. ‘He’s been so kind to me.’

‘You should be safe for two or three months yet,’ said Beset, ‘if we dress you properly and it is dark when you lie down with the King.’

But Daniel rubbed his chin, ran his fingers through his hair, and finally he turned away from the mirror so abruptly that Beset let go of the dress. Jezebel turned after him.

‘At least say something?’

Daniel sat down alone on the couch. He linked his fingers together, stretching them to and fro, then he stood up again and went to the window. ‘I don’t think you should go out with Esther today, that is all.’

‘She is the only friend I have here, apart from the two of you,’ said Jezebel.

Daniel smiled a little at this, but his crease remained. ‘Then at least stay in the Palace.’

‘But she is going to show me the cloth merchants and the markets. She wants my opinion on which cloth is of the best quality and that at least is something I know a little about.’

‘Does she talk to you about her mother?’

‘Not really,’ said Jezebel, now feeling Daniel’s anxiety herself. ‘Should she?’

‘Perhaps she wouldn’t anyway. Not given how things are.’

‘I know it must be difficult for her now I’m here, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.’

‘You could ask the King to take down your Temple.’

‘What makes you say such a thing?’ asked Beset.

‘I fear that if Ahab does not take it down then someone else will.’

‘Leah?’ asked Jezebel, perplexed by the turns of the conversation.

‘Not Leah, but the priests who are loyal to her. Amos told me last night that there is a lot of anger among the Samarian priests that Leah has been displaced. The Judeans pray to Yahweh just as the Israelites do.’

‘But surely they’re angry with Ahab and not with me.’

‘They believe you’re seeking to influence Esther away from her mother. It’s no secret that Esther is her father’s daughter in temperament and intelligence, but you appear to be blatantly leading her away from Judah altogether.’

‘But I’ve never taken Esther into my Temple—’

‘Jezebel?’ Esther’s voice rang out, breathless, from the corridor. ‘Are you ready to go out?’

Jezebel shot an urgent look at Daniel but he simply shrugged at her.

‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she hissed at him as she grabbed her robe from the bed. ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life locked in here!’

As Esther guided her through the narrow streets of the city, Daniel’s warnings lingered. Jezebel found herself more than usually distracted by the people around her. Every eye watched her, every mouth formed around a judgement of her, even if many of these people wished only to be left to get on with their lives.

The cloth merchants treated her with a grudging respect when they realised she knew what she was talking about, and one even spoke with her in an almost friendly fashion about the difficulties of getting good red dyes to set in wool. But as they left the bustle of the market to return to the Palace, Jezebel noticed a group of priests gathering ahead of them, their dark murmuring shot with the light tinkling of tiny bells that hung from the hems of their blue robes.

‘Let’s go this way,’ said Jezebel, pointing to a nearby lane. ‘Doesn’t this go to the jewellery quarter?’

‘But this is the quicker route, even if we aren’t going to the Palace,’ said Esther.

‘Then what’s down here?’

‘Nothing really.’

The priests had moved in very quickly and they en circled Jezebel in a swirl of bright garments. Their beards bristling with animosity, their tongues fat with insults. In a moment she was separated from Esther.