Eleanor Jong - Jezebel

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.

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