Eleanor Jong - Jezebel

She let the scroll go. ‘Are you asking the Judeans to pay for the upkeep of the northernmost stretch of the Highway? They surely will not agree to that. It is the furthest stretch from Judah, and also the furthest from here, and the part of the Highway in which both kingdoms have least interest.’

‘Are you calling Father a fool?’ asked Balazar lazily from the couch.

‘Jezebel is right. Strategically it appears to make little sense.’ Ithbaal looked down at his son.

‘Then it makes little sense,’ repeated Balazar, his cheeks ruddying.

‘Unless you think that Ben-Hadad of Damascus has ambitions to seize that piece of the Highway,’ explained Jezebel. ‘It borders his land of course. Should it fall into his hands traders would be at his mercy. That does neither Judah nor Tyre and Sidon any good at all.’

Ithbaal nodded, but his attention had fallen from her face to her dress. ‘I presume you have something else to wear for dinner. One of your very best outfits. And perhaps that engraved amethyst pendant I gave you for the Spring Festival.’

‘You want me to meet the Judean officials?’

‘They’re absolute barbarians,’ said Balazar. ‘No culture, no art, their food is bland, and that awful brown land—’

‘I suppose I’ll seat you between the King’s son Jehoshaphat and his son Jehu,’ said her father to her, resting his hand on her shoulder. He spoke casually, but she felt the weight of his touch. ‘I am sure you will show them both the very best of your hospitality.’

Jezebel’s heart banged hard in her chest, and she held her breath to slow it down. ‘Of course, Father.’

Her father stood and walked away without another word and Jezebel could only watch him go, as dizzy now as she had been up on the promontory.

‘You know what he means, don’t you,’ said Balazar slyly, ‘sitting you next to—’

‘I know.’

She ran past Hisham out of the retiring room and up the grand stone staircase to her room, flinging back the heavy drapes and darting across the corner of the room to the small shrine to the great Goddess Astarte beside the east window. But the stone plinth was already heaped with grapes, and the redwood circle carved with Astarte’s manifestations was wound with fresh tendrils and leaves of the vine.

Jezebel glanced frantically around the room, for Astarte’s shrine was only ever dressed for festivals and for weddings. At the foot of the bed stood Rebecca, her hands clasped at her waist, her eyebrows arched knowingly beneath her greying hair. Beside her was her youngest daughter, Beset, a year older than Jezebel and in Palace service at her mother’s side. The girl smiled at Jezebel. Jezebel tried to speak, but her throat was tight and she could only sink down onto the white kneeler at the foot of the shrine. At a nod from Rebecca, Beset filled Astarte’s ceremonial bowl with water and gave it to Jezebel. She drank it down gratefully.

‘What did Father tell you?’ she whispered, looking up at her maids. ‘You must know something, else why would you have dressed the shrine?’

‘So that Astarte will guide you,’ said Rebecca.

‘I will have to marry one of these Judeans to secure the safety of the Highway,’ gulped Jezebel. She’d been expecting this day for two years – not many royal daughters remained unmarried in their sixteenth year. ‘Has he told you which one?’

‘The Palace is full of gossip—’ whispered Beset.

‘Then which?’

‘It won’t do us any good to speculate,’ said Rebecca, frowning at her daughter. ‘We have made our offering to the Goddess, so we must allow her to take care of you.’

Jezebel shook her head. ‘It would surely be better if I did not understand what is at stake, then I could just do as I am told without thinking about it.’

‘When have you ever done as you are told?’ said Rebecca. ‘Now come and bathe and then we can dress you. You must look your best for your future husband, whomever the Fates decide upon.’

Later that evening, Jezebel entered her father’s crowded chambers for the ceremonial dinner, her heart feeling tight in her chest. Two courtiers held the pleated train of her finest silk dress, and she kept her eyes fixed on her father rather than glancing around at what form her future might take. Ithbaal stood to escort her personally to the couch opposite his, signalling the respect which she was to be accorded by the visitors. Jezebel lowered her gaze to the tables, groaning beneath golden bowls piled high with cooked grains and meat, fruits and nuts.

‘You look wonderful,’ whispered her father.

Jezebel concentrated on keeping her shoulders drawn back. Standing so, she was almost as tall as her father. Her shoulders were bare, and almost brushed by the amethyst pendants of her earrings. Rebecca had wanted to whiten her skin, but Jezebel hated being pasted with make-up, especially when it was liable to crack as the evening wore on. She settled for a pearlescent shimmer dusted across her collar bones. Her lips were painted vermillion, using one of her mother’s recipes learned from the Egyptians.

‘I had always thought it like the cool of a midnight sky,’ said a voice to her right, ‘but in truth it is more like the heat of a glorious sunset.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Jezebel politely, turning. The accent was not like any she had heard before.

‘Tyrian purple,’ said a young man settling on the couch next to her. From Balazar’s dismissive description, Jezebel had imagined the Judeans to be as dull and ugly as their lands, but this fellow was as handsome as any of the young men of Tyre. His jaw was a little squarer and his eyes had a dark knowing about them that Jezebel found oddly cool in their attractive setting. From his unlined face, he might have been only a couple of years older than her, perhaps even eighteen, but his body was certainly a man’s. She blushed at how intently he studied her in return. His eyes caressed her shoulders, then took in the folds of fabric that draped across her body. ‘The cloth I’ve seen dyed with it in the Jerusalem markets has a rather bluer hue to it,’ he continued, ‘but your dress is quite rich and red in comparison.’

There was a moment’s silence before Jezebel realised he was expecting an answer, but when she tried to speak, no words would come. The Hebrew he spoke was guttural but soft. She coughed, her fingers covering her mouth, and the young man quickly reached for a bowl of wine and offered it to her.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, furious with herself for being so struck by his looks that she had forgotten her poise and her manners. She drank some wine, and swall owed hard. ‘I’m afraid that the colour you are describing isn’t true Tyrian purple, but tekhelet.’

‘I don’t know this word,’ he said, ‘what does it mean?’

Jezebel swallowed some more wine, its richness surely flushing her cheeks even more. ‘Tekhelet is the colour used for our ritual clothing.’

‘And that makes it different?’

Jezebel lowered her gaze. ‘I am quite sure one of the officials will be able to tell you about the technical processes if you wish to know.’

He leaned closer to her and she smelled the sweet almond oil on his hair. ‘It can be very boring,’ he whispered, ‘listening to a lot of officials droning on. But I’m sure the Princess Jezebel can make even a dead snail sound interesting.’

‘It seems you know more about me than I know about you,’ said Jezebel. ‘I’m afraid I don’t even know your name.’

The young man lowered his head and hesitantly offered his hand, palm up, in the traditional Phoenician greeting. Jezebel lowered her palm onto his in response, the calluses at the base of his fingers catching on her own smooth soft skin.