Читать книгу Jezebel - Eleanor Jong De - Страница 12

Jehu held his hand out to Jezebel as she stepped onto the royal galley, but she was far steadier on her feet than he was. He looked pale beneath that bronzed skin, and his hands were clammy against hers. Gone was the assured lover whose body she had enjoyed night after night in her chamber, the sleeping couch now so strongly scented with him that she thought she would never know other fragrances again. But here on the edge of the harbour, the west wind was sharp with salt, and Jezebel felt as though she had woken up from a deep sleep to find winter had turned to spring.

Certainly that was their reason for being on the galley, to open the water festival of Yam in gratitude for seeing the fleet through the harsh winter. She released Jehu’s hand quickly, so no one could mistake his courtesy for intimacy. The ceremonial redwood boat was in position beyond the harbour, piled high with the carcasses of all the boats that had foundered in the previous year. The whole pyre would be set ablaze as the sun set, but first there was the inspection of the merchant fleet by Ithbaal, raised up in the prow of his galley.

‘Why must it roll around so much?’ muttered Jehu as he stood beside Jezebel behind Ithbaal.

‘Because Yam breathes just as you do, only in the ebb and flow of the tide.’ Jezebel longed to reach out and steady Jehu, slide her arm around his waist, feel the muscles across his abdomen tauten at her touch.

She suspected that the cordiality between kingdoms remained only between herself and Jehu. There hadn’t been a banquet for almost a week and negotiations now only took place between lower level officials. Ithbaal had invited Jehu to the ceremony as a last gesture of faith, but he admitted to Jezebel he thought the son just as stubborn as his father and grandfather. They would not concede on the point of taxation of exports to pay for the military patrols on the King’s Highway, and there was nothing more to be done about it.

Earlier in the day, as the galley was rowed out, Jezebel felt torn. She wanted to tell her father that Jehu’s passion could be useful if it was properly directed. She was desperate to explain that Jehu was not blindly holding on to his family’s principles but could reason as thoughtfully as he could make love to her. But as she cast a subtle look at him, whose hands gripped the rail of the boat, she guessed nothing but an enforced declaration of marriage between them would bring the nations together.

‘It will be calmer in deeper water,’ she said as the vessel pushed past the first of the great trading boats, its prow carved into the rearing head of a sea serpent.

He didn’t answer. He stared wide-eyed across the water, his teeth gritted and jaw set.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she murmured. ‘Yam won’t swallow you up when I’m with you. He wouldn’t dare.’

‘My people are meant to walk the earth, Your Highness,’ he said eventually, his voice more brittle than usual. ‘We fear the sea because, just as you say, it might swallow us up. Only our prophet Moses could control the sea, and even he didn’t sail upon it but parted it so that my ancestors could walk on the land beneath. Our priests tell me that we are a people destined to walk the land forever in search of a home.’

‘Then you will only ever walk in circles,’ said Ithbaal from the prow. ‘This is your opportunity to change that, to break with the narrow vision of your father and grandfather, to lead your nation forward to exceed the very history that still confines you. Do you have the courage to do so, or will you stand rigid on this deck forever, pretending that the wooden boards are a little piece of earth beneath you?’

‘Well said, Father,’ cried Balazar from the other side of Jezebel. But she could only exhale quietly and try not to look at Jehu. If that was not an exhortation to him to marry into the Tyrian royal family, then what was?

So it was with considerable joy late that evening after the festival that she watched Jehu walk alone from her father’s retiring room towards the guest wing in which the Judean delegation were staying. He didn’t look up at her window, but she couldn’t expect that he would. Appearances had to be maintained until the announcement was made. Besides, there were still two hours before Jehu would climb the tree outside her window in the dark and creep into her bed, and Jezebel was desperate to hear what her father had said to him. She was considering casually going down to her father’s chambers when Beset knocked on the open door and parted the inner curtains. She glanced quickly around the room, no doubt fearful that Jehu was also there, but kept her voice steady.

‘His Highness the King is here to see you. Shall I ask him to wait?’

‘Of course not.’ Jezebel came away from the window. ‘Father? Come in.’

Beset drew back the curtains fully and gave a low bow as Ithbaal entered. He looked around him at the cosy space, soft with couches and cushions and the yellow tones of the oil lamps, and for a moment, Jezebel was sure he would notice Jehu’s distinctive almond scent in the room. But he merely gave a nod of satisfaction and sat down on a couch beneath the window. Jezebel smiled to herself. At least if Jehu scaled the tree, eager to give her the news of their engagement, he would see that her father had got there first!

‘You have made these chambers very comfortable for yourself. You have your mother’s eye for beauty.’

‘Thank you, Father.’ Jezebel sat down beside him.

‘At least you can take all these fancy pieces with you when you move, and recreate this room exactly as it is elsewhere. It won’t be the same, of course.’ He paused, and Jezebel looked eagerly at him. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I will miss you when you are gone, but the time has come for me to let you go. The negotiations have been completed and you are to be married.’

Jezebel gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks to smother the flare of delight. ‘Just as you wish, Father.’

‘In three days you will travel to Samaria to marry King Ahab of Israel.’

Jezebel sagged on the couch, all her giddy joy suddenly dispelled. Her hands turned clammy in her lap as she stared at her father, panic rising fast in her chest. ‘What? I don’t understand. King Ahab?’

‘It has been a far more difficult negotiation than with the Judeans, if that could be possible, and I don’t believe that Obadiah came here prepared to give up anything at all in exchange for you. But it is the right outcome for Tyre.’

‘But the Judeans have been here longer.’

‘What sort of reason is that?’

Jezebel scrambled to order her thoughts. ‘Then settling with Israel is the less ambitious choice, they are our immediate neighbour, they open no new land routes for trade, and Jehu was right, the King’s Highway and the Sea Road together would secure—’

‘Jehu’s arguments are persuasive only because of the passion with which he delivers them. Just because a man shouts loudly does not mean that what he says is right. He is thinking only of Judah whereas I’m thinking of Tyre and all the Phoenician kingdoms.’

‘But Jehu is a better match—’

‘For whom?’ demanded Ithbaal, standing up. ‘For you or for Tyre? You have enjoyed a life utterly without responsibility, Jezebel, and though you are more than intelligent enough to understand the issues, you know nothing of what sacrifices must be made for the good of the kingdom. It is time to put aside your personal wishes and become a true princess of Tyre. You are to marry Ahab and there will be no further discussion about it.’

He strode across the room towards the doorway and Jezebel sucked hard on her cheeks, trying to control her tears until her father had left.

But at the doorway he suddenly stopped, steadying himself on the doorframe as he turned.

‘Perhaps I haven’t presented this to you very well. Perhaps if you had seen Obadiah for yourself, if you had witnessed both sets of negotiations, you might have understood better what I’ve had to consider myself. And perhaps if I had seen matters through your eyes, I might have understood that the presence of a handsome young man, however misguided, is always going to be more attractive than the proposition of an absent stranger. But Ahab is a sound ruler.’

‘And what is the point of owning two great ports,’ sniffed Jezebel, ‘if you cannot safely navigate the sea between them? We must protect all of the King’s Highway, not just the top and the bottom.’

Jehu didn’t see the arrangement that way at all.

The dish of nuts left his hand and smashed against the wall and Jezebel flinched. ‘Your father had no intention of ever sealing a deal with us!’ he yelled.

She went quickly to him, smothering his body in her arms. He remained rigid, trembling with rage. ‘Don’t be angry, please. If there was any other way …’

‘He kept us hanging on here for days while he waited for Obadiah to make up his mind,’ Jehu muttered.

‘It’s not like that—’

Jehu pushed her away. ‘Isn’t it? I’ve been a fool.’

‘We love each other! What’s foolish about that?’

‘Love? Is that what you call this? Sweetening me night after night so that I might go back to my father every morning with fresh reasons for us to stay and negotiate.’

‘Don’t say that!’ cried Jezebel, stepping back. ‘Don’t say things so hurtful when I know you don’t mean them. I must go to Israel and marry a man I’ve never met instead of the man I love.’

‘So you say!’ His voice cracked on the words, and she could see his face holding back his tears. The boy who had seemed so grown up now looked very young.

‘I’d never given myself to a man before you came to Tyre.’

‘You want me to believe you learned those charms in my arms? Surely a people as travelled as yours have learned a thing or two along the way.’

‘Oh!’ Jezebel fell back on the couch, unable to hold back her tears. Had this monster, who even now was kicking over stools and hurling cushions across the room, lurked always beneath that tender exterior? As he grabbed the ceremonial bowl from Astarte’s shrine, she threw herself at him, trapping it between them.

‘Don’t dishonour us both,’ she whispered urgently, ‘don’t call down the rage of the Gods on us for what has happened.’

She clasped his face, now wet with tears of anger and disappointment, and wiped them away, then she kissed her fingers so that she might taste his misery and know it as well as her own. ‘Don’t blame Astarte but pray with me that our love might last for all eternity.’

Jehu’s head fell against her shoulder, and Jezebel felt his body shudder against her in a great heave of despair. ‘No God will protect that.’

‘Then at least believe in me. Stay with me tonight, one last night, so that we can seal our love—’

But Jehu pulled away from her, drawing out of reach. He turned his back on her and laid Astarte’s bowl back at the foot of her shrine. ‘I won’t lie down with the wife of the Israelite king. The God I share with him would forbid it.’

‘Jehu!’

He shook his head and strode from the room. Jezebel watched the curtains sway in his wake, felt the last sweet draught of almond-scented air brush her face, then she sank sobbing to her knees.