Читать книгу Jezebel - Gardner Fox - Страница 10

Since the time of Solomon, Megiddo had been a royal stronghold, an armed fortress fitted out with stables and stalls to house war horses and chariots. In his day, Solomon had brought horses from Egypt to breed and multiply, the finest mares and stallions in his world, paying one hundred and fifty shekels for each animal; with them he had bought chariots, paying six hundred shekels for each one of those light, strong battle-carts.

In the sixty years since Solomon had died, the Egyptian horses had multiplied until now they numbered into the thousands. Israelite craftsmen had copied the Egyptian war chariots, handcrafting them almost as swiftly as they could work adze and awl. The chariot forces of King Ahab made a mobile army which could travel swiftly and easily in any direction.

“But how swiftly?” Ahab asked.

His guards captain could not answer his question. Perhaps no man alive could do that; his chariots must be tested in battle before any judgment could be made on them. Ahab paced the hot spring sunlight, head bared to its heat, clad in iron armor fitted with golden crescents, his feet kicking up puffs of dust at every stride.

The border guards on the northern strip of Israel, that curved northward from the Kishon River and Mount Carmel all the way to Mount Hermon and then down to Judah by way of Dan and the Sea of Chinnereth, reported large bodies of Aramaean horsemen along the border. They trotted back and forth, staring across the river waters into Israel, but they made no hostile move.

For two months they had patrolled the lands of Geshur and Bashan where they touched against Israel, ever since Omri had died in his sleep in his palace at Samaria. Like vultures hovering in the sky above a weak man crawling on the ground, their shadow lay over young King Ahab.

He wanted to hit back, but what man could fight a shadow? He knew that an attack would come. He did not know where, could not know until it was begun. And once under way, it might be too late to defeat.

For the first time in his life, Ahab understood what it meant to be a king. He had seen his father pacing the palace gardens, brows furrowed with worry, but in his youth he had not dreamed that where Omri walked, he too would walk one day. He understood it now. Ah, how well he understood!

He beat his fist upon the curving handrail of an unharnessed chariot. Desperately, he wished that Jehu had not gone to Babylon. He would have put him in charge of the army, let him stake out his patrols, be responsible for the warning and the defense of the country.

Without Jehu, he must stand alone.

Zubral was no help. His eyes slid sideways to touch the muscular bulk of his war captain, a squat giant in brazen armor. Zubral was a good man to lead a charge, to take troops into battle; but when it came to planning the strategy of a campaign, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

No, Ahab alone must map out a plan.

He kicked at the dust in his helplessness, remembering Jezebel and missing the fever of her embraces. He wondered what advice she might have to offer. It was stupid of him to turn to a woman in war counsels, he supposed, but she had shown so much wisdom in other matters that he felt curiously confident she would help in this. Was not her goddess Astarte also known as the mistress of horses and the lady of chariot? Astarte was a war goddess as well as the goddess of love; her prietess might be as wise.

His eyes touched a sundial in the stable yard. Samaria was only a score of miles away. A fast chariot would cover fifteen miles in an hour; he could be at the palace before nightfall.

A little of his despondency fell from Ahab.

This night he would sleep with Jezebel.

He found her in a large bedchamber the balcony of which stood out over the palace courtyard where it met the Jezreel wall. She was bent above a table on which rested the model of a building. As he approached her, Ahab touched the tiny edifice with his eyes; it was a temple of some sort.

He spared the plaything small attention, for Jezebel was clad only in a thin Egyptian kilt, no more. It was hot in this early summer of the year, and though the upper floors were free of the heavy drapes that sheltered them from the winds that roved the plain of Jezreel in the winter months, the air was heavy and sluggish.

He put his hands on her hips and drew her back against him. Jezebel cried out sharply at the touch of his armor, turning to stare up at him with something like fright in her eyes. When she recognized him she squealed in delight and opened her lips for his kiss.

“What interests you so much?” he wondered, when she took away her mouth. He followed her gesture down to the little temple model.

“A toy, my darling. I had it made in Tyre and brought it with me to Israel in my baggage. Some day I would like to build a temple such as that so I may worship my gods in Samaria as I used to do in Tyre.”

“Some day,” he agreed casually. “Right now I have other things than temples on my mind.”

She drew him to a bench and pushed him down onto it, undoing the cuirass straps with her own hands, lifting off his iron armor and dropping it to one side of the bench. Then she seated herself on his thighs and began to kiss his throat and jaw.

“Solomon built a temple, darling. He even built temples for his wives. And he had a lot of them.”

“I’m no Solomon,” he protested, laughing.

She disarranged the quilted jacket over which he wore his armor, to lay bare his hairy chest and touch her breasts against it, she nibbled at his earlobe. Jezebel could feel her young husband responding to her advances. His breathing was faster, his muscles strutted by desire.

“A tiny little temple? One no bigger than a—summer-house? Where only you and I may go to worship together?”

“If Ben-hadad permits us to live that long, we’ll build a temple,” he agreed grimly.

She drew back and stared at him, plucked brows meeting in puzzlement. “Ben-hadad? Does he mean to attack us?”

He told her of the horse patrols along the northwestern boundary of their country. “They could strike anywhere over a hundred miles of territory. We can’t cover such a long borderline, even with all our chariots. The best we can hope for is that the invasion will come where one of our own patrols will see it.”

“And that the charioteer can ride in time to bring a warning,” she added soberly. The impishness was gone from her face, for Jezebel felt coldness stirring in her middle. To be queen of Israel only a few months, then to be overthrown, taken captive and perhaps raped to death as Shubadad had been—she shivered.

“What can we do?” she asked in a small voice.

“I don’t know,” he muttered gloomily. “It isn’t just Aram that troubles me, either. Beyond Bashan is the land of Ammon and beyond that, Moab. My father conquered Moab but it’s only waiting the opportunity to throw off its yoke. I suppose it thinks me weak, untried.”

“As you are,” she said flatly.

He nodded, sunk in his mood of self-abasement. Only to the west where lay Phoenicia, his ally, and the Great Sea, was there any safety in Israel. Even Judah to the south might strike a blow to reunite the twin kingdoms that had split apart on the death of Solomon. King Jehosephat was an ambitious man who would give almost anything for a chance to extend the shadow of his sceptre northward.

Jezebel wriggled from his lap and ran to a little tripod where a fire burned slowly. The tripod faced a wall niche in which was set a small image of the god Baal-Melkart, of red gold with rubies for its eyes. Ahab watched her lift a cone of natron incense, dip and hold it to the coals in the brass bowl supported on the tripod.

When a thin line of smoke rose upward she carried the lighted incense to an obsidian kylix standing before the god. With an obeisance, she dropped the cone into the shallow bowl.

“Baal-Melkart, hear my plea,” she whispered.

She turned and beckoned him to join her. Sighing, Ahab got to his feet wishing he had the religious fervor that possessed his bride. If he could have gone to Yahweh in this manner, as Jezebel went to Baal, perhaps his own God might give him the help he needed so desperately.

Jezebel tugged him to the tiled floor where she knelt. Ahab joined her, staring up at the golden image. What was it the commandments said? I shall not suffer graven images before me. Yet while Moses had been on Mount Sinai writing down those laws, his brother Aaron had made such an image for the people to worship, a golden calf. He wondered what it was in the makeup of his people that enjoyed the ostentation of idolatry.

His eyes followed the black plume of scented smoke rising upward before Baal. Cold reason told him that this was nothing more than a statue of a man with the head of a bull, seated on a Greek klismos for the worship of deluded men who gave it, with their minds, the attributes of godhood. The statue could do nothing to help him. It was only the idea which counted.

“—sustain the thrones we sit so that—Ahab!”

“What? Oh.”

“You’re wool gathering, not paying the slightest attention to what I’m saying. If we were in Jerusalem before the Ark, you’d want me to show some respect.”

“I respect your gods,” he said firmly.

She looked at him, a slow stare that he could not face. At certain times, Ahab had the feeling that Jezebel was only using him, that almost any man would do for her worship of the gods, even for the pleasures of her body. It was not a nice thought and it made him uncomfortable as though he were in some manner unfaithful to her, but it hid away in the back of his mind and showed itself only when he was under tension.

So that he would not have to meet her eyes, he stared again at the statue. The black smoke stood out with startling clarity against the gold, even against the painted background of the chamber wall, where a scene out of the life of Abraham had been limned by some unknown artist.

A mountaintop had been sketched in the mural showing Abraham with the sacrificial knife in his hand, about to plunge it into Isaac. The clouds in the sky were very clear. It was almost as if Ahab were staring through an opening in the wall to Mount Carmel in the distance. If it were not for the incense smoke, he would imagine that the scene was taking place before him, so excellent was its composition, so vivid its colors.

Incense smoke, thin and black against the clouds.

If it were night, the black smoke would be invisible. Then, however, he would see the red fire that spawned it as the natron burned.

Ahab gasped.

Annoyed, Jezebel turned to glare at him but something about his expression made her curious. She frowned, touched her lips with her tongue; then asked, “What is it?”

“A way to warn my army when Ben-hadad attacks. The smoke from the incense shows clearly against a painted sky. It would appear as black against real clouds.”

“Signal fires,” she said, and shrugged.

“Not just signal fires. Oh, I know they’ve been in use for centuries, but these would be somewhat different. They would have the added merit of being holy fires.”

“Holy fires?”

“In the old days where were the sacrifices made?”

“In the high places.”

“Exactly. And on horned altars. Abraham would have offered up Isaac on top of a mountain, as Jephthah gave up his daughter on a similar elevated shrine. Today the priests and the corybantes who worship the magna mater Cybele burn their offerings on hilltops.”

Jezebel opened her lips, then closed them.

Ahab said, “You brought a number of priests with you from Tyre. Summon more of them. Send them to the western border, there to wait until Ben-hadad invades Israel. Let them send up a black smoke if it is day, a great red fire if it is night. It will be a warning. I will hold the army in readiness somewhere near Kedesh, to be midway of the point where I expect he’ll come.”

Jezebel nodded. “It might be done that way. Certainly the Aramaeans will not suspect holy men busy at their sacred flames for our spies.” She glanced at him slyly. “Such a service to Israel would be deserving of a great reward.”

He grinned at her. “A fine, big temple to Baal-Melkart, with possibly another one in honor of Astarte.”

Sitting back on her heels, she clapped her hands. “I shall bring many priests to Israel so that their holy fires may protect us. I shall bring priestesses too, that they may dance when the fires are lighted and so distract Ben-hadad’s soldiers from their duty.”

Ahab glanced at her body, naked to her navel. “If the priestesses are half as attractive as their princess, Israel need have no worries.”

He reached out and caught her, bringing her in against him.