Читать книгу Jezebel - Gardner Fox - Страница 5

Ahab paused in the shadows of the basalt pillars surrounding the mighty bulk of the twin temples of Baal-Melkart and Astarte, his heart hammering under his bruised ribs. There was an enchantment in the moon-drenched night, a sense of anticipation that ran like wildfire in his veins.

There, beyond the granite incense bowl!

Someone or something had moved a little. Moonlight flashed on metal, was quickly gone. He stepped forward. As if in echo to the slap of his boots on the paving stones of the pathway he heard another, softer footstep.

“Are you the priestess?” he called softly.

“Are you the prince of Israel?”

He grinned and moved forward confidently. He had been right about the wench. She wanted him just as badly as he wanted her. A spark had come to life between them; it was up to him to nurture it to flame.

She backed away from him slowly as he advanced. True, he could see her only as a shadow but his heart told him this was the woman who had posed naked before her god. His arm ached to enfold that nude white body. His lips itched to cover that smooth flesh with kisses.

“Wait,” he called.

“Follow me,” floated back her answer.

A door in a high wall opened. For a moment he caught sight of a garden enclosed by those walls, filled with statuary and with flowers, fragrant in the springtime night. The woman slipped inside and closed the door; he did not hear the sound of any bolt.

He ran, big and strong in the pride of young manhood, straight for that barrier. His hand went out for the latch. It lifted and the door opened.

Ahab went into the garden and closed the door behind him. His hand drew the bolt while his eyes moved this way and that, seeking out the Temple harlot. The garden could be a trap, he knew. Among the shrubbery, half a hundred soldiers might lie in wait. He did not see them, nor any twinkle of moonlight on a burnished helmet or spearpoint, however, and so his tension eased.

He moved along the path, away from the garden door. The heavy scents of mimosa and roses made the night swim in languor. An ache was forming in his middle as he moved deeper into the garden. Behind him was the Temple of Baal-Melkart, ahead the smaller Temple of Astarte.

Between the two temples and set like a jewel in the center of the walled garden was a small sanctuary, like a summer-house. It was the only place where the woman could be hiding.

Ahab slipped between the pillars.

She was lying on a low couch, wrapped about by a silken garment. Ahab paused, staring. The woman was different, somehow. More regal. Proud. Imperious. She wore a golden fillet in her hair from which dangled tiny golden hyacinth flowers, shaped like bells that tinkled when she moved her head. Her slim white arms were clustered with golden armbands. There were khalkhals around her ankles.

“What kept you, Ahab?”

Her voice made music in his ears.

“I came as swiftly as I could. It was no mean embrace in which I found myself, between that stone wall and the god-wagon.”

Her laughter tinkled. She raised slim arms into the moonlight and made caressing motions with her hands and fingers. Not once had she looked at him; she seemed enchanted by the bottom of the domed roof.

“Come. Let my embrace wipe out the memory of the other. I promise you, though—that mine may be a harder one from which to escape.”

He needed no encouragement. His long legs took him to the couch so that he stood above her, filling his eyes with her loveliness. The silken robe she wore was only a mist over her nudity. Earlier he had looked upon her nakedness and known excitement; now he realized that excitement had been as nothing. Veiled by the black gauze through which the tints of her nipples and the even darker smudge of blackness at her groin could be seen stark against white skin, she was enough to choke the breath from a man.

He knelt and bent his head, touching her warm thigh with his lips through the robe. She made a contented sound in her throat and put a hand on his head. Lazily she ran her fingers through his hair.

“Ahab, do you know my name?”

“You are beauty,” he whispered.

“Oh, sweet. I like that, but—I’m not just beauty, you know. I’m a person. I do have a name, a certain sort of rank.”

“You are Astarte.”

She laughed at that, turning her head to stare at his intent face. “This from you? An Israelite? Your god is my god’s mortal enemy.”

“Gods are never enemies. It is only their worshippers who make them so.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you so wise, so young?”

He grinned at her, nodding. “Like Solomon himself.”

His hand was on her thigh, sliding upward to her belly. Under his fingertips he sensed the smooth fire of her flesh, felt the tremble that showed her awareness of his exploration. Slowly he began to unwrap the robe that only pretended to hide her body.

She permitted his attention, breathing more rapidly when the silk slid away to bare the swollen mound of a breast. Ahab bent to touch its jutting nipple with his lips. Under her breath she whispered words which he could not make out.

“My name, Ahab,” she panted. “Who am I?”

“Does it matter?” he wondered. “You’re a woman, I’m a man. We are together in the gardens of your love goddess. Worship her with me.”

Her fingers caught his thick hair and held his head motionless above her belly. “You are wise with the wisdom of Solomon, as you say. To get what you want you tempt me with my own religious beliefs. Ah, but you! Isn’t it a sin for you to forsake Yahweh in order to slake your desire in the body of a Phoenician girl?”

“I am a prince,” he told her.

Her strength was as nothing against his heavily muscled frame. She was further weakened by laughter. Fingers tangled in his hair, she drew his mouth to the pouting nipples of her breasts, held him to his devotions while her hips squirmed lazily.

“As you say, you are a prince. And I—what shall I be after this night?”

“What greater rank can you have than that of goddess?”

A sullen roar seemed to be his answer. It came from the direction of the royal harbor. The woman drew strength from it, half sitting up and listening with her head tilted to one side. Ahab saw her ripe red mouth parted expectantly, felt her breast move against his cheek as she breathed in and out with excitement.

“Can you make out what they say?” she panted.

“Something about a new king in Phoenicia.”

“Ahab! Is that right? Are you sure? Listen again!”

To humor her, he drew away and concentrated. Yes, he could hear their words now, the words they shouted to the night sky. Ithobaal! Ithobaal was king in Phoenicia. The tyrant Phales was dethroned! The attack of the palace was a success. The king had been dragged screaming from his sleeping covers where he had hidden himself, to form a human pincushion for the spears of the rebels. Ithobaal ruled in Tyre!

He could make out the screams of women.

“Phales’ wives and concubines,” breathed the girl beside him. Her hand dug into his arm so tightly her silvered nails were drawing blood. “They will be raped to death before the goddess!”

Ahab growled in his throat. She turned an amused face to him. “It is the unwritten law of the conqueror. An old law, true—but one which Ithobaal decided to uphold. He wants no unborn child of Phales to rise in later life and plague him.”

He nodded grimly, saying, “Such was the law in the old, old days. Things are different now. We are barbarians no longer.”

She sank her teeth in his earlobe. “We are still barbarians here in Tyre. Tonight, you will be glad of it. Come with me to the Temple. I want to see what happens to proud Shubadad who was queen in Phoenicia before Phales lost his crown.”

He might have refused, might have pulled her down to slake his flesh hunger on her body but there was an excitement about this woman that was like heady wine. Soft, warm, fragrant, her skin smooth to the touch of his hand, she was an allurement he could not resist.

“All right,” he nodded, lifting her to her feet. “Show the way.”

She ran ahead of him along the garden walks—while outside the tumult of the crowd and the screams of the terrified women were growling louder—toward the columned portico of the Temple of Astarte. Ahab found himself caught up in the excitement that flushed her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle.

He gave no thought to the fact that this was a pagan temple, forbidden to him as a worshipper of Yahweh. All he saw was a naked woman under a thin black robe through which he could see plumply quivering buttocks, and when she turned to urge him onward, the bouncing of her ripened breasts. She waited for him before a blue door on which was set the carving of the wheat sheaves which were sacred to the god.

When he came up to her, she moved against him, clutching his shoulders with her arms, her open mouth lifting to his own. He held her, shuddering in the passion that gripped him. For this woman, he would dare anything. All she need do was beckon.

“Come quickly,” she called, catching his hand.

They ran side by side into the darkness of the great colonnade and up a flight of stone steps to a gallery that bordered one side of the temple. Below them in the vast open space before the goddess, men and women were thronging, crying out as the doors opened to reveal armed men in bloodstained mail shirts, their metal caps awry on their heads, as they came forward into the candlelit Room of Altars. They moved forward between the golden pillars past the great ablution bowl in a shouting wave, carrying four helpless females to the gigantic block of obsidian that was the Altar of the Gods.

Ahab stood by the rail, the woman holding him by his arm, staring down in horrified fascination. Two women were being dragged forward between the opening ranks of jeering soldiers, together with two young girls. They had been stripped naked in the palace, he assumed. All the way from the dock-side quays, over the city cobblestones, they had been forced to walk on bare feet. Now their feet left bloody stains after them as they were pushed forward to the altar.

They were not screaming now; their throats were raw and painful. All they could do was roll wild eyes at the grinning men hemming them in. Hands clutched at their loins and their breasts. Voices cried out lewd invitations to them.

The woman in his arm stirred expectantly. Her breath was coming fast and her hips quivered where they pressed into him. “Proud Shubadad,” she whispered. “She who was queen in Phoenicia.”

Ahab stared down at a struggling, writhing woman whose face was streaked with tears and grime. Her hair had become disarranged during the nightmarish walk from the harbor but it showed traces of the gold dust that had powdered it and a few chains still gleamed between her thick black hairs. The greedy hands that had snatched her jewels and garments from her had left her little else.

She mewled in terror as rough hands dragged her to the altar, struggling weakly and crying out against her degradation. Her eyes sought the ivory and gold statue of the goddess looming tall and gigantic in the torchflame and incense smoke rising from the tripods.

“Mercy, great Astarte. Mercy!” she screamed.

A row of priestesses stirred at her words. The foremost of them, a tall woman in a high tiara wound about with jeweled ropes, lifted her arms, palms outward. This was the high priestess, she who officiated at all the sacrificial ceremonies.

“Who is this who comes before me?”

“Shubadad, queen of Phoenicia,” the woman panted.

“No longer queen,” a man bellowed. “Phales is dead by twenty spears. Shubadad is here to be sacrificed that the rule of Ithobaal may be a good one.”

The throng pressed closer, roaring. Unseeingly the priestess stared out over their heads. “Shubadad is no longer queen in Tyre. Let her make sacrifice to the goddess.”

Triumphant laughter rose into the vaulted ceiling. Shubadad screamed, mouth open, muscles strutted against the arms that held her, that turned her across the altar. Ahab saw her legs lifted before she was almost buried by the men crowding about the great high altar.

Shubadad screamed and screamed.

The young woman pressed her buttocks back against him, moved them gently. She whispered a command. Ahab put his hand to her robe and parted it.

“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, Ahab, prince of Israel. Take me now, for I am Jezebel, daughter of Ithobaal—and this night I am a princess, heiress to the kingdom of Phoenicia.”

He gasped in surprise and at the insane pleasure of her flesh. Below them, they were bringing forward the sister of Phales and his two young daughters, throwing them to the ground and falling on them. It was a scene of nightmare, Ahab thought, though only briefly, for he was too concerned with his own delight to be philosophical. Vaguely he felt disgust at what he witnessed but it was a disgust that excited the primal instincts that are in every man.

This night a man had won a kingdom. Another man had failed to keep his power. Now he lay dead and his women paid the penalty of his failure.

Ahab’s pleasure went on and on. . . .

Rael stared into the thick wine in his leather cup.

Across the winewet tabletop, Jehu was cuddling a serving woman. Jehu would enjoy himself with her. And that was all that mattered to Jehu.

He wished fiercely that he could be more like his friend, but there was a sensitivity in him that made him yearn for something better than a sweatstained tavern wench. Something better? Ah, why lie to himself?

The woman—priestess, rather, he guessed—who had posed so shamelessly before the image of Baal-Melkart was the one he wanted. Ah, there was a woman to set fire to a man’s blood! He saw her in the air before his eyes as she had been then and his heart beat more swiftly. His long fingers tensed, closing.

To get his hands on her. Just one! It would make his years of study, the sacrifice of time when he had passed up the antics of his friends to become a physician, all worthwhile. He lifted the leather jack and drank.

When he put down the cup he saw that Jehu and the redheaded woman were moving toward a curtained doorway that offered entrance into the little cubicles that held a bed, a table and a basin of water. Sourly he watched them, faintly envious.

Jehu could be satisfied with substitutes.

He could not.

After a while he forgot the woman in the wine.

Jehu sat on the edge of the cot and watched the serving woman lifting off her worn woolen tunic. Instead of the loose breasts and overwide hips, his staring eyes were seeing the woman on the pantechnicon. The breath scratched his throat. His hands itched to stroke and fondle.

“Hurry, hurry,” he rasped.

She smiled down at him, tossing aside her tunic, throwing back her long red hair. Oh, she was fortunate, this night. The Habiru from Israel was young, thewed like a working ox. She did not wonder what made him so eager for her flesh; she accepted his lust for what it was, and knew contentment.

The woman would have posed for him but he was too impatient for niceties. His hand stabbed out, caught her wrist, yanked her down on top of him. Astarte! He was eager. Wild. Kind of crazy, almost. She giggled and let him do what he wanted, knowing he would not be through with her until the dawn.

Jehu groaned out his frustrations.

Always he had stood in the shadow of his prince. As long as he could remember, Ahab had always taken first choice. He was prince in Israel; Jehu was only an officer, the youngest son of a grain merchant. He had seen no future in industry with two older brothers already taking over the management of the grist mills, and because he was naturally strong and quick, had turned instead to the war chariots for his career.

He did not regret his choice, no. But he was cast into close association with Ahab who was a soldier and a good one, and soon the two were fast friends. He might hope to be commander of the armies were it not for Ahab, who took the poled banner of leader as a matter of his rank.

Ahab also took the choicest loot when there was a war, and the loveliest of the women who had been made prisoners. Just once, just once Jehu would have liked to make the first selection. Like tonight. The woman on the god-wagon had chosen Ahab. Not because of his good looks, nor because of his princely bearing. Only because Rael had howled out his rank to her in the stark fright that gripped him.

“Damn her,” he growled.

“Who, honey?” panted the woman.

“The bitch on the dais of Baal-Melkart.”

She trailed laughter into the night. “Oh, her. A wild one, that Jezebel. You’d think she’d be satisfied with being a rich man’s daughter, wouldn’t you? But not her. She has to play at being a priestess, too.”

“Jezebel? You know her?”

“The whole city knows her. Oh, you’re a stranger. I forgot. Her father is Ithobaal—honey, you all right?”

“I’m all right. Ithobaal? Isn’t he the one leading the revolt?”

“And if it succeeds, he’ll be king in Phoenicia. Some people have all the luck, don’t they?”

Jehu began to laugh. The woman rolled her hips at him, felt his laughter turn to harsh sobs. Her arms drew his head down so she could whisper in his ear.

“People like us, honey, have to take what we can get. There’s a kind of destiny about women like Jezebel.”

“And about men—like Ahab.”

Destiny. Maybe that was it. Destiny waited on Ahab and placed his feet where he would walk so as to fulfill it. He, Jehu, was doomed to walk forever in the shadow of such a man. It would do him no good to rail against his fate.

He must accept the leavings, like any other servant of royalty. Like this woman panting and surging back and forth beneath him. She was no Jezebel but she was a woman and she could bring him forgetfulness of a sort.

He gathered her in his arms and brought her in closer to him, feeling her respond with soft, erotic cries. A moment later her teeth were biting into his shoulder. Jehu wondered if Ahab would have toothmarks in his flesh by morning.