Читать книгу Jezebel - Gardner Fox - Страница 8

Jezebel stood before a toy temple, touching it with rouged fingertips. All around her was the confusion and excitement of the royal palace preparing for her wedding. She alone was calm. Her ears did not hear the wheels moving over the cobbles, bringing meat and bread for the feasting, nor the stamping feet of the dancers, the sounding balag drums, the reed pipes and flutes of the dancers and the musicians readying their entertainment for the occasion. Her every sense was occupied with the little structure resting on the ebony table before her.

“Such a temple will I build to Baal-Melkart, once I am queen in Israel,” she told her slavegirl, Alanna.

Alanna was an Elamite girl who had been born into slavery of a Hittite mother and an Elamite father. She had known no other life but the service of Jezebel and so she considered herself privileged to speak her mind upon occasion.

She said now, “Israel worships Yahweh. He dislikes graven images or so I’ve been told.”

Jezebel moved her shoulder idly. “Pooh! Did not the Habiru worship a golden calf while Moses was leading them out of Egypt? Did not Solomon permit his many wives to worship the gods they chose? And Jeroboam, when Solomon died and he took the northern kingdom for his own—did he not build temples and put golden calves in them for his people to adore?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“The Habiru have a weakness for graven images, despite what their Yahweh says. It’s a failing I mean to exploit.” Her face dimpled into a smile. “Ahab will do whatever I want him to do. He likes his pleasures, does Ahab.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Jezebel turned and regarded her thoughtfully. “I always wanted to be high priestess. My father would never permit it, though he allowed me to practice the worship of Baal in the temples almost as if I were a priestess. In Israel, there will be no one to forbid me from doing as I please.”

“There will be Ahab,” Alanna pointed out.

Jezebel laughed, “I can handle Ahab.”

She turned back to the toy temple and caressed it. Such a building would she make in Samaria, and in Jezreel, which was a sort of summer capitol for the nation she would rule. Priests without number she would bring from Tyre and Sidon into Israel, to worship her god.

In such a temple as this all Israel would bow down in worship before great Baal.

Living babes would be cast screaming into the holy fires built before the golden statue of the god. Let their mothers wail and tear at their hair, as some Phoenician mothers were wont to do, it made no difference to Jezebel. Men and women taken in war would be brought for sacrifice into his temple, held down for the sacrificial knife that their deaths might bring the blessings of Baal-Melkart on Jezebel and Ahab.

She put her hands to her breasts under the thin muslin tunic, lifting them up as she felt a flood of desire stab her loins. Ah, and after the sacrifices, when the blood-lust was upon both men and women, when men forgot their heritage and were no better than animals in rut, these were the moments which were best of all.

She and Ahab would watch and then take part in the orgy. Jezebel was glad she had saved the young Israelite from death on the timbers of the god-wagon. He was young, strong, filled with hungers as vital as her own.

After a while she would tire of him, but that was only natural. She would procure, pretty slavegirls for him, or handsome noblewomen if he wanted them, while she herself would . . .

She smiled dreamily as her eyes narrowed. Those two companions of his, the one who was built like a stallion, Jehu, and the other one, the more slender Rael: they liked her. She had seen their eyes on her as she posed before the golden image of Baal. It might be fun to see how passionate she could make them.

Oh, it would be marvelous, being queen of Israel!