‘But I’ve never taken Esther into my Temple—’
‘Jezebel?’ Esther’s voice rang out, breathless, from the corridor. ‘Are you ready to go out?’
Jezebel shot an urgent look at Daniel but he simply shrugged at her.
‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she hissed at him as she grabbed her robe from the bed. ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life locked in here!’
As Esther guided her through the narrow streets of the city, Daniel’s warnings lingered. Jezebel found herself more than usually distracted by the people around her. Every eye watched her, every mouth formed around a judgement of her, even if many of these people wished only to be left to get on with their lives.
The cloth merchants treated her with a grudging respect when they realised she knew what she was talking about, and one even spoke with her in an almost friendly fashion about the difficulties of getting good red dyes to set in wool. But as they left the bustle of the market to return to the Palace, Jezebel noticed a group of priests gathering ahead of them, their dark murmuring shot with the light tinkling of tiny bells that hung from the hems of their blue robes.
‘Let’s go this way,’ said Jezebel, pointing to a nearby lane. ‘Doesn’t this go to the jewellery quarter?’
‘But this is the quicker route, even if we aren’t going to the Palace,’ said Esther.
‘Then what’s down here?’
‘Nothing really.’
The priests had moved in very quickly and they en circled Jezebel in a swirl of bright garments. Their beards bristling with animosity, their tongues fat with insults. In a moment she was separated from Esther.
‘Heretic!’ one shouted.
‘Phoenician harlot!’ snapped another. ‘You bring your false Gods to our land!’
Jezebel spun round, throwing furious glances at one priest after another, but there were so many of them, and like a swarm of hornets they seethed around her, driving her back against a wall without touching her at all. She stumbled on the uneven ground and grabbed at the wall to steady herself, but her voice quavered as she tried to control her fury and fear. ‘I’ve nothing but respect for your God, so you can find the same for mine.’
‘You deserve no such thing,’ said another, spitting at her feet. ‘And you,’ they turned as one on Esther, ‘you should save yourself while you still can.’
‘Help us!’ Esther called out.
Jezebel tried to see through the crowd of the priests’ turbans but she could only see the top of Esther’s head.
‘You bring shame on your mother and on all the people of Yahweh by consorting with the infidel!’
And then Jezebel heard the clop of approaching feet and the clank of horse tack. The priests scattered like flies and in their absence she saw a pair of soldiers riding slowly from the opposite direction. She moved to Esther’s side. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘They should not have spoken to you like that,’ whispered Esther, pale with shock.
The soldiers glanced incuriously after the departing priests.
‘Are you all right, Your Majesty?’ asked one.
‘I think so,’ Jezebel replied. ‘We should be getting back to the Palace.’
Jezebel slid her hand around Esther’s shaking elbow and guided her home. But once she had seen her safely through the main gate, she walked around the garden walls towards her Temple. Astarte would bring her much-needed peace and guidance to see her through this dreadful experience, she told herself, breathing deeply to calm herself.
Even before she reached the Temple she sensed that something was wrong. There were no guards at the entrance gate. As she turned into the lane she saw the two pristine white columns were smeared filthy brown with horse dung. She looked around, her chest contracting with panic, but the lane was completely empty. She swallowed down a few nervous breaths and entered the Temple.
She strangled a sob of anguish. The desecration of the inside was far worse than the filthy pillars. Each of Astarte’s beautiful statues had been smashed to pieces, and the walls were daubed with more dung. Worst of all, on the altar lay a dead dove, its throat cut.
Jezebel pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. She listened as hard as she could for the peace of Astarte’s wisdom, begging it to fall like rain through the Temple roof and cleanse the dirt from the place and the anger from her heart. But all she could feel was the ground surely shaking with Baal’s purest rage, and she turned and ran for Ahab.
If Jezebel wished for solace in Ahab’s arms, she didn’t find it. He pushed past her to see the devastation for himself, and emerged fuelled by the war Goddess Anat’s burning desire for vengeance. He summoned the head of his personal guard and issued in the coldest terms the order to round up every priest who had openly taken issue with Jezebel’s arrival, starting with the three who had left the wedding banquet.
‘If you would just let me talk to them,’ begged Jezebel as she stood before him in his private office, ‘I could show them that I mean them no disrespect.’
‘They won’t listen to you.’
‘Then I ask that you do. Exacting revenge on them will not solve this.’
‘I won’t tolerate their contempt for you, for it’s nothing less than contempt for me!’ he barked. ‘I’ve put up with their petty disregard for the Judeans throughout my marriage to Leah, but now they turn that into some perverted loyalty to our southern neighbours, just so that they may turn their malice on you. Priests of Yahweh occupy a privileged position within this kingdom – I tolerate their outspokenness, but outright rebellion must be quashed without mercy.’ He strode to the wall and grabbed down a long sword which hung in its ceremonial sheath, yanking out the blade so quickly that it sliced the air.
Jezebel stepped back, shocked by how easily the gentle lover had been swallowed up by the ruthless ruler. ‘What will you do to them?’
‘Exactly what they would do to anyone who defiled their temples.’ He raised the sword and pointed it over Jezebel’s shoulder just as Obadiah strode into the office.
‘Your Highness—’ He stopped at the sight of Jezebel and gave an obsequious bow. ‘Madam.’
‘Well?’ snapped Ahab.
‘The girl is too young to be party to affairs of state.’
Ahab started to reply, but Jezebel saved them both the trouble by leaving the room without another word.
Up in her chamber she lay on the couch in front of the window, Beset beside her holding her hand, and they listened together for the inevitable resonances of Ahab’s punishment, first the awful screams of the executed, then the dreadful thump of the bodies being thrown over the city walls. Twelve men in all met their deaths. Only as the sun began to cast its golden evening light into her room did they rise to look, still clinging on to each other, and saw the cluster of vultures swirling thick and black over the foothills to the east.
Jezebel sat for a long time in the window that night, staring out towards Tyre, to where her own Gods surely sat in judgement on her husband. While Samaria lay stunned in silence below her, not even a whisper or the bark of a dog disturbing the dark, news would soon break over the Phoenician border like a storm-swollen wave of the travesties inflicted on their distant princess. But Jezebel was politic enough to know that stories changed and shifted like sand-dunes. By the time her father heard of what had happened, the complexion of the events would no doubt be quite different.
Chapter Fifteen
The hot and barren summer did little more than stifle the tensions of Jezebel’s arrival in Samaria, and she spent much of the season shut away inside the Palace, at first under Ahab’s orders for