The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen Read online

  Maqar, my healer, knew I had not come virgin to his bed. Nor had he ever asked about my first tearful flight from it. When I went into his arms at last, I found myself grateful for all that had conspired to bring me here, the beauty of these days far outweighing the horror of those nights. Maqar’s noble ties were wasted on me, an exile. And I could not win him favors—Hagarlat’s kinsmen had all but taken over the council and Saba’s most prestigious positions. But he would never want for wealth through me, here in Punt. And I would not want for love.

  All of these thoughts occurred within the space of my first three steps beyond my chamber.

  A secret wedding. I smiled to myself. No more questions, then.

  I followed them down the corridor to the ground floor courtyard and out through the colonnade. The gardens were lit, cicadas in full symphony. I reached for Maqar’s hand. He lifted my fingers to his lips without looking at me.

  I glanced sidelong at Yafush. One might not know at first sight of his muscled arms and impassive face that he was not a man intact. But what had Maqar said to him, that his brow was so somber? Was this not a joyous occasion? Why then did neither of them look glad to lead me where they did?

  Something was wrong.

  By the time we passed through the smaller north gate, my heart was drumming against my ribs and I had no more romantic notions about moringa trees or weddings.

  I refused to go farther.

  “Where are you taking me? Tell me now.”

  Maqar turned, and for a moment I didn’t recognize him. I had never seen him without a smile for me playing in his eyes if not on his lips. But now in the torchlight—this was not the face of a man about to marry his lover, but a man wrestling with something within himself.

  “To the temple. A ship arrived yesterday at port.”

  A ship? It was late into the season for ships, even from Egypt. “What has that got to do with us?”

  “It is better that you see and hear for yourself.”

  I looked from him to the rocky plain, its uneven grade flinty by moonlight, the faint glow of torches on the hill beyond snakelike along the temple path.

  “Makeda,” he said, and hesitated. When I turned back, anguish was plain upon his face. “Only remember: I have never played you false.”

  I stared at him, amazed by this statement.

  “I think you’d best go to the temple, Princess,” Yafush said.

  I glanced between the two of them, but they would say no more. “Neither of you will speak? Then let us be done with this charade!”

  I gathered the hem of my gown and struck out ahead of them, heart pounding in the cage of my chest.

  I ascended the temple path, past the stone steles of my ancestors, my footfalls too loud against the drone of insects, each step both too swift and slow at once.

  A figure waited atop the hill, black against the evening sky. A priest, by his robe. The chief priest by the glow of the moon against his shaven head. Was he party to this as well? He raised his palm in blessing as we arrived, his voice gravel against the night.

  “Princess.”

  The fortress temple rose up behind him, its ibex friezes shrouded in shadow. The carved wooden doors lay open. Torchlight shone from within like a great, glowing eye.

  What waited through those doors here, in the dead of night?

  When I looked at Maqar, his only response was a silent nod. And I understood that whatever waited inside, I must meet it first.

  For a wild moment I actually entertained the thought of running back down the path—not to the palace, or even the gardens, but the dark field of steles. There, at least, I need only confront the scorpions. But it was as though the act of coming here had barred the way back already.

  I lifted my gaze to the moon, full and high in its zenith.

  And then I walked into the temple.

  Five forms stood within the inner court. I blinked against the torchlight as their faces coalesced from the shadows.

  Hassat, head of the council in Punt and distant kin to me. Beside him, Nabat, captain of the garrison. Neither gave any indication he had stirred from his bed this night, if he had gone to it at all. Next to Nabat stood three men in Sabaean dress, their daggers tucked in their belts against their bellies, swords on their hips.

  “Princess,” Hassat said, inclining his head.

  “Councilman Hassat,” I stammered. Even without knowing what to expect, I was surprised to see him waiting here, apparently for me.

  “I apologize for summoning you here like this.”

  I clasped my hands together to stop their shaking.

  Hassat moved toward me, firelight playing over the severe panes of his cheeks. He indicated the three others. “These men have come to you at great risk.”

  “Indeed—” I paused to clear my throat, which had all but closed up. “Indeed, if you have come from Saba. It is nearly time for the rains.” Only a fool crossed the sea during the rainy season . . . or a man on desperate errand.

  “Princess,” one of the others said. “I come from the noble tribe of Aman.”

  “Of the great Jawf Valley,” I said slowly, the place name having become foreign to my tongue.

  “A formidable clan with ties to the powerful traders of Gabaan,” Hassat said. “And this man is Khalkharib, blood kin of your father’s most senior councilman, who walks now in the shadow world. And this one is Yatha, kin to your father’s councilman Abamar.”

  A trickle of sweat slid between my breasts. The tribal lands of these three men formed a nearly perfect north–south line through Saba between the mountain range to the west and desert to the east.

  “I have not laid eyes on your kinsmen in many years,” I said carefully. “Though I know my father has trusted them well. But what do you want with me?”

  “Plague has come with the traders’ caravans to Marib,” Hassat said.

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  I looked from one of them to the other in rising confusion.

  At last, the one called Yatha stepped toward me.

  “Princess, sickness has taken the palace. Your king father is ill. He was ailing before even this. We have not known since we left whether he lives or dies.”

  I staggered a step. But when I turned toward Maqar, who had entered behind me, I spun back.

  “The king was alive when you left. Then why have you come? Better that you had waited until there was news of my father, whether he lived or died!”

  “The monsoon is coming. We dare not wait.”

  “And so you come to say only that he is ill?”

  But no. They would not have risked the crossing only for that.

  Did I imagine it or had the cicadas fallen silent? Was there less magic in the shadows of these walls, as though the sanctuary itself had become mere limestone and mortar at the arrival of this envoy?

  “There is more,” the man from Aman said. “Hagarlat has seen to it that her tribe-kin occupy every position of power.”

  “I am aware.”

  “But there are many tribes, ours included, who will not stomach the rise of the Nashshans and their allies. The king is advanced in age. Whether he lives days or even a year more, there will soon be war for the throne.”

  “But my brother—”

  “Is only ten and a Nashshan pawn.”

  “And yet he is the heir!”

  Maqar came to stand at my side. Very quietly, he said, “Makeda . . . he is not the only heir.”

  I stared at him as my skin went cold in the stifling air of the sanctum court.

  “The tribes of Aman to the north and many as far south as Hadramawt are ready to support your claim,” Yatha said.

  I heard these words without comprehending them.

  “As will Punt.” This from Nabat, silent until now. “Who would see the granddaughter of Agabos on the federated throne.”

  Is this how it is done?

  “My brother is the grandson of Agabos,” I he
ard myself say. “Why would Punt support the claim of one sibling over another?”

  “Hagarlat has no loyalty to Punt and we have none to her,” Hassat said. “She cares only for the gold and goods we export and the tariffs her kinsmen reap from them as they travel the trade route north through Nashshan lands.”

  “But my father—”

  “Forgive me, Princess,” Khalkharib, the tallest of them, said, “but your king father may even now lie dead. If you do not return, others will assert their right—by force if not by bloodline. No one will expect your return until after the rains. If we move quickly, we will prevent war and secure your throne.”

  “Saba has not had a ruling queen in generations!”

  “Almaqah willing, she will have one again. Our tribes are ready. We have prepared for this moment for years.”

  An hour ago I had been drunk with sleep and the contentment of life in Punt, and Saba had been a distant thing, the torrent of her rains remembered only in dreams. But now it came to me: The strife of the northern tribes in their struggle against Nashshan’s increasing influence. My own tribe’s desire to retain power and the southern bid for new favor. How swiftly they moved! And for what? The promise of future favors owed or hope of a marriage alliance with the throne?

  Then I understood. They did not mean for Saba to have a ruling queen, but for its queen to bring one of them to kingship.

  And here stood Maqar . . . conveniently sent to me two years ago by his father with a company of warriors.

  I stared at him with new eyes and he shook his head just perceptibly. And though I heard his unvoiced thought, I saw only a stranger wearing that beloved face.

  Who am I, if not his lover?

  A queen?

  A pawn.

  “My men assemble at the port even now,” Nabat was saying to the others, and then they were talking all at once about provisions for the return.

  “My father may yet live!” I said, cutting them off.

  Khalkharib glanced at me as though just remembering I was there.

  “By the time we return, Princess, he may not. And Hagarlat and her Nashshan councilors will have seized the federated throne and begun to raise force enough to defend it. The monsoons are coming. Almaqah has smiled upon us. But we must leave immediately.”

  That night, I railed against Maqar.

  “What else have you kept from me? What other schemes have you worked behind my back these last two years?”

  He caught my fists when I came flying at him, and pulled me against his chest. Zabib, my maid, flinched as though to make herself unseen even as she scurried about the chamber packing my jewelry, my gowns, my precious wealth of scrolls. Dawn was breaking, the morning sky ominous. Outside my door palace slaves and armed men carried my belongings to the convoy waiting in the palace courtyard—an escort arranged I knew not how long ago, and without my knowledge.

  “You call my brother a Nashshan pawn. And yet here you are—you and these men come to summon me after plotting behind my back for years! Any one of you might have been found out at any time. You do not know Hagarlat as I do! How long has my life been in danger, and I, none the wiser?”

  “Makeda,” he said urgently, holding me tight. “Every man here has been sworn to your protection. The garrison. My men here in the palace. Yafush, who sleeps outside the door of your chamber—”

  “You, who sleep in it. What a fool I’ve been! And to think that for a moment tonight as you took me from this chamber I thought you meant to marry me in secret!” I laughed, the sound cruel, but then covered my eyes in angry humiliation.

  “I have dreamed of nothing else.”

  “Even now, how sincere your declarations ring,” I said bitterly.

  “Because they are true! But how could I marry you, knowing that this day would come—even as I wished it never would?” His hands fell away from me. “How could I?”

  “You’ve lied to me all this time!”

  “No. Almaqah knows I would marry you this instant if you would have me.”

  “How convenient that you then would become king. Tell me, was that the intent of your noble father all this while? Did he instruct you in the way you should seduce me as well?”

  “Makeda.” His expression was anguished. “Please . . .”

  “Tell me that wasn’t his design the entire time, as he plotted with the others to see me to the throne.”

  “The allies had long made a pact that there would be no offer of marriage treaty, lest their motives come under suspicion by Hagarlat. Not until—”

  I slapped him. After a stunned instant, I slapped him again.

  “How clever everyone has been! And I thought myself forgotten all these years until tonight. And without even an hour’s warning from you. For all the nights I gave myself to you, you might have at least done me that service in return.”

  He turned on me, voice raised. “How should I have told you? Can you not see that I have been torn? How should I make you believe me? Tell me, and I will do it!”

  “It’s too late. And now those men come to collect me and I am to go obediently at their summons? Well I won’t do it!”

  I yelled at Zabib to stop her packing, to put my things away.

  All around me, the sanctuary of this chamber—a place of refuge, study, and peace, and later, of evenings laden with the discovery of love—felt laid bare. Here, I had wept in Maqar’s arms the first time he had come to me, not as a thief, but as one to heal with word and caress and sigh. Here, I had hoped to spend the rest of my life in languid contentment poring over my ever-expanding library of scrolls, away from the specters of my past.

  And now here it all was, disassembling before my eyes as the mountains of Saba loomed in the distance.

  Humiliating tears slipped down my cheeks, hot and salty as the long Red Sea.

  “Makeda . . .” He took me by the wrists. “My love.”

  “Don’t speak to me of love. I beg you. Give me that mercy.”

  He pulled me toward him with desperate strength. “Tell me what you would have me do!”

  I wanted to tell him to go—to go and return across the sea with them and leave me in peace. But even then I couldn’t bear the thought of these walls without him. I had welcomed exile because it was safe. But it had been beautiful because of him.

  “Send these men away,” I said. “Live with me here, as we did before. Let it all be as it was. If you are true, stay with me though I will never be queen.”

  “How long will I be able to keep you safe when another is on the throne—another whose first priority will be to hunt down any competitor for it? Did you truly think your life would be safe if your brother wore the crown?”

  “Then let us steal into the countryside and forget that we ever slept within the walls of any palace! We’ll grow an orchard and plant fields. We will live our days in peace . . .” But even as I said it, I knew my conviction was as false as the illusion of my freedom all these years. That I pleaded not with him, but with the god who had freed me once from Saba and now cruelly called me back.

  “I can’t return. I cannot. I cannot . . .” I covered my eyes with shaking hands, not knowing if I said it to him, or to the god.

  He took me by the shoulders. “If you wanted, I would run away into the countryside and live out my days with you in hiding. Say the word, and I will do it. But you would never be safe. We would never be in peace. We would live our lives looking always over our shoulders and you would grow to resent me.”

  “Never.”

  “Yes. Because the only place you will ever be safe is on the throne. And a day will come when you will wonder if your true place was where the gods had pointed. Do you think it is a mistake that you are firstborn to a king? That your parents came from the same royal clan? Do you not see you were meant for more? So you will not be a pawn. Then don’t let them make you one! You are smarter than they are, more learned than any sage. And you loved Saba once.”

  Yes. I had. Before my mother left me for the
afterlife and I gave up my voice. Before Sadiq poisoned my chambers and Punt became my sanctuary if only because it was not the Saba I had come to know.

  This morning I had dreamed of her rains. In days to come, I would wonder if it had been an omen. I had never been able to banish the past but had lived always in fear of its tendrils, even as I invited traders from the ports to dine with me in exchange for their stories. From the safety of Punt’s halls, I had followed the exploits of the council, the shifting politics of the tribes, and news of the growing cult of Almaqah and the temples my father built in his name. Almaqah, the god of the thundering bull and lunar cycle to whom I had sworn myself so many years ago.

  Saba had found me in my dreams. Saba had found me here. I might have left Saba, but it had never left me. And now I saw that a part of me, more wise and seeing than my waking mind, had prepared for this future all along.

  Somewhere outside the shrill song of a flycatcher caught the air. I closed my eyes.

  “You asked what I would have you do.”

  “Yes. Name it!”

  “If I become queen, I will never marry you. To marry you would be to wonder all my days. I want something of certainty in this world. And so you will not be my husband, and never my king. Now what is your answer?”

  “That you will be a better queen than the kings before you.”

  I dropped my head to Maqar’s shoulder. His arms closed around me more gently than before. At last, he exhaled a long and shaky breath as though he had held it all this time.

  “Stay with me,” I said.

  “I will serve you all my life.”

  An hour later I walked out of that chamber, I thought, forever. I was not a queen. Not yet. But I was no longer the princess I had been. That morning I boarded a ship on the edge of the narrow sea and assumed again the name by which Saba knew me: Bilqis.

  And so my days of obscurity came to an end. I was eighteen years old.

  THREE

  When I closed my eyes, I thought I could smell the frankincense weeping from the trees. It was said the perfume of Saba wafted out to sailors on the Red Sea and throughout the southern gulf. Here, in the Markha Valley, one could almost believe it.