Jezebel looked past Daniel towards the well. It was a ramshackle wooden construction, dilapidated from use and with none of the elegant mosaics of shells that celebrated the carefully pumped water on Tyre. Some distance away were the huts and tents of a small Israelite settlement, as brown as the land around. But she knew appearances were deceiving. The land here concealed vast underground reserves of water.
‘Let’s get you off that horse. You should eat something and rest.’
Jezebel shivered. ‘I’m not hungry.’ She rubbed her belly. ‘I feel sick with nerves.’
Daniel smiled gently. ‘I’m not surprised. But some food and wine will settle you down and help you sleep. Even you have never spent a whole day in the saddle.’
Jezebel laughed ruefully and guided the horse to the rapidly assembling encampment. Tents were being erected and wood piled up for a fire, and she could hear the rhythmic evening chants of the priests. The land grew dark even as she looked at it, and she suddenly felt weary. As she dismounted she couldn’t even work out which way was home, and she stood alone on the edge of the busy group, watching them prepare everything for her just as she would expect it, so they might all pretend that this was still a little piece of Phoenicia. But there was nothing familiar in all this industry, not the nervous murmurings of her staff nor even in Daniel’s soft plucking of his nevel, tuning the twelve strings so that he might play soothing songs of home. Even the air smelled strange and dry, and Jezebel rocked back her head to breathe in from the sky and not the land. And there, far above her, sparkled Baal’s star – Ayish, as Jehu had called it – and there, as she traced the patterns in the sky with her finger, Kesil, his twinkling archer.
Where are you, my love? she wondered. Do you look towards Tyre as I do, and remember?
Chapter Eight
The next morning it was not the unfamiliar light that woke Jezebel, nor the strange soft breaths of the horses against the walls of her tent, but the awful heat in her skin and the lurch of sickness in her stomach.
‘What is it?’ said Beset, sitting upright in her bed on the floor beside her.
Jezebel clamped her hand over her mouth, her tongue bitter with bile. Beset emptied a water bowl just in time and held her as the sickness heaved through her, drawing her hair back from her face and resting cool damp cloths against her neck and forehead.
‘You rode too long in the sun yesterday,’ the maid said. ‘I’m calling for Daniel.’
Jezebel didn’t have the strength to disagree, and soon she lay still while Daniel gently felt her face and then carefully touched the skin around her belly.
‘Was it the food? The water in that well might not be good so far inland,’ suggested Beset.
‘No one else is sick,’ said Daniel standing up from where he had knelt beside the couch. But he was frowning, and he was slow to soak the cloth from Jezebel’s forehead in the bowl of cold water. ‘How long have you been feeling like this?’
‘Just today,’ she replied weakly.
‘But you said you felt sick last night.’
‘I remember.’
‘Have you woken like this on any other morning recently?’
‘Daniel?’ said Beset in a warning tone. Jezebel shivered, not from feeling so awful but from the strange atmosphere that was building in the tent.
Daniel bowed his head but his expression was confused and he frowned over hidden thoughts Jezebel couldn’t decipher. ‘What is wrong with me?’ said Jezebel, suddenly afraid.
Beset took Jezebel’s hands in hers and gestured to Daniel with a jerk of her head that the two young women should be left alone. He glanced at Jezebel, his face creased with worry, then he slipped out of the tent.
‘Am I going to die?’ whimpered Jezebel.
‘No, no. Well …’
‘What is it?’ Jezebel felt sick once again, but purely from fear. She tried to sit up on the couch and Beset piled cushions behind her, never once letting go of her hand. Then the young maid knelt down on the ground beside Jezebel, looking up at her mistress. Jezebel was comforted by the shadow of Rebecca’s sensible comfort in her daughter’s face, but Beset suddenly looked so grown up that Jezebel felt her eyes sting with tears at how their worlds were surely changing.
Beset, thinking her mistress understood, nodded with relief. ‘That’s right. You are with child.’
Jezebel shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I thought you had guessed for yourself.’ Beset chewed her lip with worry. ‘Those nights of intimacy you shared with Jehu. He has left his seed in you and you are now carrying his child. The early sickness is very common, it does pass, but in eight months or less you will give birth to his child.’
Jezebel grabbed Beset’s hand, gripping it hard as she tried to get up off the couch, but her head was spinning. ‘But I’m not yet married to Ahab. When I give him a child that isn’t his own he will …’ Panic surged through her. He would certainly cast her out, and she’d be lucky to escape with only exile. Death would be swift for the child. And where could she go then? Her father’s anger would be implacable, the shameful stain on the kingdom too great. She wouldn’t be welcome in Tyre, the soiled princess, and foreign kingdoms would view her as nothing but a pariah. She could only shake as if Baal Hadad’s godly roar shuddered through the skies in anger at her foolishness. ‘Oh, dear Gods, what have I done?’ she wailed.
‘Shh,’ murmured Beset, sliding her hand around Jezebel’s shoulders. ‘Daniel?’
The young physician returned to the tent, his face taut and pale in the shadows. He looked almost as wretched as Jezebel felt but she could no longer bear to look at him. When Beset stood up to confer, she curled into a ball, drawing the covers over her head. She didn’t want to hear their fears for her future. She’d known, she supposed, that it could have ended like this, but in those blissful nights it hadn’t mattered. Jehu was going to be her husband and any children would be legitimate. It would have seemed perverse to curtail their passion, churlish even. Now those desires looked very reckless indeed.
Beset tugged the covers aside, leaned again over the bed, her long black hair dangling against Jezebel’s cheek. ‘All is not lost,’ she said. ‘Daniel can make you a special drink that will end your worries.’
‘But I’ve never concocted such a thing before.’ Jezebel could hear the desperate concern in Daniel’s voice and she pressed her face further into the pillow.
‘If you take the life of the child then you are saving Jezebel’s in return,’ Beset replied.
‘I trained as a physician to save all lives, even the ones who haven’t yet known this world.’
‘But you do know how to make the drink,’ said Beset.
‘It goes against everything I believe—’
‘But you believe in Jezebel. Surely you believe in the role she plays for our kingdom?’
Daniel sighed and after a moment Jezebel heard the creak of the lid as he opened his small medicine chest, and with these strangely comforting noises she sat up on the bed and faced him. She lifted her eyes to look at his and saw not judgement, only a sad understanding.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ she whispered. He nodded, silently drawing together powders and dried leaves and mixing them with wine. Then he came to the bed and offered her the bowl.
‘This will purge the child. It will make you sick and you will bleed. You should ride in the carriage and not on the horse today while you take this treatment. But perhaps that is for the best.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘For you cannot ride into Samaria as though you are going to conquer it.’