“Let him go. He wants to be alone with her. We’d only be in the way.” Jehu whispered so that only Rael might hear him; aloud he said to Ahab, “Go, then. I’ll be busy myself this night. There’s a serving wench at the inn who caught my eye earlier, when we were eating.”
Ahab nodded, smiling faintly. He turned and was soon lost in the shadows, with only the swaying motion of his cloak to show where he walked. In a moment he turned the corner and was gone.
“If you think I’m going to . . .” Rael began.
Jehu silenced him with a fierce motion of his hairy hand. “Oh, we’ll follow him, never fear. But let him go first, and alone. He came to Tyre for adventure, where he isn’t known. Let him find it.”
“But a priestess of the god! Won’t the Phoenicians think it’s a sort of—well, sacrilege?”
Jehu snorted, “Baal-Melkart is brother to Astarte, isn’t he? And to the harlot goddess any sort of embrace is holy.”
Rael growled, “It’s a funny kind of religion that makes sacred the most intimate relations between a man and woman.”
“It goes back a long time, Rael, this worship of Astarte. You find her everywhere. They call her Ishtar in Babylon and Assyria, Ashtoreth in Philistia. In Egypt she’s known as Isis.”
“But why worship a harlot?”
“It isn’t a harlot they worship but the creative principle. As a physician, you should understand that.”
“Oh! Life and the generative powers of a woman.”
“And of a man.” Jehu’s glance was sly. “If you’d lived a little instead of burying your face in scrolls and medical texts, you’d understand even better than I the theory behind it.”
Rael grinned in embarrassment. “I understand the theory. Ever since man began to realize he was man, he realized that his safety and his comfort depended on having a lot of people in his tribe. As a result, that which gave him people—the phallus and the yoni—came to be sacred in his sight.” He added wryly, “The theory I know, it’s the practice that confuses me.”
Jehu nudged him with an elbow. “Come on, it’s time to go after him. But don’t let him see you. Let him think he’s completely on his own.”
They walked swiftly through the Phoenician night, cloaks up to shield their faces. Behind them the palace of King Phales began to glow with fire.
2.
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