He spared the plaything small attention, for Jezebel was clad only in a thin Egyptian kilt, no more. It was hot in this early summer of the year, and though the upper floors were free of the heavy drapes that sheltered them from the winds that roved the plain of Jezreel in the winter months, the air was heavy and sluggish.
He put his hands on her hips and drew her back against him. Jezebel cried out sharply at the touch of his armor, turning to stare up at him with something like fright in her eyes. When she recognized him she squealed in delight and opened her lips for his kiss.
“What interests you so much?” he wondered, when she took away her mouth. He followed her gesture down to the little temple model.
“A toy, my darling. I had it made in Tyre and brought it with me to Israel in my baggage. Some day I would like to build a temple such as that so I may worship my gods in Samaria as I used to do in Tyre.”
“Some day,” he agreed casually. “Right now I have other things than temples on my mind.”
She drew him to a bench and pushed him down onto it, undoing the cuirass straps with her own hands, lifting off his iron armor and dropping it to one side of the bench. Then she seated herself on his thighs and began to kiss his throat and jaw.
“Solomon built a temple, darling. He even built temples for his wives. And he had a lot of them.”
“I’m no Solomon,” he protested, laughing.
She disarranged the quilted jacket over which he wore his armor, to lay bare his hairy chest and touch her breasts against it, she nibbled at his earlobe. Jezebel could feel her young husband responding to her advances. His breathing was faster, his muscles strutted by desire.
“A tiny little temple? One no bigger than a—summer-house? Where only you and I may go to worship together?”
“If Ben-hadad permits us to live that long, we’ll build a temple,” he agreed grimly.
She drew back and stared at him, plucked brows meeting in puzzlement. “Ben-hadad? Does he mean to attack us?”
He told her of the horse patrols along the northwestern boundary of their country. “They could strike anywhere over a hundred miles of territory. We can’t cover such a long borderline, even with all our chariots. The best we can hope for is that the invasion will come where one of our own patrols will see it.”
“And that the charioteer can ride in time to bring a warning,” she added soberly. The impishness was gone from her face, for Jezebel felt coldness stirring in her middle. To be queen of Israel only a few months, then to be overthrown, taken captive and perhaps raped to death as Shubadad had been—she shivered.
“What can we do?” she asked in a small voice.
“I don’t know,” he muttered gloomily. “It isn’t just Aram that troubles me, either. Beyond Bashan is the land of Ammon and beyond that, Moab. My father conquered Moab but it’s only waiting the opportunity to throw off its yoke. I suppose it thinks me weak, untried.”
“As you are,” she said flatly.
He nodded, sunk in his mood of self-abasement. Only to the west where lay Phoenicia, his ally, and the Great Sea, was there any safety in Israel. Even Judah to the south might strike a blow to reunite the twin kingdoms that had split apart on the death of Solomon. King Jehosephat was an ambitious man who would give almost anything for a chance to extend the shadow of his sceptre northward.
Jezebel wriggled from his lap and ran to a little tripod where a fire burned slowly. The tripod faced a wall niche in which was set a small image of the god Baal-Melkart, of red gold with rubies for its eyes. Ahab watched her lift a cone of natron incense, dip and hold it to the coals in the brass bowl supported on the tripod.
When a thin line of smoke rose upward she carried the lighted incense to an obsidian kylix standing before the god. With an obeisance, she dropped the cone into the shallow bowl.
“Baal-Melkart, hear my plea,” she whispered.
She turned and beckoned him to join her. Sighing, Ahab got to his feet wishing he had the religious fervor that possessed his bride. If he could have gone to Yahweh in this manner, as Jezebel went to Baal, perhaps his own God might give him the help he needed so desperately.
Jezebel tugged him to the tiled floor where she knelt. Ahab joined her, staring up at the golden image. What was it the commandments said? I shall not suffer graven images before me. Yet while Moses had been on Mount Sinai writing down those laws, his brother Aaron had made such an image for the people to worship, a golden calf. He wondered what it was in the makeup of his people that enjoyed the ostentation of idolatry.
His eyes followed the black plume of scented smoke rising upward before Baal. Cold reason told him that this was nothing more than a statue of a man with the head of a bull, seated on a Greek klismos for the worship of deluded men who gave it, with their minds, the attributes of godhood. The statue could do nothing to help him. It was only the idea which counted.
“—sustain the thrones we sit so that—Ahab!”
“What? Oh.”
“You’re wool gathering, not paying the slightest attention to what I’m saying. If we were in Jerusalem before the Ark, you’d want me to show some respect.”
“I respect your gods,” he said firmly.
She looked at him, a slow stare that he could not face. At certain times, Ahab had the feeling that Jezebel was only using him, that almost any man would do for her worship of the gods, even for the pleasures of her body. It was not a nice thought and it made him uncomfortable as though he were in some manner unfaithful to her, but it hid away in the back of his mind and showed itself only when he was under tension.
So that he would not have to meet her eyes, he stared again at the statue. The black smoke stood out with startling clarity against the gold, even against the painted background of the chamber wall, where a scene out of the life of Abraham had been limned by some unknown artist.
A mountaintop had been sketched in the mural showing Abraham with the sacrificial knife in his hand, about to plunge it into Isaac. The clouds in the sky were very clear. It was almost as if Ahab were staring through an opening in the wall to Mount Carmel in the distance. If it were not for the incense smoke, he would imagine that the scene was taking place before him, so excellent was its composition, so vivid its colors.
Incense smoke, thin and black against the clouds.
If it were night, the black smoke would be invisible. Then, however, he would see the red fire that spawned it as the natron burned.
Ahab gasped.
Annoyed, Jezebel turned to glare at him but something about his expression made her curious. She frowned, touched her lips with her tongue; then asked, “What is it?”
“A way to warn my army when Ben-hadad attacks. The smoke from the incense shows clearly against a painted sky. It would appear as black against real clouds.”
“Signal fires,” she said, and shrugged.
“Not just signal fires. Oh, I know they’ve been in use for centuries, but these would
