Free Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba by India Edghill

life, if that were the sacrifice she must make. Only one thing was unthinkable, only one fate unendurable.
    Failure.

PART TWO
    The World’s Wisdom
    Abishag
    In Shunem, I grew from child to girl to woman. True to her laughing vow, my mother refused all men’s offers, remained a modest widow. All her efforts centered upon raising me — raising me, although I did not know it then, to tread safely along a jeweled path.
    She taught me what every girl learns, to spin and to weave, to sew and to bake. “How well your Abishag sets her stitches! You teach her well, Zilpah. She will make a good wife.”My mother smiled modestly at such praises, murmured that I was a clever, biddable girl, and pretended not to understand hints that a son, a nephew, a cousin sought such a clever, biddable bride — and one so well-dowered, with no sisters to diminish my inheritance.
    “You will not marry here in Shunem,” my mother told me.
    “How do you know that?” I never doubted her words, for everything my mother wished seemed to come to pass.
    “Because I know my past, and so I see your future. And it does not lie here.”
    “Where, then?” I asked, and my mother only smiled, and said that I would learn that in the world’s own time.
    “Never seek to hasten the stars in their courses, Daughter. What is the chiefest virtue for a woman?”
    “Patience,” I said, mindful of her teaching.
    “Be patient then. Now let us see what the cloth merchant has to show today.”
    Baalit Sings
    When I was a child, nothing in my father’s court seemed strange to me. For my father was Solomon the Wise, king of Israel and Judah, and kings are not bound by the laws that rule lesser men—or so my grandmothers taught me, each of the three in her own way.
    I did not think it strange I had three grandmothers when other children owned only two, just as I did not think it strange I had so many stepmothers—for kings must marry widely and wisely. I saw the world through the shining veil of a much-indulged childhood until the day my father wed the Colchian princess. That marriage did more than seal another treaty; it set one too many weights in the scales my father fought to balance.
    And it unbound the veil of childhood from my eyes. After that day I could no longer see and not understand. And after that day, I was no longer content to be only my father’s pampered daughter. But what else I wished to be, even I did not yet know.
     
     
    The Colchian princess was late; the royal women had waited half the morning in the gallery that overlooked the great throne room, and still King Solomon’s newest bride had not arrived. Restless, I drew out a ball of linen thread and began to play at cat’s-cradle with my handmaiden Nimrah. King David’s City truly held the wide world within its walls, for Nimrah’s family came from some land so far to the north that snow covered the land half the year. Her northern blood shone in her straight pale hair and her wide pale eyes; winter sunlight, winter ice.
    All about me, my stepmothers waited, the queens in the front of the gallery and the concubines behind them. Each passed the slow time in her own fashion: some gossiped, some fidgeted with their hair or gems or gown. One or two played games, as did Nimrah and I. The Egyptian queen, Nefret, listened as her maidservant read softly to her from a scroll. Queen Naamah sat smooth-faced, refusing to disturb the flawless drape of her veil or the elegant coils of her hair. Queen Melasadne caressed one of her tiny white dogs, ignoring the affronted glares from those of my father’s wives who followed the laws of our own god, for whom dogs were unclean beasts. Queen Makeda sat dark and still as deep night, her thoughts shielded behind her gilded lids. Lady Leeorenda sat serene, motionless save for her
fingers, which gently stroked the blossoms she held; from time to time she moved one flower, trying its color against another. Lady Dvorah spun, making me wish I had brought my