A.D. 30(50)

Phasa approached me, speaking to her husband without regarding him. “Don’t be silly. You’ve shown no interest in me or my family for years. I doubt that a dagger will change that.”

He stood still, unwilling to challenge her directly in our hearing.

“Please, Phasa… be a good wife and prepare our guest,” he said. “Maviah has traveled many weeks. Tonight we would dine and show our appreciation for her.”

“I’m sure you will.”

I was as surprised by her offhand dismissal of him as by his tolerance of it. She struck me as a woman who accepted but had not yearned for her position here. She, like me, was trapped in her role as a bond maker.

Phasa touched my face with long, slender fingers, perfectly manicured. She smiled. “My dear, you have such fine bones and skin. Don’t you worry, I will make you shine like the stars. If my husband intends to enjoy your company, then I will as well.”

She took my arm in hers and steered me toward the side entrance. “You will see, Maviah… we have the most beautiful baths.”

“And what of my slaves?” I asked.

Herod turned to Brutus. “Take them to the stockade for safekeeping,” he said. “See that they are watered and fed.”

I stopped and turned, horrified by the thought. Saba stood unmoving, as he had since entering. Judah only nodded at me. At their side, Brutus’s smirk expressed a measure of contentment.

“Don’t worry,” Herod said, brow raised over a whimsical grin. “I’m not going to kill them. Only keep them safe.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN





PHASA, DAUGHTER of Aretas and wife to Herod, proved to be a delightful woman, far more intelligent than her cavalier attitude suggested. She flitted about with a goblet of wine always close at hand, thoroughly embracing all the advantages she enjoyed as Herod’s wife, seemingly uncaring of anything political—not for lack of understanding, I suspected, but because such matters would offer her nothing but worry.

Rather, she seemed determined to enjoy her wine, and her gowns, and the lavish palace, and the servants who waited on her hand and foot, and, yes… me.

I should say she seemed determined to care for me. Although the Nabataeans and Bedu are distinct, she swept aside formalities and treated me as she might a long-lost sister.

She whisked me away to a wing in the palace reserved for her, speaking in no uncertain terms of how beautiful I would be. She immediately began to issue commands to her servants: draw a bath, prepare the soaps, bring cheeses and grapes and pomegranates. And more wine, the best from Zachariah’s vineyard, which she assured me was twice the value of any wine from Rome. Indeed, Rome imported Zachariah’s wine at a premium—one of the few good things besides gold and silver that flowed from Galilee to the Roman monsters, she said.

She possessed both love and hatred for those who gave her husband power. Strangely, so did I. I was at once appreciative that Herod seemed receptive to my mission, and deeply bothered by his dismissal—indeed imprisonment—of Judah and Saba.

Surely both Judah and Saba were safe, but why had Herod seen fit to treat them with such disdain?

I asked Phasa this as she hurried me to my bath.

“Don’t you worry about your slaves, dear Maviah,” she said, patting my arm. “If my husband wanted them dead, they would be already.”

This offered me no comfort.

“Though I will warn you to stay clear of his chief, Brutus. He despises all that is pleasant, not the least of which is me. He lost a brother to the Nabataeans. Among the soldiers Brutus alone hates me, but he is head of the palace guard. At times I wonder if my husband entrusts his safety to such a hateful man foremost to protect himself from me.”

She laughed at this, then looked at me, curious.

“I see a fear in you, Queen. What is it?”

My mind spun, searching for an answer. “I care deeply for my slaves,” I said. “I cannot stomach the thought of any harm coming to them.”

At this she lit up. “So, then… you have taken one of them into your bed?”

“No. By Isis, no.”

“But you love one. Tell me which. The black one, perhaps. He is a magnificent beast, that one, apt to rip the head off his prey with his hands rather than use the sword.”

“No! It’s not that way.”

“Then the one with kind eyes. He’s as strong as the beast, but a lover! I can see it in his hands and his face.”

“A lover does not concern me.”

“And yet you found one. This is the prerogative of queens, my dear. I see you have much to learn.”

She wasn’t wrong, but neither did she know that I was a queen in Judah’s eyes alone. And this thought gave me pause, for in Judah’s eyes I might indeed have such a prerogative.