“Don’t worry, Phasa,” the queen said. “She will be fed well.”
“I will be alone?” I asked.
“Naturally,” she said.
“And Judah?”
“Will remain where he is as well. You are fortunate to be alive… no need to panic.”
“This is preposterous, Father!” Phasa cried, pushing herself to her feet. “You cannot allow it!”
“The whole world is preposterous, Phasa,” Aretas said in a tired voice. “She will be kept in good stead, you have my word.”
Phasa looked at me, eyes desperate. Then spun to her father. “Then I demand you release Saba to me. As my slave.”
“Whatever for?” Shaquilath demanded. “We have many slaves as beautiful.”
“I will have the slave who delivered me to Petra and no other. And if any harm comes to Maviah, I swear I will seek vengeance. Saba under me, as a guarantee that she is well treated.”
The implied threat could not be mistaken. If harm came to me, a warrior such as Saba could surely do harm if not caged.
“Agreed,” Aretas said, giving both wife and daughter their fancy. He rose to his feet. “Give Phasa the black slave. Keep the Jew in chains. Isolate the daughter of Rami bin Malik in the dungeon and see that she is fed well.”
Having made the matter clear, he turned and walked from the court.
I felt ill.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THERE IS little to say of the weeks I spent in my cell with only cruel loneliness for company.
They put me in a larger cell lit by an oil lamp. It had a stone floor, a passable bedroll with straw for my head, a pot for waste, and a wooden bench to sit upon. And they offered me two meals each day—both with bread, some meat and vegetables in the form of a stew, and water.
All my physical needs were tended to, as Aretas had commanded.
But as the time passed, my thoughts began to slip away. I could feel my good sense leaking out, like water from a skin that had sprung a leak in the desert. And I seemed powerless to patch up that hole.
I had never known such deep loneliness as I did in those weeks, waiting without any knowledge of my fate. Worse still, I began fear whatever fate awaited me. The more I considered the matter, the more I became convinced that returning to Herod would end in my death.
Perhaps my fear was heightened by my appearance, for I was coming to look nothing like the queen who’d first made his acquaintance. In that cell I began to stoop like a lowly slave, a scavenger from the desert, a memory of my mother eating the bones of the dead for sustenance.
I was trash to be thrown out at the earliest convenience.
Perhaps my fear was heightened by the knowledge that even kings could be crushed in a single day. What hope was there for a woman such as me, imprisoned at the whim of such a king?
All the courage I’d found at Judah’s side soon left me. The words and presence of Yeshua, once so powerful to me, drifted away, as distant as a long-forgotten dream. When I did remember his words, they only mocked me, for Yeshua must have known that fear would be the end of me. Why else would he have singled me out over the others in the room that night?
I saw only three guards, each in rotation, all warriors of lesser strength. They were taller than most Bedu and well fed, but not as well muscled, perhaps because they faced no danger in the dungeons. Of the three, only one, the oldest and thinnest—who wore a pointed gray beard and carried no sword—seemed even to notice me. He alone offered me a kind, half-toothed smile each time he set my dish through the bars and removed the waste.
It was my impression that he might be daft. But not even he spoke a word to me, regardless of what I said. They were all under orders.
So I spoke only to myself.
At first I did so only in my mind, as I had always done. But after two weeks in isolation, I began to whisper aloud, if only to hear the words.
“Pull yourself up, Maviah,” I would whisper, pacing. “You must hold yourself together. Your father depends on you. The Kalb depend on you. Only you can avenge your son’s death. You must stay strong!”
But then I would think, Who is speaking to Maviah? I was speaking to myself, naturally. But who was I?
“Your fate is your own doing, Maviah. You are the slave of an angry god who has already sent you to the underworld.”
Then I would again wonder, Who is this I who is speaking to you? My mind began to twist around itself like so many snakes trapped in a box.
Time became a blur to me, defined only by the second meal each day, when I placed a mark on the floor with a small pebble. Two months at the least, Shaquilath had said. It could be much longer, for the Nabataeans were known to bide their time, striking only when all was known and prepared. This was the way of cunning.