Jezebel’s Jewelry

I have been expecting this for years.

For decades.

The roaring of the mob is growing closer.

The glass, heart-shaped pendant in my hand feels heavy and cold.

Hah. My infamous pendant. Everyone always believed it to be solid sapphire.

Jezebel and her jewelry.

Jezebel and her kohl-rimmed eyes.

Jezebel and her eternal vanity.

The don’t understand. They’ve never tried to.

The large, blue heart was set into a metal frame; it only left my neck on my wedding night, after which I wanted to feel my Lord close to my heart always; no matter how close anyone else came, my Lord would always be closest.

Even now, as I’m sure my last moments come within the hour, I can feel the breeze of his arrival on my skin.

Bouncing the pendant nervously in my hand, I listen for proximity. I want to time it right. I want to meet my Lord, but I never wanted it to happen like this.

I paced anxiously to my window, where we made eye contact.

Jehu.

The man who murdered my son.

The look of hatred we exchange renews my conviction, and after a deep breath for courage, I slip the small heart-shaped vial out of its metal flame, dig out the wax seal with my thumbnail, throw my head back, and pour the earthy-tasting tincture down my throat.

And now I wait.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

The life of a queen isn’t as glamorous as one may think.

Peasant women always made me a little envious after my marriage; they married in their adulthood. Not I; the king of Israel liked his wives young.

I was only 14 when my father sent me away from my beloved homeland of Sidon.

Oh, how I miss the breeze from the ocean. Even in such tense and anxious moments as this, if I close my eyes, I can still smell the fresh, salty air. Not like the Dead Sea; that fine, powdery salt that seems to settle in every scrape and crack in your skin.

Watching the women weave by the seaside was a favorite childhood pastime of mine. Watching the men spinning molten-hot glass on the end of a small rod—slowly, so slowly—to make jewelry was another. And I always dreamed of the day I would be old enough to harvest the Phoenician snails, the most sought-after invertebrate in the Kingdom of Israel, from which we made our famous dye—“Tyrian purple” they called it, after our sprawling territory which my father governed. The reddish-purple hue was so rare and valuable that the Romans would punish people of low status for possessing it.

But Ahab had other plans.

He had seen me on a trip with political motivations, aged ten.

Aged ten.

He said he was overcome by my beauty and would have taken me home that day, had my father not refused until I was of age.

My father, the great king Ithobaal, had extended our empire along the entire coast of Phoenicia, making Tyre the driving power behind both coastal and mainland Phoenicia. We had even started a settlement in Libya.

He didn’t want to let me go. But Omri before him was fearsome, and King Ahab had the Israelite army at his command; his father had oppressed Moab for many days, and we feared a similar violation at his sons’ hands.

So when I was only at age 14, Ahab came to claim what he considered his, and we couldn’t resist any longer. He hadn’t threatened us directly, but we knew a political alliance between Tyre and Israel would be valuable and that a conflict could be apocalyptic; that day was, in its own right, the end of the world as I knew it. My tears streaking my fathers’ robes as he waved at our departing ship is still as vivid in my mind as the day I saw it.

I would rather not discuss my wedding night.

Jehoram’s birth was such a joyous occasion for everyone—even the citizens, who hadn’t yet grown to hate me, welcomed the future heir with gifts of grain and fine wine sent directly to the palace in the long, thin, oddly-shaped vessels which were used to transport such goods; a Greek invention, and a brilliant one at that.

When my husband was killed in battle, I shed a few tears for the loss of a familiar presence on the other side of our bed, but rapidly grew to love stretching out across the luxurious, plush, wool-stuffed mattress. My husband wasn’t a kind man, and I would be telling a falsehood if I said I missed him after his death.

Still, the way he died was a symbol of things to come. I knew it even then.

The infamous vineyard that he had taken over after the execution of Naboth, the man who had owned it, was honestly a matter of pure coincidence.

Yes, my husband coveted his land; yes, Naboth refused; yes, Naboth was arrested and executed afterward.

But so hated was my Lord that that man, Naboth, who’s cursed vineyard incited all of this outrage to begin with, would sneak onto our property under cover of night to vandalize the altar to my Lord that my husband had set up.

The people of Israel just called my Lord “Ba’al”, which we did find a little bit ridiculous, the late king and I; Ba’al is how you say “Lord” in my homeland.

When Ahab set up a small temple and altar on palace grounds for me, it became my place of refuge. The one piece of home I was allowed to bring with me to Israel.

We called him Ba’al Sūr (“Lord of Tyre”), but his proper name was Melkarth. Ba’al Melkarth. Even now, as my reunion with him looms near, the name brings me comfort and peace.

Oh! How our tiny temple paled in comparison to the one in Tyre!

With pillars of solid gold and emerald, it was as old as the city itself, almost 2,000 years old as I write this.

It’s customary to build a new temple to my Lord at every new Tyrian colony, and the political marriage between myself and the old man was no exception.

I thought the farmer Naboth was just an unusually cruel man.

He had come and salted my garden surrounding the temple, killing the flowers and fragrant herbs I had planted to mask the scent of burning sacrificial meat.

He’d carved the initials of his god on the foot of my Lord’s statue.

Finally, I was outraged to find that he was sneaking into the palace’s courtyard to relive himself on the statue of my Lord.

I was so furious. I was only 15 at the time, with Ba’al Melkarth being the one and only piece of Tyre I had with me; I would have rather Naboth had slapped me across the face.

I thought my husband would have a fence built. Or ban Naboth from the palace grounds.

I never imagined the man would be put to death for it.

Naboth was put to death by stoning, and Ahab was perplexed when I burst into tears at the news rather than being delighted. At age 15, how could I handle the power to say who lives or dies? Even if I could, I would have to carefully phrase any request or complaint so as not to provoke my husband’s eagerness for execution.

Now I glance towards the courtyard, where I see the empty platform where my Lord once stood, with the broken ruins of his idol surrounding it.

After Naboth I narrowed my social circle fo the handful of other Ba’al Melkarth worshippers.

This is where I learned about the cult of Jehovah.

I had never heard of anything like it.

Never have I met a man who worshipped only one god, and never have I met a man who insisted that all other gods were false. It’s preposterous! Excluding the small cult of Jehovah, the whole world venerates the array of powers for which we all have different names. In fact, when I excitedly began to tell a Jehovah cultist that we have that god in my homeland under a different name, I was quickly silenced by my husband with a sharp and painful squeeze of my hand.

I will be honest, I was afraid of them.

Their hatred of me defied reason and logic. The rumors that abounded about Queen Jezebel—horrors that I would never commit have been attributed to me.

They call me a whore, a prostitute! Me, their queen! It’s almost amusing—what does a Queen need to prostitute herself for?

After my husband was killed in battle, my position as Queen Mother kept me safe. Until now.

Jehu had been my sons second-in-command. The spineless jellyfish of a man shot my son in the back with an arrow while he was recovering from an injury.

And now the jellyfish was coming for me. Spineless as he may be, jellyfish stings are made no less painful by their invertebrate nature; nor, do I imagine, will Jehu’s be.

The prophets of Jehovah say I will be hated for the rest of time, that my name will be used to describe wicked women for millennia to come.

I believe that the world will see through their lies. That they will know me as a woman who stuck to her faith, to her Lord, until her dying moments.

My name should be given to the women who are hated, yet do not submit to the demands of her oppressors.

I feel the tincture’s full effect now. It is time.

As I sit down at my mirror to prepare to meet my Lord, I can hear the full roar of the crowd, the slapping of leather Sandler against stone stairs; yet it sounds like the drumming and chanting of Ba’al Melkarth’s priestesses from my homeland in my intoxicated mind.

Jehu looks positively horrified when he sees me made-up from the window; I toss back my head and laugh because he can’t even see my Lord standing directly behind him, waiting to welcome me into the next life.

My Lord Ba’al Melkarth rules the cycle of birth, life, and death. He blesses the things we plant, reap and sow both in the earth and in our lives. One may praise him as they transition from maidenhood to motherhood, from bachelordom to fatherhood, and especially every year as our lush, fertile earth gives way to the arid, dry heat of the barren season.

The psychotropic tincture has me completely enveloped as I await my chariot to my Lord. I hear that rhythmic pounding ascending my stairs, and I feel the rhythm echoing through my chest exactly the way I did back home.

I can’t help but dance.

This is how the mob found me. Not cowering, nor hiding, nor begging, but dancing with joy in anticipation of their arrival, a twinkle in my kohl-rimmed eyes and an ecstatic smile on my cherry-stained lips.

As the divine madness overtakes me completely, I hold my hands out lovingly to the man who lifts me up; the mob wants to dance, too! They lift me, they twist, they twirl, they dance me directly to the edge of the balcony.

When the man dips me, I feel no fear; when he lets go, I see my Lord waiting with open arms below the balcony.

And with my last breath—a praise of Lord Ba’al—still moving through the air, I, Jezebel of Sidon, for the first time in twenty-two years, at last, am home.