King Solomon's Wives: Hunted

Chapter 10: Makeda's Wives

Sumarra

Tenth century B.C.E.

That first palace in Axum was not a prison but a home.

I came and went as I pleased, but mostly I preferred to stay. I was proud of my queen and happy to serve. I had no ambition past being near her.

My queen was Makeda, but when she lost her power, her name became Saba, a play on her former title. She was Bilqi in Persian and Arabic fables. History forgot her kingdom in favor of Egypt and its pharaohs, but Her Radiance shone brighter than her northern allies, and even the pharaohs respected her.

At first.

Paintings showed her in flowing robes, fancied up for King Solomon, and we stood around her as decoration. She bowed to him, submissive and awed. Most paintings showed her with white skin, but Makeda was dark, short, and thick, with what her subjects called a bushman’s build. Her strength and charisma made her beautiful, not delicate features or a tiny figure. Her hair hung long and wild to the curve of her lower back. When she laughed, she flung her head back, her wide mouth open, and the sound carried through the palace. She was loud and brash.

We were her Wives first, though only in metaphor. She called us servants and slaves and a few of us sisters. We tended to her palace and gardens, raised the young ones, cooked, and made clothing and tools. Still, she wrapped us in golden robes like jewels embedded in rings. “You make me powerful,” she said.

On the day of my sixteenth birthday, I joined the women who worked and lived in her wing, near her throne room. Though I only entered that royal chamber on special occasions, I saw my queen almost every day. She wore a crown shaped like the sun around her head. Furs, feathers, and silk adorned her golden-brown skin.

She moved among ivory columns and granite walls. Rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks hung on the northern halls, showing every visitor her strength. She had hunted in her youth and won her throne by besting her family’s men in many skills.

I rarely left the city growing up, but I heard of its scope. It ran down the coast of the Red Sea and across it, to Arabia. Makeda traded with Egyptians in the north and Persians in the east. She took duties from anyone sailing the Red Sea to trade between India and the Roman Empire.

And her city... The air smelled of incense and the perfumes made locally. People from all over the world came to sell their wares. They wore bright colors and expensive fabrics. Beauty was everywhere, surely like the Garden where we all supposedly began, the Eden we’d heard of in the sacred texts of Israel. This was Eden. We bought barley for beer, olive oil, rice, oranges, and grains. We even bought the tiny eggs of fish our queen ate on bread.

When she sent us into the market, she told us to buy for ourselves, too: silk shawls, braided sandals, glass trinkets, and wine. We found rings for our noses, ears, and fingers.

She first favored Dilara, Sonya, and a young one, Sasha, and me because of the color of our eyes: gray instead of brown. But as we grew up in her presence, she claimed she loved our counsel and our easy friendship with each other. She trusted us, she said, because we trusted each other, and because we trusted her. Of all her wives, she called us into her presence most often. 

But Makeda loved us all. I felt it. When she left her throne room each evening, when the formality and politics of her rule were paused, she brought a few of us into her boudoir. She told us stories and listened to ours. We performed plays for her. Some of us played lyres and lutes, and others rang tiny hand bells. Someone always made beguiling rhythms on the drums. When I’d drunk enough wine, I would dance, swinging my hips and sliding my hands through air like unraveling a curl. I spun into my sisters’ arms, and we kissed and laughed.