Beloved (7 page)

Odenathus, Prince of Palmyra, sat his horse and watched the maneuvers of a Bedawi camel corps. Its warriors were magnificently trained, and under the direction of their captain they performed extremely well. The prince turned and said to his host, “Well, my cousin Zabaai, if all your troops perform this well; if all your captains are that competent; I foresee a day when I may drive the Romans from my city.”

“May the gods grant your wish, my lord Prince. Too long has the golden yoke been about our necks, and each year the Romans take more and more of the riches that come to us from the Indies and Cathay. We are beggared trying to feed their rapacious appetites.”

Odenathus nodded in agreement, and then said, “Will you present me to the captain of your camel corps? I should like to congratulate him on his leadership.”

Zabaai hid a smile. “Of course, my lord.” He raised his hand in a signal, and the camel cavalry whirled away from him, galloped down a stretch of desert, and then turned to come racing furiously back to stop just short of the two men. “The prince would like to present his compliments, Captain,” Zabaai said.

The leader of the corps slid from his mount and bowed smartly before the prince.

“You handle your men well, Captain. I hope that someday we may ride together.”

“It will be an honor, my lord, although I am not used to sharing my command with anyone.” The captain’s burnoose was tossed back, and the ruler of Palmyra found himself staring into the face of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She laughed at his surprise, and said, “Do you not recognize me, my cousin?”

“Zenobia?”
He was astounded. This could not be Zenobia! Zenobia was a child. This statuesque goddess could not be the
flat and leggy child he remembered. Three and a half years had passed since he had last seen her.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“What?” He was totally confused.

“You are staring at me, my lord. Is something wrong?”

“You’ve changed,” he managed to say in a somewhat strangled voice.

“I am almost fifteen, my lord.”

“Fifteen,” he repeated foolishly. By the gods, she was a glorious creature!

“You may go now, Zenobia,” Zabaai dismissed her. “We will expect you at the evening meal.”

“Yes, Father.” Zenobia turned and, grasping her camel’s bridle, swung herself back up into the saddle. Raising her hand as signal, she led her camel corps away as the two men re-entered Zabaai ben Selim’s tent.

“Did you or did you not propose a match between your daughter and myself several years back, Zabaai?” the Palmyran prince demanded.

“I did.”

“The girl was to become my wife a year after she became a woman. Is that not correct?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Has she now reached her maturity?”

“Yes, my lord.” It was all that Zabaai ben Selim could do to keep from laughing. Odenathus’s desire was so open as to be embarrassing.

“Then why is she not my wife?” came the anguished cry.

“Nothing was formally proposed, my lord. When you did not make formal application for my daughter’s hand I was forced to conclude that you were not seriously interested. Besides, your devotion to your favorite, Deliciae, is well known. She has given you two sons, has she not?”

“Deliciae is a concubine,” Odenathus protested. “Her sons are not my heirs. Only my wife’s sons will hold that distinction.”

“You do not have a wife,” Zabaai ben Selim reminded.

“Do not toy with me, cousin,” Odenathus said. “You know full well that I want Zenobia to wife. You knew that the moment I saw her I would want her. Why did you simply not present her to me? Why that silly charade with the camel corps?”

“It was no charade, my lord. Zenobia commands her own corps, and has for two years now. If I let you marry her it must be with
the understanding that she is free to go her own way. She is not an ornament to be housed like a fine jewel in the box of your harem. My daughter descends from the rulers of Egypt, and she is as free as the wind. You cannot pen the wind, Odenathus.”

“I will agree to whatever you wish, Zabaai, but I want Zenobia!” the prince promised rashly.

“The first thing I want is that you get to know one another. Zenobia may have the body of a woman, but she is yet a child where men are concerned.”

“She is still a virgin?”

Zabaai chuckled. “Not that the young men of my tribe have not tried, Odenathus, but my daughter is yet a virgin. It is very difficult to make love to a girl who can outwrestle you. Zenobia is, as you undoubtedly noticed, quite tall for a girl. She gets her height from her Greek-Egyptian ancestry, not the Bedawi. She is at least as tall as you, Odenathus. Not at all like your Deliciae, who can look up at you. Zenobia will look you right in the eye.”

“Why did you not offer her to me again, Zabaai? The truth, my cousin.”

Zabaai ben Selim sighed. “Because I am reluctant to give her up, Odenathus. She is my only daughter; Iris’s child; and when she is gone from me I will miss her. If you wed her you will find in her an interesting companion. She will not simper at you like so many of these harem females. She will be your friend as well as your lover. Are you man enough to accept a woman on those terms?”

“Yes,” came the unwavering reply.

“So be it then,” the Bedawi chief said. “If Zenobia has no objections after you two have grown to know one another, then you may have her to wife.”

“May I tell her?” he asked.

“No, I will tell her, my cousin, and I will tell her immediately so there will be no confusion or restraint between you.”

The two men separated then, the prince returning to his own tent, and the Bedawi chieftain to his daughter’s quarters. He found her sponging herself with a small basin of perfumed water, grumbling as she always did over the scarcity of the precious liquid here in the desert. Still she was careful not to waste the water, and reused it several times, storing it in a goatskin bag between her ablutions.

“Praise Jupiter that it is almost time to return to Palmyra!” she
greeted him. “You have no idea, Father, how I long for a decent bath!”

He chuckled, and sat cross-legged on a carpet. “Odenathus wants to marry you,” he said, coming directly to the point.

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted for me all along, Father?” She took up a small linen towel, and mopped where a few drops of water had spilled on her table.

“You have to marry eventually, Zenobia, but I want you to be happy. Odenathus is a wealthy, pleasant, and intelligent young man. Still, if there is someone you would prefer then it shall be as you desire, my child.”

“Only one thing concerns me about the prince,” she said. “It distresses me that he gives in to the Romans so easily, and without a fight. I do not understand it.”

“It is quite simple, Zenobia,” Zabaai replied. “Palmyra, as you know, was founded by Solomon the Great, King of Israel. It has always been a commercial state. We have never been interested in expansion, in taking our neighbors’ lands. Our only interest is in making money, and because everyone needed us, and our talents, and because we are located here in the Syrian desert, no one bothered us. We have been friends to the world, but Rome is a conqueror, and has a conqueror’s fear of her neighbors. Palmyra is an outpost for Rome against Persia, Cathay, and the Indies.

“But because we are a nation of merchants, and not soldiers, we have never been prepared to defend ourselves. After all, we have never needed to. If Odenathus ever attempts to thwart Rome, they will destroy the city without a thought. He does the next best thing—he welcomes them, and in doing so saves us all. Do not judge him too harshly. When the time is right he will drive them from our land, and we will once again be our own masters.”

“If I marry the prince will my children be his heirs? The gossips say he is quite fond of one of his concubines—and her children. I will have no one else’s children supplanting mine.”

“Your children will be his legal heirs, my daughter.”

“Then I will marry him, Father.”

“Wait, my child,” Zabaai cautioned. “Get to know him before you agree to this match. If you then still wish to wed him, so be it.”

“You say that eventually I must marry, Father. The prince has asked for me, and I will agree. If I must wed then at least it will be to a man who lives in Palmyra, so I may at last be free of your desert.” She twinkled mischievously at him, and Zabaai chuckled
indulgently. How he loved this child. “The prince is handsome,” continued Zenobia. “He has always been kind to me, and I have never heard anyone say that he is not a fair or good ruler. There seems to be no malice in him at all.” Zenobia knew no matter how fair her father meant to be she could not refuse the prince. Still, she loved Zabaai all the more for pretending the choice was hers.

“You say nothing of love, my child. For a marriage to be successful there must be love between a man and a woman. The moment I saw your mother those long years ago in Alexandria I knew I loved her, and she knew she loved me. Love sustains a man and woman in the hard times.”

“You and Mother were unusual, Father. Tamar tells me that love is something that grows between a man and a woman. I believe that, given time, I can love Odenathus, and he already loves me. I can tell. Did you see how foolishly he behaved today? I didn’t mean to laugh at him, but he looked so silly with his mouth open.” She giggled with the memory.

Zabaai didn’t think that this was the time to explain to his daughter the difference between lust and love. Let her believe that Odenathus was already in love with her. It wouldn’t hurt to give the prince that small edge. “Make yourself beautiful, my child,” he said, and then in a rare show of open affection he kissed her cheek. “You may eat with us instead of the women this evening.”

Left alone, Zenobia turned to her mirror, a round of burnished silver. Pensively, she stared into it. Everyone said that she was a beauty, and compared to other girls her age she was. But would she be able to compete with the women of Palmyra? Would Odenathus think that she was beautiful? She knew all about his concubine, Deliciae, and she would have to accept the woman. A slave girl from northern Greece, Deliciae was said to be very beautiful, fair-skinned, azure-eyed, yellow-haired.

Zenobia looked at herself with a critical eye. Pale-gold skin, the cheeks of her oval face touched with apricot; long, thick, straight dark hair, silken to the touch, so perhaps it would be pleasing to him. She seemed to remember that he was always caressing her head.

She looked harder at herself. She was tall for a woman, she knew, but her body was flawless, her limbs well rounded without being fat, thanks to the active life she led. She gently slipped her slender hands beneath her breasts, and looked at them critically. They were round, firm, and full. She knew the value that men
put on women’s breasts, saw with satisfaction that she would not be found wanting there. Her waist was slender, the hips slim, but pleasingly rounded. Zenobia’s gaze moved upward again in the mirror, to her face, and she stared hard.

The cheekbones were high, the nose quite straight and classic, the lips full and generous, the chin small, square, and determined. Her eyes, she decided, were her best feature. Almond-shaped, topped by slender, arched, black brows and thickly fringed with black lashes, they were deep gray with tiny golden flecks, like leaves in a winter pond. The color darkened to almost black when she was angry, remaining a deep gray at other times. They were the kind of eyes a man couldn’t resist looking into. Although Zenobia was too young to realize it, her eyes were the mirror of her soul, telling anyone who was wise enough to look deeply into all her secrets.

“If he does not find you the most beautiful woman in the world then he is blind in both eyes, little sister.”

Zenobia turned her eyes from the mirror. “It is his favorite concubine I am worried about, Akbar. Men of the desert are susceptible to fair women.”

“He has not married her,” came the reply.

“She is a slave, Akbar. Men do not marry their slaves. They may love them, but they do not marry them. What if he loves her, but marries me simply for heirs? I have been surrounded by love my whole life, Akbar. I was conceived by a great love. I cannot live without it! What if he does not love me?”

“You do not have to marry him, little sister. Father has said he will not force you to it.”

“I am almost fifteen, my brother. Most girls my age have been married for two years, and already have children. What if I never find this love that exists between a man and a woman? If I do not marry Prince Odenathus, who will I marry, Akbar? Who will have an educated woman to wife? I often wonder if Mother and Father did not do me a great disservice educating me. Perhaps I would have been better off if I had learned nothing but woman’s ways.” She sighed, and flung herself on her couch.

Akbar stared at his half-sister in surprise, and then he began to laugh. “By Jupiter, you are afraid! Never did I think to see the day when Zenobia bat Zabaai would be afraid, but you are! You are afraid that Odenathus will not like you! You are afraid of a blue-eyed, yellow-haired whore! Zenobia, my sister, the poor Prince of Palmyra is already half in love with you. If you will be but
kind to him he will be your devoted slave for the rest of your life. All he desires is a little encouragement. As to the concubine, Deliciae, of course he is fond of her. She is an amiable creature, surely you cannot be afraid of that piece of fluff?”

“She is so … so womanly, and I am more at home with a weapon than a perfume bottle!”

“You are unique, my sister.”

“Would you like a woman like me, Akbar?” The concern in her young face was so intense that he almost hurt for her.

“Too easy a conquest can be pleasant, but very boring, my sister. Be yourself with Odenathus. He will love you.” Akbar walked over to where his younger half-sister lounged, and bent to kiss her head. “Stop brooding, foolish child, and make yourself beautiful for the prince. I will come back shortly, and escort you myself to Father’s tent for the evening meal.”

When she looked up he was gone, and Bab was entering the tent. Dearest Bab, Zenobia thought affectionately. How she was going to enjoy living in a civilized city again! Bab had been her mother’s servant, and had come with Iris from Alexandria. When Iris had died she had simply taken over Zenobia, and continued on with her duties. She was getting on in years now, thought Zenobia, and the traveling was becoming harder for her. She watched with loving eyes as the older woman moved about the tent preparing her mistress’s clothing for the evening.