The girl in her said: "Go back. They will think you are seeking love.
They will think that with your white teeth, your sloe-black eyes, your
color of fine bronze, your body, lithe and sleek and graceful as a
cat's, you want love from the king of the Jews." And all her face
flushed at that thought, and she debated whether she should send for
the captain general of the fighting men and tell him to face his troops
about and return to her Ethiopia. But the queen in her rose and said:
"What care I what they say? Does Sheba need the love of any lowland
king, or plead for alliance? Sheba is Sheba, and what Sheba does is
Sheba's business." And the woman of her brooded softly: "I will go on.
Somewhere there is an answer to all the questions, and if he does n't
know the answer, perhaps he can help me to find them."
"And perhaps he has questions of his own," she said, "and I can help
him answer those." A sad boyhood, she had heard his was, with his
father David droning psalms in his latter days, busy at his prayers as
a potter at his lathe, calling for mercy for his own soul.... And his
mother, the queen, who had once been wife to Uriah the Hittite, a
strange, mad old woman who walked about the palace, gibbering to
herself, her face and fingers twisting, all the white beauty that had
dazzled David upon the roof of the king's house turned now to an
awesome gray rugosity.... A house of fear, Sheba thought, a house of
silence, and she understood how Solomon could have become so wise, for
wisdom comes with the quiet tongue....
Wisdom he had, according to all reporters, but the wisdom she had heard
about was wisdom of the head and of the body. Had he wisdom of the
heart? Did he understand why one was now quiet as a well, now
turbulent as the sea? Did he understand why peace should come in a
soft blue garment, and suddenly irritation rise in angry red? Did he
understand what it was that dragged at the heart so, pulling it, it
seemed, toward the furtherest star? And could he resolve her what she
was to do with herself? Govern she must and govern wisely, but outside
of that was she always to be so lonely--she who was so young and strong
and beautiful? The slave girl with the fatherless baby had more than
she, the queen. The housewife grinding the family corn. Each could
escape into some one else, had a refuge--all but Sheba, the queen....
"I must go on."
And so her great and gorgeous train went on through the desert, crunch
of camels' pads, shuffle of marching men, thud of lumbering elephants,
screaming of peacocks, chattering of apes.... They passed the
shimmering sands, and came to the black high rocks. They passed
sluggish Nile, and came to the roaring cataracts. They came to the
city of hawks and the city of Venus and the city of sacred crocodiles.
They came to Thebes with its gigantic figures, each of a single stone.
They came into the desert again, steering at night by the stars as
mariners do. They came to the great Lake Moeris, which the Egyptians
control by locks. They came to Memphis. They passed the giant
labyrinth. They passed the three great pyramids. They passed the
Sphinx. They came to the Great Delta. They crossed to Ais. They came
to Joppa. They wended toward Jerusalem in the cool of the dawn....