32. Like a shattered flagstaff

Some men are born to greatness, others to mediocrity, still others to shame. Shame seemed the lot of Ahaziah, Ahab and Jezebel’s oldest son. As Ahaziah’s steward, Obadiah had watched the poor young man stumble and stutter for two years at trying to be a king. He was clearly no good at it. Ahaziah’s shame, and his end, began in earnest when little Moab revolted against Israel and Ahaziah failed to act.

When it became clear to Jezebel that her son was unable to make a decision, she erupted.

“Israel measures you a coward by your paralysis,” she scolded Ahaziah one day. “Why not call your counselors, weigh your options and commit yourself to some action?”

“Because I choose not to, Mother,” Ahaziah shot back.

During Ahaziah’s reign, it had been Obadiah’s obligation to meet regularly with him and his mother. At these sessions, first established by Ahab long ago, Obadiah was required to report upon all that he had done. It was not until after Ahab died that Jezebel had become an attendee. At their last, fateful meeting, Obadiah, Ahaziah and his mother sat at a small round table upon the breezy loft in the palace that Omri built, overlooking the grand foyer.

Jezebel, most often, sat quietly and listened but on this afternoon, as Ahaziah tried to avoid discussion of Moab, Jezebel refused to let the matter die. “Obadiah,” she said, “tell the king what’s at stake in this matter.”

Obadiah hesitated. “It doesn’t seem my proper place, lady,” he said, “to advise our king.”

“Good for you,” Ahaziah said, “it is not. He’s my facilitator, Mother, nothing more.”

It had been, up until then, one of Jezebel’s better days, no hissing, spitting or rising off her seat. But, upon hearing Ahaziah’s remark, she stepped to the rail at the edge of the loft and looked down through a vine-covered lattice toward the palace floor. “A great man built this house,” she told her son. “And when his son, your father, succeeded him, though he had many faults, Ahab never did Israel dishonor.”

“That’s not what the prophets say, is it, Mother?” Ahaziah smiled.

When Jezebel spun around and evil-eyed her son, Obadiah cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps it might be better if I left…”

“Stay!” Jezebel shouted. “We will see this through.”

“Oh, please, less drama, Mother,” the king said, patting Jezebel’s empty seat beside him. “Come, sit with us again. We’ll talk. Things are not as serious as all that.”

With the wildness not yet gone from her eyes, Jezebel rejoined them. “Speak, Obadiah,” she said, clenching her fists upon the tabletop, “I want my son to hear your honest opinion, nothing held back. How do you weigh all this?”

After Ahaziah nodded permission, Obadiah spoke. “In the past, O king, when Moab first tried to break away, your father as a soldier and Omri as his king, subdued them by force and maintained them under tribute. This ongoing transfer has become a lasting, beneficial boon to Israel, sir. On this point, I must agree with your mother. Moab’s balking should not, cannot be ignored.”

“Why not?” Ahaziah asked with an unfortunate chuckle. “It has worked well enough so far.”

That proved the wrong thing to say. Jezebel raised her arms, the loft darkened and a rush of cold air swept in. “Are you blind to our power?” she asked in an unnatural voice. “Do you insist on dying too?” The table began to shake, as did Obadiah. “Must the earth swallow you whole, Ahaziah, so that your brother can rule in your place? Must the god of Ekron himself…”

“Stop, please!” Ahaziah wailed as everything began to spin.

Jezebel shut her eyes and began to chant, not words but a flood of syllables. Obadiah tried to rise and run but something held him in his place. The king stood and leaned hard upon the table in an attempt to keep it on the floor. When he could not, overcome by panic, he grabbed his mother’s shoulders and threw her to the floor.

It was a fatal mistake.

Jezebel stopped chanting. The table settled gently. The darkness she had summoned collapsed and enveloped everything upon the loft except the king.

There was nothing to see but Ahaziah, no sound to be heard but his voice.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he whispered meekly from the center of his gloom.

Lying where she had fallen, Jezebel smiled, amused by her son’s apology, then pointed at his chest. With one crooked finger, she waggled Ahaziah to his left, then his right, point-to-point, first staggering like a drunkard then bucking like a horse. Ahaziah was a big man like his father but, when Jezebel seemed tired of the game, she simply lifted her hand and sent her son sailing over the loft railing like a windblown leaf.

Obadiah heard the lower lattice splinter, the king cry out and a thunderous crack. The darkness receded. Jezebel collapsed, unconscious. Obadiah stepped to the railing and looked down. The young king of Israel lay whimpering below with one of his legs stuck up like a splintered flagstaff, sprung at the hip and bathed in blood along a length of exposed bone.

Servants ran to Ahaziah’s side but none knew what to do.

Jezebel awoke and stepped to the railing beside Obadiah and looked down with him. Seeing her son’s mangled body below, she sniffed, nothing more. “You, sir,” she addressed Obadiah over Ahaziah’s sobbing, “have you something to say?”

“No, lady,” Obadiah answered, “nothing at all.”

Despite all he had seen and heard before, Obadiah had prayed that the queen mother’s past evil demonstrations might be explained, somehow, as showmanship or illusions, but the powers she had summoned that day to curse her own son had proven to Obadiah that the gods Jezebel served were both frightening and real.