43. No hope hollower than vengeance

Jehu drove like a madman. For reasons known only to the general, he led his company, Bidkar among them, off the common road once near Jezreel and over adjacent ground littered with rocks, small trees and brush. Jehu’s chariot nearly flipped a dozen times. Bidkar, outfitted once more for battle, had not worn armor since the last war with Aram. How troubling, he thought, to be called upon to risk his life again after allowing Yashar to revive his feelings for Sara.

Near Jezreel, impassable terrain forced Jehu’s band to return to the main road. “Now that we are visible from the city’s tower,” he told his company, “we must advance with even more speed.”

Soon a horseman from the city met and hailed them. The rider said to Jehu, “Thus says Jehoram, the king, is it peace?”

“What is your business with peace, soldier?” Jehu said. “Fall in behind me and say no more.”

*

Yashar had been kneeling beside Juttah when the spinning winds settled, the citadel gates cranked opened and a rider shot out at full gallop. At the edge of the quadrangle, Yashar looked down into the valley and saw the rider’s rising dust meet a bigger cloud, approaching.

“Jehu is coming,” came a shout from the ramparts.

A shofar blew soon afterward and a second horseman struck out from the city gates. By then Jehu’s company, if that’s who they truly were, had reached Jezreel’s ascent.

*

Jezebel had made a mistake. When Jehoram, her son, had been wounded in battle at Ramoth-gilead, she unwisely left the safety of Samaria to visit him at Jezreel. She had not been there long before hearing from her spies that Jehu had left Ramoth with an armed contingent. He was already in the valley and streaking toward Jezreel.

“My guess is he means to kill us,” Jezebel told the king, her boy.

“What of your grandson?” Jehoram asked, nodding at Ahaziah, the visiting king of Judah, beside his bed.

“I suppose he intends to kill him too,” Jezebel sniffed. “Send a messenger out to meet the general and ask if it is peace.”

Jehoram issued the order. A messenger rode out at once but failed to return.

“Send another,” Jezebel ordered. Jehoram again obeyed. A shofar blew. Jezebel stepped to the window and watched the second rider leave at a gallop, then something caused her to stagger.

“What is it, Mother?” Jehoram asked.

“Nothing,” Jezebel said, too upset by what she had seen to discuss it. But, in truth, where the quadrangle ended and the main road started down toward the valley floor, she had seen a young man standing. A dog stood beside this man, an enormous creature the size of a wolf, shimmering gray and black in the fading light of day… This animal had turned and looked up as if he knew Jezebel had been watching and found her eyes. His own were black as pits, cold as eternity and exactly like those that had appeared to the former queen in countless recent dreams.

*

When the second rider also failed to return, Jehoram said, “It’s true then, Jehu has come to kill us.”

Jezebel, without a nod or goodbye, hurried from the room.

“Us?” Ahaziah said. “I only came to inquire after your health. What is my fatal sin?”

“The lady who has just abandoned us, Nephew, is your sin,” Jehoram said. “Infamous Jezebel of Tyre, your mother’s rotten mother.”

Jehoram called his attendants and, with Ahaziah, donned armor and chose weapons.

They raced from Jezreel’s gates in speeding chariots but it was too late. Jehu’s lathered company awaited them in the square.

*

Yashar and Juttah had been standing near the old vineyard, beside Ahab’s line of boulders, when Jehu’s company confronted the escaping kings. Bidkar was with them, dressed in full armor, driving a chariot. Not until that moment, as the kings of both Israel and Judah stood confronted by the anointed general, did Yashar understand the meaning of the day.

The Lord’s curse upon Ahab had passed to his son and grandson.

The kings reigned up. Jehoram held a lance, Jehu a bow. Scores of bowmen appeared behind them on the ramparts, arrows nocked and ready to fly.

“Is it peace, Jehu?” Jehoram asked.

Juttah reared his head and howled. Jehu turned and grinned briefly at the animal’s uncanny timing then answered, “What peace can there be, Jehoram, while your mother’s fornications and sorceries are so many?”

“Treachery, Ahaziah,” Jehoram shouted and, despite the hopelessness of his cause, he cut his team hard to the right in an attempt to retreat into the city gates. Jehu calmly allowed the maneuver and, when no one in his company or up on the wall seemed brave enough to kill a king, he drew his bow and sent a streaking feathered shaft deep between Jehoram’s shoulders.

The king of Israel fell forward, dead, and his chariot skidded to a stop.

“Bidkar,” Jehu called out. “Take him up,” he said, pointing at the former king’s corpse, “and cast him there…” He nodded toward the vineyard boulders. “…into the field of Naboth, the Jezreelite.”

“Remember these words, people?” Jehu asked those who had witnessed the murder. “Surely I have seen the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons and I will repay you in this plot.”

Jehu smiled. “Take him, Captain,” he said, “and cast his carcass yonder according to God’s word.”

*

It seemed unlikely to Bidkar that the pagans in Jezreel would have cared about or remembered Naboth—and Ahab’s sin against him—but when Jehu recited God’s word a cheer went up in the square, on the ramparts and beyond the open gates. Bidkar stepped down, threw Jehoram’s bloody body over one shoulder and climbed the line of rocks assembled by the dead king’s father. Once up top, Bidkar looked down into the deserted thicket, once a lush garden, and threw Jehoram’s body down into it. When it stopped tumbling among the brambles, Bidkar spit and dusted his hands.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ahaziah whipped his team about and broke for the valley road. Bidkar scrambled down yelling for his men to wheel about, Jehu turned with them and the entire company, with Bidkar in the lead, charged after Jehoram’s nephew, Judah’s king.

*

Could any hope be hollower than vengeance? Naboth was gone, his loved ones were scattered and Jehoram’s death had healed no pain. Yashar had thought to spend the night in Jezreel before returning home but the vineyard had become a morgue. He rode instead to Shunem.

Little Juttah, though he had never been there, sniffed about Zach’s old homestead as if remembering.

In return for a meal and a cot, Yashar shared details of Jehu’s coup with a family, Zach and Nurit’s former friends. The next morning, hoping to see the captain again, Yashar returned to Jezreel. Jehu and his company had returned but Bidkar was not among them. Yashar used Bidkar’s bolt at the gate and suddenly found himself in front of Jehu, former general, now Israel’s king.

Jehu shared some news. “Ahaziah got his due in Samaria,” he said, “but, according to reports, my captain, your friend, did not survive to see it. He fell near Megiddo during the chase and died of his wounds.”

“That cannot be,” Yashar said.

“Of course,” the new king said. “Keep hope. That will be all.”