From a high window in the tower, Jezebel witnessed the murder of her son. Her grandson, Ahaziah, though he had run away, was most certainly doomed too. The remaining challenge, then, was for Jezebel to survive. Because even her powers had their limits, she stayed hidden. But when Jehu returned to Jezreel instead of heading to Samaria to sit as king, it became clear that escape was impossible.
Jezebel was many things but no coward.
She painted her eyes, pinned her hair in the manner of northern royalty and sat again at the tower window, peering out, unafraid. And there sat Jehu on his horse below, looking up as if he had expected to see her. Maybe he had.
Jezebel called down an insult, one she knew Jehu would understand. “Is it peace, Zimri,” she asked him, “murderer of his master?”
*
Yashar had heard Jezebel call Jehu by the name of Zimri, the famous failure who had committed murder, long ago, to seize Israel’s throne. It was Ahab’s father, Omri, then a general of the army, who led a successful coup against Zimri so fierce in its fury that Zimri took his own life after serving only seven days as king.
Yashar watched unaffected as Jehu ignored Jezebel’s slur, artfully reined his mount a few paces back from the tower then looked up and called out, “Who is on my side?”
Three eunuchs stuck their heads out of the window beside Jezebel’s and waved.
“Throw her down,” Jehu said, a man of few words.
Jezebel fought with amazing energy but the eunuchs soon pushed her out the window. Her falling body hit the tower’s base with such force that her blood spattered Jehu’s horse. Unbothered, Jehu worked his mount, clicking and reining the animal back and forth over the former queen’s remains with heavy hooves.
Sometimes events explain themselves. Mild little Juttah, every bit as powerful as his father but never, up until then, having demonstrated a fraction of his father’s capacity for supernatural fury, bolted from Yashar’s side without warning and began to tear at Jezebel’s flesh.
Jehu seemed both surprised and pleased. “Behold the fulfillment of Elijah’s words!” he yelled while reigning his horse back, then leaning forward casually to observe.
Yashar loosened his waist cord and ran to the grisly scene, looped the cord about Juttah’s neck and dragged him back to the line of rocks where the vineyard gate once stood. But it was over. Jehu left Jezebel’s thoroughly mangled body where it lay and rode into the city.
Juttah sat calmly until several strange dogs ran out and attacked Jezebel’s corpse, when he broke free from Yashar’s cord, ran them off and again tore at what remained of Jezebel’s flesh. Yashar remained on his knees, helpless, across the square. What was the use? Elijah had foretold it.
It seemed to Yashar, then, that God’s only purpose in returning him to Israel, was to bring the dog.
*
Juttah eventually trotted back to Yashar’s side and sat beside him, panting in innocence as if he had fetched a stick, content, it now seemed, to allow the other dogs to take their turns at mauling the corpse of the former queen of Israel.
While they worked, Yashar wiped blood from Juttah’s muzzle, flanks and shoulders with his mantle.
Later, some of Jehu’s men arrived carrying tools for a burial but they found no more than Jezebel’s skull, feet and the palms of her hands.
“This is the word of the Lord which he spoke through Elijah the Tishbite,” one of the soldiers announced loudly, “in the plot of Jezreel, dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel.”
They put what remained of her in a sack and tossed it over the wall near the spot where Bidkar, earlier, had pitched her dead son. After Naboth’s stoning, Yashar had prayed for years to be allowed to see God’s judgment against the house of Omri. Now that he had seen it, Yashar understood the emptiness of all such requests. He prayed while on his knees… Dear God, please strike from my heart any further longing for vengeance, forever, as your word demands.
*
Later, using Bidkar’s key, Yashar ate at the soldier’s mess. The only news of the captain remained that he had died. The next morning, couriers galloped in and out of the city to inflame the elders of Israel with orders from their new king and later, many of those same elders carried baskets into Jezreel heaped with the severed heads of Ahab’s seventy sons.
But Jehu had not finished. After arranging for the hasty murders of all Ahab’s acquaintances, his servants, his known associates and favored priests, he took a company to Samaria and killed all the living brothers and half-brothers of Ahaziah, forty-two men, then murdered the remaining priests of Baal and burned their temples.
The violence finally subsided but Bidkar had not returned.
It was past time to go home.
Yashar left Jezreel without looking back, by way of the road that passed near Megiddo where, Yashar prayed against reason, he hoped to find Bidkar alive. Instead, he found one of Bidkar’s wounded comrades who confirmed the captain’s fate.