Queen of the Jews by NL Herzenberg

temple Moriya had built in her hideaway. Everyone’s patience had a limit, and besides, Ramah was the wife of the man on whose orders the real temple had been destroyed, so possibly her little toy temple amounted to treason, and if her stepmother told her stepfather, he might have no choice but give her over to the Sanhedrin to be judged.

No, no, he wouldn’t do it; he loved her like a father.

She was getting tired of these thoughts. She resumed collecting sticks and stones without any hope of building anything, just letting them pile up in the shed. She had just two piles, one of sticks and one of stones, without any suggestion of a temple, without any purpose. She couldn’t help being what she had become: a collector of stones, a gatherer of sticks. They were a sickness that she couldn’t cure in herself. Her arms and legs had become strong from carrying heavy loads, and her skin had become bronzed from spending so much time in the sun. She wanted to stop, yet she couldn’t stop. She would sneak out of the palace every morning at dawn and come back late in the evening, tired, silent, and hungry. She had gotten used to being by herself, to not needing anyone, like a lone beast. Sometimes she talked to herself. Aristobulus, her oldest step-brother, came to her shed once, to talk. We have nothing to talk about, she said. He said yes, there was something to talk about. She didn’t ask him what it was that he wanted to talk about, because she already knew. He wanted to talk about her. Her life. What was she doing with her life? Wasting it, she said, what else was there to do?

He said that a girl her age was expected to marry and have children. She said, I wish you luck with whatever else you’ve come here to say, it shows you’ve no thinking of your own. Get out, she said after an uncomfortably long pause. I will not, he said. He added that he had come to guide her in matters personal and political. She said that she was not involved in political matters, and as for personal ones, she had none and she hoped to keep it that way. These are matters of grave importance, he said, reaching for her hand.

She did not make an attempt to withdraw it, as her attention was temporarily 144