The Secret Chord Read online

  I went to the audience hall directly. I wanted to observe him. I took my usual place, among the counselors. While I did not always attend him there, it was understood that I might come and go from time to time. Sometimes, he would turn and seek my advice on this or that matter, but generally I was there as a silent observer.

  As he dealt with dispatches and petitioners, I had to concede that the night’s ill-judged folly seemed to have done him a power of good. He was alert and focused. To be sure, he was buoyed by good news from the front. The messenger brought word from Yoav. Our troops had devastated Ammon with small loss to our numbers. They proceeded on to Rabbah, where they drove the defenders back within the walls of the town and sat down in front to besiege them. Only once, when Uriah’s name was mentioned in dispatches for valor, did I see the muscles of the king’s face tense. But no one else in the hall would have noted it, and he soon smiled again as he spoke of the siege. “It is well done,” he said, slapping his hands together and glancing warmly around the hall. “What time of year better favors the besieger? They will squint at us over their walls and watch their fields waving in the breeze. Let them grind the last of their hoarded grain and bake their mean loaves. Let them choke as they watch the barley ripening beyond their reach.”

  David was taking petitions, dealing with each case attentively and justly, when I rose and went out. So why was my heart still tight in my chest?

  The moon had waned and waxed and waned again before I learned the reason for my unease. In those days and nights, I went about my appointed business heavily. It was, I suppose, because I felt so ill that I decided to see Mikhal at that time. I needed to see her. She held in her memory the missing piece I needed in my account: David’s ascendant season as the favorite of Shaul, and how that season had become blighted, making David into the outlaw he was when I first met him. Mikhal—Shaul’s daughter, Yonatan’s sister, David’s first wife. The most intimate witness to that time of any person living. And as I could barely expect the visit to be an easy one, better to get it done when my mood was already melancholy than save it to darken a brighter day.

  VIII

  She received me without warmth, but more civilly than I had expected. Her apartment was a small cell, dim and chilly, set off at the very edge of the women’s quarters. There was a slit for a window, looking north, its view obstructed by the bulk of the barracks that loomed across a narrow lane, stealing what little light might otherwise have found its way to warm the stones. I pulled my mantle over my arms. In midwinter, I thought, this room must be frigid. Her handmaid, an ill-favored, hunchbacked crone, occupied a low alcove separated by a curtain. It was the quarters of one who has fallen from grace, more fit for an upper servant than the daughter of one king and the wife of another.

  She had brightened the cramped space as best she could, with some good weavings, embroidered pillows and a nicely carved low table fashioned of olive wood. She gestured for me to sit, and as I arranged my writing things, she composed herself on the pillows opposite me. The years had not told on her in the usual ways—she remained tall and lithe, as I remembered her, and the shawl that she wore against the damp chill of the room revealed a glimpse of hair, still thick and lustrous. Her features were the image of her brother’s cast into a gentler female mold. Both of them had their father’s height, his high, intelligent brow, the chiseled chin and long, regal neck. I had not seen their mother, but since Shaul was fair, their coloring—the ebony hair and the light gray eyes rimmed with lush dark lashes—must have come from her. Mikhal and Yonatan might have been twins, as far as their appearance, even though eight years separated their births, and a sister, Merav, who was fair like Shaul, stood between them in birth order.

  But if age had not ravaged her, life had. Her face was drawn, and her eyes, once lively and compelling, were as dead as a deep well in which the water had long ago been poisoned. The first time I saw her, she was exhausted and had been weeping. But even in her grief on that day, she retained the glow of a woman who is loved and desired. Not now. Not after all the years of estrangements: one that had been forced upon her, one that she had invited.

  She had always been uncommonly direct for a woman and I soon discovered that this was still true.

  “I loved him. You know that, I suppose?”

  She had begun to speak even as I pared my quill. I set down the knife at once and began to write even though the tip was still imperfect.

  “It is important that you know. I want you to set it down: ‘Mikhal was in love with David.’ Nobody ever writes that about a woman. It’s always the man whose love is thought worthy of recording. Have you noticed that? In all the chronicles, they state it so. Well, you write down that it was I. I was the one who loved.”

  Her observation was quite true. Indeed, in most of our important histories, it’s rare enough for wives to be named, never mind the state of their affections noted. So I set it down as she had requested. Then I paused, and looked up at her. “Surely it would not be untrue to write that David was in love with Mikhal? He did love you—once.”

  She tossed her head, and the shawl slipped to her shoulders. She did not trouble to replace it, but returned my gaze levelly.

  “You want the truth, you say? The truth is, at that time, the other love consumed him. There was a little room for me—you know what he’s like, he seeks love like food or warmth, and he doesn’t turn it away. But David was at the height of his passion for my brother when he took me in marriage. When we made love, he made no pretense. He asked me to do things in the dark that recalled my brother to him.”

  She looked at me and her dead eyes flickered with a kind of angry light.

  “Is this too much truth for you, Prophet?”

  As a soldier I had seen everything that one body can do to another. In the aftermath of a battle, when women and boys alike are taken as spoils, soldiers in heat do not trouble to seek a private place for their debauching. But I had never had a woman speak to me so. I suppose the shock was plain in my expression. She tossed her head defiantly.

  “Do you know what is funny about it? I didn’t care. Because I adored him. I loved enough for both of us. People doubt it, who only know what happened between us after he was king. But before all that—before my father’s hateful, vindictive act, before David rushed off to warm our marriage bed with the bodies of others—I would have taken him on any terms, been anything he wanted, done anything that roused his desire. All I cared was that I had him in my arms. Yes, of course, I would have liked it to be otherwise. What young girl would not wish to be loved for herself, and not as some pale, soft version of her brother? I would have liked to be allowed to be the shy, trembling virgin, who could lie in my lover’s tender caress as he awakened my senses one by one, gently, patiently, until I was wet and ready. But do you know how he came to me on our wedding night? Hot from my brother, reeking of sweat. He made clear how it would have to be, if it were going to be at all . . .”

  Her voice sank to a deep, throaty whisper. The thick lashes dropped low over glazed eyes, her lips glistened, her face flushed. I let my eyes shift to the stone of the wall behind her, trying to imagine its rough texture and cold chill as her intimate, insinuating voice continued to describe warm, slick declivities and how various digits and appendages had been deployed there. Finally, she interrupted herself.

  “You’re not writing this down. Why is that? Have I misunderstood? I thought you wanted the whole story of my accursed marriage. The king’s messenger was quite explicit: ‘The king orders you to receive Natan, and tell him everything.’ And here I am, trying, at last, to be an obedient wife. But wait. I had forgot. You’re a voluntary gelding, aren’t you? Celibate, they say. Am I arousing you? Is that even possible? Do you get hard, still? Or were you cut, like a foreign slave boy?”

  There was real cruelty in her face now. The same cruel look that she had worn when she said the words that brought her marriage to David to an ugly,
irrevocable estrangement. I suddenly understood, in a way I never had, how this had come about. Now the miracle of it to me was that he hadn’t killed her. I knew what he was capable of, when his temper was roused. I wanted to strike her myself, even I, who prided myself on self-mastery. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath, feeling my ribs expand in my chest and slide downward as I exhaled slowly.

  “We were talking about love,” I said coldly. “We seem to have strayed.”

  “Oh, yes. Love.”

  She tossed her hair forward, over her right shoulder, and ran a hand down its glossy length. A long-fingered hand, unblemished by work. You didn’t see many women of her age with hands like that. It was a reminder that she was the first of her kind—an Israelite born royal.

  “I wanted him. For a long time, before a marriage was even possible, I wanted him. But Father had promised David to Merav, my sister, the eldest, right at the beginning, when he still loved this brave young warrior who had sprung out of the sheepfolds to bring us a victory. David was unpolished and awkward then. Tentative. You’d see him at meat, watching to see how the rest of us got on. Merav found it funny and contemptible. I thought it sweet. And he picked it all up quickly, of course. It was no time at all before he carried himself like a born courtier. But when Father told Merav of the match, she wept and begged him to reconsider. When he ignored her, she raged and sulked and complained to anyone who would give her an ear. She deserved better, she whined, than a jumped-up shepherd boy four years her junior. She even took her complaint to Yonatan. To Yonatan! Who loved David, who would do anything for him. That’s what a fool she was. Yonatan tried to reason with her, to show her that this was the best of all possible matches. But she wouldn’t listen, and went on with her sighing and nagging. I was overjoyed when Father changed his mind and gave Merav to an older, richer man. I thought he was just looking for peace in his house. I didn’t see the decision for what it was—the cooling of his regard, the birth of the envy and suspicion that would eat him alive. David, of course, pretended to be at peace with this decision—he was all modesty and duty then, when it came to my father. He said he had no business being a king’s son-in-law in the first place. I thought he really felt that way, at the time. But you and I know—everyone knows, now—how it festered inside him, so that when he had the chance, and the power, he avenged the insult. Merav paid for it in the end, bitterly. I grieved for her in her loss. But not that much, to be honest. Not as much as I should have. I’m not saying she deserved it. No woman, no mother, deserves such a thing. But she was a vain, stupid, spoiled girl. You had to be very stupid not to see what David was, what he would become. That was Merav. He never forgot, nor forgave her. He’s like that, isn’t he? Unforgiving . . .”

  The archness of her tone faltered then, and her hard gaze softened. She looked down and drew a sharp breath, and I thought she might be about to cry. But I underestimated her there. This was a woman raised in a turbulent house, who had learned early to master herself. Her next words seemed to follow my own thought. “It was no easy thing, to be part of that family.” She looked up at me, searchingly. “Why did Shmuel choose my father to be king? How can a prophet make so vast a blunder? Can you tell me that, Natan? Doesn’t it make you question yourself? When you speak in that way, so hard, so certain. Shmuel, the great seer. And yet he could not foresee my father’s madness.”

  I made her no answer. I had none. The same question kept me awake often enough. Shmuel had made Shaul a king against Shaul’s own will and inclination, indeed, dragged him from his hiding place to anoint him. And then, when Shaul struggled to fulfill this unwelcome destiny, Shmuel withdrew his support and his counsel, cursed him, undermined him, maybe even drove him mad. How had foresight failed him? The question burned me. But the question was about Shmuel, not about the voice that spoke through me. Mikhal did not understand—how could she? Though I could question the acts of Shmuel, I could not question the voice that howled through my own soul.

  “Do you know what the greatest cruelty of madness is, Natan? It’s the power it has to blot out a person. After a man goes mad, you struggle to remember him sane. The madness is so consuming, it eats up everything else, even memory. As you deal with the madman, who can recall the ordinary joys, the daily kindnesses, that came before? I have to struggle to think of my father as he was, when I was small. I can barely find a day, an hour, when I see him clearly: that big, powerful man, sweet and patient, intelligent and kind.

  “David’s music could bring that man back. I think the seeds of my love were planted there, in the ground that my father’s madness harrowed. We all of us—all of us who loved my father—would have looked with affection on anyone who could do what David did. He brought joy back into our household, for a brief time. When he first came to us as my father’s new armor bearer, the young hero of Wadi Elah, we had no idea what a change he would bring. That first time, he went and fetched his harp—a crude handmade thing he’d crafted for himself—my father soon saw to it that the best craftsmen were commissioned to fashion a better one. Nobody paid him much mind when he plucked the first notes. But soon, every head turned to him. None of us had ever heard the like.”

  I knew that she did not exaggerate. In my time, I have heard even travelers from the court of the pharaoh—men speaking in private, who had no need to offer flattery—say that in voice and in musicianship, David has no peer. To me, even now, after so many years of hearing him play almost every day, it remains a marvel, that a man can draw forth such sounds from a piece of wood and some strands of gut. His overlapping harmonies, the way the plucked strings swell and ebb, swell and ebb, and every minute, every instant, he is overlaying new, fresh melodies as the old harmonies linger and resonate. Not only the ears feel the pleasure of it. You feel the vibration on your skin. The hairs rise on your arms. The pulse, the breath, the very heartbeat. It’s a kind of sorcery, a possession of body and spirit. Yet a wholesome one. And there is one chord, one perfect assembly of notes that no other hand can play. The sound of it—pure, rinsing sound, void, so that your spirit seems to rush in to fill the space between the notes. So sublime that the priests asked David to offer it at the sacrifice . . . the music rising up to heaven with the sacred smoke. Every soul that hears it is refreshed and restored. So it was with Shaul.

  I could see that Mikhal was remembering that music, the glorious shock of it, the first time. Her face was tilted upward, to catch a meager shaft of light as it struggled briefly through the narrow slit. David would have noticed that lovely face—a girl’s face, then—as he played the first time in court.

  “I was scared for him, even though his singing and playing were so beautiful. Before he started to play, that first time, there had been tension in the hall. Everyone knew my father was cliff walking again. Well, that’s what I called it, when the madness came. He would be like a man staggering along the rim of an abyss—which was his rage—and when the edge gave way or he missed his step, he might clutch at anyone within reach and drag that person with him over the precipice. We all of us had learned that it was not safe to try to reason with him, or even to distract him. Such a person was the likeliest to be pulled down into the dark. So when he needed us most, we withdrew. The talk would die into an awkward silence and my father would be left alone to wallow in his own grim thoughts. So when David fetched that harp, I feared for him. I feared that in his attempt to soothe my father, he would become the target of his rage. Then, he started to play. You could feel the strain in the room ease. The brilliance of his music lifted everyone. But for my father it was much more than that. For him, the music worked like soothing ointment on an open wound, or the binding that sets a broken bone back into its proper place. David sang and played, and drew my father’s spirit away from that cliff edge. That’s why I began to love him.

  “It was a different thing with Yonatan. He didn’t need a reason. He just loved. It was as if one soul had been sheared in half, breathed into two separate bodies and
then cast adrift in the world, each half longing to find its other. That was how they came together, or so it seemed to me, young girl that I was. I think they became lovers the night after the battle of Wadi Elah. Even though their lives had been different in every respect, they could finish each other’s sentences, they knew each other’s thoughts. I had never seen my brother so light and so alive as he was after David came to us. And that fed my love, also. Because my brother had been sad and David made him happy. I’m not sure if you can imagine how hard Yonatan’s life was, bearing the brunt of my father’s fits, all the while trying to prop him up and provide the judgment and governance when the king wasn’t capable. It was a great burden for any man to bear, and Yonatan took it up when still little more than a boy in the world’s eyes. Until David came, Yonatan’s loyalty to my father was absolute, but he felt his duty to our people also, and holding the balance between the two almost crushed him.

  “And yet despite all that, despite all his cares, he was good to me, when I was a girl, and good to my younger brothers, too. He was more like a father than my father could be. I don’t know how he did it, but he would find time to play with us, carving little toy horses out of olive wood, listening to our nonsense stories, teaching us songs.”

  Her eyes came alive as she spoke. Her voice, too, had become lighter and more animated. Poor girl, I thought, to have so few and such brief moments of joy—slender planks to cling to in her shipwreck of a life.

  “I came of age knowing Yonatan would protect me. He would make sure that Father made a good marriage for me, and wouldn’t merely use me as some token in a game of statecraft, or give me away in some mad fit. It was Yonatan who insisted that Father make the match for me with David, after Merav was married elsewhere. By then, of course, Father’s affection for David had waned. He had come to agree with my vain sister that David was not good enough. Or at least that’s what he told her, and she fed on the flattery. Father had begun to grow unpredictable in all matters, but most especially the matter of David. He would laud him one day and want him at his side. Another day, he would shun him, the suspicions eating at his addled mind. It took time, but Yonatan pressed the matter delicately enough, and so finally, our father gave way, or seemed to. He said that David could have me. But then he named my bride price: the foreskins of a hundred dead Plishtim.