The Secret Chord Page 12

  “You remember, of course, that those were not the days of great battles with the Plishtim. They did not come against us in strength, but only harassed and raided our outer settlements. In such skirmishes, the enemy dead might number in the tens, never the hundreds. So Yonatan was dismayed. He knew what our father was about. It’s one thing to kill a man like the Gath champion in single combat, or lead a unit to drive back a party of border raiders. Another to go against a seasoned army, which was the only way David could meet this grisly dowry. Father thought he was being clever, sending David off to die while placing the bloodguilt on the Plishtim. Yonatan fretted that he, in pressing the case for the marriage, would become the unwitting agent of David’s death.

  “But David laughed at Yonatan, and went off singing. He would do that, you know, sing as he marched. He said it kept the men in spirits. Yonatan and I kept vigil together, waiting for word. I was with Yonatan when the first messenger came, just a few days later, bearing news that David had set a trap for a Plishtim brigade just outside of Gaza, and killed at least the hundred required of him.

  “My brother could not believe it. Gaza was a five-day march. My brother asked the messenger how such a thing could be possible—that David could have got his men to the outskirts of Gaza, done battle and sent word back to us, all in less than a week. The messenger replied that he had encouraged them to ‘move fast.’ My brother gave a great bark of a laugh at that. ‘Encouraged you to fly, you mean?’” The messenger had described it all. How David never tired. How, every hour or so, he would run down the column and then back up, to his place in the vanguard, having a word for every man. How he sang to them to keep their spirits high.

  “My brother smiled as the messenger went on, his face glowing with affection, pride and relief that the deadly task was done and over. But when he asked the messenger when we should expect David’s return, he told us that he had pressed on, to continue the campaign with a raid on Ashdod. I couldn’t restrain myself at that. I was not supposed to speak, when my brother received dispatches, but I burst out: ‘You said he killed his hundred.’

  “The messenger turned to me. ‘He told us that to be son-in-law of the great Shaul should not be bought so cheap as that. He wants to double the bride price.’

  “Yonatan looked grave. ‘Wants to double it? That will be more than have fallen in all the skirmishes since the battle of Elah. He counts you quite a prize, sister.’ Yonatan glanced at me, and I felt coldness, as if he blamed me for David’s recklessness.

  “Of course, my father had no choice but to let my marriage go ahead. It was hard on him, as he could not seem to be sour about such remarkable victories. But in the weeks of preparation for the marriage feast, you could feel the tension in him as he strove for the required good humor.”

  She rose, and walked to the narrow window. A great sigh escaped her. But when she turned and sat down again, her face had lightened. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of her lips.

  “I was so happy, the day of the wedding feast. David entered the hall and stood, singing to me of the bridegroom’s love for his bride. But even in my joy, I was not blind. I saw his gaze drift past me as he sang. I knew where he was looking. Yonatan sat right behind me on the dais. Yonatan had already given David everything he could: his royal clothes, his best weapons. Even, for a time, his place in our father’s affections. I was just one more gift, laid down upon the altar of that great love. And I was grateful. It was joy enough for me, to share David with my brother. I was glad I could be a bond between them.

  “Those were the years when David could do no wrong as a fighter. Most young brides fret when their husbands go to fight, but I did not. I knew he would prevail, and he did. Every time the Plishtim tried to eat away at our borders, seizing our threshing floors, pasturing their cattle on our lands, David was able to beat them back. Yonatan had taught David everything he knew of weaponry and raiding tactics. David took those lessons and added to them his own gifts for strategy, his own way of leading from within, never seeming to command, just expecting the men to be there when he ran forward. Soon enough, they were two captains together, and then David eclipsed even Yonatan. The men loved him, even though he commanded some twice his years. It helped that he was brave. He never asked a man to do more than he did himself. He always put himself in the forefront—well, you know that—you fought with him. So I do not need to tell you these things, who saw it all, when I only learned of it from tales told at meat. But there were many such tales. Yonatan came often to our house, and I would be there as they went over every battle. My younger brothers looked up to David, too. They were his own age, and younger, but even those close to him in years were still far from earning their own command. They might have been jealous, but they weren’t. All of them worshipped Yonatan, of course, and took the lead from him in the deference they showed to David.

  “At first, my father celebrated David’s victories just as we all did, basking in the reflected glory of his young captain. And then, he changed. Suddenly, my father had had enough of it. Finally, he saw.

  “I was with my father, waiting for the returning fighters. David’s unit, victorious again. The women greeted him, as they always greeted the returning men, with their tambours and tambourines. One of them stepped out of the throng, and raised her voice—a good voice, clear and sweet, that carried—and she used the old words, the old poetry, where you sing of a thousand and ten thousand. Everyone’s heard the rhymes, sung for this or that. The first number, the smaller, in the first line, the next line the number grows. She started with the king’s name, naturally. One always starts with the king. She put David in the second line.”

  Mikhal raised her voice and sang the familiar couplet:

  “‘Shaul, Shaul has slain his thousands, and David, David his tens of thousands.’ Soon, all the women had picked up the chant. My father stood there, and the blood left his face. I knew what he was thinking. I looked up and grasped his hand. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, Father. It’s just an old rhyme.’ But he wasn’t listening to me. His face had turned to wood. He couldn’t be rational. He heard that stale old phrase—a phrase he’d heard a hundred times—and his madness made him take it as a personal insult, that the women believed David a greater warrior, a greater man, than he was. I saw him look at David with hatred. And then I saw him look at Yonatan, saw him suddenly recognize what had been apparent to everyone else for many months. Yonatan was deferring to David as if David were the prince. David, in turn, was treating my brother as a beloved lieutenant. My father finally saw his throne—his house—at risk. And he saw that Yonatan didn’t care. That Yonatan had willingly surrendered his birthright to this upstart. He saw truly, for once, despite the madness that so often distorted his sight. My brother had laid his life at David’s feet; his every action proclaimed this.

  “David marched out again the next month in a sally against the Plishtim and was, as always, the most successful of my father’s officers. And every new victory drove my father deeper into his hate. He began to ask his closest aides to kill David. Then, mad as he was, he asked Yonatan to do it. A test of love, I suppose. And the greater love prevailed. Yonatan came to David right away to warn him. David made light of the threat. I suppose, having bathed in my father’s affection, he felt secure in it. Or perhaps he believed in the worth of his own deeds; that his success would save him. He was weighing the matter as a rational mind weighs it, and Yonatan could not bring him to see that our father’s mind no longer worked rationally. He grasped David by the arm and almost shook him. ‘Come tomorrow morning. We are hunting, my father and I. There is a ruined croft near the place. Hide there. When we come, I will speak with him about you and you can hear for yourself and judge if there is a threat or no.’

  “So they went, and Yonatan talked with our father about David’s valor and good service. He begged him not to wrong a youth who had himself done no wrong. He warned that it would stain the kingship with bloodguilt. M
y father was himself that morning, and was able to hear Yonatan’s plea. He swore an oath that he would not put David to death. So, for a time, all seemed well enough. David served my father as before, as musician and as fighter, as the times required.

  “And then—well, you know what happened. David was playing harp after the meat, as he always did when he was home from the field. My father had been brooding all day. He’d allowed his wine cup to be refilled many times. He was sitting quietly, listening to the music, or so it seemed. His eyes were closed; he seemed at peace. We were all of us relieved that the evil mood of the day seemed to have lifted from him. And then, from nowhere, he leaped up, grasped a spear from the hand of the door guard and threw it right at David. David tried to make light of it, in the moment and then later, with me, at home, when he showed me the slash in his sleeve where the spear point had gone through it and pierced the wall. ‘I told your father that if he disliked my singing, a simple “Enough!” would be sufficient next time.’

  “‘Don’t make a trifle of this,’ I warned him. ‘Now that he has acted in this way, any of his captains, jealous of you and wanting to find his favor, might come after you. You cannot be forever on your guard. And next time he might not miss.’ But he just smiled and shrugged the torn robe from his shoulders and kicked it across the floor. He held out his arms. ‘If I have your love, and Yonatan’s, and the people’s, then what matter if he hates? I was hated my whole life by my own father and I survived that. I will survive this, too. Let him hate. But I do not think he does, in truth. It is his illness, merely. This fit will pass.’ He pulled me down upon the bed and embraced me. He was tender that night. I remember it. I thought, if I am to conceive his child, let it be tonight. But of course there was no child . . .”

  She looked down. I stopped writing. There was something in the abject tilt of her lovely head that filled me with pity. The earlier anger had passed. After a moment, she spoke again.

  “He took my face between his hands, after we made love. ‘I never thought to have this life,’ he said. ‘I feel like a beggar at a banquet that he has prepared for me. I owe your father for it. I will not forget that, no matter what he does.’

  “I couldn’t sleep that night. And that is, I think, what saved him. I’d risen from the bed, not wanting to wake him with my restlessness. I was by the window when I saw them coming: an armed unit, moving through the dark. I shook David awake. We both knew they were coming for him, and that if they took him, he might never see another morning. My hands shook as I tied the bedclothes together. ‘Where will you go?’ I said. ‘Where can you be safe from my father?’ ‘I will go north, to Shmuel at Ramah,’ he said. ‘Shmuel will know what to do. No one knows your father better.’ As far as I was concerned, Shmuel destroyed my father. But I could see the sense in the plan. Shmuel was the one person my father feared. If David were under his protection he might stay safe till the fit passed. I clutched for his hand and kissed it, then he jumped up on the sill and let himself down from the window using the crude rope we’d fashioned. I watched him melt away into the dark as I pulled the sheets back inside, untied the knots, smoothed the fabric as best I could and replaced them on the bed. Then I took the old house idol from its plinth in the corner—yes, we had one—it had belonged to my mother’s family and I begged David to let me keep it, even though he wanted it broken. I laid it in the bed under the coverlet with some rufous goat hair from my maid’s yarn basket arrayed on the pillow. When the leader of the detachment knocked upon the door I tried to sound as imperious as I could manage—I thought of Merav and how she would have sounded, had her rest been disturbed. I told the captain that David was ill and that I would by no means admit them; that he could not rise from his bed, and that he would attend upon the king later in the day, if he felt able.

  “I heard the men at arms muttering together outside the door, arguing whether it would be all right to defy me and force the door. Had they done so, and exposed my deceit, David would not have had time to make his escape. I have my father’s instability to thank for the fact that they did not, in the end, force their way into my chamber. They knew how his moods could change upon the moment, and none wanted to risk the blame of having invaded our bedchamber against my express command.

  “So they reported to Shaul that David was too ill presently to attend him. My father was insane by then, probably, but he was no fool. The troops returned, of course, and he came with them. I had no choice but to admit him, and hope that David was now beyond reach. I was trembling when my father pushed me aside and strode into the room. He pulled the coverlet back and saw what I had done. His face was red with fury. He grasped my wrist and shook me, demanding to know why I had defied him.

  “‘I had to,’ I lied. ‘He threatened to kill me if I didn’t help him escape.’ He stared at me until I couldn’t hold his gaze. ‘Which direction did he take?’ ‘South. He means to make for Beit Lehem.’ He lifted my chin roughly, so that I had to meet his eyes. He could read the lie in my face. In that moment, he knew he had lost me, too. He flung me upon the bed and threw back his head and gave a demented cry. It was awful. I can never forget the sound he made. Wounded.

  “It took two days for his spies to bring word that David was in Ramah. He sent a party to seize him and bring him back. But David had made the right choice in going to Shmuel. There was a strange power in that man. The detachment returned without David, all of them raving ecstatically and calling upon Yah. So my father set out himself for Ramah. Even after their long estrangement, Shmuel still wielded the old sway over him. No one would ever tell me what really happened there. All I know is that Shmuel humbled my father completely and kept him naked and praying for a day and a night while David slipped away and came back here.

  “It was Yonatan he wanted to see, of course, not me. But they met in our house and I was with them as they tried to decide what was the safest course to follow. The roles were reversed now. I think Shmuel had worked his influence on David, poured all his ugly thoughts about my father into his ears. In any case, it was David, at last, who was persuaded that Shaul meant to kill him, and Yonatan who could not bring himself to believe that our father was so lost. ‘My father does nothing, great or small, without disclosing it to me. If he intended to kill you I would know of it.’ I broke in there. ‘Brother, don’t be a fool. Do you think he’s blind as well as mad? This affair of yours is part of the reason he wants David dead. Don’t delude yourself. He will kill him, the moment he gets the chance.’ Yonatan shook his head, but David grasped his arm and looked into his eyes.

  “‘Your sister’—that’s what he said, ‘your sister,’ not ‘my wife’; strange, that never struck me until now—‘Your sister sees the truth. There is only a step between me and death.’

  “‘Tell me what to do,’ Yonatan said, looking from one to the other of us. Then his eyes, full of love, rested on David. ‘Whatever you want, I will do it for you.’ David drew him into a deep embrace. I might not have even been there, so intimate it was between them. But I was there, and I feared, for a moment, what David might ask of my brother.

  “‘The day after tomorrow is the new moon. If the king returns from Ramah, there will be the customary festive meal. He invited me, before all this, to sit with him at the feast.’

  “‘You can’t mean to go?’ I interrupted, alarmed.

  “‘Of course not. But if he misses me, if he asks where I am, tell him I went to my family at Beit Lehem because my clan is gathering for its annual sacrifice. If he is content with that excuse, it will show that his feelings have softened, the fit has passed, and maybe he no longer means me any harm. In that case, I can come back here and we can try to go on as before. But if he rages, we’ll know the opposite, and I will have to flee. Yonatan, you know I’ve only ever wanted to serve him. If you think I’m guilty of anything, kill me yourself, but don’t make me go back to your father to be slain.’

  “‘Don’t talk like that. If I think my
father intends to kill you, of course I will warn you.’

  “‘But how will I know? Who will bring me the message? Who can we trust?’ ‘Trust me,’ I said. They both looked at me then. I saw Yonatan searching my face. ‘You need not involve yourself in this. Father is already enraged with you over the escape.’ He turned to David. ‘Let’s go outside. We don’t need to bring more wrath down upon Mikhal.’

  “‘I don’t care!’ I said. ‘David is my husband.’ I reached out and clasped his arm. ‘I belong to you now. If you go into exile I want to come with you.’

  “David looked down at me, his expression kind, yet already remote. ‘I hope it will not come to that. But if it does, if I do have to flee your father, I will go quicker and safer alone. Taking you will only feed his rage and his resolve to hunt me down. But let’s not talk of that now. Yonatan and I need to make a plan, and then, the day after tomorrow, we will see.’

  “The two of them went out into the darkness. An hour later, Yonatan returned alone, his face haggard. His voice broke as he told me that they had made their plans and taken vows to protect each other’s lives. To me, his wife, David had given no pledge. From me, he had taken no tender leave.