The Secret Chord Page 3

  I was ten when I first saw him. My father hated idleness, so when the pressing was done and before the time for pruning, he would send me with the goats to find better grazing beside the streams that cut a path through the mountains rising steep above our village. I did not mind this. I liked to be off by myself, away from the eyes of adults who always had some task or errand to demand of an unoccupied child. In those sun-blasted hills, I could lie prone on a rock and scan the bright hillside, doing little but casting a stone from time to time to redirect a goat that wandered too far from the flock. A boy could let his thoughts unspool in those idle hours, dreaming of a hundred things, or of nothing. Sometimes, through the dense air that hung like mist over the Salty Sea, I would gaze across at the bare hills of Moav, and wonder if there was a boy like me lazing by a spring, and what his life was like, and what his thoughts were. But that day, the heat defeated me. I lay there and felt it press down upon me, like a great furred beast, smothering even the desire for thought. I fell into a heavy doze. The sting of a pebble roused me.

  “Better wake up, little shepherd, or your flock will be halfway to Beersheva.” The voice, amused, came from above and behind me. I scrambled to my feet and turned, blinking. He was on the next ridge, the sun behind him, its rays dancing like flames in his bright hair. He jumped lightly from the ledge and moved toward me. I raised my hand to shade my eyes and saw that he was a young man, perhaps twenty, and armed. Dismay must have shown in my face. My fear was not caused by his short sword or his bow. It was the thought that I might have lost the flock. To lose even one goat was a whipping offense.

  He smiled, reached out a hand and tousled my hair as an affectionate older brother might have done. “Well met, little shepherd. Good thing I found you. When your flock wandered into my camp, yonder, the men started sharpening their knives. There was talk of goat stew this night.”

  “Please, no! My father . . .”

  “Don’t concern yourself. Your flock is safe. I was a shepherd myself, not so long since. I do not take without asking. You are from the village below?” I nodded. “You know the head man?”

  “My father is the head man.”

  “Well met indeed, then. Give your father my greetings, and tell him that my band will be camped here for some days. We are armed fighters, two score of men, and some few of us have families. We would be glad of provisions. Tell your father that David, son of Yishai the Beit Lehemite, makes this request.”

  My eyes grew wide. “You? You are the one that killed the giant of Gath?” I fingered the side of my head where the pebble had grazed it. A stone not so much larger had turned the tide for us at the famous battle in the Wadi Elah. Every boy in the Land knew that story.

  He smiled. “So they called him. He was big enough, but no giant. He was slow, I was quicker. He underestimated me. That is all. Sometimes, it is good to be small. Remember that. Use it while you still can.” He eyed me, a summing look, as a buyer might cast over a lamb on the hoof. “I see from your hands and feet that you will grow to be a tall man. Is your father tall? Then you favor him. Now come and fetch your goats.”

  I followed him across the wadi and through the date palms into the clearing where he had made his encampment. It was a spare, well-organized and clean affair of four or five large goat hair tents. The kind of camp a military unit might pitch, that can be hastily struck and easily transported. They had herded my goats into their own makeshift thorn break, and as I was sorting mine from theirs, I noticed one of the women regarding me. She had her mantle drawn across the lower part of her face, but her eyes were the same deep green as the balsam fir that shaded her where she sat, and I found myself returning her glance. She lifted a fold of her mantle off a slim wrist, and turned her hand. It was a subtle gesture, but clear enough. She wanted me to approach her.

  As I did, she stood—she was very tall, for a woman—and stepped back, deeper into the shade, out of sight of the main encampment. I followed her, as she clearly purposed. “Did my husband charge you with a message?” Her voice was low and quick. For a moment, I was confused. I did not think that by “husband” she could mean David. This woman was very handsome, but she was some years older than the youth I had just met. In my village, a commonplace thing was for the wife to be much younger than her husband, never the reverse.

  She seemed to understand my confusion. She dropped her veil so that I could see her face. A slight smile played about her lips, which were very full, but already scored with the fine lines of her maturity. Her skin, a pale olive, was gently weathered like my mother’s from many summers in the unforgiving dryness of the Land. But her wide green eyes had a level, intelligent gaze, and the lines that framed them seemed to me more likely etched by amusement than by hardship. “I am Avigail of Carmel, third wife of our leader, David. I am his wife because my first husband, Navaal, who was a drunkard and a fool, refused to send supplies for David’s men when he requested them of us. We could afford it—we had three thousand sheep. I knew what the cost of that denial would be to us, so I saw to it myself, and met David on the road with the supplies before he and his band reached our village. Tell your father this: David is no ordinary outlaw, no ordinary man. When my husband died, I came to be his wife, even though I left behind a rich household to live as you see me here, among outlaws, begging for supplies. Boy, tell your father this is no small thing. Don’t let him make the same mistake my foolish husband made. If he does, you—”

  But she did not finish the message I was to bring, for David called for her then, and she cast her veil across her shoulder and left me alone in the shadows. I waited there a moment or so, and then made quick work of sorting and gathering my goats. I almost ran them down the hill to home, bursting with my news. By the time I reached the house, I had shaped the story so as to omit any mention of my putting the flock at risk. Still, when my father heard what I had to say, his brow creased.

  That night, all the important men of the village gathered at our house. My mother sent me to pour the wine for them. One must not think ours was an insular community, distant though we were from other settlements. Because of the balsam resin we produced, and the sought-after fragrances we knew how to make from it, our village was well-known in the Land, and prosperous, too; the trade route was well traveled by all classes and kinds of men. So when our leaders gathered to deliberate, they were well informed. Our neighbor Shem, a resin maker, and therefore an important man, was speaking. “I say we pay him what he asks. His men do some service when they are camped in the wadi. They are a wall to us, and keep the young herders, such as your own boy there, safe from wild beasts or passing brigands. They are disciplined; they have not stolen livestock or plundered the date trees—”

  “They are debtors and malcontents and troublemakers.” My father, usually civil, cut Shem off in midsentence. “He that leads them has set himself against our king, who has made it plain enough that he wishes the man dead. If we pay him, we are abetting an outlaw, a condemned man. Do you want to incur the anger of Shaul?”

  “I would risk that before I risk angering him, camped upon our dooryard.” It was my uncle Barack who spoke, tossing his head in the direction of the hills. “The king is far away in Geba. What will he know of a dozen wineskins and a few bushels from our grain store? It was a good harvest, a good vintage. We can spare these things.”

  “And if we spare them to the outlaw son of Yishai the Beit Lehemite, what rabble next will we have at our door, demanding the food from our children’s mouths and the fruits earned by our laborers’ hands? Slaves run away from their masters every day, but we are not obliged to abet them. This brigand is no better than they. Worse, I say. There are rumors he serves the Plishtim seren, Achish of Gath. You would help him, and abet our worst enemy? I say we send him nothing.”

  “This ‘brigand,’ as you call him—when he was a mere boy he put the Plishtim to flight at the battle of Wadi Elah. The king did not think him a brigand then. Nor when he
took him on as armor bearer, or married him to his daughter, or raised him up as leader of his fighters. You know how he fought in those days. How we all thought he had the blessing of the Name upon him, so many victories he won. Kings are fickle. You know that, brother. They say Shaul threw a spear at the boy, in his own hall, at meat, for no reason. Who would not flee, in such a case?”

  “Who would not flee? A man who is innocent. A man who is honorable. It is not for us to question the judgments of our king. You would have us put food in a traitor’s mouth?”

  “I would put it there, yes. Rather than have him bring his men to take it.”

  “If that traitor and his rabble come here, we will fight them. Some few of us know how to fight.” My father did not often speak of it, but he and his brother had borne arms against the Ammonites in their youth.

  I loved my father, and I believe he loved me in his turn. I do not think it entered his mind that the denial of goods would put lives at risk. But when I left the room to replenish the emptied wine jug, I bumped into my mother, listening an ear in the passageway. I saw her face, before she had the chance to arrange it. There was dread in her expression, and also anger. She turned on her heel and led the way to the wine store. As she lifted the lid from the pithos, her hands were trembling.

  “What is it?” I whispered. She shook her head and compressed her lips and would not speak. I reached for the dipper and took it from her. Her hands were too unsteady to fill the jug without spilling the wine. “You think Father errs in denying these outlaws?”

  “It is not my place to say he errs,” she hissed tersely. “Neither is it yours to think it. Go, serve and be silent.”

  “But I met a woman in his camp. One of his wives. She warned me that it would be risky to refuse him. Her husband did, she said, and she defied him, and brought the goods herself. That is how she—”

  “Shhh.” My mother raised her hand and laid her fingers on my lips. They were rough fingers, work worn from the hundred tasks she knew how to perform. But they were gentle fingers, too, always ready with a caress. “Your father heads this household. Leads this village. It is not for us to doubt him. I am no slut like this woman, who threw herself at the feet of a stranger and defied her husband’s will.”

  “But she did it to save—”

  “Hush, I said. You will obey me, and you will obey your father. Go now. They are waiting for their wine. Serve and be silent as I bid you.”

  A dozen wineskins and a few bushels of dates. It would have been a small price, and I might have lived a different life. I might have stayed in that village lit by the glare of the Salty Sea. Grown to manhood the beloved son of a prosperous house, learning to become a winemaker at my father’s side. Feeling the weight of the warm grapes fall into my hands as each long summer ripened, plying the pruning knife with skill till the long rows of old vines held their balled fists up to the winter sky. By now, the vineyards would be mine to tend, and I would be teaching my sons in their turn. Or so I like to think. But perhaps this other destiny could not have been gainsaid. I do not know. All I do know is that no supplies were delivered, and I was instructed to take the goats by the southern wadi rather than the stream that ran to the north. Two days later, David sent to ask again. One of his men—a youth, really, no older than David himself—presented himself in the village asking for my father. He was received, and put his requests—or I should say, demands—rather more urgently than David had put them to me. My father became angry. I heard him say hard words: “traitor,” “brigand,” “thief.” The young man became angry then in his turn. He raised his voice even louder than my father’s, so that I could hear every word he said as if I were in the room.

  “You dare to speak so of a man whose spittle you are not fit to wipe. David son of Yishai is the rightful leader of our people, the best leader—the best man—any of us has ever served. The king in Geba knew that, once. Did he not make David his son-in-law before madness seized him? Now he hates David for his very qualities, which are a reproach to his own failures. You should ask Shaul’s son Yonatan, if you doubt me. It is well-known where his heart lies. Were it not for the command to honor the father he would be with us now, not propping up a demented, drooling . . .”

  My father cut in then—loud, angry—saying that he would not have such disloyal words uttered in his house. He was not a stupid man: he could see the danger by then, I am sure. Yet he did have a stubborn streak, and a regard for his own opinions. Small flaws, maybe, to cost such a price as he paid for them. But he could not unbreak the eggshell. A few moments later, the tall young stranger pushed past me, thrusting me against the wall so hard that the stone bit into the bare skin of my upper arm. When he looked me in the face, I saw naked anger. For perhaps a thousand men, that look has been the last thing they ever saw. David’s messenger to my father was Yoav, who would become our mighty general, though on that day I did not yet know his name.

  At dawn I walked through my father’s blood and stood face-to-face with his killer. David had come in the dark, swift and silent. He slew my father and my uncle Barack with the dispatch of a slaughter man attending to his trade. As I approached David, I could hear my mother screaming. Her voice was horrible—a ragged rasp. Stay back, she cried. Run. Hide yourself.

  But I had done with obeying. I could no more heed her than stop my own heartbeat. I walked up to David. He looked down at me, puzzled. I imagine he saw a tear-streaked child, too touched or stupid to fear the blood-flecked murderer who stood before him.

  “Did you not hear me, little shepherd? Did I not say I would kill all of his kin that can piss against a wall?”

  Yoav lifted his spear, but I just stood there. David raised his hand wearily. “The boy’s simple,” he muttered. “Let him be.” He shrugged and turned aside.

  Then I spoke. Later, others had to tell me what I said. I knew that my lips and tongue were moving, but I could not hear my own words because my head was ringing like a stone under the blows of an iron mallet, blows that beat the blood behind my eyes. I stood there, in the crimson-misted ruins of my own life, and the words poured out. Through the red blur, I saw the faces of his fighters distort with wonder. Yoav lowered his weapon and gaped. David’s own face creased, confused. Then it changed. His look became greedy. He spoke, but I could not make out his words through the thunder in my head. I saw him reach out to me, and then I fell.

  When I came to myself, I was in his tent. The woman Avigail was leaning over me, swabbing my forehead with a cool cloth. David himself was sitting on the edge of my pallet. When he saw my eyes flicker, he nodded to Avigail, who went to the water jar and filled a cup. He reached and took it from her, caressing her hand as he did so, and offering her thanks even for so small a task. Even in my pain, I noted it. My father had never treated my mother with such distinction. David helped me into a sitting position, and then raised the cup to my lips. At first, I recoiled from his touch, but he clasped my shoulder with a gentle authority. “Drink,” he said. When the water touched my lips, I realized I was parched. “Slowly,” he cautioned, taking back the cup and setting it down.

  He had washed off my father’s blood and was wearing a fresh tunic of fine wool. To my complete astonishment, he grasped the neck of that tunic and rent it. He stood then and walked to the fire pit, stooped for a handful of cold ashes, and rubbed them into his bright hair. “I want you to understand. I regret these deaths. I mourn your kin. But what I did was necessary. These men—my fighters and their families—have put their trust in me. I have to do whatever it takes to sustain them. Know that I did not kill your father and your uncle for a few bushels of dates. I killed your father because if his refusal of my request had been allowed to stand, word of it would have spread, and I would not be able to feed my people—people who have risked everything for me. I can’t allow that. It’s the bargain I have made. They would die for me, so I must live for them. And kill for them, when I have to. Your uncle I had to kill
to forestall blood vengeance. For that reason I should have killed you, too. You know that. But here you are. You will see how it is, now that you are one of us.”

  And I did see. And heard, and smelled. In my dreams, even now, I hear the screams of the enemy’s stumbling warhorses, after he ordered their tendons cut. I smell the reek from the leaking bowels of the terrified Moavite captives, lined up in rows upon the ground as David’s men ran the measuring cord alongside their squirming bodies, measuring life as one might measure out cloth, marking out a quantity to live and sentencing those beyond the cord’s end to be butchered where they lay.

  Whatever it takes. What was necessary.

  These words might well have been the graven mottoes of his house. What was necessary, and no more. He spared a hundred of the Aramean horses—they are the ones that pull our merkavot today. He spared what he deemed to be a safe number of the Moavites, who pay tribute to us now and trouble us in war no longer. And he spared me, also, to be the pebble in his sandal and the goad in his hide. For he took me into his service that day and since then I have rarely left his side.

  It might seem strange, that a boy would so easily desert all that he knew to serve his father’s killer. It seemed strange to me, too. But as I lay there, my grief raw and my mind addled, I was not confused about where I now belonged. I knew, in some deep place, even then at the very beginning of things, that the heart of a prophet is not his own to bestow. I had to go with David whether I would or no. And not just because he willed it. Had he beaten me, thrown me out and left me dying by the side of the road, I would have crawled after him, shouting the words he needed to hear. Later, had he exiled me (as he might well have done, after some of my pronouncements) to some dry scab of white crystal in the middle of the Salty Sea, I would have waded back to him. But I have not needed to do any of those things. Until now, he has kept me close, even when my words have blistered him. I think he learned from what passed between Shaul and his prophet, Shmuel. He saw that the kingship of a people such as ours could not be fashioned after the kingships of other nations. It is, instead, a fragile and mysterious gift, and what is given by such a mighty hand can be snatched back in less than an eyeblink.