The Secret Chord Read online

  “But then they started taunting us with their champion from Gath. He was big; I’ll give you that. And armed better than any of us. Better than Shaul. Better than anyone we’d ever seen, at that time. Not the usual Plishtim stuff, either—more the kind of thing that came from the island peoples far to the west. He had an odd-looking foreigner’s bronze helmet and scale armor—I remember that, because it was uncommon then—and a great bronze breastplate and greaves. His spear was as big as a weaver’s bar with a massive iron point set to it. There was a curved sword as well.

  “I’ll own to it, when he’d come down into the valley and yell his taunts, none of us felt like stepping forward to fight him. ‘Get me a man!’ he’d yell. And then he’d laugh when no one came forward. The trouble was this: any man who had a chance to defeat him was too valuable a man to lose. Shaul would not let Yonatan go, and his other sons, the younger princes, weren’t up to it. Nor would he allow Avner to meet the challenge, and rightly so, because the defeat of such a one—the crown prince or the general—would have taken heart from the men and fed the battle lust of the enemy. But some of the hot young asses in the ranks grumbled about it, especially after the wineskin had been passed a few times. They didn’t like it, that Shaul just sat there and took the insults. They’d talk big at night. But I didn’t see them so brave come the morning.

  “So the three of us, Eliav, Avinadav and me, had been there in the wadi for weeks, and our father, back home, realized that our food would be running short. Somehow, David contrived to get himself entrusted with the resupply. Or maybe he wheedled the errand off some kitchen slave. In any case, there he was with the donkey, panniers laden with parched corn, loaves of bread and rounds of cheese. His charge was to bring the food and go back to his work with the flock. But did he do as he was bid? Of course not. Little shit was off in an eyeblink, looking out for himself. Eliav got word of him far beyond the baggage train, mingling with the troops, pestering them for information. Eliav was none too pleased, and sent me to fetch him. I got up behind him before he knew it. He was bragging away when I caught him, belittling the real fighters who had borne the battle while he was dozing in the hills, or sticking his little cock in some unwary ewe . . .”

  “Don’t,” I interjected. I couldn’t help myself. No one spoke of the Lamp of Israel in such a way. But Shammah just glanced at me, sneering.

  “‘Don’t.’” He pitched his voice into a high whine. “Don’t what? Don’t tell the truth? But you said you wanted the truth. I’m giving it to you. Do you want it or not? Well, then. Shut up and write.” He threw down the citron switch, rubbed his two flat, square thumbs into his eye sockets, inspected the thread of rheum he extracted and smeared it on his tunic. “So, there he is, big-mouthing, pointing over to where the Plishtim champion stood in the valley. ‘See how slow he is?’ he was saying. ‘Did you see him stumble coming down the hill? All that armor is probably weighing him down. Yes, he’s got the height, and he’s well armed, but you could attack him from a distance, you don’t have to meet him hand to hand, on his terms. If you don’t give him a chance to even . . .’ I cut him off there, grabbed him by the ear. I dragged him back to Eliav. I can still hear his whiny little voice—‘What have I done now? I was only asking.’ But Eliav had his measure. He chided him for his black-hearted scheming and his pompous bragging and told him to get on home to his work. But it was too late. Someone had told Shaul about David’s empty boasting, and a messenger came up to say David was wanted in the king’s tent. Eliav thought it would teach David a lesson, and sent him off with a smirk.

  “All right. I’ll confess: We all of us wanted to see him put back in his place. And we all of us underestimated him. David saw his chance and he took it. I think he reckoned that he might not get another one, and that any risk was worth taking to change his miserable little life.”

  Shammah stopped pacing and sat again, heavily, in the chair opposite me. He propped his elbows upon the table and let his chin rest on his hands. I looked up, waiting for him to continue, and found him glaring back at me. I thought, for a moment, that his disgust for me, and for this undertaking, had mastered him, and that he was about to put an end to it. But the story he was telling seemed to have caught him up, despite himself.

  “We all followed behind David to the king’s tent. We thought it a great joke, and so at first did Shaul. When David repeated his boasting right to the king’s own face, Shaul just laughed. How could a shepherd lad untrained to arms fight a professional soldier? Then David launched into a preposterous tale of how he’d slain a lion, grabbed it by the beard and wrenched a stolen sheep out of its jaws. Well, it was true he did have a lion skin, but I’d always assumed he found some dead beast and skinned it and made up all the rest. But it seemed that the king was taken in by the whole thing. David was certainly giving it all he had: ‘The Name saved me from the lion and he will save me from the man,’ he said. I don’t know if Shaul was already a bit touched, or if he was desperate, or if he just didn’t give a shit what happened to my braggart brother. Maybe he thought, if the big man slays him, so what? The slaughter of an unknown shepherd boy would be no great loss to us and no great boast to him who slew him. But Shaul did offer my brother his own armor, so I suppose he thought the lad brave, at least. We had to stifle a laugh, I have to tell you, watching David try to walk in Shaul’s breastplate, which hung down past his skinny knees. When he unstrapped the gear and set it aside, I thought he might use that as an excuse to back out, but no. He took up his shepherd’s staff and went off to the wadi. He picked up a few stones, weighing them in his hand, looking for the densest ones, and skipped off with his leather sling in his hand. The king watched him go. He turned to his commander. ‘Whose son is that boy, Avner?’ Avner shrugged. He said he had no idea. Eliav, Avinadav and I didn’t speak up. We didn’t claim our brother, because we were sure that when Goliath turned up, David would get himself smeared into the sand.

  “So it went on as it usually did. The Plishtim archers lined up, and so did we, with the usual shield banging and insults. Goliath stepped out and called for his man. And there goes little brother, prancing in and out of the line, brandishing his staff. When Goliath saw him, he threw back his massive head and laughed. Well, why wouldn’t he? Does a gnat worry a bear? He yelled out to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come against me with sticks?’ He’d only seen the staff, at that point. He hadn’t noticed the sling. David ran forward, farther out of the line, but still well clear of spear distance. He loaded up a stone and let it fly. It missed, of course. He was too far back. The big man’s voice got angrier then. ‘Come here!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field!’

  “And then David stunned the lot of us. He always had that voice; you’ve heard it, you know what I mean. He called back, as clear as a trumpet: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of Hashem tzva’ot—the lord of armies, the God of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied.’ We were raised in an observant household—we kept the feasts, we did the sacrifices, you know that—but this kind of holy talk, well, not even our father went around spouting out that kind of thing. None of us knew where he came by that style of speech. It was a bit uncanny, to be truthful. I started to feel the hair rise . . .” Shammah’s hand drifted to the back of his neck, remembering. His face had lost its scowl as the memories possessed him. For a few moments, it was as though he’d left me behind in the courtyard. He was no longer sitting there under the citron, conversing unwillingly with a man he disliked. He was far away, a youth in the Wadi Elah, watching with disbelief as his youngest brother rushed headlong toward his destiny.

  “So then the Plishtim started in on their own man. Goading him. ‘Are you going to take that from a weedy boy?’ He’s getting taunted from both hills, and you can see he’s getting more and more rattled. David slings another stone, and Goliath can feel the breeze as it passes. He dodges out of the w
ay of it, and he’s in all that armor, so he stumbles, and everyone laughs at him—his own and ours both. David’s the only one not laughing. He’s in some kind of a state, trumpeting away. . . . ‘This very day the Name will deliver you into my hands’—and more of that style of thing—it just poured out of him—the kind of high-blown words your kind comes out with: ‘All the Earth shall know there is a God in Israel . . .’ Not the kind of thing you expect out of the mouth of a shepherd boy. If the Plishtim had hurled his javelin right then, things might have gone otherwise, but he was still standing there, feet planted, baffled that this loudmouthed little nobody was making a fool of him. He turned around to curse at the men in his own ranks, to shut them up. That’s what did him in, I’m sure of it. The stone from the sling was airborne by the time he looked back toward David, and when he did, it was too late to avoid it. And I have to credit it, David’s aim—or his luck—was perfect. The stone hit right in the forehead”—Shammah raised a beefy hand and laid two fingers on his own brow just between his eyes—“right here, just a hair below the edge of his big bronze helmet. You felt it, even from far off. It was as if you heard it. Smack.”

  He slapped his meaty hands together and tossed his head back, mimicking the instant of impact. “Rock. Bone. Crack. You should have seen his head snap. The helmet flew right off him. The big hulk dropped, just like that, right onto his knees. He groped for his sword. He couldn’t see. The blood was pouring into his eyes—you’ve been to war, you know how scalp wounds bleed. And David hadn’t stopped. Hadn’t even checked his stride. He just kept sprinting forward after the stone, and the Plishtim archers are shooting, but missing him. And he cries out some other thing about Hashem tzva’ot being with us, and that’s all it takes for our young hotheads to break ranks and charge in after him. I heard Avner trying to call them back, cussing and yelling, but it was no good, because they’d been spoiling for this fight for a long time.

  “I ran myself then, following after David. I was catching up to him when he got Goliath. He grabbed the sword hilt right from under his hand. It was almost too heavy for him to lift. He staggered as he tried to raise it, and I thought he was finished. But he found his feet, and grasped the sword, two-fisted, like an ax. He still could barely lift the thing, and it fell under its own weight. Right on that thick neck. Must’ve been sharp, that sword, because the head came off clean. David picked it up by the hair and held it up, so that everyone could see it. Our men took heart then, and plowed through the enemy. That’s how battles turn. The Plishtim scattered and fled, and we pursued them all the way back to the gates of their town, Ekron. When we got back, we looted their abandoned camp.

  “I heard later that David had walked right up to the king with the head still dripping in his hand. He told him his name and whose son he was. Avner wasn’t happy. How would he be? He’d lost control of his men to this little nobody. But of course, he didn’t stay a nobody. Yonatan was all over him, praising his guts and his leadership. And so began all that folly between the two of them. I think that very night, if I had to lay a bet on it. Well, you know what it’s like, when you take your first man. You’re ready for sex—or, maybe, you don’t know.” He looked at me with a mixture of distaste and contempt. “Well, I can tell you this: a normal boy’ll put it anywhere, after that first kill. Girl, hag, mule. And if a prince wants to suck your cock . . .”

  He turned his head aside and spat into the dust.

  “I will not speak of that. But there it was. The days of humble sheepherding were over. Yonatan wouldn’t let him go home, and David surely wasn’t clamoring to get back there. Next thing we knew, he’s the king’s armor bearer. And then someone mentioned that he played the harp. Shaul took to having him play anytime an evil mood seized him, and they say the music brought him relief, for a time. But I don’t know much about all that. David had a gut full of malice toward us, and made sure we were not asked to Shaul’s court. Well, it was no more than our due, I suppose. Later, when Shaul turned on him and made us all outlaws, it was a different story. We had no choice but to join forces with him or be cut down. My brothers and I went on the run with him; he arranged refuge for my mother and father off in Moav, across the Yarden, under the protection of the king there. Well, you know all that. You were with us soon enough. In the end, he saw to it that we survived, and we’ve all made shift to get along with each other through the years since. I don’t say he hasn’t been generous. Since he came to his throne he’s made sure all of us got back what we’d lost on his account, and plenty more, too. But there. I’m sick of talking about him and I’m as parched as the dirt.”

  He called out for water and the boy came running. He did not wait for the boy to pour, but snatched the pitcher and lifted it, letting the cool water run into his mouth and down his chin. When his thirst was slaked he upended the pitcher and let the water spill over his head, then he shook himself like a dog. He laid his hands flat upon the table and pushed himself up. “Get this man his mule,” he ordered the boy, and turned away. I had been dismissed.

  V

  It was an easy ride back in the cool of the evening. The mule was willing and sure-footed, so I sat her at my ease as the stones exhaled the day’s heat and the soft cloak of the sky changed its hues from golden to pink to royal purple. It was late when I finally had to put some leg on her, to urge her up the last steep approach to the town gate. The moon had risen full, bathing the white stones in a cool, pearly luster. The gate was closed of course, and when one of the younger sentries challenged me, I heard his senior officer upbraid him in a low hiss: “Fool! Can’t you see it’s the prophet? Let him pass.”

  The metal of the bolts groaned, and in the dancing light of cressets I saw the youth’s hand tremble as he held the heavy gate. I have never become used to it: the awe that common men have for my kind. I suppose it is because I feel no more than a common man myself. Even less, perhaps. No more than a tool in the hand of an unseen craftsman, something to be used as needed and then cast casually aside.

  But I have come to accept this fearfulness and distance. My own slave, a Hittite boy named Muwat, in my service a full two years, still looks at me sideways. He is a capable youth, nonetheless, skilled not only in meeting my simple needs but also in reading the temper of the household. I have found that the common people, and even, on occasion, those who should know better, such as the king, nurse strange ideas about me. They do not understand that I am given to see only those matters that roil the heavens. They expect me to know everything. Muwat keeps me in credit in this way, his ears open to the gossip in the slaves’ quarters, the stables and the kitchen, where one who knows how to listen can learn a great deal. Most useful of all, because he saw service as a child in the eastern kingdoms, he grew up among eunuchs and does not share the common aversion of most of our young men toward these unfortunates. He has befriended one or two, so from time to time I can learn from him even those private matters that pass in the women’s quarters. As tired as I was that night, I could sense, as Muwat came and went with my bathing water and my bed robe, that he had news for me. He was a timid boy who had come to me from a hard service with a master who did not invite familiarity. I had learned that I would have to tease out his confidences. So when I was clean and robed and he had brought me some bread and dates and a cup of watered wine, I inclined my head toward a stool in the corner. “Sit, Muwat. Pour a drink for yourself and tell me what I need to know this night.”

  He sat, his eyes locked on the floor and his foot tapping nervously. He had not fetched himself a cup, so I got up and got one for him. At this, he shot me a look of confusion from under his long-lashed eyelids. “Come now, Muwat. We are alone here. There is no need to stand on ceremony with me.” Still, he didn’t speak. “What is it? Does it concern the king?” At this, he nodded.

  “Well, perhaps. That is, they say so . . .”

  “Who says so? What do they say?”

  “They say the king is not himself—well, you kn
ow that, of course. But since you left him, the morning before the last, he has not slept. The servants of his bedchamber say he does not come to rest, but paces the corridors. Last night, he visited the concubines and asked for this one and then another and finally a third. But Gholagha—you know him, I think?—he’s the youngest of the eunuchs—reports that he sent each one of them back without . . . well . . . you know . . .” He was blushing now, the flush a spreading stain under his fine skin. He had not lifted his cup, so I pushed it toward him. He took a long swallow. David had always been a sensualist. In the outlaw years, he’d made do with two wives. Ahinoam he’d taken because he was urgent to get an heir and she was a sturdy, uncomplaining girl who could bear the hardships of the outlaw life, and then Avigail, who was a love match. In Hevron, he’d added others. Most of them, like the Princess Maacah of Geshur, for well-founded diplomatic reasons, to seal an alliance, secure a border or bind a tribe. It was only after Avigail’s death that he had, in my view, abandoned continence and embraced excess, adding and subtracting concubines simply because he could, to satiate the lusts of a day or a week.

  “Today, they say, he has been sharp with everyone who has come near to him. He did no work and received no one—he would not even give an audience to Yoav’s messenger from the battlefield. And in the kitchen they say he sent back all his food uneaten. As a result, the hands have had a miserable day of it, the chief cook all out of temper and looking for someone to blame.”

  I raked a hand through my hair. David’s appetites—bedchamber and table—were well-known. As was his hunger for the merest scrap of news from any fighting when he had not been in the heat of it. Also, he was famed for his zealous attentiveness to governance. This kind of disengagement from life was unlike him, and worrisome. As tired as I was, I told Muwat to bring me a fresh tunic. I would go to the king’s quarters. I would use the pretense of carrying greetings from Nizevet, even though no such message had in fact been sent. And even if he would not see me, I thought I might learn something of use there.