The Secret Chord Read online

  “Foolish boy. It’s the king’s son Yonatan. He sent word last eve that he would be here.” He grasped me by the shoulders and forced me to look him in the face. “Yonatan loves David. Every man in this camp knows that. More, he is loyal to him. How else do you think we elude Shaul’s relentless hunting, as large a band as we are now become? If Yonatan didn’t risk his neck to bring us word of the king’s spies, we would never be able to keep ahead of the pursuit. Get about your business, and think of this no more.”

  Some months later, we were encamped on the table mountain at Horesh, in the wilderness of Ziph. Unknown to us, Shaul’s spies had tracked us there. Acting on that intelligence, Shaul himself saw an opportunity to entrap us at last, and he set out himself, leading a large force. Yonatan appeared in the camp just in time to warn us. I was with David when he arrived, and he did not send me away, but presented me. To my surprise, Yonatan embraced me, and thanked me for my service. The meeting was brief: the danger was imminent and we all had tasks to do to strike camp and move off swiftly before we became encircled on the mountain. Yonatan and David clasped each other in a farewell embrace, not caring that I stood there as witness. When they separated, Yonatan took David’s shoulders into his hands and held him at arm’s length. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “The hand of my father will never touch you. You are going to be king over Israel and I will be second to you, and even my father, Shaul, knows this is so.”

  As he finished speaking, a shard of ice shivered through me. I was aware of a terrible voice.

  Red runs the sword in the hand of Shaul. The blood is royal.

  I saw their faces turned to me. I saw the avidity of David, the awe of Yonatan.

  Yonatan! Why come ye not to aid your king? Why linger ye in Yavesh, sleeping in the tamarisk shade?

  Then all the breath went out of me and I fell to my knees. I could not hold my head up. It hit the rock floor with a crack. They had to carry me on a litter, still unconscious, when we broke camp. When I awoke, Yonatan was long gone, and every wise man and priest in David’s band had been set to puzzling the meaning of my words.

  He was waiting for me when I awoke, his face haggard. This time, he did not wipe my brow or offer a solicitous draft of water. He was pacing. In a low, affectless voice, he repeated to me the words as I had spoken them. Then he turned to me, glaring.

  “What did you mean? Whose blood did you see on Shaul’s sword? Was it mine? Was it Yonatan’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? You said the words. You must know.”

  “It wasn’t me speaking.” I took a deep breath. Even that small effort made my head scream, and I winced.

  David loomed over me, menacing. He kicked the earth, raising a spray of gravel. Then he picked up a rock from the floor of the cave. I flinched. His face registered my fear, and answered with a sneer of disgust. Then he turned and hurled the stone at the wall. “What good is it, then, this gift of yours? You speak—or words come—about those most dear to me—words of swords and blood. And yet no one can tell me what to make of them.” He clenched his fists and then opened them heavenward in a gesture of supplication. “Why?” It was almost a wail.

  “I don’t know,” I said. And tears rolled down my cheeks. In my weak state, I was powerless to stop them. I hated this feeling, that I was disappointing him. His question—What good is it?—seared me. Why had I left behind my family and come into his service if I could not serve him at his need?

  “Get up,” he said harshly. I rose, unsteady, to my feet. “I’m tired of being the hunted one. Tonight, I will hunt, and you will hunt with me. After dark, be ready.”

  I had no idea what he meant. I dressed warmly; the night was cold. Every movement cost me. I was tired beyond fatigue. I tried to hold my head still, as every movement sent pain pulsing through my jaw and brow as if my head were crunched in a vise. As I waited, the pain slowly ebbed, until I could drift into a fitful doze that must have turned to a deep sleep. When I woke, David’s nephew Avishai, my weapons master, was shaking me. “Come,” he said. “It’s time.” To my surprise, there were no others: just David, Avishai and me, moving through the dark, and at speed, across the table-topped hill. I felt empty and light, and to my surprise was able to keep the pace. On the other side of the hill, I knew, lay the track to the village of Yeshimon. “Where are we going?” I said, but Avishai hushed me with an urgent gesture. When we reached the cliff edge, the dark was graying into the approaching dawn. Below us, at the base of the hill, lay a military encampment, more than a hundred soldiers, all of them fast asleep. I peered through the half-light, looking for a picket line, for sentries on watch, but I could see none. Where were they? Was it a trap?

  David and Avishai moved swift and low, running between bushes. I followed, moving when they moved, stopping when they stopped. When we reached cover, I bent double, retching noiselessly, dry heaves that made the sweat bead on my brow. David stood, listening, waiting to see if any of the sleeping men stirred. Then we moved again, silent and swift, until we were right in among the sleeping forms. My heart was bursting in my chest from fear and exertion. We picked our way through that large force, men prone, men supine, men curled in their cloaks like infants. They lay as if in the grip of some powerful drug, and we moved through them with no more trace than a shadow, or a breeze. And then suddenly David was standing over a large man. He lay sprawled out in a dead sleep, his spear stuck in the ground at his head. A purple cloak covered his body. Although he was an older man his face, even slack-jawed in sleep, was handsome, his beard still full, fair and unsilvered. David looked down, his face a mask, unreadable. Avishai crept up beside him. His face I could read quite plainly. It was lit with the nervous triumph of a hunter who has cornered his prey at last. I knew then that the tall man must be Shaul, our king. Our foe. I began to tremble, violently. All the more so when Avishai spoke. His voice was an urgent whisper, brimming with anger and hate.

  “Let me run him through right here and now, pin his carcass to the dirt.” His eyes glittered. “I won’t have to strike twice.” But David shook his head. “No one can lay hands on the anointed.”

  I spoke then. He will go down to battle and perish.

  David clapped a hand over my mouth. The voice of prophecy did not whisper. Yet none of the sleepers had stirred. Under his breath, David repeated to me what I had said. He gave me a hard look. “Nothing more?” I shook my head. Then he turned back to Avishai. “Take Shaul’s spear. And give me that water jar also. Let’s go.”

  I still, to this day, do not know how we got in and out of that camp unseen. How it was that I spoke prophecy aloud across the body of the sleeping king and yet did not wake him, and all those trained soldiers slept on as if drugged, or enchanted.

  We climbed back up the hill and waited for the sunrise. We had a perfect view of the camp, and of the king where he lay sleeping. As the sky lightened, David pointed out Avner, the famous general, asleep in a sitting position, weathered and craggy as the rock that supported him. As the first rays struck the hilltop above us, David raised his powerful voice and shouted.

  “Avner!”

  The general sprang up with the reflexes of a seasoned fighter, grabbing his spear and his sword in a single fluid motion. “Who dares to raise his voice?” he cried.

  David’s reply dripped with a silky sarcasm. “There’s no one like you in Israel.” He tossed his head, and dropped the unctuous tone. His next words were loud and harsh: “Why don’t you keep watch over your king? Look around! Where is the king’s spear? Where’s his water jar? You know it was right by his head.”

  Shaul scrambled to his feet, reaching in vain for his spear. He scanned the hillside, raising a trembling hand to shelter his eyes from the swiftly rising sun.

  “Is that your voice, my son David?”

  David stepped out from the shelter of the trees, so that Shaul might see him. “It is, my l
ord king.” There was a catch in his voice. That one word, “son,” had undone him. I saw that he struggled for self-mastery. Avishai moved forward, a soldier’s reflex, to shield him—he was a plain target, there on the hilltop, with a hundred trained spearmen, alarmed and confused, gazing up at him. But David extended a firm arm and pushed him back.

  “Why does my lord continue to pursue his servant? What have I done? What wrong am I guilty of, that the king of Israel should come out to seek a single flea? Here is your spear, my king. Let one of your men come up here and get it. For the Name delivered you to me this night, yet I would not raise a hand against you. Just as I valued your life, so may the Name value mine, and may he rescue me from all this strife.”

  Shaul cried out then. “I am in the wrong. I have been a fool. Come back, my son David . . .”

  David’s hands clenched at his side. “He is calling me his son.” His voice sounded young and plaintive. I opened my mouth to say, “Go down to him. You wanted reconciliation, and now he offers it. Go down.” But the words that formed in my mind were not the words that uttered from my lips. I could not force the breath to shape itself into my thought. Instead, my tongue lapped helplessly—sibilant and fricative sounds made against my will, carrying another message entirely.

  Flee this land. Or surely you will perish at his hands.

  David looked from me to the king, anguish on his face. A soldier of Shaul’s guard was already climbing the hill, coming toward us to reclaim the king’s possessions. Avishai grasped David’s arm. “You brought the prophet with us,” he hissed urgently. “Heed him.” David raised the king’s spear then, and hurled it, so that it stuck the earth just ahead of the young soldier. He left the water jar where it lay on the ground. Then he turned and ran, and we followed.

  By midmorning, we were on the road to the coast, leaving the lands of Yudah. Whether it was the words I had uttered, or the voice of his own heart, David made his decision. He could not put his trust in Shaul, unstable as he had become. That left us only one place to seek refuge where Shaul could not pursue us. We were on our way to Gath, to offer service to Achish, the Plishtim seren of that city and its surrounding territories, who had been our bane and enemy.

  Many blamed us, in those days. Some blame us still. But those same words that had cost my father his life still ruled David’s actions: Whatever it takes. What was necessary.

  And so we left the hill country, heading east into the flat lands of the Plishtim along the Great Sea. It was a weary, footsore journey. When I felt the hot sea breeze on my face, it recalled to me the briny scent of my childhood. My heart should have lifted, but instead a great gloom settled on me. No man—not even a hunted outlaw—walks willingly to become a vassal of his most bitter foe.

  In return for David’s promise of service, the seren of Gath allowed us to settle in an old fortress within the town of Ziklag. David and those others with wives and families all lived there, while single men were billeted with Plishtim families nearby. Though we took most of our meals together at the fortress, I lodged at night in the home of a prosperous ironsmith who supplied most of the seren’s weaponry. It is a hard lesson, to accept refuge in the home of those you have been raised to despise. Yet the family I lodged with was kindly, and the other single men grudgingly admitted the same. Though they could have no cause to welcome us—unkempt strangers—they showed us no ill will. In time, I became ashamed of the baseless hatred I had harbored for these people.

  I found it most difficult, at first, to live among idolators, averting my eyes from the strange bird-headed statues that seemed to stare from every crevice and nook. To be sure, many of our own people kept the old house idols, even as they were castigated for it by the priests. But our people, I think, kept them as sentimental decorations, mementos of a past time. Few really believed they held any power. The Plishtim, on the other hand, revered these things. I saw this reverence plain when I went to their temple. One time only. I made myself go there. A man like me, held safe in the fist of a jealous God, has nothing to fear from idols and should understand their power over his foes. Or so I told myself.

  To my surprise, I found myself strangely moved by their rituals. Are we not all of us thankful for the soft, soaking rains that bring the harvest, and for the golden ears of ripening grain? We all fear the power of the lightning that rends the heavens. If they call these things Dagon or Baal, what of it? Elohim hayyim, our one living God, who knows all, must know that the thanks and the awe belong to him. Can it matter so much to him that some people need a statue in order to pray? These questions troubled my sleep. I did not visit their temple again.

  My room in the ironsmith’s home was finer than any I had known, certainly better than the caves and tents of our fugitive years. The smith’s young wife was very beautiful, once one got used to the strange artifices that were the fashion among them. She did not hide her hair, for instance, but wore it in a most unnatural arrangement: a shoulder-length fall of tight, tiny braids. Her eyes she painted with heavy lines of kohl and she dyed her lips a distracting red. You could tell where she was by the strong, flowery perfume she wore.

  The main room of the house was a columned salon built around a pebble hearth where the smith’s friends would gather for drinking parties. They preferred spirit liquor, which they drank in honor of their grain idol, Dagon. At first, I found the searing drink too harsh for the palate of a winemaker’s son. But in time I came to crave—and require—the oblivion it brought me.

  For these were bitter seasons of lies and killing, by which we earned our ignominious keep. Shaul did not pursue us into the Plishtim lands. He did not have the means to engage Achish on his home ground. So, in return for our safe haven, David made many raids in the name of the Plishtim seren. The raids were brutal and served no high purpose other than to ingratiate us with Achish, who supposed that we raided our own people. But David was too shrewd—and too loyal—to do that. Instead, he plundered the outlying settlements of the Amalekites and the Geshurites and lied to Achish about where the loot came from.

  These lies had a cascade of ill consequences. To conceal our duplicity, David commanded that we leave no one alive in the sacked villages to tell what we had done. These were ugly, cruel, asymmetric fights. We were well-armed and seasoned soldiers; the villagers were simple herdsmen and farmers, often defending themselves only with scythes and hoes.

  On one searing day I fought beside David as he cut down a man who had confronted him bravely—the village headman, so it seemed. There was something in the decisive, almost casual way that David slew him, something in the way the man fell, his face registering surprise rather than fear or panic—and then I saw the boy, struggling in the grip of his howling mother. A boy of the age I had been when David took my father’s life with just the same detachment.

  Bile rose in my throat. Despair, like a smothering fall of earth, crushed me. As David turned and moved toward the boy and his mother, I cried out.

  “Don’t do it!”

  David turned for a moment, his expression perplexed, but then he moved like a lynx and in two sword thrusts dispatched the woman and her child. He turned back to me and lifted his shoulders. “It was necessary. We can’t leave any alive. You know that.” And then he turned away, moving off in search of his next kill.

  I stood there in the swirling dust, staring at the body of the boy. He’d fallen against his mother, his hand open on the dirt as if reaching for her face. The sobs that convulsed me were unstoppable, a spring in spate. I could barely breathe. These were the tears I’d never shed for my own father, the grief that vision’s fierce grip had torn away from me. I went and knelt by the boy, my hand on his head. Others of our band passed me. Some paused a moment to see if I was injured. After a summing look, they moved on to the chore of killing until everyone was dead.

  It didn’t take long. It never did. I made no move to rise when David, the spoils loaded, gave the command to move out. It
was Avishai who raised me up and set me on a plundered mule at the rear of the baggage train. When we arrived at my billet, the armorer’s servant waited, as always, with hot water, fresh clothing and a beautifully decorated pottery crater brimming with grain liquor.

  I drank it down, and signaled for another. I drank that night till I lost myself, and with the Plishtim liquor, it did not take much. Soon, it became a habit. I would take a crater before we set out, to numb myself, and then on our return I would down as much as it took to secure oblivion. But the pain for my father’s death stayed raw, as if the calendar on my mourning had started on that day, in that foreigners’ village, far from my own home and kin.

  Perhaps it was the dulling liquor that explains why, for all the injustices I witnessed—and, yes, had a part in—my inner voice never spoke up again against any of it. Not the old woman burned alive in her hut. Not the infant, dead with one of our warrior’s boot prints mashed into his tender flesh. Sometimes, I would kneel in the blood and the smoke, exhausted and retching, hoping that the cramp in my gut was a prelude to vision. Hoping that the roar of heaven would issue from my mouth and decry what we had done, that divine wrath would cleave me apart and leave me there among the dismembered dead. But it never happened. It seemed that Hashem tzva’ot—the lord of armies—tolerated this butchery. Whatever it takes. What was necessary. I had no visions at all during that time, and I had begun to doubt my own oracle. I could not see any road ahead that would lead David from this shameful exile to the mighty throne and the glorious destiny I had foretold for him.

  When David brought the spoil—the herds and trade goods we plundered—to Achish, he would tell the king that we had raided our own tribes in the Negev. In secret, though, he sent a portion of the spoil back to Yudah, to those he knew to be friends, to elders whose goodwill he hoped to earn and to all those places where our band had roamed and been furnished with supplies. Such was his cunning, and by year’s end, Achish trusted him. As far as he knew, David’s rift with his own people was total, and he had aroused their hatred. Achish believed that David would be his vassal forever.