Michal
Authors: Jill Eileen Smith
Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #Historical, #Romance, #General
M
ICHAL
T
HE
W
IVES
of
K
ING
D
AVID
,
BOOK
1
M
ICHAL
A NOVEL
Jill Eileen Smith
© 2009 by Jill Eileen Smith
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Jill Eileen, 1958–
Michal : a novel / Jill Eileen Smith.
p. cm. — (The wives of King David ; 1)
ISBN 978-0-8007-3320-9 (pbk.)
1. Michal (Biblical figure)—Fiction. 2. David, King of Israel—Fiction. 3. Bible.
O.T.—History of Biblical events—Fiction. 4. Women in the Bible—Fiction. 5.
Queens—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.M58838M53 2009
813'.6—dc22 2008041193
Scripture is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearance of certain historical figures is therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Contents
And so it was, whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David would take a harp and play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him.
1 Samuel 16:23
Now Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.
1 Samuel 18:20
Gibeah, 1023 BC
Michal ducked as a shard of pottery soared past her head. She took a step backward into the shadowed hall, gripping the stone wall for support.
“No! Please! Not my alabaster vase!”
Michal stiffened at her mother’s shrill voice. She crept forward and looked around the heavy wooden door into the battlefield of her mother’s spacious bedchamber.
Her father, the king of Israel, held the priceless Egyptian treasure above his head, his gaze taunting.
“Please, Saul!” Her mother rushed at him, her sheer robe drooping from one shoulder. She gripped the vase, trying to wrestle it from his grasp.
Michal’s breath caught. Had her mother lost her mind?
She had to create a diversion. Get her father out of this room. Or pull her mother away before she died trying to protect that silly pottery collection.
“Give—me—my—vase!”
Her father’s eerie laughter followed. Fabric ripped as he yanked her mother forward by her tunic. She gripped the vase hard. Snatched it from his grasp. A guttural sound came from his throat. He heaved her across the blue tile, and the vase shattered beneath her.
Her mother’s screams faded.
Silence settled over the room.
Michal cowered, fingernails digging at the mortar between the stones.
Her father sank to his knees, face cupped between both hands. Soft weeping came from the corner where her mother lay. A moment passed.
Darting a quick look at her father, Michal hurried to her mother’s side. “Are you all right, Mother?” She noted a jagged cut on her mother’s arm. “You’re bleeding.”
“My vase . . .”
Was that all she could think about? “We’ll get a new vase, Mother.” Never mind that the urn had been in her mother’s family since the exodus, dating back several centuries.
“Guards!” Michal called out, hoping one of the cowards was within hearing distance.
Her father’s piercing wail startled her, followed by deep, throaty groans as he pushed his purple-draped body up from the floor. Dark, smoldering rage burned in the abyss of his gray eyes.
Michal tugged on her mother’s arm, bending to whisper in her ear. “Come, Mother. Let’s go!”
Her mother clutched a pottery shard to her chest. “I cannot.”
Michal gritted her teeth, wishing she could fly away like a bird. To somewhere far from Gibeah and her father’s unpredictable wrath.
“I’ll get Jonathan,” she said. Her brother was the only person who could control the king when he got like this. More importantly, her brother could issue the command to send for the singer.
David.
The thought of him fluttered her stomach.
“Come here, Daughter.”
She stared at her father in silence, his glare pinning her feet to the floor.
“I won’t hurt you.”
She’d heard the words before, their promise disappearing like water through shifting sand. Michal held her tongue, surprised at how calm she felt. After six months of putting up with her father’s changing moods, maybe she was finally figuring out how to manage him. Though staying out of his way seemed like the wisest option.
She took one step, then whirled about and dashed to the door. On the third step, she felt her father’s grip on her forearm. “Let me go!”
He yanked her to his chest. “Do you think you can outrun a warrior, Daughter?” His fingers dug into her flesh.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me!” With tears in her eyes, she writhed to get free. “Why, Father? Why do you do this?” She winced at the bruise he was giving her, hating him.
Her mother’s weeping grew to loud wails.
Michal felt her father’s fingers slowly release her arm.
“I shouldn’t have . . .” With a wounded look on his face, he glanced about the room. One hand lifted to his temple as he sank to the floor again. Moaning, he dug both hands into his shoulder-length hair.
Michal resisted the urge to kick him and beat him with her fists. Instead, she drew in a calming breath and rested a hand on top of her father’s head, brushing the golden crown. “Don’t worry, Father. The harpist will come soon, and you will be well.”
When he didn’t respond, she slipped from the room, disgust and despair mingling in her heart.
Michal rushed along the cobbled stones, then stopped abruptly in front of a guard. “Joash, get Marta to help my mother. She’s hurt.” The guard hurried away, and Michal ran to the courtyard, where Jonathan sat with her brothers Abinadab and Malchishua, rubbing oil into their leather breastplates. “You must come at once, Jonathan.” She bent forward, dragging in a breath of air. “The demons are after Father again.”
Jonathan dropped the oilcloth and shield onto the stone bench and stood. “Tell me quickly, what has he done?”
Michal blurted out the scene in her mother’s chambers, her words tumbling on top of one another. Her brother’s left brow hiked up a notch, and his dark brown beard moved with the clenched muscle in his jaw.
“He’s getting worse,” she said, falling into step at Jonathan’s side. His long legs carried him faster than she could keep up. “What are we going to do?” She hated the whiny quality her voice took on when she panicked, but she was grateful that Jonathan never seemed to notice.