The Secret Chord: A Novel (19 page)

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I
t was a lovely tree, old and wind sculpted. Its generous canopy had been pushed eastward by the hard, hot gusts from the western desert, so that its trunk curved out over the newly turned soil and extended its largest branches like a pair of sheltering arms. The fine sprays of foliage slid about in the afternoon breeze, amplifying each breath of air.

The four graves were small. They’d burned the noisome remains to clean ash before interment on this hilltop. For a long time, David stood gazing at the mounds of yellow earth and white stone. Finally, he sank down, resting his back against the tamarisk’s rough trunk. We had made the long journey north and west because David said he wanted to see for himself the burial place that I had described in my vision. At first, I wondered if he doubted me. I was not unduly troubled. For I knew that we would find the place, just as I had seen it.

As the sun dipped into the western ridge, the oval pool of shade stretched and lengthened. I studied his face, gaunt from fasting, yet lit from within by some deep source of energy. He had one of the small harps—he had carried it up the hill himself, slung across his back. In the last golden light of that day, he set it between his knees and sang “The Song of the Bow.” When he got to the verse of Yonatan, tears spilled down his cheeks. Yet his voice did not waver, and he held the last sweet note long and pure. Then he stood, and we walked back down through the gathering dusk to the town of Yavesh.

The men there had long memories. They remembered that Shaul fought his first great battle as king for them. Before madness, before Shmuel’s rejection, at the dawn of his power, he saved their town from the tyrant who threatened to sack it and gouge out the right eye of each of its defenders. The men of Yavesh did not forget this. When they learned that the Plishtim had severed Shaul’s head, and that of his sons—Yonatan and two of his younger brothers—and impaled the desecrated torsos on the walls of Beit She’an, they resolved to repay their debt. They went by night and reclaimed the rotting corpses and buried the cremated remains with honor under the tamarisk upon the hillside.

David entered Yavesh with a train of spoil from the Ziklag years. He bestowed it on the men of the town who had led the raid. “One day,” he said to me, “when I can, I will bring the remains home to Shaul’s own lands, and give them a royal burial.” Then we went back south, crossed the Yarden River and traveled east to Hevron. The town opened its gates to David as to a long-expected, much-beloved son. They crowned him king of Yudah as soon as the mourning rites were completed. It was done with little ceremony, because we all of us knew there was little, as yet, to celebrate. We were ravaged by the losses at Gilboa, and as disunited as ever.

They gave us the best house in the city, and there we waited to learn how Avner would answer David’s crowning. During those weeks, David’s first son was born. On the eighth day, David held him in his arms as our priest, Aviathar, marked him with the sign of our covenant. The look on David’s face as he held that tiny infant was something I had never witnessed before. His expression conveyed a range of emotions that I hadn’t realized one man could feel all in the same instant. There was the wide-eyed avidity that I’d seen in the heat of battle, but coupled now with tenderness. There was, also, the transfiguring awe and wonder that I had glimpsed in his face when he prayed. His long, shapely hands cradled and caressed that child as if it were valuable as solid gold, yet fragile as a moth wing. As he held up the boy before the crowd, he was laughing and crying at the same time. I looked at the red, wrinkled, squalling infant, and tried to see what David saw, to feel what he felt. But it was no use. Those emotions were opaque to me. This, I thought, is what real love must be, and I will never feel it.

Being a father, having an heir, seemed to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been a vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy, whom he had named Amnon, crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been an engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glittered ahead into centuries. It’s one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it.

The timing for this happy transformation was ripe, as the hard matter of Avner stood before us. Shaul’s general had seen to his own survival on Har HaGilboa. No one seemed to know quite how he had escaped uninjured, or why he had not been at the side of his king at the battle’s deadly climax. They did not whisper “treason”—perhaps they dared not. But by some craft or stratagem, that sinewy old trouper had saved his own skin and lived to gather the frayed threads of Shaul’s defeated army into his own hands.

Avner had lived too long and become too canny to claim the crown of Israel for himself. Instead, he propped Shaul’s last living son upon the throne, making clear enough that this was a gesture only. The Plishtim had killed all of Shaul’s sons save this one, Ish Boshet. He had not been at the battle, because he was no warrior. From birth, Ish Boshet had seemed like a foundling among that family of tall, handsome boys and girls. He was slow-witted from some mishap in the birthing tent, or so the women said. He hovered at the edges of the family, never regarded with anything more than pity. When word came to us that Avner had taken Shaul’s favorite concubine to bed, David was in counsel with Yoav. The two of them were incensed. “He might as well have set the crown upon his own head,” David said, pounding his fist upon the arm of his chair. “That woman is Ish Boshet’s, by law. Avner is brash, to throw down such an insult as that. Even Ish Boshet might have been moved to answer it.”

“Ish Boshet?” Yoav said dismissively. “What has Ish Boshet? A name, and you can’t wield a name. You think he would confront Avner? Avner would crush him if he moved a finger. Avner has the remnant army in his hand. And Avner does nothing lightly. He has done this to show that Ish Boshet is no more than his glorified hostage.”

“Well, if Ish Boshet won’t answer the insult, I will,” David said. “I won’t have the king’s house belittled in this way.” Yoav looked gratified. He had reason to wish ill to Avner, and any sign of David’s disfavor in that direction brought him satisfaction.

We were braced for war, and war came. Not all-out war, as one people might wage who seek to expunge another. This was tribal in-fighting: a probing, to see where the power lay. I think Avner knew already that David would prevail. He knew David, and his gifts, better than anybody. He had relied upon him in war. He had pursued him fruitlessly as an outlaw. If he couldn’t put an end to David when he was on the run and poorly armed, he could hardly expect to do so now, with all the men of Yudah rallied to his banner. I believed that Avner meant to position himself the better to negotiate terms from a place of strength. He was not willing to give up the dominance he enjoyed as Shaul’s right hand. For David’s part, he had no great personal enmity toward Avner, the man who led him from obscurity to greatness on the day he held Goliath’s bleeding head in his fist. He knew that Avner’s pursuit throughout the exile years was Shaul’s doing. So the battles we fought were enacted in set-piece engagements. Our young warriors went off to these skirmishes high hearted, as if to contests rather than to mortal combat.

It might have been resolved with far less loss of life were it not for Yoav. He and I had never been close. He was an earthy, practical man who distrusted what he could not touch or smell. He mistrusted my visions and deplored the fact that David set such store in them. Also, I believe, he was jealous of our intimacy, feeling perhaps that I usurped the intimacy that should have been his, as David’s nephew and blood kin. For my part, I remembered the cold-eyed youth who had thrown me against the wall in the corridor of my father’s house, and who had raised his spear at me the next day, ready to run me through. Yet I knew he loved David with a fighting man’s intense, to-the-death affection and loyalty. And I believe he credited me with similar feelings. Moreover, he had seen the use in my predictions, and even though he set no store in uncanny things, he was soldier enough to value whatever weapon came to hand. So though there was no warmth between us, we dealt civilly enough with each other.

But I don’t think he would have come to me in the matter of Avner were it not for his younger brother Avishai. Avishai was a hotheaded warrior to whom violence came as naturally as breath, but even so, we had forged an unlikely friendship. He had been my weapons instructor when I first joined David’s band, and we were close in age. Avishai believed that my foresight had saved David the night we surprised Shaul in his encampment. It was Avishai who urged Yoav to come to me for counsel, hoping that he might enlist me to put his case to David.

But it came hard to Yoav to solicit my help. I was in my chamber, after meat, when Muwat, rather wide-eyed, said Yoav was at the door, seeking a word with me. Of course, I bade him enter, and set my servant to pour the wine. I invited Yoav to sit, but he paced instead between the window and the door as he gulped his wine in two long swallows. I nodded at the boy to pour more, then I inclined my head, indicating that he should leave us. Perhaps, I thought, Yoav would more readily speak his mind if the two of us were alone.

He was looking out the window when he finally spoke. The words poured out in a rush, without preamble. “My brother trusts you. He told me to seek your counsel. Once the two kingdoms of Yudah and Israel reconcile and are united, there can be but one general in chief. Avner’s claim is strong. He’s led a great army, not merely a band of outlaws, and in war, not just raiding parties. He’s got all Israel in his hand. If he delivers it, if he’s the one to broker peace, David will be deep in his debt.” He turned then, and stared at me, his brow compressed. “Will the king choose him over me?”

I spread my hands. “We have not spoken of it.”

“But what do you think? What do you . . . see?”

“If you mean have I
fore
seen anything to the purpose, no, I have not. What I see, as an ordinary court observer, is that you are the king’s nephew, and his trusted general. Furthermore, there is no one David relies on more, in military matters, than you and your brothers. And you’re the only blood kin he cares for. He has told me that when he was a child, your mother was the only one of his siblings who showed him any affection or regard. Avishai is skilled at arms and fearless and Asahel is the swiftest runner in the army. David relies on all of you.”

“But is it enough? Will it serve?” He was pacing again. “Avner has all Israel behind his banner.”

“So he wishes us to think. But Avner is old,” I said. “That is the obverse side to all his experience. He is old enough to be your father.”

“He doesn’t act so. He doesn’t fight so.”

“Really? Then why was he not at his king’s side on Har HaGilboa?” I thought of Avner as I had seen him in the predawn gloom, asleep at his post as Avishai urged David to let him kill Shaul.

“You think his loyalty to Shaul was in doubt?” Yoav’s brow unknotted, his eyebrows raised. He had not thought of this. Now I could see him savoring the idea. “Does David see it so?”

I lifted my shoulders and spread my hands. “I do not know. I do not counsel him in military matters.” I allowed myself a wry smile. “Based on my fighting skills, I am hardly in a position to do so.” Yoav returned my grin, picked up the wine jug and refilled his cup. “But I
will
counsel you, since you have asked,” I said. “Go to David. Put this matter to him directly. Better, surely, to know his thoughts than to live with this festering unease.”

“Perhaps,” he said, running a finger around the rim of his cup. “Perhaps you’re right.”

But in the end, he did not do so. Instead, he continued to thresh the matter privately with his brothers Avishai and Asahel. To say these three were close does not do the matter justice. They had shared more than a womb. They were knit together by the rind of scar tissue that comes after long, bloody service. If battle makes men brothers, then these three were twice bound, each ingrained with the habit of vigilantly watching the backs of the others. And that, I believe, led to the events at the battle of the Pool of Givon.

It should have been another in the series of set-piece contests of arms in that season of feints between the men of Israel and the men of Yudah. As with all such encounters, the rules of engagement were agreed in advance. The youths went out to meet one another in even numbers. This time, there were to be just a dozen youths as combatants on each side. Any supporters who came with them—officers, armorers—understood that they were not to engage in the fight. Injuries were the common outcome of these things; one fought one’s opponent to land a telling blow; one did not seek his death.

They began to fight with short swords, and then a cry went up: a youth had fallen dead. Someone called out that the youth had yielded, and that his opponent should have spared him. I do not know even today the truth of the matter, so lost was the spark in the conflagration that ensued. Both sides ignited, and the blood lust rose in all the young men, until they were laying into one another brutally and falling from lethal blows.

In the mayhem, I suppose Asahel saw his chance to do his brother service. That, or some crazed, incontinent rage seized him, and he set off to attack Avner. Avner had come to the pool to watch and direct his men, not to fight. He was both unarmed and unarmored. When he divined that a young warrior had singled him out and was bearing down upon him, he grabbed a spear from the hand of the nearest man, and ran. Asahel rounded the pool, easily closing the distance between them. Avner had an old leg injury that had knit awry, which made his gait ungainly. He knew that the youth would soon overtake him. He called out over his shoulder, saying he had no wish to fight. But Asahel kept coming, closing in. So Avner, with the wiles of a veteran, turned the younger man’s own gift of speed against him. As Asahel, at a full sprint, closed the last few steps between them, Avner suddenly stopped dead. He braced the point of his spear hard into the ground before him, positioned at a low angle, and let Asahel’s own momentum propel him into the hind end of the shaft. Asahel, unable to check his onrushing momentum, ran himself right through. He was stuck like a boar. Still, he reached out for Avner and kept coming on a last few steps. Avner took a step back, out of his reach. Asahel stood there for a long moment, before his knees buckled and he dropped.