The Secret Chord: A Novel (23 page)

David’s mind became much occupied with the problem, but he had little time to act on it, amid the press of urgent affairs. These were years of bloodshed as all our enemies came against us, hoping to disrupt the new kingdom even as we strove to forge it. Yet they were also fruitful years, when David’s family grew and expanded as befit a king. Avigail’s son, Daniel, arrived soon after the anointing, another cause for feasting and rejoicing. Then Maacah, before a full year in the household, gave birth to a striking baby boy named Avshalom. Later, she bore David his first and only daughter, the radiant child Tamar. There were new wives, too: Hagit, who gave him a son named Adoniyah; Eglah, whose first child was named Yitraam; and Avital, whose boy was called Shefatiah.

I did not have occasion to get to know these later wives, who were acquired to bind the tribes. David made it clear enough that they were honored, and would be made in all ways comfortable, but once he had got an heir on them it seemed to me he paid them little mind. If he wanted a woman’s company, it was still Avigail he sought out, even as her illness took her ever more firmly into its grip. He also spent time in Maacah’s separate house, but it wasn’t clear whether the attraction there was the beautiful Geshurite princess or her infants, or both.

I did go to the women’s quarters, of course, when I had cause to. I went, as always, to visit and consult with Avigail, as far as her waning strength allowed it. And I went reluctantly, at David’s request, about two months after the anointing, to speak on his behalf to Mikhal. He had invited her to his bed on a few occasions in that time, and was most unsatisfied with the outcome.

“She’s changed, Natan,” he confided, the morning after one such encounter. He had called me early, and his face was drawn as if he hadn’t slept. The servants were still bustling about performing their morning duties. Before I replied, I tilted my head in their direction and gave David a look. He came to himself and dismissed them wearily.

“How not?” I said. “It’s been ten years since you were man and wife. And she has been through a great deal—”

He cut me off with a sweep of his hand, not wanting, I think, to listen to a catalog of the grief and loss that his own behavior, in large part, had caused her. “She’s cold. It’s like lying down with a corpse. The first time, I thought, well, as you say, it’s been a long time, she’s suffered . . . I’m not going to force myself on her. I waited a week, two. But it was the same again, the next time, and the next. Limp, ungiving . . . I can’t even get her to look at me, much less . . .” His voice trailed off and he glanced away, embarrassed. “I wouldn’t turn to you, except that Avigail isn’t well, since the birth, and I won’t burden her. So I want you to go to Mikhal and see what she wants. I will give her anything. Short, of course, of . . .” Again, his voice trailed away. I had rarely seen him so awkward. “If it’s her children, for instance—it could be that she misses them. I can see how that would be a heavy thing for a woman. The last thing I need is another man’s children underfoot, resenting the young princes. I won’t risk that kind of thing in my household. You’ll have to be clear with her on that—if I bring her children here she’ll have to have her own house outside the palace.”

I fiddled with a scroll that was open on his table so that I would not have to meet his eyes. “I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said.

“Is that so?” His tone changed. He was suddenly terse. “Well, let me simplify it. I’ll give her a house. I’ll get her children here. I’ll do any reasonable thing. In return, I need her to act like my wife. I need you to find out what will make that happen. Is that simple enough?”

I looked up and held his eyes, which were angry now. I returned his gaze with my own hard stare. But,
eved hamelek,
after a few moments I dropped my head in a nod of compliance. “As you wish,” I said, and waited for him to dismiss me.

She received me, as she was obliged to, but offered me the same silent passivity that the king had described. She looked resolutely at the floor as I launched into a big speech about how David cared for her welfare, was troubled by her apparent unhappiness, and was willing to do whatever it might require to make her content, given the current circumstances. I saw her eyebrow rise at the words “current circumstances.” She made me no reply.

“He says you may send for your children, if you would like.”

At that, she sprang to her feet and glared at me, her eyes narrow. “My children?
My
children? They are Palti’s children, too, and he loves them. Do you think I would strip him of that last comfort, after he has been unmanned and debased? Do you think I would bring them here, to serve as attendants and sycophants to the king’s mewling litter?” She shook her head violently and then drew herself inward, sitting down again and staring at the floor, compressing her lips as if to ensure that no more of her true feelings escaped.

“‘Litter,’ you call it,” I said quietly. “Yet one of those young princes or princesses could be your own child. I know the king greatly desires it. Such a child would be the perfect heir—”

She looked up at me. “Still a herdsman at heart, is he, looking for the perfect ewe on which to get a fatling lamb?”

“Look,” I said. “You’re here, he’s the king. This is your life now. These facts won’t change. Why not make it easier on yourself? Let him give you those things that might provide you some solace. You can neither of you change the past, but you can change this day, and the one after—”

She cut me off with a strained laugh. “
That’s
what passes for wisdom in this court? That’s the best the king’s great prophet can do?” She laughed again, but I could see her eyes fill. I realized then that the only kindness I could do for her was to leave, before her hard-wrought shell cracked open, and all her pain spilled forth.

I went from her room straight to Avigail, and gave her the gist of our exchange. “I don’t know what to tell the king,” I said.

“It’s difficult,” she agreed. “He’s much too vain to grasp it.”

I gave her a sharp look. She smiled. “You are not the only one, Natan, who is allowed to sometimes speak the truth. We may love him and yet not be blind to what he is. I’ve come to understand that he is what he is because of his faults.”

I felt a sudden urge to embrace her. I had a painful premonition of all the empty years ahead, when I would not be able to turn to her for counsel. When I would be alone, with no wise ear to listen to my most private concerns about the king.

She seemed to sense my sadness, and reached for my hand. She took it in hers and patted it reassuringly. She was still mothering me, after all these years. I would miss that, too.

“I’ve observed Mikhal,” she went on. “I no longer think as I did, even a month ago. I do not think David can win back her affections, even if he devoted himself to it. And he won’t do that. It’s not important enough to him. Perhaps that’s all we can hope for—that other great matters will distract him so that he loses interest and lets the poor woman be.”

Not many months later, Avigail lay dying, and I spent many hours at her side, talking, when she had the strength for it, of all the great things that had been done with her help and of the further greatness that lay ahead. One thing we did not speak of, and I was thankful she did not ask. I saw nothing in the future for her sweet young son, good-natured little Daniel, who was often at her side in those days and brought her much joy.

Sure enough, the boy did not live to see his sixth year. He was carried off by a flux. David mourned him grievously. He loved all his children deeply, but Daniel he especially cherished as the living reminder of Avigail. He had favored him after her death, asking for him whenever he had a few moments to spare.

As the small, linen-wrapped body was laid in the earth beside his mother, David’s shoulders shook with sobs. He leaned on the priest Aviathar for support. I remember the oldest boys, Amnon and Avshalom, standing with their father, shifting their weight restlessly from foot to foot. Their eyes were dry. Amnon, who was nearly seven then, looked sullen, angry that he was not the center of attention. Avshalom, Maacah’s son, born just a few months after Daniel, had a smirk on his face as if the proceedings amused him. Well, I thought, they’re only small boys. It’s no remarkable thing if they do not know how to behave on an occasion of such solemnity.

David’s way of dealing with his grief was to look for a problem that would absorb his mind. He threw himself fully into the search for a new capital, poring over maps, conferring with strategists. He fixed on a hilltop redoubt named Yebus. It was a town of some forty-five dunams—only a little larger than Hevron, but more secure and defensible. Set on a low, narrow, arrowhead-shaped spur between the deep wadi of the Kidron and the valley of the cheese makers near Hinnom, it stood right on the border between the lands of the Benyaminites and the Yudaites, and for that reason had caught his notice. It was a long-settled place, and famously impregnable. Yehoshua had tried to take it, and failed. Later, the Benyaminites and Yudaites each had tried to conquer the city, and been rebuffed. This was not a town to fall easily, and could not be taken by one tribe alone.

The Yebusites were Knaanite people, and Hittite refugees had found welcome there when their own kingdom fell to the Sea Peoples. They had offered their skills as builders and warriors to reinforce the Yebusite defenses. Until our tribes had conquered the surrounding lands, the Yebusite king had ruled from there and made it the most important town in the hill country. Because we had not been able to take the city itself, we had come, over time, to accept this foreign enclave in our midst. We lived alongside them, trading in peace.

But now David set his eye on it. I stood by him as he waxed on about its qualities, the foremost, in his mind, being that it had no strong connection with any one of our tribes. In addition, its location on the central ridge put it out of easy reach of Plishtim raids. Though it was far from the main trade routes—the Sea Road on the coast and the King’s Road to the east—it was close enough to the Mountain Spine Road, which connected it to Hevron and Shechem. While the current town huddled on a single spur of the Yudean hills, there was room to expand the settlement in several directions. Furthermore, it had one great asset: a secure water supply, from an elaborately fortified year-round spring, the Gihon.

David ran through all these concrete advantages. And then, as he often did, he set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic. “This is a sacred place, Natan. Melchizedek ruled there, and he was both king and priest. A king should be more than a war leader . . .”

I could see it through his eyes, the rational and the romantic arguments, both. My concern was that we were picking an unnecessary fight with a people who were not our enemies, when we still had adversaries aplenty at our heels. “Are you sure you wish to stir that hive?” I asked. “For if we try, and fail, we will have made an enemy right in the heart of our territories, and at a time when we can ill afford it.”

“Do you ask me this as Natan, or as . . . as . . .” David never seemed to find a name for that nameless voice inside me.

“I speak only as myself.”

“Then have faith. I will not do this lightly. But a town like that—with a secure spring and excellent fortifications, and right on the border of Yudah and Israel—I could scour the Land and not find another. Such a city we could make there, Natan . . .” And he went on, building it in his mind, until some pressing matter called for his attention, and he had to turn reluctantly aside.

Discreetly, David sent around to find any traders who knew the place, or slaves who had been in service there, and had them questioned closely about every aspect of the town, its layout, its defenses, and the habits of its people. Because relations had been peaceful for so long, there were many who knew the town quite well, and were pleased to offer their small share of information in return for the king’s favor.

Sometimes, if the informants were especially knowledgeable, David would see them himself, after administering a stern oath that they not disclose the meeting. I was there for each of these briefings. I think he hoped I might have a vision to tell him how best to frame his assault. But nothing came to me, and sometimes my mind drifted as David delved into tedious details as to how and where livestock was housed, or how exactly the watches on the gates were staffed and timed, and how the fields in the valley floor beyond the walls were irrigated. Seraiah the scribe was also present, noting everything that was said. What I did not know was that every scrap of information was being compiled into a kind of master plan of the city. By the time the year turned again, David was satisfied that he had a full accounting. When, finally, he unrolled the skins that Seraiah had worked on, Yebus lay there before us.

It was a dispiriting sight. David’s informants had described, in detail, the might of the town’s defenses. The walls looked to be unbreachable: powerful fortifications of undressed stone that stood five cubits thick. Nor would a siege be practical. The Yebusites had enjoyed excellent harvests, according to our sources, and their strategic stores of grain and fodder stood full. As for water, the spring was ingeniously defended.

“Well, it has to be,” David mused, running a finger over the marks that showed the spring and its defenses. “It stands outside the walls—as it must, low as it sits there, at the foot of the hill. If they’d brought the wall down to encircle it, they would have laid the lower town open to an attack from above.” So the city walls stopped some seventy-five cubits short of the spring. In peacetime, this was no problem. The water gate stood open and citizens came and went with their waterskins or tall clay vessels. For wartime, the Yebusites had constructed a defensive rampart that ran out to a high tower that overlooked the spring. The rampart offered a measure of cover to water fetchers; from there, the archers on the tower could defend them from attack.

The logical direction of attack was from the north. The mountain, Har Moriah, was unoccupied and overlooked the city. From the south, troops would have to negotiate the steep sides of the Wadi Kidron even before they reached the formidable town walls. David was well advanced planning a massive attack from the north, even though he conceded that it would be costly. But all those plans proved unnecessary.