The Secret Chord (23 page)

I
n winter, a few days after the child was born, the king sent for me. I stopped short at the door. Batsheva was there, the child nestled sleepily against her breast. I had not expected that.

She had her head down, her back half turned to me. But even from that partial view, I could see that she was, as David had said, a striking woman: creamy skin, a glossy fall of obsidian hair, which she wore unbound and uncovered. Even in her loose robe it was possible to discern long, slender legs, a supple rounding of hips, and generous breasts, against which the baby lay, his thick shock of hair bearing fiery witness to his paternity. When David presented her she looked up, and I took a step backward. Her eyes were unexpected: a luminous blue. Also shocking: despite her tall, full figure, the face that gazed up at me was the face of a child. She was very young.

Awkwardly, not knowing how else to greet her, I asked how she did.

Her voice, when she answered, was the breathy voice of a shy girl, barely audible. “Very well, I thank you. Far better than I have a right.” She gave a swift smile, very brief. But it was as if the sun had come out. A man might do a lot, I thought, to win that smile.

David cleared his throat. “It's her first, you know. She never had one with . . . him. The midwives said they'd never seen a first come so easily. And I know it's not just words. Ahinoam, Avigail, Maacah, Hagit, Eglah, Avital . . .” He counted them off on his fingers, the
wives who had borne him children. “All of them, the first time, long labors. Days, sometimes. But Batsheva . . .” He looked at her and his face softened. “She turned to me at dawn and said she felt the first pain”—so she shared his bed, even in late pregnancy—“and by noontime they handed me my son.” He reached down for the boy. She settled the infant into his large hands, where the baby—a good size for a newborn—suddenly looked rather small. Batsheva's eyes locked with David's for an instant, in the uncomplicated bliss of new parenthood. But then she bit her bottom lip, and his face darkened.

“We—I—asked you to come because I wanted you to see him.” He held out the infant. “See how healthy he is. I—we—we wonder if what . . . you've said, at times, that these prophecies of yours don't always lend themselves to straightforward interpretation. That you see a part, maybe, but not the whole.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “That was how it used to be.” Before the desert visions made everything clear to me.

“What I am asking—what we are asking—is this: Is it certain this boy will die? Is there any room, in what you saw, what you were shown, to give us hope?”

I looked from one to the other of them. Their eyes—dark amber, deep blue—were trained on me like archers' eyes, taking aim at some truth they imagined I held in my heart. I studied the baby in David's hands. Pink-skinned, perfect, his small fists punching the air. I closed my eyes. His arms fell flaccid, spilling out of David's grip. The tiny fists uncurled, the fingers limp, motionless. His skin gray as mortar. Crusts of dried mucus sealed his nostrils, eyelids.

“No hope.”

Batsheva gave a cry and raised her fist to her mouth. David sucked in a breath and clutched the infant to his heart.

“You will not have long to wait. It will be soon.”

The fever rose the following night. It burned him alive for six days. All through that time, David fasted, lying out in the open, on the cold winter ground.

Courtiers, those who cared for him, came to me, begging me to go to him, to tell him to eat and to take shelter, lest he, too, sicken and die. I did not go, knowing it was fruitless. Yoav did try to reason with him, as did Zadok and Aviathar. But he would not listen.

When the baby died on the seventh day, no one dared to bring him word, worried that he might do something mad and terrible, so great had been his grief during the illness. They were standing there, off at a distance from where he lay, debating it, when I arrived. I don't know if he overheard, or whether my presence was enough to open his eyes to the truth.

He ran a dry tongue over cracked lips. “Is the child dead?” he rasped.

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath, and before he had exhaled he was on his feet. “Draw me a bath!” His servants looked at one another, confused. “Now!” he said, brushing the dirt off himself and walking toward the bathhouse. They scurried after him. After bathing, he called for oils to anoint himself, put on fresh linens and went to the tent of the ark, where he prostrated himself. Then he came back to his house and called for Batsheva, I suppose to console her. Later, he ordered a large meal, to which he invited his close counselors.

Yoav sat across from him, clearly perplexed. Finally, he blurted it out, in his blunt soldier's way. “I don't understand you,” he said. “When the child was alive you fasted and wept. Now he's dead, you dry your eyes and feast.” David put down his chicken leg and wiped his mouth. He spoke with the weary air of a man obliged to explain the obvious. “When the child was alive, I thought, Who knows? The Name might have pity on me, so I fasted and prayed that my son might live. Now he's dead, why should I fast? Can fasting bring him back again?” His eyes filled. “I shall go to him, but he shall never come back to me.”

He sent then to have his six living children brought before him, to bring him comfort. The boys were Amnon, Avshalom, Adoniyah,
Shefatiah and Yitraam, and his only daughter, full sister to Avshalom, Tamar. I rose and left the room before they arrived. I could not look at them.

I decided, that night, to leave David's household. I knew too much of what was coming to remain there. I asked if I might take rooms outside the palace, and be at his service at need. So he gave me this house across the wadi, nestled in its old groves of olives and almond. He wanted to raze it and build me something grander, with dressed stone and cedar left over from the materials the king of Tyre had sent him. But I said no. As soon as I walked into these plain rooms, I knew that no new house could suit me better. I knew that the large shutters would keep the rooms cool in the heat of summer and let the sun spill in to warm the whitewashed walls in winter. When Muwat flung open the shutters for the first time, the sun flared on the pink flagstones, worn to a soft sheen by generations of feet. It splashed upward, so that I blinked in the glare. When I opened my eyes, I saw him; dark-haired, bright-eyed, the beautiful boy with the grave, thoughtful face. The promise. The reason.

It was the vision of a moment, but I knew, as certainly as I have ever known, that it was a true vision, and that he would come to this house and stand there, in the window. I have no child of my own flesh, called out of the void by love, or pride, or desire. But I saw that I would have a child of the spirit, mine in heart and soul. That I would serve him, as I served his father, until he grew so great in wisdom that he would not need my counsel, and I could live out my waning days in peace, free from the visions and the pain that attended them.

And I knew I would do it right here, in this house, as I have. As I do.

I
n the month of olive harvest, it was common enough to see strangers on the paths of this mount, carrying staves to strike the boughs and coarse cloth to catch the ripe fruit. I was sitting on the terrace, the outer gate open. The shifting light as the clouds passed across the valley, the silvering of the olives at the noon hour, the glare of the sun on the stones of the city and its changing profile as the work of building went forward—all of this gave me pleasure.

I had a scroll open on the table in front of me, a work of history from Mitzrayim. Since my time among the Plishtim, I had become interested in our neighbors and their gods. But the glyphs of Mitzrayim are difficult, their meanings various and dependent on context. The hot sun on my back and the low hum of the bees were making me too drowsy for the effort needed to follow the text.

I noticed two women climbing the path toward my house. I took them for harvesters, since the trees on the terraces above my house were heavy with fruit. But as they drew nearer I saw that they carried neither stave nor burlap.

The path dwindled to a goat track beyond my house; mine was the last dwelling. I could not think they intended to come to me. There was no call for women of the town to seek me out. Most of them, in truth, would go an hour's walk out of their way to avoid me. Except for Muwat, who handled my simple needs, I lived entirely alone. The press of people around David, with whom I still spent a good part of my time, was more human company than I craved. I retreated to my house for solitude, and few around the king lamented my absence. I
knew well enough that most people sighed with relief when I left the room.

Still, the women approached. I let the scroll close on itself. Their mantles were plain, undyed homespun, drawn down modestly over their brows. They walked easily even though the way becomes steep near to my house, so I took them to be young women. Only as they drew close did I notice that the leather of their sandals was finely worked.

Muwat had gone to the city market, so I had no choice but to greet them myself. Wearily, I pushed myself up from the table and walked to the open gate to ask their business.

And then the taller one addressed me by name, and I knew that breathy, girlish voice, even though I had heard it only once. Like a dissonant chord, her presence struck an uneasy note. Royal women did not leave the city unguarded, dressed in homespun. I mouthed some rote greeting and ushered her inside. She spoke softly to her serving woman, who nodded and remained on the bench in the garden.

Inside the house, she walked to the window, tossing off her borrowed mantle and letting it fall unregarded to the floor. Underneath she wore a fine linen robe, dyed a pale sky blue, subtly embroidered around the hem and sleeves with a thread of darker blue—the color of her eyes—and belted with silver filigree. Her black hair was caught in a thick twist down her back, tied round by a fine silver fillet.

How dare she come here in this way—duplicitous, disguised—clearly without the knowledge of the king. I waited for her to turn or speak, but she did neither.

“I do not think you came all this way to admire the view,” I said coldly.

She turned then. She wore the cringing face of someone who awaits a blow.

“Indeed, Natan, I hardly know why I came.” Her lip trembled, and there was a catch in her voice. “I have no cause to expect kindness
from you . . . of all people.” Her eyes brimmed and tears spilled down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them away.

“Sit down,” I said. The room was sparsely furnished—I preferred it that way—but there was a good couch from the palace that David had sent me as a gift. She took an uncertain step and sat, her spine still very erect even though her shoulders shook. Her entire face—her lovely face—was wet now, and still her eyes welled and overflowed.

“What's happened?” I said, less harshly. “Why have you come to me?”

“I'm carrying another child.”

This was unsurprising news. It was well-known that in the second year of their marriage, the king's ardor toward Batsheva had not waned. Muwat reported the chamber servants' gossip: Batsheva was with the king on every night except for the time of the month when she was forbidden, which was when David did his duty by his several other wives.

“Is that so grievous a thing?” I asked. “It's natural, that you think of the last time. But this is different. This infant will not be victim of divine wrath. You need not fear.”

“I don't fear divine wrath,” she said.

“But you are trembling.”

“I fear you, Natan. And I fear the king.”

I laughed. “Why would
you
fear the king?”

“Why would I
not
fear him?” She looked up, her face suddenly hard. “Do you think I did not fear, dragged from my home in the dark, to be debauched and discarded?”

I regarded her coldly. Easy enough to cry rape, when you are the one who has invited the seduction. Still, I turned away from that fierce gaze, fingering the writing implements on my table as I replied. “And I suppose there was no private place inside your house where you might have bathed, instead of the rooftop directly overlooked by the king's terrace.” My voice dripped with sarcasm. “Of course, you didn't realize. You had no idea you would be seen and admired, invited to
his bed. A bored girl with an absent husband; you never entertained the idea that it would be diverting, to be desired by a king.”

“How could you think . . .” Her voice was low and furious.
“‘Invited'?”
Her full lips compressed into an ungenerous line. “For someone who sees so much, you are so blind! I went up onto that roof
seeking
privacy. Except for my one maid, Uriah's house servants were all of them male. Most were ex-soldiers, young men in his service who had been injured in some way. He took them in and gave them work. You think it was easy, to be in that house and feel their eyes on me, and my husband far away? I needed to do my ritual purification, and I could not clear my thoughts for the prayers when I feared that at any moment I might be spied upon. The roof, the dark—it was the only privacy I had. Or so I thought . . .”

She stared at me, defiantly. And then she dropped her gaze. “Don't think I haven't flayed myself for my mistake. Every day, every single day, I ask myself why I went up there. Do you have any idea what he was like, that night? He used me like some—receptacle. The bruises on my breasts took a month to fade. I was afraid Uriah would come home on leave and see the marks.”

I thought back to that spring, as David's troops mustered without him for the first time, and I had been called to the side of an angry king who had put even Yoav in fear. I recalled my own fear, as I waited for my audience with him that morning. And we were men who had known David, and loved him, almost all our lives. I looked at Batsheva and suddenly I felt as I had throughout that long night after I'd returned from Beit Lehem, when I sat up waiting for some stillborn vision. I knew now why I felt so ill that night. All through that vigil, he had been raping her. And I had let myself call it a seduction. As I looked at her now, I was shamed by my own thoughts. In a way, I, too, had violated her.

“When he bundled me out—tossing me a jewel, as if I were a whore requiring payment—it was over for him, but not for me. I lived every day in fear, knowing my life hung by a spider's thread, waiting
for word of my dishonor to reach Uriah—Uriah, a man for whom honor was everything.” She lifted her chin. Her eyes fixed on some distant point. “Have you ever seen a woman stoned to death, Natan? I have. My father made me watch when I was a girl, so I would know what became of faithless wives. And when my monthly signs didn't come, I thought about that woman, the sound of her moans, her mashed flesh, her shattered bone. . . . At the end of it, she had no face . . .” She drew a hand across her eyes, as if to wipe out the image. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. “And now, I'm guilty for this, too; that all I thought about in those weeks was myself. It was Uriah I should have feared for. I know that now. But how could I think that David would kill him? Who does that, to a loyal and innocent man? And then my son—my baby, my blameless little boy . . .” Her shoulders heaved in another sob. “He suffered, Natan. The fever burned him alive. And I have to stay with the man who caused all this. Sleep in his bed. Try to pretend that he's not a monster . . .”

“The king is
not
a monster. He has failings, as all men do. He did wrong. He has acknowledged it before the people. He repents it. How many kings have the humility to do that? He prays for forgiveness every day. He strives, every day, to be a better man. You must see—”

“I can't see! And neither can you, Natan. You, because you choose to look away from the truth. You let your love for him blind you. But I can't see anything except what he has taken from me. My child. My husband. My own body. Everything, except my life. Because he can. He can do whatever he wants. You are the only one he fears.”

“No. Not me. He fears the Name.”

“And you speak for the Name. I am hanging on to this scrap of breath that is my life, Natan. Hanging on to give it to my child.” Beads of sweat pearled her brow. She was very pale.

“I'll get you some water,” I said, and went out to the garden. I
leaned my forehead against the rough wall of the spring house until the stone grazed my skin. I stood there a long time, castigating myself. I had thought this matter of Uriah was done and over. Now here it was again, with yet another, deeper layer to its evil. A trickle of blood ran down my face. I licked my lips and tasted iron. I stepped back from the wall and fingered the graze. Batsheva's maidservant was standing nearby, staring at me. She reached out and took the pitcher from my hand and bent to fill it.

When she was done I let her pour the cool water into my cupped hands. I washed the blood from my forehead. Then I took the pitcher from her and went back inside. Batsheva was lying on the couch, her face pressed into the pillow. I filled a goblet and set it down on the low table beside her. Her breath was ragged. I sat in the chair by the window and waited. Presently, she pushed herself upright and reached for the water.

“Did you love him? Uriah.”

She paused, considering, her head tilted on her long, slender neck. “I wasn't thinking about love. No one talked of that. I wasn't raised to expect it. I was a child when my father promised me, and I was sent to Uriah's bed soon after I bled the first time. He was a good match. That's what my father said, and I was raised not to question what my father said. I was proud, to be known as the wife of Uriah. He never mistreated me. I mourn his death. Is that love?”

It was my turn to shrug. “How would I know?”

“How would you?”

We sat in silence. Outside, the sun dipped, throwing long shadows across the glossy flagstones. I gazed at the white veins tracing through the pink stone, and all I could see was flesh and gristle; flayed skin and torn sinew.

“You haven't told me why you came here. Why you took this risk.”

“I came to ask . . . to see if you would . . . Natan, I need to know what you see. For this child I'm carrying.” She placed her long fingers protectively over her belly. The light caught the sapphire that gleamed
on her hand. “You said the other one was payment of the blood debt. But what about this one? Will it live?”

I stood up and opened my hands. “It doesn't work like that. I cannot . . .” And then I saw her face—lovely, even now, blotched and red-eyed with weeping. How could I leave her in this pain? In recompense for my misjudgments, I owed her hope, at least.

“I can say that, since I saw so clearly the other death, yet I see nothing for this—”

And then he was there, a beautiful dark-haired little boy, standing by the window, turning to me, his face full of laughter. I had seen him before, the first time I entered this house. Then I had known him for David's son. Now I understood that he was the child of Batsheva, the shapling growing within her.

He had a young eaglet on his wrist, and as he spoke, it walked up his arm and rubbed its head against his face. He turned away, and when he looked back again he was older, a smiling young man, a gold circlet on his brow. There were maps on the table, and he bent over them, pointing at something, then he raised his eyes in a question. The vision dissolved, and I could see through him, to the window beyond. The same tall, arched window, its big wooden shutters thrown open to the view. But the view itself was utterly changed. Where groves should be, houses stood. The city spilled down into the valley and lapped at the very foot of this hill. Far away, on Har Moriah, the sun glinted on the golden capitals of a great white temple . . .

It was my turn to sway. I staggered to the couch and sat down heavily, reaching blindly for the goblet. It was empty. She took it from my shaking hands and filled it, then held it to my lips so that I could drink. I reached a shaking hand tentatively toward her belly. I closed my eyes, and felt the power surge through me.

“He will be king, Batsheva.”

She gasped and brought her fist to her mouth. “But how? How can that be? All those brothers . . . Amnon, almost a man already, and
Avshalom, Adoniyah . . . and then all the younger ones . . .” I saw her tally them in her mind.

“I know.” I could not reveal what else I knew: the desert visions of fratricide, treason, betrayal. “I can't say how this will be, but take comfort. This boy you carry will live and thrive. I have seen him, crowned.”

She got up, pacing. “But how—I don't—it will have to be different, between me and the king. If my son is to sit on the throne, I will need to—”

Her mind was racing. I had meant to bring her comfort, and all I had done was set her into turmoil.

“Batsheva,” I said. I moved toward her and set my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to stand still. Her darting eyes scanned my face. “Let this unfold as it must. Be content to know your son will live. Leave the rest where it belongs. No need to run toward it. It will come to us, soon enough.”