Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) (23 page)

“Welcome to Ashdod, Delilah.”

He led me through flame-lit streets, and above us, the sun had descended in pink and yellow bands across the deep purple horizon. We walked without speaking, spying on families eating around low tables with flickering oil lamps, past quiet shops with tools resting on tables and mice scampering through straw on the floor and great fat cats leaping after them. Dogs trotted through the streets, whining when they saw us, hoping for a treat. A boy leaned out of a window, whistling, and his dog bounded past us. The boy’s mother stood at the door to let the dog in, then shut the door behind him, closing her home for the night.

These were wonders I had never seen.

“It is a peaceful city,” I said, sighing. Lord Marcos kissed me on the top of my head, and we walked on.

“This is my home.”

I had seen it from a great distance; now I stood in its shadow, dwarfed by its size, sand-brown bricks rising up before me, windows set in the walls higher up than three men stacked head to feet. Above the door, nothing. For almost two years now I had lived in a temple, where the main door bore an inscription that welcomed all men in. “Enter and enjoy,” it read, or that is what the other women told me, but I had hoped they were wrong. That would have made us harlots, not priestesses.

His door had no inscription. He was a free man.

He pushed open the double wooden doors and bade me to enter.

Crossing the threshold, I saw a mosaic tile floor of blue and white, images of women and gazelles, and three whitewashed columns along each side of the home. On the back wall was a staircase to the upper chambers, and low tables stood behind the columns.

“Citizens wait here for me to attend them,” Marcos said.

“Where is your throne?”

He laughed at me.

I frowned. “You are the ruler of the city.”

“The five lords rule with intellect, not force or fear.” He walked to the stairs. I hesitated. “Come.”

I had never been allowed upstairs as a girl, and at the temple, I had never wanted to go up the stairs. Everyone else lived above me, and things happened above me that I did not like or could not be a part of. I was not a girl who climbed stairs with men, even men like Marcos.

“Delilah. It’s all right. Come and join me.”

I took a step forward.

At the bottom of the stairs, he held one hand out to me.

He was a gentle man.

Always, he held out his hand for me. I climbed those stairs many times. My life settled into a comfortable routine—a life without fear, a strange delight. I returned to the temple before dawn and returned to Marcos’s home before the sun drifted away completely. Hannibal did not mind that I no longer entertained Marcos at the temple. Marcos made generous offerings to Dagon every week, even better offerings than in the past. Hannibal was pleased enough to say nothing.

Marcos was busy with men who had urgent business. Tonight he saw to it that I was comfortable in his chambers, then went below to attend them. I looked around me, a foreigner in this room without him. His bed was empty, the pallet resting on the floor, draperies around it to keep the pests out in the summer. The windows brought in the strong salty summer breezes from the sea.

A dressing table stood against the wall, with a stool, and a table by the bed with lion heads on each corner, for trays of refreshment. A lovely, perfect room that no woman could find fault with. Marcos had even purchased a jar of exquisite perfume for me. It was a luxury I had never known. With Marcos, life itself had become a wonderful luxury.

When Marcos returned, I had a question. I had always had this question, but until tonight, I did not have the courage to ask. His love was making me bold.

“Why do men divorce their wives?”

Marcos shrugged and began removing his sash. “Do you mean, ‘Why did you divorce your wife?’”

“Was she no longer attractive?”

He draped his sash across the foot of the bed. “She was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known.”

His answer did not make me feel good.

“Was she barren?”

He was removing his robe. I should have stood to help him, but I was afraid he would stop talking if I came near.

“I don’t know. I stopped lying with her years before the divorce.”

“But you said she was beautiful!”

“Delilah, whatever you may think of men, we are a bit more complex than you realize. A beautiful woman is just as likely to displease a man as an ugly woman. Maybe even more so.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t. Whatever has happened to you in the past, whatever behavior in themselves men have excused on account of your beauty, they were wrong. If a man claims he was compelled to hurt you, he is either lying or no man at all.”

He was in his linen robe now and nothing else. I stood to help him remove it. He shook his head no and got into bed with a sigh.

I wanted to say many things to him just then. I did not want him to be mad at me, but I was not sure this was anger.

Without deceit, I had nothing to say, so I disrobed and lay beside him. An hour or more passed as I waited for him to touch me. When he did, I turned my body into his and did not resist him. That was all the truth I was capable of.

We passed most all our evenings in this chamber or on the beach, watching the waves break and little crabs scurrying for their dinner. In the distance, birds flew straight at the water, diving below, then surfacing to float effortlessly. There were dancers, acrobats even, in the market on warm nights, but these birds were the performers I preferred. Marcos, too, I think, was glad to be away from the city, away from the problems and accusations and pleadings of the citizens.

Tonight was such a night. We sat on the sand, the day’s heat keeping it warm though the sun was setting in a blaze of yellow and orange. Brilliant white clouds reflected the last of its rays. I had served as Marcos’s consort for a full year now.

He watched the birds at the horizon. “Do you ever wonder if all of this”—and here he gestured to the world around him—“is all there is?”

“But my love, you have everything! Wealth. Passion. Even power. How could that not be enough? How could you wonder if there is anything else? What else could there be?” I was breathing rapidly, my nostrils stinging from the effort. I wanted to know what he would say.

“Is it enough for you?” he asked, with a steady gaze that made me doubt myself. This must be how he ruled the citizens.

“Nothing is truly my own. I cannot say it is enough, because nothing is mine. I was made your consort, not your wife.”

I stood without grace, my chest still rising and falling.

“It will not always be like this, Delilah.”

I turned to him with a shudder. “Please do not send me away for speaking like that. I am sorry. I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve much more.”

That summer passed without any more frightening words. We drank of love, and I grew to know his body, and his heart, so much better than my own. Slowly, this man I had once claimed no desire for, now claimed all my desire. In him, I knew my place, my home, my purpose. I did not fail him. Even when I was weak, he showed me how to be strong. When I was sad and could not explain why, he comforted me with walks, and love, and tenderness that left me breathless. He kissed me on the forehead when I was unlovely and angry.

That is why I did it.

I opened myself to a great pain, thinking I was stronger now. But always, always, life has its surprises. Unguarded hearts always lead to disaster.

I was such a fool.

We lay in his bed, and he told me of the day’s business. A man and his wife had found a child in the fields and made claim to it. He had blessed them and given them a silver coin for luck. I asked their names, but I did not recognize them. I had met most everyone of any importance in the city, and even the other four Philistine lords, but none seemed to see anything unusual in my face. No one saw their daughter’s features in mine.

“Do you know of anyone who adopted a baby from the temple?” I did not want to reclaim her. I would not even know her in the streets. I just wanted to know if they were good people. I wanted to think she was as happy as I, that the gods had been just as kind to her.

“Of course not.”

“No one?” I felt cold. His tone was not right.

“Who would take a baby that had been birthed at the temple? That would be like stealing from the gods. A curse would follow the baby.”

“But I do know of a child that was given to a nobleman’s family.”

In the darkness, I heard him catch his breath. He understood why I asked and what lies had been told to me.

I tried very hard to make no noise, but he held me as I cried.

That is, truly, where my story ends at the temple. I knew Tanis as she had truly been, a tender liar who served only herself. Or her god, not knowing that they were one and the same. Perhaps she had wanted to tell me the truth the night she was killed, but whether she wanted that for herself or for my own sake, I would never know.

I lay awake, thinking of who else might hurt me, who else might hide. I must have fallen into a deep asleep, because I awoke alone, shivering, though the room was not cold.

And here was the greatest irony of all: One last secret was being played out upon me as I slept. One last secret, one that would change my fate forever.

Stretching, lazy in the late afternoon sun, I was the last to rise. The other women were already dressed and at work on their hair. I sat up, crossing my legs on the bed, waiting for sleep to clear from my eyes. Spring was here. We all felt it, even locked away in this room. I smiled to myself, thinking of the flowers already in bloom and all the treasures of freedom Marcos would show me.

Hannibal entered the room, a dark look on his face.

“I would like to be alone with Delilah. Everyone, please go and eat now.”

A few glanced at me. Rose did, a fearful look on her face. I smiled at her. I had nothing to fear from Hannibal.

When the room cleared, Hannibal did not move. He stood at the door and did not look at me. I rose, my stomach beginning to tighten into a cold knot.

“Have I done something?”

He did not reply. He was pressing his lips together, rubbing them back and forth. Hannibal was always sure of himself. Nothing had ever made him nervous in my presence.

“What is it?” I rested a hand on his arm, hoping he would look at me.

“Marcos died this morning. He was listening to cases at his home, and he slumped over at a table. No one could wake him,” Hannibal said.

I fell to the floor. My breathing sounded clotted, rasping. I willed myself to die too, before the heartbreak took me. I think I was moaning. I do not remember much after this.

What is there to say of such grief? My heart was torn from my body, and I was weak, and pale, and grew thin. For months, I had no appetite, no desire for food or wine or words. I lay on my couch, my body aching from a grief that numbed every sensation except crushing black sorrow.

Rose tried to sit on my bed once in the early morning when she returned from her service, to comfort me. I smelled men on her and turned away. She did not try again. Hannibal gave up reasoning with me and ordered servants to hold my head back as he poured a thin soup into my mouth, shutting it after each pour, blowing in my face, tricking my body into swallowing.

One morning he lost his patience. He had something to tell me that would not wait any longer.

“Delilah, you must listen to me. Lord Marcos loved you.”

I moaned and thrashed against Hannibal. I couldn’t bear to hear the name. I couldn’t bear to lie here anymore, cold and alone. I had had everything, and everything I had lost. It had been enough, I wanted to scream in sorrow. It had been so much more than enough, a wealth beyond imagining, and I had lost it all again. I wanted to die, and I did not even have the strength to find my blade and lift it. If only I had known I would need this last strength, maybe I would have saved it.

“Lord Marcos bought your freedom. Before he died, he came to me early one morning. It was the middle of the night, really.” Hannibal was smiling softly as he told it, remembering. “I could not imagine what had gotten him out of bed at that hour, especially when you were in it with him. He banged on the main doors, refusing to enter through the portico, demanding to see me. He said he would buy your freedom at any price. I asked him if he was going to marry you, if that is why he demanded your freedom, and do you know what that man did? He hit me. In the face. He said he would buy your freedom for your sake, not his. What you chose to do with it was your own business, or it was not really freedom.”

Hannibal placed his hand on my cheek. “Your color is better. You need to eat again. Lord Marcos bought your freedom, Delilah. It is a thing that is unheard of. But he did it, for you. Regain your strength, and you can go.”

A new lord lived in Marcos’s house now, a man chosen by the people, who voted with stones dropped into clay pots. I knew Galenos to be a moderate man, moderate in drink and food, which would have pleased Marcos, and moderate in judgments. He did not move too fast to punish, or sweep away offenses as if they meant nothing to him.

I wanted to get away from this city and this temple. I took the money Lord Marcos had set aside for my freedom and bought a little home in the Valley of Sorek. I could walk to a market in Ashdod if I chose to, but on the streets near my home, I was granted the blessing of indifference.

I was nothing more here than an oddity, an unmarried woman who controlled her own fate. I had a past that gave them a little meat for their gossip, and a former love that still afforded me respect among the noblemen. Even if, in their hearts, they honored Marcos and not me. It did not matter. They could talk as they pleased. They did not care about me, and I found great relief in this.

I could not bear to remain indoors. I had never lived alone, and I had never known how terrible silence could be, how it suffocated and made the mind race, desperate for escape. I had chosen a small brick home in the center of the city, safe within her walls, where the noise and cries of the streets would reach me at all hours. Hannibal had been of great assistance in securing it and had even introduced me to the new lord, Galenos. Galenos was married with no interest in me, which was a relief. I had heard his wife was quite lovely. I wished them many children and much happiness, everything I had been denied.