The Secret Chord: A Novel (18 page)

“Where are you coming from?” David asked.

“I have just escaped from the camp of Israel,” he said, though his accent was foreign.

“Get up,” David commanded. “Someone, bring him a stool. Some water.”

The man sat, heavily, and drained the cup. When he was done, David asked him to account for himself. He glanced up, warily. He was, he said, an Amalekite mercenary. He flinched as he said it. Considering how things stood between the men of Yudah and the Amalekites—our sworn enemy—I thought him either very brave or very foolish to admit to it. And then he said he had been captured by Yonatan’s men early in the fighting.

“Yonatan?” David stood up abruptly, his face greedy for news. “So they held you where? In Shaul’s camp? What happened? Tell me!”

The exhausted fellow, unnerved by David’s sudden urgency, stammered out an account of a battle gone hopelessly wrong, the Israelite forces outmanned and overrun, the massive casualties and finally the rout, as the survivors fled for their lives, leaving Shaul, Yonatan and his brothers holding the ridge with only a handful of loyal men standing ground beside them.

A certain drawing back of the shoulders. The slightest tilt of the head. I knew David well by then. I knew how to read his body. I saw him adjust his stance as if to receive a great blow. The mercenary took a ragged breath, and stated what I—and, I think, David—already knew to be true. Shaul was dead, and Yonatan beside him.

David’s shoulders sagged, his belly contracted. A sigh, no more than that, escaped him. Then he took a step forward, bent down and lifted the Amalekite up by the tunic, his voice a flat, hard whisper. “How do you know this?”

The man glanced up into his face, and then quickly looked away, as if to avoid what he had seen there. His words came in a breathy rush.

“When the battle became a rout, our guards fled, and all the prisoners scattered. We were running for our lives, as you, lord, surely would understand. By chance I came over the ridge, and ran right into Shaul’s own unit, and realized that he had made his stand there, on that very spot. You could see the signs that fighting had raged all around him. There were many dead. At his feet I saw one I knew—the body of his son Yonatan, gashed by many wounds.”

The muscles beneath David’s eyes worked. His words were a rasp. “You are sure of it? You knew him, you say?”

“My lord, I did. His unit was the one that captured us, and we were paraded before him. And there he was, not ten spans distant from where I stood.”

David’s voice was even lower now. He pulled the man closer. “You are sure he was dead? His wounds—they were mortal?”

“My lord, no man could have withstood them. He was laid open like a gutted buck.”

David’s eyes closed. The muscles of his throat worked. His hand clenched even more tightly on the Amalekite’s stained tunic. The man went on, his words tumbling forth.

“The king alone was alive, save for a youth—a boy, merely—I think it was his armor bearer.” David winced. He had been that boy, once. “The two of them, man and boy, were covered in blood. The king was leaning heavily upon his spear to keep himself upright. The enemy’s archers had made a target of him. Their arrows had pierced his gut. You could see it cost him merely to stand. He was looking out to the plain, where the Plishtim merkavot were advancing. They were close; you could hear the grind of their wheels. And through the dust, you could make out the glint of their spears. They were almost to the foot of the ridge. In minutes they would dismount and swarm the mountain. I saw the king turn to the boy. His face—my lord—you could read the pain there. He knew well enough what the Plishtim would do with him—to him—if they got to him while he yet drew a breath. He could barely speak, but he managed to mouth an instruction. “Draw sword,” he told the boy. “Run me through.” But the boy couldn’t do it. He fell to his knees, weeping, shaking his head, crying out that he could not raise a hand to the king he loved. Shaul lunged for his own sword. He braced the hilt against a rock, and fell forward onto it. He didn’t even cry out. As he lay there, the sword right through him, I thought he was dead. But then he rolled onto his side and raised his hand, as if gesturing to the boy. The boy didn’t see it, in his grief. He was on his face, tearing at his hair and weeping. So I crept forward, to help him, if I could. As I bent over him, his eyes fluttered. He looked right at me. My lord, he could barely lift a finger, but he gestured me to come even closer. I knelt down there in the dirt beside him—this is his blood, you see it, here on my tunic. He tried to speak. Blood bubbled up through his lips. I had to put my ear to his mouth to make out what he said. He asked who I was. I told him I was his Amalekite prisoner. ‘Then finish me off. I’m in agony.’ So I took the short dagger from his dead son’s belt and cut his throat with it. He was barely alive when I did it. Then I took the circlet from his helmet and the amulet from his arm, and ran for my life. I have brought them here to you, my lord.”

He made to reach into a small cloth sack that he wore cinched about his shoulders. I saw a glint of gold before David swatted his hand away. There was a clatter as the circlet fell back upon the amulet inside the bag.

David dropped his right hand from the Amalekite’s tunic as if he had just noticed how foul it was. He pushed him away so hard that the man staggered. David’s eyes were voids. I had seen it before. I knew what it meant.

“How dare you?” He spoke slowly, his voice low. “How dare you lift your hand and kill the Name’s anointed? No one may take it upon himself to kill a king.”

The Amalekite’s voice became high and shrill. “My lord, I knew he would never rise from where he was lying. He was as good as dead. . . . He, he begged me. The Plishtim would have done terrible . . . I was not . . .”

I saw David’s hand clench at his waist, where his sword would have rested had he been wearing one. He turned to Yoav, who was armed. “Strike him down.” Yoav hesitated for only a second, his brow raised in interrogation. David answered with a curt nod. Yoav drew his sword and, with a step like a dancer’s, ran at the man. With his right hand, he plunged the blade into the Amalekite’s chest, and with his left he pounded the hilt, driving it home.

David reached for the neck of his own robe and ripped it, lifting his head and crying out such a lament as I have never heard before, and hope never to hear again. We all of us in that room rent our clothes and wept with him.

I know that David wept for Yonatan, whom he loved. I believe he also wept for the memory of Shaul as he had once been, and for the reconciliation that he might still have hoped for. Some in that room, I know, hated Shaul and envied Yonatan his special place with David. Yet they also wept. I suppose they mourned for our people and our ignominious defeat.

I wept for David. And I will own to it, I wept for the Amalekite. I can close my eyes and watch his blood, glossy and crimson, pooling on the gray of the flagstones, forming bright little runnels that fingered out along the joints in the stones. I believed his account, that he had dispatched a suffering man and saved him from torture at the hands of the Plishtim. I suppose he thought David would welcome the news of the death of his greatest persecutor. He expected a reward. Poor soul, he would have done better to make off with the crown and armband—worth more than he’d earn in a lifetime. One of the door guards picked up the pitiful corpse by the ankles and dragged it out of the room. I stared glassily at the snail trail of blood across the flags.

But even as I wept, I began to feel the world shift. These tears were cleansing. The murk in my mind lightened and lifted, a relief, as if the wind had freshened, blowing away a noxious smoke that had stung my eyes and fouled my nostrils. I could see, again, the road ahead of us. Our exile—the seasons of wanton murders and low deceits—was over. We would go up from this wretched, humid plain to the hills, into the crisp air and the clean sunlight. We would return to the Land, to our own people. We would go home.

But first, before any such plans were made or even spoken of, we mourned and fasted for the dead. David asked me to stay by him, and so I did. I sat in his chamber throughout the day, keeping a silent vigil, as he worked the harp strings, composing. In the evening, we rejoined the others in the hall where he sang, for the first time, “The Song of the Bow,” which I shall set down here as I first heard it, even though every child now can give some version.

Your glory, Israel,

Lies slain on your heights.

How have the mighty fallen!

Tell it not in Gath,

Proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,

Lest the daughters of the Plishtim rejoice,

Lest the daughters of the heathen exult.

O hills of Gilboa—

Let there be no dew or rain on you,

Or springs or freshets,

For there the shield of warriors lies rusting,

The shield of Shaul,

Polished with oil no more. . . .

Daughters of Israel

Weep over Shaul,

Who clothed you in scarlet and silk,

Who bejeweled you with gold.

How have the mighty fallen

In the thick of battle—

Yonatan, slain on your heights!

I grieve for you,

My brother Yonatan,

You were most dear to me.

Your love was wonderful to me

More than the love of women.

How have the mighty fallen,

The weapons of war perished.

I have written here of his harp playing. I have not described his singing voice. It is hard to describe a sound without likening it to another sound, and yet the timbre of David’s voice was a thing apart. It had the urgency of the shofar, and yet was not shrill. It could engender awe, as a high wind howling dangerously through mighty branches, or bring delight, as an unexpected trill of sweet birdsong. It could satisfy, as the sound of running water rinses and slakes a thirsty spirit, or it could bring unease, like a wild beast howling in distant hills. To describe the sound, I find myself turning to other senses—sight and touch. The fall of fine silk through the hand; the rich warmth of enveloping fur. Or a goldsmith beating out a foil, at the moment when he lifts and turns the leaf; the sudden gleam, as if sunlight itself had been captured. David’s voice was that bright flare of shimmering gold. It could transmit light and warmth. But not that only. Sometimes, the voice could summon such a power that it recalled not sunlight but lightning—something so fierce and magnificent that when it passed through you, it left you stricken and hollowed.

That night, as he sang, his grief still raw, his voice did all these things. None of us who heard it could be the same man, after. My breath was still uneven when, after he set down his harp, he signaled me to come and sit by him. He did not speak for some time, but I could sense his mind, unrestful. I waited, silent, until he turned to me at last. He spoke softly, so that others in the room could not hear what was said. “
‘Red runs the blade in the hand of Shaul. The blood is royal.’
Those were your words, in the camp at Horesh. Shaul’s own blood upon his blade, you meant. Still you tell me you did not know that he would end his life thus?”

“I knew he would perish in battle. That is all. I did not know it would happen as it did.”

“And what about the rest? What did you mean about Yonatan, Yavesh, the tamarisk tree?”

I shook my head and stared at the floor. “I have no . . .”

I was about to say “I have no idea” but a great noise of cawing birds drowned out my words. There was a gust of foulness, a stench of rot. I raised my hands to fend them off. I was on my feet, shouting. I could see the others in the room, rising to their feet also.

Bodies, headless, black with buzzards, impaled to the wall. The birds’ wings flapped as they fought one another to get at the meat. Each beat carried the stink to my nostrils. I ducked and waved my hands about my head as one swooped low, a strip of flesh dangling from its beak. At the base of the wall, foreign faces, twisted, laughing. Hurling stones at the poor broken torsos.

Fetch them down, oh men of Yavesh!
I was crying out, running from one stranger to another, frantic.
Save your king from this dishonor!
Then the noisome vision cleared, and I was back in a room in Ziklag, face-to-face with David, his tunic grasped in my fist. I uncurled my hand and let it fall to my side. Yoav and the others had backed away. They stood against the far wall, fear in their faces. But David’s face was calm, waiting. He reached out a hand. His thumb wiped the cold beads of sweat from my brow. Then he laid both hands upon my shoulders. “What must I do, Natan?”

Through the pounding in my head, I could not hear the words I shouted:
Go up to Hevron, King! Shaul is buried. The men of Yudah wait to anoint you.