The Secret Chord: A Novel (30 page)

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.”

XVI

T
hat day, I ceased to serve a king and began, instead, to serve a kingdom. Since my time in the desert, I understood that David’s fate was out of my hands. He would have to live through the punishments he had earned, and nothing I could say or do for him could remove that burden. But neither was I Shmuel, withdrawing my love and guidance. As the Name still loved David, so did I, and I would be there at his side, to offer what solace I could, to make sure he made wise decisions despite the self-inflicted pain he had to suffer, and so to make sure the kingdom was protected and kept whole until Batsheva’s son became king.

To do so, I understood that I would have to secure a place at the young prince’s side. This would be delicate, as I had always gone out of my way to avoid any dealings with David’s children. At first, it had been the normal disregard of a young man toward any infant not his own. I thought of children as women’s business—nothing to do with me. Later, as the princes grew and the older ones began to attend on David at audiences and feasts, I noticed only that they were handsome and spoiled. Daniel, the second born, the son of Avigail, was the only one who carried out his minor duties—cup bearer, page—with any seriousness or dignity. But when Daniel died, it left the eldest, Amnon, as the unchallenged and feckless leader of a wild and headstrong band, fractious with one another and contemptuous toward everyone else.

Even in the ordinary course of things, David’s heirs would have been fawned upon and flattered to a dangerous degree, with only their father in a position to set limits. But because David had received no love from his own father, he was determined to lavish it upon his sons. He poured it out with a wastrel’s abandon, unwilling to exact any price or place any conditions. And as he did not restrain them, neither did the world. So I viewed them, I suppose, as spoiled nuisances. Then I went to the desert, and saw what they would become. After, I could not look them in the face, and made every excuse I could think of to evade their company. Now, suddenly, I would have to reverse myself.

I expected that at some point David would confide in me regarding Batsheva’s condition, and I had carefully prepared what I proposed to say. But a month passed, then two, and nothing was said. David continued his public atonement in the matter of Uriah, and I suppose he felt uneasy raising with me anything connected with that business. I saw that I would have to change that, and make it clear that I now accepted his marriage and its issue. When I saw Batsheva, it was from a distance, walking with her women in the courtyard, or listening to music in the hall, and I could not tell if her condition was evident or not. But I had to think that her pregnancy must be patent by that time to David who, according to Muwat’s informants, continued to lie with her almost every night.

Finally, I decided that if he would not speak, I would. I was in his private quarters with Yoav and some others of his inner circle. Earlier, there had been music and wine and much boisterous talk. This had waned now that the hour had grown late. Yoav had fallen asleep in his chair. I saw that David stifled a yawn. He made to rise, intending, I suppose, to dismiss us and retire. Before he could do so, I laid a hand on his arm. He gave another yawn and gazed at me sleepily.

“What now? It’s late, and you have that goat track to navigate in the dark. Can’t it wait till morning?”

I lowered my voice so that only he could hear me. “Why do you say nothing of the child Batsheva carries?”

He squirmed in his chair, suddenly quite awake.

“How do you know?” he said sharply.

I turned a hand and gave a slight shrug. “How not?”

“But you have said you don’t see personal matters . . .”

Yoav stirred. I gestured to David to lower his voice. I dropped my own to a whisper. “I don’t see personal matters that are without consequence. This . . . has consequence.”

“How so?” He looked alarmed. “You said the boy who died was payment of the blood debt. How is this one . . .”

I raised my hand. “Not in that way. I see nothing ill for this child.”

“Then what?”

I had the words all prepared, well rehearsed.

“Your sons. Yoav has had the training of the eldest—Amnon, Avshalom and Adoniyah—as his armor bearers; Aviathar has the younger boys, Yitraam and Shefatiah, as his acolytes. But Yoav and Aviathar have sons of their own. I have no sons. It’s hard, to reach such an age as I am and have no one. No son to teach, no one to guide. You do not need another general, another priest. But whichever of your older sons becomes king, he will need someone like me, who can stand by him and speak truth. If I have served you, if I have been of value, this boy . . .”

He raised a hand and interrupted me. “You are saying that this child Batsheva carries will be a prophet? You have seen this?”

I was going to lie and say yes, I had seen it. I could not tell him the truth. To do so would raise alarm about the fates of his older sons—matters of which I could not speak. To serve him, I now had to mislead him. I had practiced how I would deceive him by describing a false vision. I intended to use a part of what I
had
seen—the city, grown great, spreading out across the seven hills, the shining temple columns, rising stone by stone on Har Moriah. But I thought to people the vision with a king, standing in shadow, his face unseen, his back toward me, listening raptly to his younger brother, whose boyish face was aflame with divine power . . .

But those lies died on my lips. “No,” I said, “I have not seen it.” I felt a great upwelling of emotion. I had not, until that moment, felt the lack of a son. But now, having fabricated it, I did feel it—a great void, a sense of loss. Nothing I could have feigned would have moved David more. He stood, raised me from my chair and embraced me. “If the child is a boy, then he will be in your charge. I appoint you, Natan, to be his teacher.”

XVII

Y
ou could say he found his own way to me. That is how it would have seemed, to any who did not know better. A psalmist might fashion it otherwise. Such a one would say he was carried to me on the wings of an eagle.

There had been a great storm in the night, lashing rains and high winds such as we rarely see in these hills. In the morning, the winds had died, but the rain continued to fall steadily, filling the dry wadis till they brimmed, spilling between the rocks in swift freshets. It was a day to be spent indoors, by the fire with the shutters closed. Not a day to expect guests.

Muwat, who was cleaning my armor—which was, happily, tarnished from disuse—flinched in surprise at the heavy rapping on the outer gate. He flung a shawl over his head and went out.

The boy did not wait to be announced, but burst in, wet through, his attendant—a tall, thin Mitzrayimite—hunched sodden and miserable behind him. He did not offer an introduction or a greeting, but simply held out his two cupped hands and parted his thumbs to show me the egg cradled carefully in his palms.

“I found this. Just at the bottom of that cliff-footed ridge, over there to the east, where the elah trees grow.” His wet face was flushed, the blue eyes—deep blue like his mother’s—sparkling with excitement and urgency. “My mother says you know almost everything—she told me you are to be my teacher when I’m old enough. I’m five now—I’ll be six in the month of vine pruning, and my mother says I’m to come to you then. But I told Hophra we had to come today, because I want to know what to do with this. I would have climbed up and put it back in the nest, but Hophra wouldn’t let me. He said the rock is too slippery in the rain. I think it must be an eagle’s egg. It was a very big nest—you could just make out the edge of it.”

“It
is
an eagle’s nest,” I said, struggling to retain my composure. I had awaited this day for a long time. Now my head was light with joy and excitement. I took a deep breath, trying to sound calm. “There is a pair that returns to that ridge every year. Come here, where it’s warm, get dry and we’ll decide what to do about this egg.”

He stood patiently while Hophra toweled off his rain-slicked hair. He politely accepted a bowl of warmed broth, then we sat by the fire and I read to him from a scroll that gave an account of the ways of eagles. “Since we can’t be sure when this egg was laid, we don’t know when it will hatch,” I said. “Also, it may have been addled in the fall. But since we can’t return it to the nest, the best thing you can do is build something like a nest—soft and warm. Then wait. If it does hatch, and you feed it, it will attach itself to you. It will be yours, if you want it.”

“I do!” he said, his face lit with pleasure. But then he frowned. “I can’t take it home. My older brothers, they’re not very nice to animals. Especially if they see that it’s something I care about. They’ll smash it on the stones, just for sport.”

“Then leave it here. You can come every day, if you like, and see how it does.”

“I would like that, very much, if they’ll let me.”

“I’m sure they will let you. But I will speak to them, if you think it will help.”

•   •   •

And so it began. Without ceremony, without even an introduction, he became part of my life. Indeed, he became its whole purpose. Every day, I looked forward to the sound of his small, enthusiastic fist knocking on the outer door. I had to discipline myself not to wait for him, staring out the window, watching the path like some lovesick swain. She had named him Shlomo, from the word for peace,
shalom,
but also from the word that in some uses means “replacement,” because he was the child she hoped would bring consolation after bereavement.

I grew to adore that intense little face, the way his brow would crinkle before he asked a question. And such questions, from the mouth of a child. “All streams flow into the sea,” he said. “Yet the sea is never full. How is that?” Or, “The sun rises and the sun sets, and glides back to where it rises. How does it make that journey?” These were the questions of a curious intelligence and I did my best to answer them, drawing on scrolls from Mitzrayim and the teachings of astronomers from Ur. But sometimes his face would crease and the question would be one so profound that one could hardly credit that it issued from the mind of a small boy. “Men are born and they die, but the earth remains forever. Why, then, do we set such store on our short lives? Can they matter so much as we think they do?” In such cases, I blundered on as best I could, praying for inspiration, terrified that a weak answer or, worse, a platitude would shake his trust and draw him away from me. But that did not happen. To my joy, he seemed to look forward to our time together as much as I did.

The egg he had rescued hatched—as I knew it would, since I had seen the eaglet in the vision. It was a ball of dandelion fluff with a vociferous call and a tremendous appetite. Shlomo was immensely tender and patient with it, shredding the flesh of river fish, feeding it strand by strand, laughing when he couldn’t keep pace with the hatchling’s noisy demands. The bird’s growth was so rapid it seemed to change appearance every day.

“You know the eagle is called king of the sky,” I said. “Why do you think that’s so?” We talked about the eagle’s keen eyes, and how a king also must be visionary, looking beyond the surface of things; how its speed and strength surpassed other birds, just as a king must hope to surpass his subjects. We talked about its ability to find prey, and how a king also must be a provider for his people.

And then, unexpectedly: “An eagle is ruthless and takes whatever he wants,” he said. “Kings do that, too.” He ran a finger gently over the eaglet’s downy head. It closed its eyes and stretched its neck with pleasure. “My brother Amnon told me that my father took my mother that way.”

I regarded him gravely. His small brow was drawn tight and his face had a haunted look.

“Your brother should know better than to speak of such things,” I said.

“Oh, he’ll say anything. And not just to me. It gives him joy, to upset people. He’s always goading Adoniyah, and he
hates
Avshalom. The only one he’s nice to is Tamar—well, everyone’s nice to her, she’s kind. But Avshalom—he’s Tamar’s full brother, you know, they have the same mother, Maacah. Anyway, Avshalom hates Amnon to be with Tamar. He told her serving women that Amnon’s not allowed to see her in private anymore. There was a big fight about it.”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. I felt the blood draining from my face.

“Are you all right? Should I tell Hophra to bring you something? Should I get Muwat?”

“No,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing. Just a headache. It will pass.”

It was natural, of course, for Shlomo to speak of his brothers. I told myself that I would have to harden myself to it. Still, the words went through me like spears and I had to struggle to keep my composure and focus on our lesson.

Shlomo, of course, wasn’t the only source of gossip about the older princes. In the city, it was hard to escape whispers of their outrages—which were numerous—and their enmities, which were life threatening. They had grown like wild thorns, tearing at everything they touched.

David, who so often saw so clearly, who weighed men to a fine grain, was utterly blind to the failings of the men he begat. I had been by his side often enough through the boys’ youth when word came to him that one or other of the princes had abused his slave, insulted an elder or mistreated his mount. David would laugh and shrug it off, and mock the complainant, inferring that he lacked the canniness or the authority to deal with childish pranks. Then it would be seen, in subtle ways, that the king’s affection for such a person had waned. He would be seated at the rear of the hall at feasts, or perhaps no invitation to the feast would be forthcoming. Courtiers who cared for their position noted this. Soon enough, the boys’ outrages went unremarked and unpunished. By the time they were nearing manhood, what had been mischief had become malevolence.