Shlomo had sent the eagle airborne again, and her eyes traced its graceful swerves across the sky. “He’s using you as a shield—I suppose you know that?”
“How so?”
“He says that if the Name wanted Amnon punished, he would have heard of it from you before now.”
I winced. Of course he would take my silence as assent. How could he know the real cause? “Well,” I said, “if it will please you for me to see her, that is enough reason to do it.”
She smiled. “Good, then, I will arrange for her to join us next time you come to me.”
• • •
I barely knew Maacah. Her father, Talmai, the king of Geshur, was the first leader on our borders to seek peace with us, and David was glad to secure the north and seal the treaty with the marriage, especially once he saw the princess. He set her up in a queenly state, as befit her rank, with her own house and her familiar Geshurite attendants. I saw her, therefore, only when she came to the palace for high state functions, and I never had occasion to speak to her directly. It was remarked that David spent a good deal of time at the house of Maacah, especially in the early years of the marriage, when their children were young. Avshalom and Tamar had always seemed to occupy an especially high place in his affections.
We met in Batsheva’s rooms. Maacah declined to sit, which meant that I could not do so, either. She held herself as straight as a spar, her head very erect and her long neck collared with beads of polished ebony. Her silken gown also was black. She stood with her fingers laced in front of her.
“They say you are the king’s conscience.” Her voice was as thick as cream, with the strong accents of her northern childhood. I inclined my head. I had no better answer.
“All those years ago, when my father told me he had made this match for me, I was afraid. I did not want to leave behind my people and my gods, familiar gods that I knew by name, that I could see and touch and worship in the high places. I was afraid of your god, this god whose name I may not even say, whose image I may not even see. But my father said it would be all right, for though this Name had no face, it had a voice, and spoke through a prophet, who was fearless, and told the king if he did good or ill.”
Her gaze, as she said this, was lacerating. It could have etched a stela. I found myself looking away from her, studying the floor mosaic.
“But now I know this is not true. You say that your Name gave you laws, which you keep in your ark and proclaim as holy. And now one of those laws, one of the heaviest of those laws, has been broken. Yet the king does nothing, and the Voice of the Name is silent. How can this be?”
“I know that you—” I was stammering, my words stalled in my mouth. The Voice of the Name, she called me, yet my own voice was a rasp, a broken reed, rattling helplessly in the breeze. I reached for water, and tried to speak again. But my tongue would not shape itself to the words that formed in my mind. Then I felt the stab of pain, the blackness descending. And new words filled my mouth and issued forth, loud and resonant. Who are you to question the Name’s anointed? Justice comes when I ordain it, on the hot wind and the raging tide, when the mountains tremble and the earth opens to swallow all who offend me. I had raised both my arms and stepped toward Maacah. I stood towering over her. She folded in on herself, reeling away. As the fit passed, I dropped my arms and stepped back, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes to stop the blinding pain.
Batsheva had never heard me speak as a prophet before, and her eyes were wide. She looked between Maacah and me, unsure what to do. I was doubled up with pain by then, so she moved tentatively toward me, signaling to her attendant, who was cowering. “Bring Natan a chair!” she cried. “Can you not see he is ill?” Maacah, her face white, tottered toward the door, urgent to get away from me. “Maacah,” I said gently, and my voice was my own again. She halted and turned. Her bearing was not regal now, but cringing and fearful.
“What I said. It means that the crime against Tamar will be punished, but it is not in David’s hands.” She looked at me blankly. I lifted my hands in a gesture of helplessness. I could not speak more plainly. Pay him back four times over, so David had said, in his own harsh judgment of the man who stole the ewe lamb. “The king, too, is awaiting punishment. The matters are linked. I can say no more. But you will have your justice. Just not yet. Take comfort in that, if you can.”
XX
The barley ripened and was harvested twice in that time of waiting. I gave myself over in those two years to what shards of happiness I could unearth when I pushed dread of the future away. There were some golden days, when the work of making and mending went on, when music filled the king’s halls, and when the city seemed bathed in a kind of radiance.
We made many new alliances at that time, and fought no wars. A few border skirmishes, merely, put down with little loss of life. Because of this, Shlomo was allowed to follow his own inclinations in a fashion that would not have been possible for the Hevron princes raised in time of war. Shlomo showed little interest in the business of killing. He was lithe and quick handed with a sword, accurate with a bow, and got through his necessary lessons with good grace and efficient dispatch, and did not seek to push his skills past a necessary level of proficiency.
But if soldiering did not interest him, the soldiers themselves were another matter. He loved to sit with the men and draw out their firsthand stories of past campaigns. After, he would come to me and ask all kinds of questions about the larger matters at stake in the battles they’d described. He was fascinated by strategy and was able to grasp how an engagement had looked from the point of view of the common fighter as well as from the vantage of the commanders. Even taciturn Yoav opened up under the youth’s polite yet persistent need to know every detail—why he had used this tactic in a particular campaign and not in another, what qualities he looked for in promoting a man from the ranks, when to sit down in a siege and when to press an attack. I would find the two of them deep in these discussions, a sand map drawn in the dust at their feet. Later, Shlomo would come to me with some detail of a battle that he had learned from Yoav, and we would compare it with what was known of famous battles in the past. When he found that this or that king or general had used similar tactics, he would derive immense satisfaction. “Everything that happened has already happened, if you look hard enough and far enough back in time,” he opined one day. “With enough study, one should be able to have the means at hand to win any battle and outwit any foe. It seems to me that there is nothing new under the sun.” But then he paused, and looked out across the groves to the city beyond. “What would be new, of course, would be an end to all this fighting. That would be a good time to be alive.”
Before very long, the boy’s agile mind outstripped my own, and with David’s permission I called on specialists to tutor him. We engaged distinguished magi from the east and learned Ethiops from the south. Architects from Tyre and Mitzrayim, poets and bards from the islands of the Sea People, astronomers from the Two Rivers, snake charmers, horse tamers, even wise women and herbalists—whatever it took to feed his insatiable intellectual appetite.
At my urging, David allowed him to take his place beside his older brothers in the hall of audience a full three years earlier than any other had been given such a privilege. Toward the closing of his tenth year, in that sudden way that male children sometimes will, between the waxing and waning of a single moon, he began to transform from boy to man. Out of rounded softness, a strong face emerged, cheekbones high and fine like his mother’s, framed by a defined brow and a severe jawline. It was an arresting face, not perhaps as classically handsome as Avshalom’s, but lit by an intelligent gaze. He had been an elegant child and seemed to be slipping gracefully into his larger frame.
He would come to me after he had attended David, avid to discuss his father’s judgments, turning every matter this way and that, revisiting what had been said, recasting the arguments that had been brought b
efore the king so as to put them more persuasively. He never shrank from his own well-founded opinion, but he would become wistful if he reached a different conclusion from his father as to how a matter should have been judged.
And within a year or two, those instances increased. There was a shadow on those sunlit days: David was beginning to show his age. A moment of inattention here, an inability to recall a fact there. Sometimes, a drawn look around the mouth and eyes, or listlessness when audiences dragged on too long. David’s voice—his beautiful voice—became hoarse when he was fatigued. His skin, too, had lost its healthy glow and taken on a dry, papery sallowness. Most obvious of all the changes: his hair—that bright, thick mane—had begun to fade and thin.
All this was plain enough to me, who had known him so long, and to Shlomo, because he was preternaturally observant. But it took Yoav, as blunt as ever, to put it in words. “He’s starting to look like a cur with mange,” he remarked to me, leaning across the table at the feast of the new moon. I’d seen it, too; David had raked his hand absently through his hair, and a tangle of strands had come away in his fingers.
I shrugged. “He’s not young; you can’t expect him to keep his hair forever.”
Yoav cut me off. “It’s not about hair. There’s something wrong with him. He’s tired all the time. He—who never needed rest. And look at him—wearing that heavy cloak, in this weather.”
As he spoke I saw David rise in his place to give the salutation. It was the sign for the feast to end. We all stood, the benches scraping across the stone flags. But Avshalom stepped forward and raised a hand. “Father, if I may, before you retire. . . . As you know, it’s shearing season at the lands you granted to me in Baal-hazor. We expect a record wool clip this year, and I have promised my people a feast. It’s beautiful there in this season, and I would be honored for you to see my improvements to the farm, to see what I’ve done with your generous gift. Will you do me the honor of feasting with me? You—and my brothers.” He turned then, and bowed to Amnon. “All my brothers.”
Everyone in the hall drew a breath. It was the first time Avshalom had exchanged so much as a look with Amnon in two long years. Amnon, who had been drinking heavily, did not have the wit to arrange his face. He stared at Avshalom, slack-jawed.
David glanced from one to the other of his sons, beaming. He rose and stepped down from the dais, walking toward Avshalom with his arms open for an embrace. He held him close for a long moment, and when he drew back, there was a look of such love in his eyes that I had to glance away from the intimacy of it.
“Avshalom, my son.” His voice was quavering with emotion. “My son, Avshalom.” He raised a hand to his eyes, struggling to compose himself. “It pleases me that you have been diligent in improving the lands I gave you. But it pleases me even more that you make this invitation.” He turned and let his gaze rest on Amnon for a few moments. “But I have affairs to attend to, and I can’t travel unless half the court comes with me. I do not want to tax your resources with such a crowd.”
“Father, it would not tax me at all. We have tents, the weather is mild—”
David raised a hand. “You go with your brothers—” He glanced again at Amnon. “All your brothers. Have a young man’s party. It will be better so, without the burden of a king and his retinue and all that must attend it.”
The king left the hall, and the feast broke up then, unevenly, as feasts always do. Those still engrossed in their wine-fueled conversations stood in little clots here and there, making a final point, sharing a last joke, while the bored, the weary and the trysting lovers, relieved to be released, made quick exits toward their longed-for beds. Only two sat unmoving in their places. One was Amnon. His face was like a wax tablet, written, erased, rewritten. You could read everything there: fear, then relief; confusion, then anger. You could see him working it through: Sincere act of reconciliation? One-upmanship in the battle for their father’s regard? Deadly trap? If the latter, how to escape it, now that the king had given his permission—indeed, his full-hearted blessing—on the invitation. I saw Yonadav making his way across the hall to Amnon—he had been seated with his father, Shammah, several tables distant. He bent down, and spoke into Amnon’s ear. Amnon turned to him, remonstrating, but Yonadav masked the moment with a boisterous laugh, clasping Amnon’s hand as he raised it to expostulate, drawing him up off the bench and into his chest in a backslapping show of good humor. It was well done, and Amnon had presence of mind enough to yield to it. As they passed my table on the way out of the hall, Amnon held his lips in a rictus that could pass for a smile.
But I sat there, stricken. Even as my eyes followed Amnon across the room, I was in Baal-hazor. The sun eased up over an undulant horizon bright with the haze of new grasses. The sheep moved in a corona of morning light, the edges of their heavy fleeces as bright as filaments of gold. Behind them, the high ridges of the Golan marched north to distant mountains still dusted with snow. The fine large house, sheltered in the broad hammock of the valley, was already awake. In the still air, threads of wood smoke curled lazily upward from the tannurs. Out in the fields, crews hauled on ropes, raising large goat hair tents, and serving women bustled about, laying down bright carpets. A mule driver urged his pair, laden with firewood, up a last incline, to where the spit turners were setting up their tripods over fresh-dug pits.
From the house, a slight figure emerged, crossing the courtyard to collect ewers of fresh goat’s milk. Halfway across, she stopped, and tilted her face upward, to receive the warm spring sun. Her veil slipped back, and light glinted in her red-gold hair. Her eyes were closed, her mouth curled in a private smile.
She stood there for a moment, rocking slightly. Then her eyes opened, and their expression was fierce. I saw her lips move. A single word: “Soon.”
XXI
The princes left severally for the feast, the older with their own retinues, the younger in a caravan together with their attendants. Shlomo traveled with the younger princes, excited, as any boy would be, at the prospect of a party. I saw him off, pretending to share in his joy. But I knew that the boy who returned would be much changed. When I saw him again, ten days later, there was a drawn look about his eyes, a new gravity and steadiness. As teacher and pupil, we did not usually embrace, but that day, I opened my arms to him, and he stepped forward and let me enfold him.
It was cold, for that season, so I had asked Muwat to lay a small fire. Shlomo sat on his heels in front of the hearth and stared at the flames as he spoke of all he had witnessed. “One of the worst things,” he said, “was that it started out as such a wonderful festival. The best, I think, that I have ever been to. It wasn’t like the festivals in the city, with professional singers and all the expensive food and wine and the important people separate from the ordinary folk. This was everyone all together—big landowners and simple herdsmen, trained musicians that Avshalom had brought from the city, and local people playing instruments they’d made themselves. There were prizes for the shearers, and donkey races. Storytellers. Dancing. Children running everywhere. Avshalom had thought of everything. Even the little princes had entertainments. My brother Natan was there with his nursemaid, giggling and running wild with the shepherd boys. And the food—good, simple—warm bread and juicy lamb off the spit to wrap in it. And wine, of course. Rivers of wine. Everyone was in such high spirits. We could not have been more unready when it happened.”
His face had lightened for a moment, but now it resumed the pinched expression he’d worn ever since he fled from Baal-hazor; the haunted look of a boy who has witnessed fratricide. I had been obliged to witness it, too, lying stricken and swollen tongued here in my own house. But I let him speak of it, because it seemed to me to be a good thing for him to give it voice.
I had watched, in a vision, as Avshalom welcomed Amnon and treated him as an honored guest, plying him with the best cuts of lamb, endless drink and, at night, willing country girls to share
his tent. At first, Amnon was reserved, suspicious of his brother’s intentions. But by the third day of the feast he had relaxed into the belief that the reconciliation was genuine. By afternoon, he was very drunk. The killers moved then, as pitiless as a wolf pack. Three held him down as another three stabbed him.
“Adoniyah was drunk, too,” Shlomo said. “That’s why he panicked, I think. He yelled out that Avshalom’s brutes were going to kill us all, and then he and Shefatiah and Yitraam and the others all ran to where we’d left the mules hobbled. I saw Yitraam scoop up Natan and put him on the mule in front of him. Adoniyah was yelling, ordering everyone to split up so that Avshalom wouldn’t be able to get us all.”
“But you did not run.”
“No. I knew it was only about Amnon. And once I saw that Natan was looked after . . . In any case, I was holding Tamar, who was sobbing. Avshalom had brought her into the tent just before the attack. She was heavily veiled, but I knew it must be her. Because I’d really missed her, you know, and one of the reasons I wanted to go to Baal-hazor was to see her again. I’d been watching for her, asking everyone where she was. I’d begun to think that because Amnon was there, she wouldn’t come out to the feast, and I was disappointed about that, and wondering if I should ask Avshalom for leave to visit her in private. Then, when I saw her, I was so glad, and I got up right away to greet her. I’d just made my way through the press of people in the tent, but before I could even get a word out, Avshalom shouted to Amnon, where he was reclining in the place of honor. Amnon turned to him. Amnon was smiling—I’ll always remember that. Avshalom signed to Tamar, and she threw off her veil. I don’t think Amnon even recognized her. His face didn’t change—he was still grinning away. I suppose after so much heavy drinking he was pretty thick witted. But that was the signal for Avshalom’s men, who were all dressed up as if they were guests. They grabbed Amnon. I think he did recognize her then, at the last moment, as the knives went into him. When they stabbed him, she just crumpled up. She was crying and shaking, so I held her, and she clung to me. Everything else was a blur of screaming and yelling and people running, tripping over one another, tables falling . . . Then Avshalom grabbed Tamar by the hand and pulled her away from me. He had a mule saddled for her and packhorses ready. They were on the road for Geshur while Amnon lay there with the blood still pulsing out of him.