“There is beauty and power there,” I said softly. “And I don’t speak only of the bird.” I gestured to the bright, intense face smiling up at us. “I speak of the boy—the young man—who has mastered this bird. I speak of your son. A son of whom you can be proud. Your sins have consequences, but the Name has not forsaken you, King.”
David turned to me, color returning to his face. “Send for the boy. Tell him I would eat with him. Send me my son.”
• • •
And so it began. Shlomo, at twelve, became a salve upon his father’s wounded heart, the beloved companion and the joy of his old age.
But affection was one thing, royal succession another. No one accounted a twelve-year-old in that reckoning. Adoniyah, next in age to Avshalom, seemed to be the presumed heir. But Adoniyah did not have Avshalom’s presence, intelligence or political skills. Nor did he have the same place in his father’s regard. David had always seen himself in Avshalom, and why wouldn’t he? Avshalom had the same quicksilver nature, the same physical gifts, the same ability to attract a following. It was not just David who lamented his exile. David made no move to name his heir, and it seemed his own mind remained unsettled on the subject.
As the months passed, memories of the murder faded. It became clear that a faction had emerged, ready to say that Avshalom had acted within his rights, and that he should be allowed to return from exile. I asked Muwat to probe the matter, and in a very short while he was able to confirm, through his network of Hittite servants, that the partisan faction centered on Maacah’s house, which did not surprise me, and that it was led by Yoav, which did.
When I confronted Yoav on the matter, he was forthright. “There’s unrest in Hevron,” he said. “We keep a firm fist on it, to be sure, but I think there’s a real risk from there, with no settled successor, if David were to die untimely—and let’s face it, at his age it wouldn’t even be that untimely. They resent us, Natan. They resent paying taxes to build this city, which flourishes, while Hevron has become a backwater. They don’t see the fruits of the taxes they pay, as we do. And outside the town, the farmers in Yudah are unhappy that their surplus food has to be sold at set prices to feed the standing army and the priests—who live and spend in this city, and marry from among its daughters, not their own. They know they can get more for their produce on the open market. The bald fact is the people have grown used to peace. They forget how it was, before. They don’t value what David has done for us as they once did. It’s not a good situation. I think Avshalom should come back, so that there’s a clear heir, a man with military experience, who could be king tomorrow, if it came to it. David won’t do it. He wants to. I know he does. But he bent the law to his own desires with regard to Uriah, as you were so quick to point out with your parables. He’s not in a rush to be seen doing it again. You, perhaps, are the only one who could convince him. Make up another fine parable or two.” He gave me an appraising look. “But you won’t.”
“No,” I repeated calmly. “I won’t.”
“And I can’t fathom you. Never could. Avshalom avenged a great wrong. Why do you hate him so?”
“I don’t hate him for what he did,” I said. I hate him for what he will do, as will you, Yoav, in due season. So I said in my heart. But I could not speak those words aloud. Yoav left in a foul mood, muttering about my intransigence.
A week later, I recalled that conversation when a widow from the town of Tekoa presented herself before David for a judgment. She was dressed in mourning clothes and had the spare, worn look of one who has grieved a long time. She prostrated herself, uttering words of thanks to the king for agreeing to hear her suit. David was clearly moved by her salutation, and waved for one of his servants to help her up and to bring her a chair, which was rare for a supplicant in the audience hall.
“What troubles you?” he asked kindly.
“My king, your maidservant had two sons. As brothers will do, they fell into an argument while tending the fields, and came to blows, with no one there to stop them. One of them struck the other and killed him, and then all the men of my clan insisted that I hand over the killer to be put to death.” She began to weep, but with great composure continued speaking through her tears. “My lord, I know the law ordains this, but my son did not mean to kill his brother. He’s all I have left. They would quench the last ember remaining to me, and leave my dead husband without name or remnant on the earth.” She buried her face in her hands.
The king was clearly moved. “Go home,” he said gently. “I will issue an order that your son be spared. If anyone says anything to you, have him brought to me and he will never trouble you again.”
She raised her wet face, blinking. “You will restrain the blood avenger, so that my son will not be killed?”
“As the Name lives, not a hair of your son will fall to the ground.” David gestured that the matter was closed, and a guard stepped forward to escort the widow out.
“Please let your maidservant say another word to my lord the king.”
“Speak on,” said David, a little surprised.
“Your majesty is as wise as an angel, and has given me this judgment. Yet he does not bring back his own banished one. We must all die. We are like water that is poured out on the ground and cannot be gathered up.”
“Who are you speaking for?” David demanded sharply. The widow, rattled perhaps by the change of tone in his voice, gave a frightened glance in the direction of Yoav, who, I noticed, was sweating. The king saw the glance, and glared at Yoav.
The widow—if widow she was—stammered as she replied. “Your maidservant thought, Let the word of my lord the king provide comfort, for my lord the king is like an angel of God, understanding everything, good and bad.”
David shifted in his chair, irritated by her obfuscation. “Do not withhold from me what I ask of you. Did Yoav put you up to this?”
She clenched her hands, which were trembling. “It is as you say. Your servant Yoav was the one who instructed me.”
Yoav stepped forward and prostrated himself, ready for David’s anger. There was a long silence. When David spoke, he lifted his chin and looked beyond Yoav to the courtiers and supplicants crowding the hall. “I do not pardon my son. I will not receive him back into this court. But I will end his exile.” He looked down at Yoav, prone on the flagstones at his feet. “Yoav, do this thing. My son may return to the Land. I will not receive him. He may not return here to the court, but I will allow him to reside outside the city, where his mother may have comfort of him. Go and bring him back. Bring back my son Avshalom.”
Yoav let out a long, relieved breath. He rose to his knees, his arms outstretched, palms upward. David pushed himself from his chair and walked forward. He reached out to Yoav, took his hands and raised him. They stood for a moment, eye to eye. Then the king embraced him. To some in the audience hall it was, I suppose, a reassuring moment. The frail king encircled and supported by the strong arms of his robust nephew. A king had taken counsel from his beloved general. He had recognized Yoav’s good intentions and allowed his heart to soften in the matter of his son. You could hear an exhalation of relief and satisfaction in the crowded room. Standing behind the throne, I also sighed. But for me it was a sigh of resignation, weariness, despair.
XXIV
Avshalom returned without fanfare. David granted him some land neighboring Yoav’s, with the idea that Yoav could keep an eye on him. I think that David believed the young man needed Yoav’s guidance and would be glad to settle modestly for the life of a prosperous farmer. Which only demonstrated how little he knew of his son.
Avshalom did not remain quiet for long. His first act was to clear half his cropland for a barracks and training ground. He bought himself a merkava and surrounded himself with a princely retinue of fifty bodyguards and pages. As their leader, he appointed his cousin Amasa, the youngest son of David’s sister Avigal. Yoav had been Amasa’s mentor
and patron, promoting him rapidly through the ranks. The move seemed to be a way to draw Yoav closer, and at the same time to underline Avshalom’s royal ties. If David would not restore him to the state befitting a crown prince, Avshalom, it seemed, was willing to do it for himself. He could be found most afternoons with Amasa, exercising his men in what had once been a field of swaying barley.
The mornings, however, were another matter. Muwat told me that Avshalom made a practice of being at the city gate early in the day, when supplicants arrived from the outlying villages, hoping to have their matters heard by the king. Avshalom had taken it upon himself to greet all comers, holding a kind of informal court of his own just inside the city gates. Muwat gave an arresting account of the scene there, so early one crisp morning I borrowed one of his shawls, threw it over my head and went to the gate square, to mingle with the crowd and see for myself. Sure enough, Avshalom arrived soon after, mounted on a glossy mule, surrounded by a retinue of good-looking young men; tall, hard-bodied youths who carried themselves with the confident bearing of soldiers.
Some handsome men prefer to surround themselves with plain or homely attendants, but Avshalom clearly had enough confidence in his own physical perfection to be unconcerned by comparisons. It was clear that he had not spent his exile idling, but in hard training. He blazed with good health, from the shining fall of his long hair to the sun-bronzed gleam of his well-muscled limbs. His vibrancy brought David before me—David as he had been in his prime, not enfeebled as he now was. The traveling supplicants, I thought, also would draw such a contrast. Having been welcomed to the city by this radiant figure, how would they not be disappointed when finally they came face-to-face with their aging king?
I loitered in the shadowed colonnade at the edge of the square, close enough to observe, yet far back enough to blend into the morning bustle. Avshalom could not have been more personable. He seemed to have a wide acquaintance among the city folk, greeting many by name and asking after their families. But his main focus was on the steady stream of visitors who entered the gate. He moved unhurriedly from one to the next, extending his greetings, endlessly patient with those who wished to pour out the details of their suit. He would lock eyes with each person, sometimes placing a hand lightly on their shoulder or arm, creating a sense of fellow feeling, nodding, frowning, smiling, as the substance of the conversation required. It was very well done. Very well done, and entirely devious. Day by day, man by man, hand clasp by hand clasp, Avshalom was building his faction. The merkava, the attendants, gave him the trappings of royal power, the ruler that you follow. The daily encounters at the gate brought him down to the level of everyman, the leader whom you love. I had no doubt that each of these travelers would go home to his village and tell his neighbors how David the king had disappointed them, that he seemed wan and distracted and suddenly old. But his son, ah, now, that handsome, princely fellow who took the time to listen—there was a man to watch. Avshalom was deft, I had to credit him.
Yoav, so anxious to return this heir to his father’s bosom. Might as well have brought the king an asp. I wondered how he now saw things, and resolved to find out. I was so lost in thought that I neglected to take Muwat’s shawl off my head as I approached his gate, and the gatekeeper barked rudely as he demanded my business. Any other day, I would have been amused by the stricken look on his face when I threw off the shawl.
He was still muttering apologies as the gate clanked shut behind me. Yoav interrupted a meeting with his unit commanders as soon as a servant brought him word that I was waiting for him.
“You’ve been to the gate?” he asked, direct as always. “He’s not wasting any time, is he?”
“It’s quite a performance,” I said.
“Quite. It’s not what I expected. I thought he’d be content to bide his time, as he did with that other business. He’s been at me to get him invited back to court.”
“Have you broached it with David?”
“No, and I don’t intend to, either. I’m out on a thin branch already with this one. I did tell David about the antics at the gate, and do you know how he reacted? With pleasure. He’s always been blind about his sons. You know that. Now he says he’s glad that Avshalom is winning the hearts of the people. He says he’s proud of him.”
As Yoav spoke, my thoughts traveled to my interview, so many years earlier, with Mikhal. She had described her father Shaul’s growing jealousy of David, the young upstart winning the people’s hearts. Now David himself was being usurped in the people’s affections, and yet what had driven Shaul deeper into madness had not caused David a moment’s concern. The difference, I suppose, was that because of Shmuel, Shaul knew he had lost the love of the Name. As distant and unhelpful as I had been forced to be in recent years, David knew I was with him, and through me, he still felt the touch of the divine hand upon his kingship.
“I believe that if I did ask him to receive Avshalom,” Yoav said, “he might very well say yes. And to be honest, now that I see that young man at work, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’m beginning to understand you better, Natan. I don’t trust him, either.”
“Does he know that?”
“I don’t think so. Although he might be starting to sweat over it a bit. I’ve ignored his last two messages.”
“Have you so? He won’t like that.”
He grinned. “I am sure of it.”
“Do you have someone close to him?” If Yoav could be direct, I decided, so could I. He gave me a piercing glance, but then he barked his foxlike laugh. “You know I do,” he said.
“Amasa?”
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Amasa. And others.”
A week later, Avshalom set fire to Yoav’s barley field. Yoav pulled me aside in the palace hallway to tell me about it. “Total loss, that field.”
“Did Amasa not warn you?”
“He swears he didn’t know. He was the one Avshalom sent to bring me the message that this was just a warning. He intended to burn all my fields if I didn’t come to see him.”
“And did you go?” I thought I’d seen Yoav in every mood—violent rage, deep fear for his life, lit up, variously, with battle fervor and victory toasts. But I’d never seen him look sheepish until that moment.
“Of course I did,” he grumbled. “I can’t set up openly against him. If I did, it wouldn’t stop with my fields. He’s a power, that young man. It’s clear enough. David’s the only one who could’ve dealt with him, but I think it’s too late now, even for that.”
“So? What did he want?”
“What he’s wanted all along. To see his father, to be received at court. To worm his way back into the succession. He was as cool as could be when I got there. Apologized for the field. Offered to compensate me for the lost grain. Said I’d left him no choice—no other way to get my attention. I’m going to do it, Natan. Because you can be sure it will happen, one day. David wants it, in his heart. So I might as well keep in credit and not make an enemy there. I’m going to ask David to receive him.”
“Do what you have to,” I said. “I will not speak against it.”
So Yoav put Avshalom’s request to David, who had been waiting for any slight pretext to see this son he loved. Still, David held himself aloof at their first meeting. When Avshalom rushed forward to kiss him, he turned his head and did not offer an embrace. To cover the moment, Avshalom offered the supplicant’s ceremonial kiss, touching his lips to David’s shoulder, making it seem as if this respectful stranger’s greeting had been all he’d intended. I am not sure why David withheld himself from full reconciliation, as it was abundantly clear how much he desired to clasp his son in his arms. In any case, the return of Avshalom breathed new vigor into him. He ate more, and gained back some of his lost weight, and started to look stronger.
Shlomo, who had become such a solace to his father, was pushed aside as soon as Avshalom returned to court. “I
t’s as if he doesn’t see me,” he confided wistfully one afternoon, as we walked in the almond groves behind my house. “He never sends for me anymore. Avshalom’s the only one he wants. Adoniyah is angry about it. His pride is hurt, and he lets it show. Which is stupid, I think. The king doesn’t like it, and it just makes Avshalom look better by comparison. Me, it’s not about pride. I just miss talking to my father. There’s so much to learn from him. But Avshalom doesn’t seem to see that. He doesn’t even pretend to be interested in anything David has to say. It’s all just flattery with him, and empty words. Anyway, maybe I’ll be called on again, once Avshalom goes to Hevron.”
“Hevron?” I swallowed. “When?” I had not expected this so soon.
“For the feast of the new moon. He says he promised, when he was in exile in Geshur, that he would sacrifice in his birth city. He said it would be good for relations with Yudah as well. The king hasn’t been there in an age—Avshalom said his going would be a way to show that the family remembers their kin. So the king told him to go in peace. He’s taking his companions, and has invited others from the city who also want to make pilgrimage to their family graves. It will be a large party, I think. They leave at first light.”
XXV
It is one thing to know what is to come. It is another thing to confront it. Go in peace, the king had said to Avshalom. But he went, of course, for war.
I had expected more patience from him. The same cold patience he had used against Amnon. Had Avshalom bided his time, played upon the king’s great love for him, power would have flowed gradually into his hands. In a year, maybe two at most, he would have been king in all but name. By then, it would have taken only a small push to unseat David and claim the throne. But Avshalom couldn’t wait.
Some two hundred set out with him to Hevron. I do not say that all of them were conspirators. Many, no doubt, joined with him in good faith. It was a long tradition to sacrifice in the old hallows of Giloh. Some went with Avshalom in reverence, some simply looking to enjoy the feasting that accompanied such rites, some, no doubt, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the young prince who stood once again so high in his father’s love. I do not know which share of them were traitors at heart, and which share found themselves caught up in events that they could not have foreseen. But witting or not, those two hundred were the seed corn of Avshalom’s rebellion.