What did surprise me was Yoav. It became clear, in a very short time, that Yoav had become Adoniyah’s chief supporter. Yoav blamed me for his estrangement from the king. So he was not inclined to support Shlomo, seeing him as my creature, no matter what his merits. I suppose he transferred his loyalty to the one among David’s sons he deemed likeliest, in return for that loyalty, to restore him to his accustomed full command. I began to take note, and to be on guard when I perceived this.
I made sure to let David know of it. I was well aware that he would never again love Yoav. But I sensed that he missed his abilities. And I also sensed he was looking for a way to be rid of Amasa. It was in the midst of a trivial attempt at insurgency among a Benyaminite faction that Yoav found his moment, and David allowed him to seize it. A disgruntled Benyaminite named Sheva had tried to rally supporters and David, acting at the first sign of dissent, dispatched Amasa to deal with it. When Amasa blundered and let Sheva and his rebellious faction give him the slip, David turned to Avishai to take command of the pursuit and set matters to rights. Yoav rode out with his brother. They caught up with Amasa’s troops by the great stone of Givon. Yoav dismounted to greet Amasa, coming up to him as he might have approached one of his brothers, drawing him close with his right arm. Amasa never saw the unsheathed knife in his left hand.
It was a reprise of the killing of Avner. But this time, David did not mourn or curse. The king chose to see the matter as Yoav exacting an overzealous punishment for Amasa’s dereliction of duty. It helped that Yoav went on to make an end of that rebel without damage to the town in which the scoundrel had taken refuge. In a gesture that recalled Avigail to me, a woman of the town bravely came out to Yoav and begged him to spare her community. Yoav agreed. If they surrendered Sheva, he said, there would be no fighting. That night, a party of townsfolk cornered Sheva, cut off his head, and threw it over the wall to Yoav.
David made public his gladness that the town had been spared and praised Yoav for his management of the incident, using it as the occasion to give Yoav back his place at the head of the armies. But it was not the full command he had once enjoyed. David left in place the division of authority that he had created under Amasa, which meant that Yoav had no direct command of Ittai’s forces or, more significantly, Benaiah’s. This chafed at Yoav. It proved that the wall raised by the killing of Avshalom still stood between him and David. In some measure Yoav continued to blame me for that, as if I could somehow have forestalled the events that had caused this estrangement. For myself, I did not care. Yoav and I had never liked each other, not from that first moment in the hallway of my father’s house. At best, we had been civil, and managed to work together for the same ends. But now those ends diverged.
XXVIII
I have been allowed to see many things. But one thing I had not seen. I did not know David’s end. I had imagined it, many times. How not? When Shaul chased us through the dry hills, or the Plishtim arrows darkened the sky above our heads, or the scalding oil, intended for him, showered from the ramparts to splatter and blister my own shoulders, death had been a breath away. When I stood between him and his own enraged, grief-maddened warriors, or we struggled for our footing in the rushing waters of the Yarden, the shadow of death lay heavy upon him. Everything in our entwined lives had prepared me to witness a violent death. But a silent, stalking death, creeping in on the footpads of age and illness: that, I had not foreseen.
I could never have conjured a vision of David as he finally became: a husk of a man, shivering under a mountain of bedclothes. Because he had been so strong, the illness was slow to truly claim him. But at seventy, he finally seemed spent. His body lost all capacity to warm itself. The constant shivering was like a wracking palsy that exhausted him until he could not rise from his bed. And his mind, also exhausted, seemed to wander, so that it was hard to get him to attend to matters that required his word.
As his condition grew worse, Batsheva defied all household protocol to remain at his side, night and day, seeing to his comfort in any way she could. I think everyone, with the possible exception of the dazed and baffled king, knew exactly why she was there. But if her motive was to buy time for Shlomo, David benefited greatly from the ardency of her care.
Adoniyah, still the presumptive heir to the throne, tried his best to thwart her in this. It was not fitting, he claimed, for the king’s wife to be ever present. Even in his depleted state, the king received his ministers and his generals when he was able to do so; these men should not have to wait about in an anteroom, kicking their heels, while a mere woman decreed who might come in or when they must go out.
Adoniyah had never liked Batsheva, jealous of her place in the king’s affections while his own mother remained unloved. But he played his hand too soon, when David still had the strength to resist him. David ignored Adoniyah’s protests and instructed his bodyguard, under command of Benaiah, to admit Batsheva without restriction, and to rely on her word as to which others might come or go. Unsurprisingly, Shlomo was often in attendance, whereas when Adoniyah or any others among the princes tried to see their father, it often happened that he was sleeping.
Although David had showed little outward concern, I think the knowledge of the tacit alliance between Adoniyah and the unforgiven Yoav weighed heavily on his mind. And Adoniyah’s behavior, when he was admitted to see his father, did not help his cause. Each time, he looked his father over with a kind of hunger in his face, as a greedy man might examine a fatling lamb, anxious for the day of slaughter. He did not tap his foot, but one had the sense that he wished to, so impatient was he for this death. David, as frail as he was, sensed this, and was curt with Adoniyah, feigning greater fatigue than he in fact felt, so as to have the young man gone in the shortest possible time.
Batsheva, during these days, wore herself to a nub ensuring the best possible care for David. She searched out healers and herbalists, anyone who could bring a moment of ease. The best of these proved to be a young woman from Shunem, barely more than a girl, who had a prodigious knowledge of plants. This, so she said, had been passed down from mother to daughter in her family over many generations. She knew how to infuse warmed oils with peppercorns, mustard seeds and other heat-giving plants, and applied these unguents with slow, soothing strokes, pressing and releasing David’s poor wasted flesh as she hummed low incantations in some forgotten, ancient tongue. She ordered bowls of steaming water, constantly replenished, that she infused with crushed aromatics. These gave the bedchamber a clean and wholesome scent, recalling the honey fragrances of springtime meadows and the bracing tang of cut hay in fresh-mown fields. Whether it was the herbs, the healing touch (she was skillful, and seemed to know every sinew of the body) or merely the presence of a lovely young girl (she also was very beautiful), David seemed to rally from these treatments. And so, at Batsheva’s insistence, the girl, Avishag, became David’s chief nurse and most constant servant. I noticed that Adoniyah had no issues with her presence in the room when he came to visit his father. In fact, his eyes were more often on her, as she organized and prepared her remedies, than on his father.
Shlomo, for his part, brought a different kind of healing. His presence seemed to raise David’s spirits, and he took comfort in having the youth stay by him. Sometimes, when he had the energy, he would compose. Shlomo would sound the notes of the melody on the harp strings as David directed him, and write down the words. Although the king no longer had the breath to sing, some of these psalms live on as his finest. Shlomo would bring the notes and lyrics direct from David’s chamber to the singing men and women to learn, so that David could hear the psalm he had composed performed for him. David seemed to take pleasure in it, and it delighted Shlomo to be useful in this way.
“You have to hear this one,” Shlomo said. He still liked to come to my house when we were not with the king. It was not a matter of lessons anymore; he had no need of them. But to my joy, he seemed to crave my company, and sought it out whenev
er he had an hour’s liberty. He had been with the king earlier in the morning and wanted to share with me the new composition they had worked on together. “Listen, it’s lovely—” He hummed the melody, following the lines he’d inscribed.
“‘He who rules justly is like the first light of daybreak, a cloudless clime, sunbeams after showers, fingering forth the green of the earth . . .’ And then there’s this bit, a little further on . . . ‘Will he not cause my success to blossom and my every desire to bloom? But the wicked shall be raked aside like thorns . . .’ I love that—‘raked aside’—you feel the carelessness of the gesture, the violence of divine indifference. I wish I had a voice like his, so I could sing it for him myself. I think I will ask that young singer who came to us from the Yezreel—you know the one? He’s got the purest tones I’ve heard, saving the king’s own, of course—I wish I could—”
He broke off there, and looked up in surprise as Muwat burst into the room, breathing hard and dropping his market bundle on the flagstones.
“What is it?” I said sharply, starting up from my bench. “Is it the king?” Muwat shook his head, wincing, pressing a hand against a stitch in his side.
“No. They say the king’s condition is unchanged. It’s not the king. It’s Adoniyah. The whole market is abuzz. He’s placed vast orders. He’s giving a feast, this day, at Enrogel.” I knew the place—a pleasant spring in the Wadi Kidron, just southeast of the city walls and set in a wide meadow where a large crowd could assemble for major sacrifices and ceremonies. “I could barely find a loaf or a hen for sale, all the food and livestock—oxen, sheep, fatlings—being prepared and sent off. They say that all the princes are invited—”
“All the princes?” I interrupted sharply. “You?” I said, turning to Shlomo.
“Of course not! I would have told you if he’d—”
“That’s what I thought. Who else do they say?”
“The king’s courtiers from the tribe of Yudah—not the Benyaminites, they are not included, or so the rumors say, anyway—and Yoav, and Aviathar the priest is to perform the sacrifices.”
“Is that so? And yet I am not invited, nor Shlomo here, and not Benaiah, either, I’ll be bound.” I turned to Shlomo, who was standing now, wide-eyed. I put my hands on his shoulders—he was almost as tall as me, suddenly—and I felt the power surging through me, painful and raw, as if I’d grasped a naked flame. He felt it, too. His large eyes widened and a deep flush of excitement colored his ivory skin.
“It’s time,” I said. “Are you ready?”
He didn’t answer me in words, but the high carriage of his head and the set of his shoulders gave me my reply.
At the palace, I did not need to ask for Batsheva. She was waiting for us in the anteroom, and as soon as we entered she sent the guards out.
“This is it, isn’t it? Adoniyah is going to declare himself king today.”
“He will—he may be doing so even now. And if he does this, the next thing he will do is kill you, and your son.”
“No!” said Shlomo, enfolding his mother in a protective embrace.
“Let her go,” I said. “Go in there, Batsheva, and tell the king to put Shlomo on the throne. Remind him that he made you this promise, when his sin caused your first son to die.”
She stared at me, her eyes very wide, her face pale. “But he made me no such promise,” she whispered.
I turned my hand, brushing away her concern. “Say it. I will support you.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice catching. “It isn’t true.”
“You will. If you love your son. You will do what is necessary.”
I heard the words come out of my mouth. David’s words. What is necessary. How often had I despised those words—the utilitarian willingness they signified, that anything may be done in the quest for power. Now I, too, was after power, and I, too, would do what was necessary to secure it. “Go in,” I said to Batsheva. “I will come in after you and tell him that it must be.”
“Must be? You mean you know it will be?”
Did I? At this moment, I was no longer sure what I truly knew. I had seen Shlomo crowned, the city grown great, the glory of the temple on the hill. But of how that would happen, and if it would begin today, I had no certainty. I did not share this doubt with her. At this moment, I needed her to believe in me. “I have said it. Now go.”
I gave her a few moments, and then I came in behind her. She was kneeling by David’s bed, his spare, trembling hand clutched in her own. “The eyes of all Israel look this way,” she whispered. “Tell them who shall succeed you on the throne. Otherwise—” Her voice caught. “Otherwise, when you lie down with your fathers, Adoniyah will have us put to death.”
I came up then, and bowed low, as I had not done in some years. “Did you say that Adoniyah was to succeed you as king? Because right now, at the sacrificial feast, with Yoav’s army behind him and your priest Aviathar in front of him, they are claiming your throne. Listen, and you will probably soon hear the shouting. If you have decreed this, without telling me, your servant, then I will say no more.”
“I decreed no such thing, as you well know,” he rasped. His face creased with strain. He struggled to sit upright. He was gasping for breath, his skin mottled. The girl Avishag hurried to assist him, supporting him into a position that eased his breathing, then running her hands across his brow and temples. He shrugged her off. “Batsheva!” he said, his voice clear. “As the Lord lives, who has rescued me from every trouble, I swear that your son, Shlomo, will succeed me as king, and sit on my throne this very day.”
Batsheva bowed her head and kissed his mottled hand. “May you live,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Summon me the priest Zadok, and Benaiah.”
I had already asked Muwat to fetch them, and they were waiting outside. “Get me to the chair,” David commanded. “Bring me my cloak.” David let Avishag and me help him to his high-backed, carved chair. Batsheva draped his purple cloak around him, arranging the folds so as to hide his tremors. When Zadok and Benaiah entered, David intended that they should see a king, not an invalid. I registered the surprise in their faces. Benaiah, who had a daily audience at which the king, at times, was often too weak to raise his head, checked at the door in surprise to see David looking more like himself. I could read real gladness in his face at the change. But when Benaiah and Zadok began their greetings and well wishes, David cut them off abruptly.
“Take my loyal soldiers, and have my son Shlomo ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon. Zadok, Natan, you two will anoint him there, king over all Israel. When that is done, sound every shofar, and proclaim ‘Long live the king.’ Then march up after him, and let him sit on my throne. For I say to you here: He shall succeed me as king; today I designate him ruler over Israel and Yudah.”
As soon as Benaiah and Zadok left the room, David slumped in the chair. We helped him to the bed, where he fell into the pillows, spent. Avishag busied herself with her herbs, crushing a handful of leaves into boiling water so that a sharp, refreshing scent filled the chamber.
I knelt beside David and whispered in his ear: all that I had seen and had not been able to say, the vision of the great kingdom that would arise under his son’s rule, its grandeur and magnificence. The judgments he would render that would make his name a byword for wisdom and good governance through the centuries. “And there will be peace, at last,” I said. “What you started, what you bought with so much blood, that will be over finally. He will finish it. And then, all the days of his rule, the people of the Land will dwell in safety, each under his own vine and his own fig tree.”
David closed his eyes and smiled. But then he gripped my hand. “And the temple?” he rasped.
“The temple!” I built it for him there, dressed stone by dressed stone, the carved cedars inscribed with gourds and calyxes, the solid gold overlay gleaming within the hol
y of holies. Every detail of my vision I set out for him, and I think, by the end of it, he saw what I had seen. He lay back, breathing easier. After a little, a frown creased his brow. “He’ll have to kill them. Yoav, for certain. Adoniyah, probably. Others . . .”
I laid a hand on his forehead. “Not now. You do not need to think of this today. I promise you, you will have time. Because of what you do today, you will have time to sit with him, to tell him how to be a king. To show him what he needs to do, to tell him what will be . . .” I swallowed, as if to choke back the word, but it came out, as it must “. . . necessary.” But this time, what was necessary also would be what was just. David sighed. “It won’t be easy for him.”
“Not at first,” I agreed. “But you will live to see with your own eyes the beginning of the greatness you have created.”
“With your help, Natan. With your help.” He put his trembling hand on my head, and gave me his blessing. I felt a surge of power pass through him into me, and I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed.
There was a knock on the door then, Benaiah’s aide telling me that all were assembled. “They wait only for you, to start out for the Gihon spring.”
I clasped David’s hand, feeling the bones move under the loose flesh. “Rest now,” I said. “Rest, and listen. May what you hear make you glad.” I stood, and signed to Batsheva. She came and knelt in my place, running her hand tenderly through the strands of David’s faded hair.