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THE
ADULTERESS
If
you and your sons will walk before me in truth with all their heart and soul,
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Prologue
Jerusalem,
The Palace of Solomon “The Queen desires your presence in her room, lady Elisheva.” The girl cringed at the title before looking up at the palace guard. “I will come,” she replied, as if she’d been given a choice; but when the Queen over all other queens summoned a mere concubine, there was no denial. When The Great Lady allowed a young girl into her very private rooms, it was an honor to be so called. As she walked beside the unsmiling guard down the long, white corridor from the special room she’d been given overlooking the mountain slopes and the king’s garden – a source of great envy among the other concubines – Elisheva wore no expression. Not that it mattered, since she was heavily veiled to her feet, the eunuch couldn’t see her face. No man but the king had the right to see her. She was the king’s woman. She’d had no choice in that, either. One minute she’d been a country girl singing praises to God among the trees as she picked nuts in her beloved Jezreel Valley. The next she was inside a massive tent filled with luxuries, talking and laughing with a man too young, too ridiculously handsome to have reigned over Israel sixteen years. He’d said, “Call me Jedidiah,” as if he were just an ordinary man – but within another day her father had sold her to him, as if she was a tamed ass. Veiled and travelling in a caravan of dignitaries, she was a terrified child in a world of important adults who resented her presence. They still did. Almost a year later, a country girl walled in a cage of gold and marble, they hated her for her dark skin and for the love the king bore her. They saw her as an outsider, since her mother was a dusky-skinned, lissome beauty from the great land of Sheba on the western side of the Red Sea. The guard opened the massive, carved double doors, made from the finest cedars of Lebanon, and bowed her into the Queen’s rooms. “I will wait for you here until the queen dismisses you, lady Elisheva.” I am not a lady. I am barely a woman yet, she wanted to shout. I am but seventeen! Her lips pushed hard together, her fingers curled into her palms, and with a great effort of will, she nodded. “Thank you,” she said, though protocol demanded she ignored a mere slave. “Come in, child,” a tender voice called. Elisheva licked her upper lip, and walked into the magnificent rooms the king had built for his beloved mother, the Great Lady and still premier Queen, despite the number of wives the king had. The moment the eunuch closed the doors, the queen waved at the girl’s head and said, in loving impatience, “Take that thing off, dear child. I wish to see your lovely smile.” With a sigh of relief, Elisheva tossed the veil aside. “My lady queen.” The motherless child ran to the woman with no daughter, a woman whose dark-eyed, radiant beauty had brought Israel to its knees: a beauty still vivid in its remnants after more than thirty years as queen. Elisheva knelt at the queen’s feet, head bowed. “You wished to see me?” For once she did not give the tender chiding to call her Mother. Bath-sheba lifted Elisheva’s chin, searching her face with the haunting dark eyes that saw too much. “You were with him today, my love,” she said quietly. Elisheva stiffened. “With whom, the king?” she asked, aiming for a careless tone. “Stop putting a distance between us.” Bath-sheba caressed her unbound hair with loving strokes. “You put yourself in terrible danger, you and your Jesse.” Again Elisheva struggled against the temptation to speak. Daily the pain of deception grew worse, but the game she played was vital. Even the queen did not know the stakes of discovery. “I am sorry, Mother,” she whispered, and laid her head in the queen’s lap. “You must stop this, my daughter. The king will kill you both when he knows.” Elisheva shuddered. She was only seventeen, too young to see the specter of death before her each day…and she was far too young to bear this alone. “I love him.” A sigh so deep it seemed to bring the queen’s heart with it, and too late she remembered this was not her mother, but the king’s. “I know – oh, dear child, I know.” Elisheva looked up, shocked by the pain, the empathy in the queen’s voice. She touched her hand. “Mother?” The queen nodded, and put aside the touch of splendor that was her final barrier. The mask of the beautiful, dignified queen tore, laying bare the real woman beneath. The years melted from the striking face, and Elisheva saw a young woman in love, in pain. “As I loved my Uriah, you care for your Jesse. And for the sake of your young shepherd’s life, my dear, you must send him away.” Elisheva remembered the rumors she’d heard of the beautiful, cunning siren who’d lured the faithful king David to madness and murder in order to be called his queen. “You were still a bride when my lord king first saw you, were you not?” Her smile seemed to come from across a universe of time and loneliness. “Thirty-five years have passed since I saw his face, but my heart still aches for him.” Her eyes were remote as she took the girl’s hand in hers, but then they focused on her. “You are the daughter of my heart, and so I must warn you. Jedidiah is wise in many things, but in love he is his father’s son, blind to anything but his need.” The earnest dark eyes, with the heart-melting beauty her son the king had inherited, filled with rare tears as she spoke the family name for the Great King Solomon. “He has the power of life and death over you both. If he discovers your deception, he will kill Jesse to make you his queen – and your suffering will never end. You’ll see Jesse’s face in your dreams, as my son holds you, even as he lays with you and you bear his children, you’ll ache for them to have the face you’ll never see again.” Again Elisheva shivered. “Mother, I cannot. I am weak – and –” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words that would see Jesse’s head severed from his body. “You must. You don’t understand what it’s like. Love is not worth the cost when a king wants you. You cannot win – and the consequences to your family, to Israel itself, are beyond your worst dreams.” The queen’s cheeks were white, her eyes blank with a memory so poignant that, unable to bear looking, Elisheva turned quickly away from her. “Why must I be responsible for this?” she asked, husky with anger. “Why does the king win all, and I must lose?” “Because he is king, child. You have no choices but the right one, and fighting against it as you do endanger more than you and Jesse alone.” The queen reached behind her, to the exquisite writing-table of quarried marble, and turned back holding a thick-bound mass of papyrus sheets. “I have never shown this to a living soul. Take it, dear heart. Read it so that you may understand.” She put her hands up as if to barricade the queen, but the books were pushed onto her lap. A wave of fear rolled across her body, but at the same time, curiosity burned deep in her chest. Although aching to know, she swallowed, picked them up and handed them back. “No. No.” The queen’s face changed, became regal and cold, like a goddess carved into a bronze coin. “I will see to it that not even the king disturbs you until you’ve read them. I will bring your meals to you, and accompany you on your daily walk.” Elisheva gasped in fury and defiance, feeling the warmth drain from her face. The threat was clear: Jesse would find no way to see her until she’d obeyed – and no one in Israel dared disobey The Great Lady. Elisheva rose to her feet, reluctantly taking the books in her hands. “Again, it seems I have no choice. I thank you for the precious gift, my lady,” she all but snarled, with a low, mocking bow. “I will leave you to your rest.” “Child –” Elisheva didn’t turn. “Put the order in place, my lady queen. Perhaps you should put me in chains, for I fear I shall break your command if you do not.” The tenderness in the queen’s voice was now gone. “Go, then. I will not cage you – but God help your poor Jesse. I have done my best to save him, if you will not.” Her eyes burning, holding the bound pages to her, Elisheva snatched up her veil, flung it over her head and body, and left the rooms. Accompanied by the silent guard, she fled once again for the sanctuary of her lonely room. Elisheva sat cross-legged on her bed, her breaths choppy with anger. Her heart was torn with outrage and the betrayal she couldn’t accustom herself to. It had been a year since she’d been chosen as the king’s chosen lady. She’d be his premier wife and queen the moment she agreed. While she cared for Jedidiah, she did not love him; yet that seemed to matter to no one but her. Her father and brothers answered her passionate pleas with notes that told her to think of what she did for her family. She had no friends among the concubines, and the king’s wives – eighty in total – all behaved as if she didn’t exist. Until tonight, the lady Bath-sheba had been the only one to understand her, and give her a choice. She glared at the thing lying on her bed. Having read only animal skin scrolls until now, she’d never seen Egyptian papyrus before. It was perfectly cut, bound in the same kind of dark leather the palace guards had for their jerkins, and held closed with string wound into some kind of metal pin. For a moment she struggled against the desire to toss it into the fire pit. Then Jesse’s face rose in her mind, her beloved shepherd who risked his life daily to be near her. He will kill your Jesse to make you his queen. Her mouth set into a stubborn line, she unwound the string and let the book fall open. The leather seemed to be some kind of folder holding the loose pieces of papyrus in place. Elisheva picked up the first page. It was covered in writing, small and cramped, as if Bath-sheba hadn’t known where the next piece of paper would come from and so had fit as much as she could on each page. * I saw him die, my love, my Uriah. As ever my hated curse came to life when I needed it least, and gave me a vision that will haunt me every day and night until I die. I am compelled to write this. My mind forces me to relive his death over and over until, in writing it all down, I find release and finally, I can sleep. I hope he finds this when he sneaks through my things. I know he does. His obsession with me will last until he wins, but I swear he never will. He can cage me here, but I give him no emotion, not even the hate that churns within me every moment. I give him only a slave’s dull obedience, for that hurts him most. But the worst I can do to him will never equal the pain he has inflicted on me. I hope you read this, my king. Instead of the love poems you hoped I would write when you gave me this papyrus, you’ll read of Uriah’s last hour. You’ll know what I see daily when you imprison me here, read what I feel when you try to buy me with your gold and perfumes, or win my heart with your pretty songs. You will stop giving me the papyrus then, I know, for you take away everything that gives me happiness. Read it, my murderer – for that is what you are. You destroyed my innocence the day you had your soldiers bring me to your palace and forced me into your bed with subtle threats against Uriah’s life. You killed my heart when you ordered the death of my beloved. You can put veils and circles of gold on my head, but I will never be your queen – I am the Witch of Giloh, and I swear by the living God that I will one day find the way to use my hated curse to destroy you. * Elisheva put aside the first sheet with a shaking hand. No wonder Bath-sheba had written with such a small hand. So The Great Lady did truly understand her position, knew her life – far more than she’d dreamed. Compelled even beyond her resentment and anger, the girl picked up the second leaf of papyrus and devoured it with eyes that had a will of their own.
Betrayal
Rabbah, Ammon, in the twenty-first year of King David’s reign
The light seemed to sink rather than rise, as if the day moved in reverse. To the north and south of the walls looming over them, the horizon held touches of early lavender and rose-topaz; but a thick mass of cloud was moving in from the Great Sea to the west, heavy and dark-grey with lining the hue of a ripe pomegranate. “More rain,” a soldier muttered. He shivered, for the fire was poor, made with young branches and wet twigs carted north from a small forest north of the ruined gate of Jericho. “Hail, more likely, with that shade of green,” another said, his tone sour. “Strap our helmets on tight today. Keep your shields over your heads as we launch the offensive.” “What offensive?” another derided. “We sit in the cold darkness and shiver and starve as the Ammonites laugh at us. We’ll never take this place. There’s no road to or from the city, no grass or trees, just torrents of mud – we’ve had rivers of it the entire spring! Even our tents are too soaked to sleep in.” “Why are we here? We have fields and family business to attend.” “Why isn’t the king here fighting with us?” a thin man lamented, as did at least a hundred men every day. “We never lost a battle or a siege when David led the army. We sit in the pouring rain and endure the stench of our feces while he sits in Jerusalem eating and drinking, playing his harp and loving his many wives, and I eat undercooked greens and must not look upon the only wife I have!” Uriah deliberately did not hear the mutterings as he passed the fires. If he could not argue with them, then he must be a good leader and not speak his doubts aloud. As one of David’s chosen thirty, a Mighty Man of Fame, Uriah’s duty was to encourage and inspire his men – but they’d only lose respect for him if he lied. None of them had had a nutritious meal in weeks. The rain was constant, making the required burial of their natural functions a pointless task. This so-called siege was an exercise in ridicule for the Ammonites. Rabbah was impenetrable. The pride of the Ammonites had stone walls two cubits thick and fifteen high; the three double sets of gates were of forged bronze and iron. Built on the apex of a massive hill and sprawling across and down the eastern side, the city blocked out the sun until just before it began to set. Israel’s once all-conquering army was locked in perpetual darkness, drowning in slimy white clay mud and wetness, and losing heart beneath the constant jeering of the Ammonite people. Even children’s rocks flew at them hourly from the battlements; old, dull arrows hit the ground from outworn bows. The Ammonite soldiers didn’t bother to fight; they sent their boys to the walls for target practice. As a professional warrior, Uriah recognized futility when he saw it. Having returned from Jerusalem last night without having so much as glimpsed his bride, all he wanted was to go home, take his lovely wild girl in his arms and carry her to bed. He’d never imagined when he’d left for battle that this would drag out over the remains of autumn, throughout winter and now into the spring. Why had David not given the command to retreat? The thought of his young, country-bred wife staying alone for months on end in a city she hated haunted his soul. Her final words rang as clear in his head now as they had the night he’d told her he must leave. Why must you go, Uriah? Have I driven you away? No, my dove, he’d said quietly. I cannot stay with you while my men suffer and die. I must lead by example. Being one of the lord David’s mighty men of fame, when I am not an Israelite born, means I must make the difficult choices. But we have not yet been wed a half-year, she’d wailed. You can stay with me by law for an entire year, or until you fill my belly with your child. Stay with me, my love, live and dance and rejoice with me. None could blame you for loving your wife. The thought of rejoicing with her made him ache. It had been more than four months since he’d lost himself inside her eager, welcoming body… Please do not leave me alone in this place. It’s haunted by ghosts of those sacrificed here. I see the babes burning. I feel the pain and violence of those who were here before. Stop it, my love, he’d told her with unwonted sternness, even as he’d wiped her tears away. He couldn’t show her how her words, a reference to her strange and unwanted curse, set his nerves on edge. I must go. It does no good to frighten yourself with children’s tales. You will be safe here. Ask Mina to stay with you if you fear being alone. He’d never expected her to be alone this long, with still no end in sight. He worried about her day and night. He knew how much he meant to her, his outcast bride. He had no choice, no matter what the Law says. He must lead my men with all honor! He stood outside his tent, allowing his man Micah to buckle on his shield and strap on his helmet securely. As Micah worked in silence – Uriah disliked empty chatter to distract his thoughts before a battle – his gaze swept over the fortress, reliving the plans in his mind. The lord Joab had recalled him to the commander’s tent within three hours of his return to Rabbah. “My uncle the king has chosen you to lead the attack.” Joab held the scroll Uriah had brought the commander in his hands. There was a strange, hot anger in his eyes. “The Seventh and Twelfth Units will dam up the river tonight while the men of Rabbah sleep. In the morning your Eighth Unit will split: half will go through the watercourse into the city and open the gates. The rest of you will take the frontal assault, closely followed by another two battalions, foot, arrow and spear.” He’d blinked, puzzled. “The king expects three Units to take the entire city, my lord?” “As I told you, half of your Unit will enter by the waterway, dressed as Ammonites, and will by stealth win the gates, and open them for you. The rest of us invade as the other gates open for us. The king says he asked the will of God, and had the answer by the prophet Nathan,” Joab’s cheeks held a near-puce shade, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that Uriah had never seen from him in all their years of soldiering and drinking together: a friendship as strong as it was unspoken. “Your men will reach the gates, and open them to allow the flooding force of Israel. We will end this long siege today. Nathan has spoken it. Do you refuse the assignment? Did my uncle David not kill a giant with a single stone when everyone believed it impossible? Did he not vanquish the entire Philistine army by the time he was twenty-two, and with an armed forced half the size of theirs? To be singled out in this way is a gift of God many an Israelite would envy!” Many a true Israelite, Joab had meant – and Uriah was silenced. He’d bowed his head, accepting the honor, the duty and the will of God. He must do no less. Suddenly Bath-sheba’s voice filled his head, like a warning. I fear I will never see you again! I know you dislike my speaking of my curse –I hate that I cannot understand or explain it – but I know you must not go to Rabbah! Stop thinking of her, he thought fiercely. I made my choice. Prepare for the attack! The memory of his bride’s tears as he left the house that last day still hurt his heart. For four months the soldier had waged daily war with the husband, the lover; but to win the respect of the people, he must make no excuses for himself. He must sacrifice his needs for the sake of the children not yet born. This was reality, the life that had become hers from the day she’d accepted him as her husband. They would always be outsiders, he and Bath-sheba: he by race, she by the hatred of her own people. She, a true Israelite of the race of Judah, would not be his wife now but for the strange gift of seeing, feeling things she ought not to know. She called it her curse. The people of Giloh called it worse than that, swearing her eyes burned into their souls, stole their secrets from the darkest corners of their minds. It had been the deaths of her grandfather’s young wife and her lover that brought terror to the hearts of anyone in Giloh. If Bath-sheba had not been granddaughter of the king’s trusted counselor Ahithophel, she would be dead now. Had Ahithophel himself not protected her when the people of Giloh come at her with stones… Even now Uriah believed the stories were exaggerated over time – but the dark-skinned alien resident and the black-eyed, shy-hearted witch of Giloh could never do less than the right, the perfect and honorable thing. Bath-sheba must learn to live with it, just as he had. An arrow smacked into the ground not far from his feet. Its iron-tipped barb sank in the mud; the fletching quivered in the half-light. Splatters of gray water stained his legs, his laces. Uriah shrugged. If the Ammonites wished to waste their arrows shooting at targets out of range, the men of Israel would collect them and send them back, with a more deadly aim. He nodded to Micah, who blew a horn call: the eighth Unit had been summoned to their Captain. It was time. “My lord!” Shimon, a thin, dark-haired child of twelve summers, came running to his tent. Gasping for air, his big eyes wide, he came around his Captain to give his news, puffing with importance. “My lord Uriah, the lord Joab told me to inform you that the men of your Unit have left to divert the watercourse. Now he commands that you begin the –” Thwack. The child gave a gurgling gasp from deep inside his bony chest, and with an unnatural leap, landed in Uriah’s arms. Uriah roared in fury born of agony. He’d made a vow to Shimon’s parents when they’d entrusted the boy to his care; now his word had become a bitter mockery… Followed by his stunned men he carried the boy to his tent, laid him on his side, for removing the arrow would make the death more painful. He wiped a dribble of blood from the boy’s chin and cheek. As he stared at the dying boy, his words dried. The only things that came to mind, words of rage and vengeance, would not help Shimon. “I will tell your father and mother how brave you were.” But Shimon’s eyes had gone blank; the froth of scarlet bubbles in the corner of his mouth dribbled down his chin as blew out another blood-soaked sigh, and his soul left him. His men left in silence. They knew their Captain, what he’d need from them. Outside, they called to their servants strap on shields and helmets, to ready their swords and arrows. Uriah closed Shimon’s eyes, covered him with the woven blanket, and stumbled through a prayer for the child that sounded weary in his own ears: so many unnecessary deaths in this benighted place. Then he clenched his fists, dragged in a breath. He could give the boy nothing now but justice. He strode out, hefted his sword and body-length shield to his shoulder, blew his horn and roared, “Eighth Unit! In the name of the living God and the child Shimon ben Ahud, slain this hour, we will bring Rabbah and the Ammonite hoards down this day!” Furious shouts of agreement and battle cries were his reply. The clashing of shields and blasts of horns accompanied him as he charged up the dank hill. He dodged arrows, lifting his shield high as he tried to charge in battle formation, but sinking ankle-deep in the mire with each step. He ignored the screams of the Ammonites as the watch alerted the infantry in the baked mud houses clustered just behind the gates of the city. It felt strange, the emptiness on his left side where the other half of his Unit should be. They’d gone to the watercourse fed by the Jabbok River where it entered the city, led by his lieutenant, Yakob. They should be inside the city by now, ready to open the gates for him. This plan is the will of the God who parted the Red Sea, and brought down the walls of Jericho: walls that fell four hundred years ago and are still not rebuilt! Uriah ran on, despite his calf muscles cramping hard. Half a dozen men fell dead at his side, friends and neighbors who’d followed him from Hebron, and then Jerusalem – but he’d grieve later. Now was the time for God’s will to be done. “Courage!” he yelled to his men. Then the sound he’d been waiting for filled the sky: the trumpet call that told him Yakob and his men had breached the water defenses of the city! Soon victory would be theirs. Filled and overflowing with grief and rage, his vision misted with the scarlet of Shimon’s blood, he continued the charge. “Come, men! In the name of the living God we will take this place!” With a mighty roar and lifted sword, he charged toward the gates – The gates opened! Yakob and his men must have done the impossible, as the prophet Nathan had spoken. This attack was surely the will of God! He stormed inside, feeling his men there with him, his trusted friends – As he turned to inspire them to fight, he saw four dozen men as he’d expected, dressed in the gear of his Unit surrounding him – but they were strangers. Grinning strangers, advancing on him instead of the enemy…heart pounding a rapid tattoo, he swung back. His men were in a ragged line halfway up the hill, swords tipped downward, battle formation lost. Each man’s face wore the same look of torn loyalty and anguished guilt, the awkward uncertainty of a man following an order he didn’t understand. The trumpet blast he’d heard. Had it been a call to charge, or to halt? He’d been so focused on vengeance he hadn’t listened to the exact notes. A stunning blow to his head made him reel. One of the strangers pushed him so hard he fell to his knees. Two men grabbed him and dragged him inside the open gates that now looked like a gaping maw, lion’s jaws open and waiting to devour. One of the men holding him muttered to another, in the harsh, guttural tone of the deposed Midianites: “This will be good for many moons of payment!” Apiru! By the living God, he’d been ambushed by the Apiru – Canaanite tribes who’d escaped David’s annihilation, eluding capture through years of knowledge of the region, and eked out a living as mercenary units: men who’d kill their grandmothers for a good price. Someone had sent him in here with the Apiru dressed in the gear of his own regiment… Bile filled his throat. The Apiru hated the men of Israel, but still more despised men like him, people whose race had surrendered to Israel. Even five generations later, they saw him as a traitor to the Canaanites, fighting for the enemy against his own people. With a roar, Uriah struggled to his feet. “Cowards! Stand and fight like men of honor!” “Who are you to speak of honor? You will die like a dog!” one snarled. Another blow to the head – not with a sword, soldier to soldier, but with its hilt, signifying the traitor’s death to follow; and no matter how he fought against the indignity of it, he sank again to his knees. Laughing, the Apiru turned and ran as the gates swung back – but they stopped laughing when four men fell with arrows in their gut. His two trusted and beloved lieutenants and friends, Mattaniah and Hilkiah, were dragging him to his feet. “We are with you, Uriah!” they cried raggedly. A horn blew – his own call to arms – and the archers of his Unit, running to beat the gates’ closure, sent a deadly hail. Another two Apiru fell. “They were not supposed to fight us!” their leader cried in obvious astonishment. “Turn back, turn back!” In moments the Canaanites had gone. The gates of the inner bailey boomed shut behind them; the thick bars fell into place, high and low. In fury, the enemy swarmed the three men of Israel to finish them off, while the Ammonites jeered and laughed from above, throwing down cat-calls on how to best kill them. Uriah gained his feet, fighting for his life as his glance took in every corner of the inner courtyard. There was nowhere to go. They were locked inside a fortress between iron and bronze gates the height of four men. Around them were Apiru; above was a multitude of mocking faces. Their corselets and shields wouldn’t keep out a slew of iron arrows for long. Caught inside Rabbah’s walls like animals in a trap – and in a flash, the puzzle-pieces came together with hideous clarity. His old friend the lord king David had ordered him home last week, ostensibly to ask how the siege progressed. Both nights he’d made Uriah roaring drunk at dinner, and encouraged him to go home and to his wife. She misses you. You sacrificed time with your bride you were entitled to by Law, to serve Israel and your men. Should you not have the joy of her for one night? As a soldier himself, the king knew the Law forbade any soldier to sleep with his wife while on active duty. The king also knew that Uriah, a Hittite and outsider, could not afford to break any part of the law. There was no sacrifice against prejudice. The morning after the second night, the king had ordered him back to the fighting. He’d handed him a scroll, said they were new orders for the lord Joab – but they’d included the most unusual honor for Uriah, a non-Israelite, to take the leading position in the attack. He’d delivered his own death sentence to his commander. Why, why? What had he done to deserve this – from his king, friend of nearly two decades – from the lord Joab who’d given the command? Was this punishment from God? “No – no! I will not lose my faith, too!” With a yell of defiance he plowed on, loosing arrows as fast as did his two dearest friends – friends who’d proven their loyalty this day, fighting a losing battle, blood dripping like sweat to the ground. The blood of sacrifice… He roared, “Men of Ammon, you have walls and swords and arrows, but I have the name of the living God, and I will smite you down –” Mocking laughter and a hail of arrows was the Ammonites’ only answer. The first arrow pierced him above the heart, downward and into his lungs. Within seconds his breath filled with gurgling blood, as arrows fell like hail from above him, spearing him through, and the swinging two-sided sword of the Apiru cut him almost in two. Through eyes filmy with coming death, he searched out Mattaniah and Hilkiah. An arrow jutted out of Mattaniah’s sightless eye and blood bubbled from his throat; Hilkiah writhed on the ground, arrows protruding at odd angles in his belly and groin. “Why?” he gasped as he fell to his knees. “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Through the roaring in his ears, he heard the sound of a battle cry: the men of his loyal unit were running to him as the voices of the Lords Abishai and Joab came to him, yelling at the men to hold their positions. The voices of his commanders, the king’s nephews, might have been vague and uncertain through the closed gates and his clouded brain, but their authority and desperation rang true. Yes, Joab, complete the betrayal. I would rather die now than go home and see with my own eyes what the king has taken from me, my wife, my house and my good name. Witch of Giloh, my love, you warned me not to come here… An arrow pierced his back, and he fell to his face. “Bath-shaba,” he whispered, his hand groping for Mattaniah’s. The Mighty Man of Fame, the warrior and Captain curled his fingers over his friend’s hand and died like a child, not wanting to be alone.
Captive
Jerusalem, the Palace of David The communal area in which the concubines of King David spent their days was large and airy. The wide windows let air and light flood in, and looked down over the torrent valley of Kidron: steep-falling hills and sudden plateaus, lush and green, with the spring waterfalls heavy and crystalline with the late melt of snow from Mount Moriah. There was a wondrous balcony, long and wide and fully tiled with marble quarried from the valley to the south which has no name. Any of the king’s concubines could stand near a waterfall as the foaming waters thundered past, look down upon the fishing or pleasure craft in the river below, see the boats filled with happy, busy people, and imagine herself a free woman. I’d tried to look over the edge the first day I was confined there, but the king’s stony-faced guards drew me back from the parapet before I could even come close to the rail. “You must not endanger yourself, my lady, for you are precious in the king’s eyes,” one of them said as he led me back in. They never pulled any other of the king’s concubines away from the edge. Then I noticed that four of them were stationed near me constantly, watching my every move. Had the king told his guards to watch me more carefully than the rest? Of course he had. He knew that, if I could, I would have run all the way to Rabbah to warn my love of the danger. The guards stood in inconspicuous positions on the balcony, in the room or in the doorways leading to the main palace, or the outside world. They stood by to offer a woman help when she needed it, to give harmless flattery when she seemed lonely, or enjoy male conversation when the company of the women palled. Yet still their eyes remained on me. For like all the women here, I belonged to the king. Each of us was his possession. Only a male relative or these loyal, unquestioning king’s guards could approach us without the king’s presence. The days were filled with pretty, dull emptiness. How could the women accept this pampered prison, day and night? How many of these women had been given to the king as gifts, like jewels unwanted by their former owner? And how many were here by force like me, stolen prizes captured through violence, pregnant by violation, won by murder? Oh God, let this be some fevered dream from which I would awaken any moment, I prayed constantly. Let me rise from my own bed, to run to the rooftop of my own house and write to Uriah, laughing at my foolish fears and dreams! Even now, it seemed ridiculous. How could the king, with thirty exquisite women to choose from, endanger his kingdom and murder a loyal friend, just to have me? I spent days staring at cedar walls the hues of sheep’s milk, gold and bronze merging into a pool of nothing. Curtains the color of the sky fell across the floor in dividing patterns, sections of four with tinkling bells at the hems, so any concubine in dispute with another need not see or even hear her. The children played with each other heedless of their mothers’ bickering behind those curtains, or in the passageway leading to their private bedchambers. I watched the ebb and flow of women and children with incurious detachment, cold to the core. I could easily see inside these women, but I didn’t want to know. I was numb, more so than when I was fifteen. I never thought I’d feel worse than that day when I saw my grandfather’s young wife and her lover Aaron stoned to death, knowing both my curse and my foolish mouth had killed them. My mother swore that from my birth, I was cursed. My grandfather Ahithophel calls it my gift, believes I am a prophetess; but people have only feared me for as long as I can remember. They call me the Witch of Giloh. I am neither prophetess nor witch, for I cannot explain what I know, or how I know it. But when I look at people, I can tell when they lie or hide the truth. I know what they want, feel their love and their hatred, their anguish and evil. But I’d never seen visions until the hour I watched Uriah die, while I was locked inside these rooms more than fifty miles away. My curse taunted me with a power that was mine, yet over which I had no control. Telan of Memphis, daughter of the brother of the king of Egypt came in to the room, her chest puffed out with importance. She spread her arms and cried, “A messenger has come from Rabbah. There has been a disastrous defeat!” Telan’s maid, right on her heels, gasped, “The Captain of the Eighth Unit led his men to their deaths!” I sat silent in my corner, waiting for the rest. Clearly uncomfortable, one of the women said, “Be quiet, stupid woman. That’s Bath-sheba’s husband.” The maid looked at me, but was apparently satisfied that I was too insane to hear what she’d said. She shrugged and crossed to sit with the children, leaving her mistress to recount what she knew. So Joab had decided the one the king had sent to his death could bear the blame of all the other deaths on his shoulders. What did it matter to him now he was dead? Though his people had converted five generations ago Uriah was still a mere proselyte to them. He had neither an honorable family name nor a place in his tribe to lose. There was only me. My love, my love, I know the truth. I know the man you are. I rocked myself in a corner of the room behind the sunny sky curtain, and wept. The other concubines looked at me with baffled pity. “Why does she cry so?” “Sitting in the corner for days on end,” Hadine, who’d come from Geshur with one of the queens, whispered loud enough for me to hear. “Sitting in a torn shift, no simlah, veil or sandals, neither eating nor drinking…” Another spoke with a heavy accent – I knew not where she came from – but her voice was filled with confusion and disgust. “Does she not know how blessed she is?” “How can she sit there in the corner unpainted, her hair a mess? Why does she not prepare herself for the king? Does she not know how greatly he honors her?” I almost laughed aloud at that – but my habit of taking shelter in silence had reasserted itself the night the king had locked me up here. I’d retreated inside myself, and was terrified to speak. If I opened my mouth, I might betray my plan, and everything would fall apart. Just wait until Grandfather comes…he will help me. He will save me. I sat huddled against one of the cedar-paneled walls, the curtain’s rich fabric trailing over one shoulder. I kept as far from everyone as I could. I was not one of them. I might seem powerless, friendless, but the king would soon see I was not alone. “I would give my eyes to wed my lord,” a beautiful, sulky-faced concubine named Mtah spoke. Mtah decked herself in seductive silks that swished as she walked; her black hair reached her waist, oiled and with pearls woven through her braid. When she moved, the heady scent of frankincense followed her like an invitation. Kohl ringed eyes warm and swirling dark, like pools of night. Henna deepened her plump lips; her nipples and belly were also reddened, showing through the silk of her thin simlah and veil. “The king would not want you without them – they are your only good quality,” Sondeh, from King Hiram of Tyre’s court, spoke with a touch of spite. “With or without yours, he’ll never wed you,” Mtah snapped back. “Not since he caught you bowing to the teraphim of Asherah, begging her for a child.” “Well, he has not wed you either,” Sondeh snapped, her thin bosom heaving. “You will suffer for your inattention to the gods of Canaan. Egypt is far away. Her gods cannot hear you. Asherah has been the goddess here for centuries, long before the invisible god of my lord came to this land. She blesses the crops and the infertile one.” “I have given my lord sons,” Mtah laughed, watching Sondeh flinch. “You are not infertile. The king takes exception to your thin face and flat breasts. You are lucky to be given to such a kind man, for the king of Tyre could not find another man to take you.” “And your father the Prince of Memphis could find no man to wed you.” Sondeh was shaking with fury. “Men appreciate your beauty, but after listening to your viper’s tongue, any man of sense would travel a thousand miles barefoot to wed a sweeter woman.” Similar conversations had taken place between different sets of the king’s concubines every day since my arrival. I allowed my mind and eyes to wander. A small oil lamp filled with sandalwood sat on a small nestle table beside me. It was one of several on every alcove and table in the room, probably burning in an effort to calm the constant bickering over which of them was most important in the unseen rungs of concubine protocol. Though I loved the sensual restfulness of it, now all I could smell was mud and blood, rain and death. I had the constant taste of something acrid in my mouth. I did not know if it was the hated child growing in my belly making me ill, or if I shared the foulness filling my love’s mouth as he fell. I did not rinse it away with the peppermint water offered me by Kalini the Nubian concubine, even though I knew my breath stank. All of me stank, but if this taste had filled Uriah’s mouth when he died, then I would spit it on the king’s face when he summoned me. At least he had not summoned me to him this past week. Either his guilt at what he’d ordered done, or my uncontrolled tears and pleading with him on my knees not to kill my love, had dampened his ardor – but I knew the reprieve would not last much longer. Even now I could not understand it. The king had so many beautiful women eager for any scrap of attention he would bestow. Why me? You shine as the sun amid the tricked-out stars of the court, my sweet dove, Uriah told me when I came to Jerusalem, and saw the women in their silks and kohls, their bodies drifting scent as they walked. Never change the person you are, Bath-sheba. You are as lovely and shy as a wild woodland creature, intriguing in your silence, because one senses you leave so much unsaid. I love that you give of your heart, your inmost self to me alone. Though Uriah loved having me to himself, he’d had ten men from his Unit at the house to meet me the night we arrived in the city, along with their wives. He’d drawn me out gently during dinner, so the women would know me for awkward and frightened rather than a haughty Captain’s wife. From that night, Uriah had allowed many interruptions to our honeymoon so my new friends could visit, and I visited in return. He knew I’d need friends when he was away fighting. He also knew I needed some form of normal life here in this ancient city, where the echoes of residents past that haunted my soul. Though hundreds of new buildings had been since the king had taken the city from the Jebusites fourteen years before, though the Ark of the Covenant sat in the tabernacle atop Mount Moriah with the priests singing praise to our God, all I saw were the clay-baked gods of Baal and Molech. I dreamed of their wide, hungry maws waiting for the firstborn babes of every family to roll into the fire. I smelled the roasting flesh in my sleep, saw the rivers of blood as the Canaanites hacked each other to death over the centuries. Speak to no one of the things you see and feel, my dove, Uriah had warned me the night I arrived in the city, holding me close. I love you and do not fear you, but others are more superstitious than I am, a fighting man. Obeying this dictum was easy. A lifetime of shame and rejection by my people in Giloh had made hiding my curse a habit. None of my new friends knew of it. I never even spoke of it to Uriah again until he said he must leave for Rabbah, and the jumble of fears and knowledge burst from me like a drunkard’s ravings. Beloved, beloved, my mind whispered to him. I know I made no sense, but why did you not listen to me instead of dismissing my knowledge as a bride’s silly attempt to keep you with me? Why did you not love me enough to stay with me for the full twelve moons allowed by Law, and fill my belly with your child? I could barely feel the warmth of my tears on my skin, or the stinging of my eyes. It was as if I’d had wine mixed with myrrh and hyssop: I shivered in a weary numbness that all the rubbing in the world could not take away. My senses were sharp; I heard and absorbed everything outside myself, but I felt slow and stupid. My thoughts and my pain were locked away where even I couldn’t see or reach them. Yet this half-frozen coldness, like the winter torrents thundering outside, saved me from losing my senses entirely. Perhaps it helped me to cope with a future over which I had no control. For an outsider who’d only wanted to live a quiet life in a safe place, my future loomed ahead of me like the threat of another Amalekite invasion, with all its savagery. “It is fine that you mourn your Captain. He was known to be a good and kind man, and an excellent leader of his men.” Kalini’s words broke the inner night in me. I looked up. The compassion of the lush, dark woman from Cush reached silently across the room to me. She was the only one of the concubines who’d given me any compassion or understanding since the king’s guard brought me here a week before. My throat closed over so hard it hurt to breathe – but if I choked, some of them would try to care for me, not from friendship, but to gain favor from the king’s new favorite. My soul shrank from the attention, the intention. I lifted the long-cold infusion of chamomile leaves steeped in honey and sipped at the drink, hoping none of them noticed me move. Only Kalini noticed, but she did not speak or draw attention to me. So immersed in their thoughts about me, the other concubines seemed to have forgotten I was there. Hadine snarled, “You are a fool, Kalini! Uriah was a mere captain, a proselyte, not even a man of Israel! And he led his men to their deaths. How can he compare to what our king wishes to give her? She will be a queen!” Queen. I’d live the rest of my life in this house of cedar and gold. As queen to the legendary King David, I would have riches beyond compare, servants to cater to my every whim, a life of privilege long after he tired of me… Forgive me, my love. You would be alive and safe if I had not grabbed at the chance of ordinary happiness others take for granted, people who do have not my curse. I should have known that to wed you would end in your death. I looked outside at the tumbling waterfall beyond the balcony, the beauty of Mount Moriah behind it in the distance. The mountains of Jerusalem are like hands cupped downward to cover over centuries of blood beneath. Now your blood now joins them, a sacrifice to a king’s lust. His final words as he fell to his knees would forever come to me in dreams. My God, why have you forsaken me? I closed my eyes. If only the king had not been on his roof that day – had he not heard me squealing, or seen me dancing out of the bath after I read Uriah’s letter, hoping he would soon come home to me… That was the last moment of innocent joy I ever knew. An hour later four of the palace guards banged at my door. Dragged barefoot and terrified to a secret room in the palace, that night I crossed a new threshold, from naïve bride to king’s whore. Telan, who had apparently gone back for news during Mtah and Sondeh’s argument, burst through the doors once again. “The messenger is recounting the tale of the fall of the Eighth Unit!” Eager for news, the women moved to the door as one to head down the private corridor from the women’s quarters to the thick scarlet curtain behind the king’s throne. From there they could hear everything, if they strained their ears. A fevered hunger overrode the numbness in my soul. I must hear it all; I must know. With all my heart and soul I reached out to hear the hearts of those in the throne room, straining to feel what I could not hear from this distance. Again my curse mocked me in silence, a blank wall. Unless I was in the room with a stranger, I could not feel them. This group of chattering women would not have more fodder on the failure of my Uriah to discuss. My love’s death was not a topic for bored conversation! I had risen to my feet before I was aware of moving. As if the king had not locked me inside these quarters like a prisoner this past week, I walked toward the wall of guards. “You will let me pass,” I said with cold authority. After a moment’s hesitation, they lifted their spears and made way for me. I turned back to the concubines pushing their way through the carved double doors after me, avid to see what I did. “I will go alone.” As the only granddaughter of the famed Ahithophel, the king’s foremost counselor and keeper of secrets, I knew how to school my voice to haughty command. They parted in silent resentment for the one in their ranks who had cat-jumped from the low to the high. Even Telan did not follow me. Their future queen had spoken. If I were wise, I would have stayed in the concubines’ quarters, safe in my ignorance, silent in my grief. But as my mother had complained bitterly through the years, “Will you never learn wisdom, Bath-sheba?” She was right. I had never taken the safe option – and again, I refused to heed my mother’s words. Driven by the compulsion to feel something, anything, I walked down that corridor. I walked like a sleepwalker. My feet punished me for my long sojourn in the corner, with pins sticking into them. I kept losing balance. To stay upright and walking down the hall, I trailed my hands over the walls, seeing the carving in the double Doors of Queens. They were dark cedar from the forests of Lebanon, a gift from the king’s dear friend Hiram. The inscriptions, meant to warn others away from what belonged to the king alone, touched my soul with a most private irony. YOU MUST NOT COMMIT ADULTERY YOU MUST NOT COVET YOUR NEIGHBOR’S WIFE At last I reached the end of the corridor. As weak as a babe just beginning to stand on her feet, I held onto the thick curtains of royal scarlet and purple that hung behind the king’s throne in a semi-circular formation. By parting the curtains a finger-width, I could see the messenger from Rabbah kneeling before the throne; I could hear every word he spoke to the king. By now Elisheva had lost all sense of time. It must be deep night; there was velvet blackness outside the shutters, and the fire burned low in the pit. She could only read by the thin light of three beautifully carved silver oil lamps, gifts from the king that she’d set on the small table beside the bed. Her eyes hurt and her head ached, but though she felt the pain, she was beyond such thought, beyond fear or anger or resentment. She’d moved past thinking of herself and her cage for the first time since the king had brought her here. Driven by the need to know, she put down the sheet of papyrus she’d just finished, and picked up another.
Copyright © 2010 by Lisa Chaplin No part of this work may be used, copied, published or printed without permission
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