I was stunned. I knew that he’d had a wife who’d died long before I was born. He was such a thickset man that Merab and I used to speculate – wickedly – that he’d crushed her to death in bed. He had never displayed any interest in remarrying. Unlike so many of the elders and captains who visited us in Gibeah, he never hugged us too close or pressed his peppery kisses on our cheeks. He was happiest in the company of his men, in the gatehouse and on the training ground. In the agonizing days after learning the truth about David and Jonathan, when I’d looked at every man I knew with fresh eyes, I’d wondered whether Abner was of a similar stamp, but, even before I realised that theirs was a unique aberration, I had absolved him. I presumed that now that he wished to lay down his sword, he was looking for a new wife. Given that he must have known her in Gibeah, his choice of Rizpah seemed less perverse. Maybe he had taken messages to her from Father, which had enabled him to discover qualities in her that were hidden from the rest of us? Although a man of his renown might have hoped for a young, fecund woman, maybe Rizpah's age was part of her appeal? Maybe at seventy-five, any desire to perpetuate his house was overshadowed by the fear of leaving his children defenceless at his death?
‘I understand. He wants – he deserves – a companion in his final years.’
‘Possibly. But that's not how the king sees it. He fears that Abner is using her to stake a claim to the throne.’
‘What nonsense! Ishbaal is an idiot. You say that the woman's two sons are his most trusted advisers. They should have instructed him better.’
‘It's not that simple. Your father was our first king so we have no precedent, but in Moab and Ammon when the king dies or, more to the point, is overthrown, the new king confirms his right by seizing his wives and concubines.’
Choking back a wave of biliousness, I felt unexpected sympathy for Rizpah, which I strove to expunge. She and I had more in common than I had supposed. We were both the instruments of ambitious men. It was Ishbaal's seizure of her that had led to David's demand for my return. Teman's account dashed any lingering hope that he wanted me for myself rather than my name. I would bring him by birth what he must otherwise take by blood. As aghast at the prospect of returning to David as of leaving Paltiel, I thanked Teman and went up to our chamber, to find Paltiel hunched on the bed, his knurled face streaked with tears. I sat down and held him, my own fears forgotten in the need to allay his.
Abner's summons and Teman's disclosure made me realise as never before how generously Paltiel had treated me when Father bound me to him. Had he been younger and more confident, he might have pressed his advantage; instead, he was full of contrition for taking me to this remote territory and even more for taking me to his bed. His first wife had died young, and he shared the house with her elderly mother, his widowed aunt, two sisters and their families. Leading me up to the roof, he announced that all the land as far as the eye could see belonged to his brothers, nephews and cousins. ‘We’re a close-knit clan,’ he said, with pride that felt like a threat. Every one of them treated me with kindness and respect, which I repaid with arrogance and contempt. I brought winter into their lives. I played the princess far more determinedly than I had done in Gibeah. I outdid Merab in my airs. My every other word was a command or a complaint, both of which they sought to answer. Their very solicitude enraged me further. I wanted them to punish me the way I was punishing myself. Yet little by little their affection disarmed me. After declaring that I was a stranger to menial tasks (a claim that Mother would have refuted with either a laugh or a slap), I was never required to so much as fetch a pot from the hearth. My initial sense of superiority turned first to worthlessness and then to shame. I longed to share in both the work and the companionship but, like a prisoner who clung to her chains, I was frightened of the freedom I craved.
Then one day I rose before dawn, leaving the bed I divided with Paltiel, and came downstairs to find his sisters, Hodesh and Tirzah, making the bread for the men to take into the fields. They looked at me in surprise but said nothing, as though afraid of being shouted down. I also said nothing but watched them mill the flour and tip it into the trough, adding the water and leaven. Silently, I took the trough from Tirzah's hands and over to a bench, where I placed it at my feet and started to knead the dough. Although I enjoyed their confusion, I knew that I had to speak or risk being regarded as even more disdainful, turning their labour into my sport.
‘You may prefer to use your hands,’ I said, ‘but the Ammonite women in my father's house taught my sister and I to do it this way.’
It looks quicker,’ Tirzah said tentatively.
‘And easier on the back,’ Hodesh added.
Conversation faltered, but by the time that the dough was made, shaped and placed on the hot stones to bake, we had touched on their families, the coming harvest, and the swarms of locusts that descended the previous summer, turning the noon sky as black as midnight, and which preyed on their minds since they had no prophet to explain what it meant. At daybreak, the men and boys arrived to eat their bowls of buttermilk and collect the bread and fig cakes. Ithai, Hodesh's youngest grandson, less shy of me than the rest, asked if I wanted to see the sheep. Hodesh, horrified, rebuked him, but I assured her that there was nothing I would like more. Smiling, as if he had answered a question that baffled his elders, he took my hand and led me to the fold, where the flock gathered around him. I was amazed that, with only the slightest distinctions of face and fleece, he knew each sheep by name, insisting that they answered to it when called. But after a duly compliant Grey Ear and Stripy, half a dozen responded to Brown Leg, whereupon his roar of frustration sent them scattering.
Fighting back the memory of that other shepherd boy who had blighted my life, I watched attentively when Ithai showed me how he drove the sheep up the hillside, even pretending to run away so that they would gambol after him. When one wandered off on her own, I expected him to follow, but instead he aimed his sling with formidable accuracy, landing the stone a few palms from her head, prompting her to scamper back to the flock. This time I couldn’t banish the thought of David, honing the skill that had enabled him to fell the Philistine giant.
I spent many mornings on the slopes with Ithai, although, try as I might, I never managed to identify any sheep other than the leading ewe. Then, when he was needed to help with the almond harvest, climbing trees to dislodge the fruit that the men couldn’t reach with their sticks, he asked if I would tend the flock. Nervous of the responsibility yet eager to earn his trust, I agreed, setting off at dawn with a bag of bread and date cakes but without his sling since I was more likely to hit any errant sheep than to rescue her. The day passed quietly: not a single sheep slipped or strayed and I counted every last one back into the fold. I returned to a stream of compliments for what I realised, to my dismay, had been the greatest accomplishment of my life.
In time, I took on other tasks, not just in the fields and orchards but in the house. I swept floors, mended clothes, beat rugs and emptied the grate, all of which I had previously left to bondwomen. The one task to which I was never reconciled was milling flour. Every second morning, Hodesh, Tirzah and I spent three or four hours on our knees at the grindstones. But even that brought some satisfaction, since a simple soup at the end of a gruelling day tasted better than the richest feast eaten in indolence. Then, when with limbs so heavy that I dragged them up the stairs, I made my way to bed, I knew the unique joy of being revived by a man who loved me: not a young man, not a strong man, not a man at whom anyone would look twice unless it were in surprise or mockery, but equally, not a man with his mind fixed on my father's crown or my brother's flesh.
Paltiel lay with me as a suppliant rather than an overlord. Yet it didn’t make him shy. He enveloped me in his desire and his touch made me whole again. The revulsion I’d felt when I first saw him was transformed not just to tenderness but to passion. Even the carbuncle of which he was so ashamed no longer reminded me of mould on a tree trunk but of a plant in bud. My one r
egret was that I had failed to give him a child. I no longer prayed to Ashtoreth, who was either deaf or powerless, but addressed myself to the Lord. In time, he answered my prayers, although not in the way that I would have chosen. It was as if, unable to forgive my past disloyalty yet wishing to reward my newfound devotion, he refused to give me a family of my own but made me mother to my dead sister's sons.
Merab and I had been estranged ever since she’d sided with Father over my marriage to Paltiel. My hope that, once I’d moved to Manasseh, we would be able to repair relations was dashed by the discovery that the territory was divided and she lived on the far side of the Jordan. We saw each other less often than if I’d stayed in Gibeah, where she took her growing family every summer until Father's death and Mother's capture by Joab. I even suspected that she resented my wedded happiness, believing, like Father, that my exile should be a punishment. When Adriel succeeded his father as Manassehite chief, she grew more distant still. I accompanied Paltiel to several councils but it was clear that she found her unprepossessing brother-in-law an embarrassment. Then Adriel was killed fighting against David. Merab, pregnant with her fifth child, gave birth prematurely, dying when her women failed to staunch her blood. With the children of his own dead brothers to support, Adriel's cousin, newly elected tribal chief, wrote to Ishbaal, suggesting that he would be better placed to raise his nephews. Ishbaal, true to form, ordered instead that they be brought to Paltiel and me.
At a stroke we had the family for which we’d yearned: Penuel aged seven, Hillel aged six, Malkiel aged four, and two-year-old Shealtiel, as well as a baby I was able to name myself; although Paltiel insisted that we call him Adriel after his father. The first few months following their arrival were hard. They refused to settle, grumbling about the food, the beds, the flies, even the lingering smell of the donkeys who had recently vacated their chamber. I realised that they were distressed and confused by the death of their parents but failed to see why they chose to punish the very people who sought to help them. At my wits’ end, I accused them of ingratitude, reminding them that they might have been sent to live with their Uncle Ishbaal. Hillel retorted that at least he wasn’t married to another man's wife, and I slapped him. He whimpered; the others were shocked; I was ashamed. He had obviously picked up the phrase from Merab or Adriel with little idea of what it meant. No wonder the Lord had sealed up my womb when that was how I treated children! I apologised, but it was too late. After weeks of moaning and yelling, the three older boys refused to speak to me (Shealtiel had just learnt to talk and, despite his brothers’ remonstrances, nothing could curb his babble). I reasoned, pleaded and, finally, threatened them, but to no avail. Paltiel, ever-patient, insisted that the protest would peter out, which it did, when first Malkiel, then Hillel, and finally Penuel, as angry with his brothers as he was with me, backed down. It was Penuel who moved me most, when, fighting back the tears, he revealed that, as the eldest, he felt a responsibility to take his father's place. I held him in my arms, breathing in the summery smell of his hair, and explained that his first responsibility was to himself.
I promised that I would be their mother in all but name, yet in time they gave me that too. My happiness was tinged with guilt at dispossessing Merab, although I told myself that only the three oldest boys remembered her and Malkiel's memory was fading fast. I would have liked a niece to call my daughter but, when I confessed as much to Paltiel, he laughed and asked me which of the boys I would be willing to give up in exchange. ‘None!’ I protested, since I valued each distinctive character, even Adriel who, I maintained to Paltiel's amusement, had a unique way of rubbing his ear when he slept. Although if forced to surrender one, it would have been him, at least until he were weaned and I no longer had to watch the wet nurse press him to her breast.
Paltiel who, according to his sisters, had been the most diligent of uncles, took to fatherhood as a matter of course. He threw off as many years as his shortness of breath and swollen ankles would allow in order to lead the boys on expeditions through the countryside. He objected as loudly as they did, albeit with less conviction, when I insisted that he combine the play with lessons in reading and writing. I joined them, finally acquiring the skills that I had been denied in childhood, but my participation came to an end when Paltiel engaged an itinerant Levite to instruct the boys in the laws and traditions of the tribes. He refused to let me attend, even as an observer, although I never discovered if this were because I was a woman, for whom learning was redundant, or the daughter of the man who had ordered the massacre at Nob.
David was sure to have spies in Ishbaal's household. Had they told him of my adopted family? If so, how could he tear me from it? I’d heard that he’d had six sons by as many wives since settling in Hebron; would he sever any of them from their mothers? Trusting to the fondness – if not love – he had once felt for me, I asked Paltiel to write to him but, against my advice, he chose to appeal to Ishbaal, convinced that, if nothing else, pride would prevent his allowing Abner to surrender his sister to the Judahites. He was wrong. In a letter that reeked of revenge for his boyhood slights, Ishbaal declared that Saul's daughter must sacrifice her own concerns for the sake of the kingdom. I pictured him gloating as he dictated the message or rather, as a scribe embellished it, since its cadences were far too measured to be his.
Seeking to clear my head, I walked to the river, where I chanced on Hillel and Malkiel fighting. They looked perturbed when, having pulled them apart, I made no attempt to rebuke them or to discover who was at fault but clasped them to me, eliciting their bewildered oaths to love and protect each other all their lives.
Two days after the messenger brought Ishbaal's demand, Abner reiterated it in person. In the eleven years since I’d seen him, he had scarcely changed. His thick hair and close-cropped beard had grizzled, heightening the contrast with skin as dark as an Egyptian's. His hooded eyes remained watchful as a hawk's. He stood straight-backed and sturdy, his legs as ever straddled a cubit apart. He exuded the acrid smell of a sheep or goat being led to sacrifice but, unlike them, he was fearless.
He greeted me with a curt bow, brushed my hand with his lips and addressed me as ‘My lady’, his gruff tone making it plain that it was we who should be honouring him: a view with which, to my chagrin, Paltiel concurred, welcoming him with a warmth that Abner inevitably construed as weakness. I seethed as I saw the contempt in which Abner, the broad-shouldered man of action, held Paltiel, the soft-bellied man of peace, but I reserved my keenest resentment for myself when, after eleven years in which I had come to treasure my husband's qualities of courtesy, consideration and fair-mindedness, I saw him through Abner's eyes as a gnarled nonentity I was relieved when, after a meal that he devoured as heedlessly as if he were heading for battle, Abner sent him away
‘I shall be in my chamber if you need me,’ Paltiel said.
‘We won’t,’ Abner replied shortly. I gazed at the ground as Paltiel shuffled up the stairs.
‘I’m here to escort you to David,’ Abner said, even before Paltiel was out of earshot.
‘That's quite impossible.’
‘You needn’t fret. I have twenty men outside to help load any necessaries.’
‘That's not what I meant.’
‘But it's what will happen. I wrote to you a week ago. You’ve had time enough to make ready.’
My only recourse was to throw myself on his mercy, but tears and pleas would betray weakness, abhorrent to a man like Abner. An appeal to his better nature would be self-defeating. So I chose to address him as my kinsman. ‘You were my father's right arm.’
‘With the scars to prove it.’
‘Do ties of blood count for nothing?’
‘Why else would I have put your father's son on the throne and propped him up for six years, when he has proved to be incapable, corrupt and, worst of all, ungrateful? But no longer! We must stop tearing ourselves apart and unite under a strong king if we’re to preserve our integrity.’
‘Under Dav
id?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though he has sworn allegiance to the King of Gath?’
‘He has broken vows before.’ Abner smiled. ‘Judah is suffering from famine. The people blame it on the alliance with the Philistines. They say that the Lord is angered by their subservience to a land ruled by foreign gods. David is discovering what your father discovered too late: that the people are less tractable in peacetime than in war.’
‘Then why not incite them to abandon him?’
‘Even if we had the power – and our troops are worn out – it would be futile. Who would we propose in his place? Ishbaal? David needs peace so that he can break with the Philistines and regain his peoples’ trust. We need peace because we lack the resources to fight against both the Judahites and the Philistines. But several of the northern tribes remain hostile to him. That's why he needs you – Saul's daughter – to bolster his support.’
‘Surely the fate of the kingdom doesn’t depend on one weak woman?’
‘You underestimate yourself,’ he said, disregarding my tone.
‘Besides, he already has my mother in his household, endorsing his claim to Judah over that of her own son.’
‘You are his wife; Ahinoam is his concubine.’
‘What?’ I gulped back the horror in the hope that I had misheard.
‘His concubine. I raced to her rescue as soon as I learnt of Ishbaal's flight, but Joab and his men reached her first.’
I’d heard nothing of her since her capture as, unlike David and Jonathan, we had no chain of messengers. I’d comforted myself with the thought that, had she been taken ill or died, I would have been told. But who else besides Abner would have brought me news of her shame? ‘He made her his concubine?’ The words fogged my brain.
‘Haven’t I said so twice?’ he replied tetchily ‘He's laid claim to your father's harem.’
‘My father didn’t have a harem. He had a wife of forty years – my mother – and a concubine, Rizpah, whom my brother took for himself and now you’ve taken from him.’
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