Jonadab came to collect me. Too obtuse to realise that the death I brought David went deeper than the goatskin and grime, he cast a satisfied glance at my fresh robe and clean face. ‘You are truly blessed. The king has been impatient to welcome you back. This whole week he has taken no other woman to his bed.’ I scorned to reply and he smiled at my gratitude. Even in a world where one king lay with his father's concubine and another with his wife's mother, there was something uniquely squalid in Jonadab's abetment of his uncle's nightwork. We entered David's fusty chamber. Jonadab announced my arrival, bowed and shuffled out backwards, as though loath to forfeit a single glimpse of his royal master. David raised his hand to silence me and studied a scroll, an obvious contrivance, since I was left with nowhere to sit but the bed, which I immediately rejected. Finally, he set down the scroll and approached me.
Every movement released a memory. As he touched my arm, I was taken back to our wedding night when, more nervous of me than of the Philistine giant, he’d had no notion of how to proceed. Now, with the women in his harem lining up for him as docilely as the donkeys in his stable, he undressed me with consummate ease. I gave thanks for the lamplight, kind to both my blistered skin and my flushed cheeks, as he examined me with chilling intensity. Was he looking past the sad, sour woman for the sweet-faced girl he’d once known? Was he comparing me with his younger, meeker wives, on whom even motherhood had left no scars? Or was he yet again chipping away my breasts and hips and chopping off my hair to find my brother (a practice that I could now view with equanimity)? On reflection, I decided that it was none of these, since the only person David could appraise with such fervour was David. It wasn’t my youth that he was looking to recover but his own.
His lips shackled my neck, while his hands roamed my flesh as if reclaiming his homeland. He shrugged off his loincloth, drew me on to the bed and climbed on top of me. I gasped beneath his weight. As he nipped and tongued, and squeezed and crushed, and fingered and pawed, I longed for the diffidence that had once dismayed me. Whereas Paltiel's sole aim had been to please me, David would no more have asked if I enjoyed his embraces than if a bondman enjoyed his blows. I panicked that, notwithstanding my resolve, my body would betray its excitement, and, the more he threatened to inflame my desire, the more I sought to douse it. I reminded myself that he had molested my mother, conjuring up images of their coupling that I’d struggled to suppress.
His passion spent, he slid out of me, while pressing his hand between my legs. I tried to break free but he held me fast. It was as if he had anointed me with a precious unguent and was determined not to waste a drop. Was he so sure of his potency as to suppose that I would conceive at the first encounter? For years I had prayed that the Lord would open my womb; now I prayed with equal ardour that he’d seal it.
‘I’ve missed you,’ David said.
‘How fortunate that you had my mother to take my place!’
He laughed, as though my jibe explained my hostility. ‘I lay with the queen for the sake of the kingdom.’
‘But it didn’t succeed – not with everyone – so now you need me.’
‘You’re too proud, Michal: prouder than any woman has a right to be. You’ve started to sound like your dead sister. I should hate you for it. But I don’t; I almost admire you. And I shall win you back.’
‘I’m already here.’
‘No, not your body, that's easy. Your heart.’
He told me to dress. I had barely finished when he called Jonadab to take me back to the harem. I was grateful at least that he didn’t require me to stay, extending the ordeal until dawn. Paltiel and I had found peace in one another's arms: peace that plainly eluded David. I suspected that he was prone to bad dreams and reluctant for anyone – even a woman – to witness his weakness. The thought made me smile, which Jonadab misconstrued. ‘Yes, the king is an incomparable lover,’ he said, with a reverence that made me shudder. Although in the bloom of youth, he was the one man with access to the harem. Was it kinship that made David trust him? Or did he know him to be no threat: happier furnishing other men's beds than his own?
Over the following weeks, I grew accustomed to the harem. As if to ensure his own pre-eminence, David allowed us few diversions. The harem door had no lock, yet none of the women opened it. Refusing to be confined, I ventured into the main courtyard, but there was no one to be seen except servants and soldiers, and, despite my defiance, I hesitated to enter the great chamber, where David heard the petitions that my father had heard at the city gate. My temerity did not go unremarked, and Ahitophel, with only mild embarrassment at our reversed roles, informed me that David would rather that I didn’t rove the palace.
‘Does he forbid it?’
‘Of course not,’ he said smoothly, ‘he knows that he has no need.’
I spent much of my time with my mother, although I was forced not just to give up any hope of reviving our former closeness but to acknowledge that it existed largely in my head. She sought solace in her memories and, while I was willing to join in her praise of Jonathan and the twins, I declined to endorse her veneration of Father. To hear her talk, he was a man without faults, perfect as both husband and king, whose misfortune had been to provoke Samuel's jealousy. More than once I had to stop myself reminding her of the occasions when he had hit her for suggesting that he step aside for younger men and publicly accused her of infidelity. Painful as it was to admit, she was happier with Rizpah, who colluded in her revision of the past. Despite her abiding anxiety for her sons, she cared for my mother with a devotion that even I couldn’t attribute to guilt.
Civilities apart, I was determined to keep my distance from the other women who, emulating Abigail, honoured me as both Saul's daughter and David's first wife. In ordinary circumstances, I might have befriended Abigail, who exuded contentment – even serenity – despite the death of her only child. Her companions regularly called on her to resolve their disputes, the bitterest of which were between Ahinoam and Maacah. Ahinoam jealously guarded her position as mother of the king's eldest son. At times when extolling Amnon's virtues, she showed so little sensitivity to Abigail's loss that I wanted to strike her. Maacah, a Geshurite princess, made no secret of her contempt for those of lower rank, above all Ahinoam, a maidservant who’d had the effrontery to give birth before her. Their hostility, so overt that I had perceived it on first meeting, was transmitted to their sons, Amnon and Absalom, fighting now for their father's affection as I suspected that one day they would for his crown. Each had his adherents in the harem: Amnon wooing them with swagger and tenacity, Absalom with coquetry and charm. Moreover, Amnon displayed a disturbing fondness for Absalom's sister Tamar. Even Ahinoam failed to protest when Maacah gave him a hearty slap on finding him lifting the two-year-old's robe.
Fiercer even than the women's advancement of their sons was their rivalry for David's attention. Each evening Jonadab arrived, all ogles and smirks, to lead one of us to his chamber. I tried to work out what governed the choice. Was there a pattern – a schedule – or did it depend on his mood? Ahinoam when he felt passionate? Haggith when he felt tender? Maacah when he wanted a challenge? Michal when he wanted a son? I had assumed that, unlike lesser men, he never had to lie alone during his wife's impurity, but Abigail explained that, by a quirk of the palace, the women's cycles concurred. At those times, Jonadab summoned someone older – such as herself, she said quickly, although I had already pictured my mother. For now, I was his favourite. I hadn’t aroused so much envy since the elders brought their daughters to Gibeah. Yet every encounter widened the gulf between us. He was intent on my bearing his child, wearing me down as he would an enemy garrison: by stealth, by siege and, finally, by direct assault. ‘Our son will be king after me,’ he declared, ‘the heir to the house of David and the house of Saul.’ But the prospect of spiting Ahinoam and Maacah was nothing to that of spiting David.
Month after month I suffered his desire and relished his disappointment. His hope of uniting the houses grew more
urgent after Abner reneged on his promise to deliver the Israelite tribes. They remained loyal to Ishbaal who, for all his failings, was the son of the Lord's anointed, the king whom Samuel, the last of the prophets, had exhorted them to elect. Then one afternoon when I was making a floral crown for Tamar, who evinced a touching attachment to me, I heard a hubbub from the main courtyard, in which one name was audible: Abner. I hurried outside, where Jonadab informed me that he was dead.
‘My cousin Joab killed him,’ he said, stressing their incongruous kinship. ‘He and his men ambushed him at the well of Sirah.’
‘Wasn’t he under David's protection?’
‘You may not remember, but Abner killed Asahel, Joab's brother... he was also my cousin,’ he added redundantly.
‘Of course I remember,’ I said, bridling. ‘But that was years ago, on the battlefield. There was no blood guilt.’ I had seen them together several times since then, most recently engaging in one of the drinking bouts to which idling soldiers were partial, the veteran general more than a match for his former armour-bearer. Had Joab been toying with him, feigning friendship to spin out his revenge? No. He was a man who drew his sword as fast as he drew breath: a man for whom discretion was another word for cowardice. Such an ambush bore the mark of a man who weighed up every outcome, a man who had concluded that Abner either enjoyed less influence with the Israelites than he claimed or, in the last resort, couldn’t bring himself to betray his own clan. There was only one man to fit that description.
My suspicions must have been widely shared or else David would not have taken such pains to dispel them. He summoned the entire household, men and women, together with all the Judahite elders, to the great chamber and, with Joab prostrate before him, professed his innocence of the crime and abhorrence of the perpetrator. Rising from the throne, he moved to Joab and raised his foot a few digits above his head as if about to stamp on it, like Amnon on the ants. I heard a gasp to my right and turned to Jonadab, whose face oozed excitement. Just when I thought retribution inevitable, David stepped away, brushing his sandal on Joab's ear.
‘You jackal, you serpent!’ he said. ‘May you be accursed forever! May the water that you drink infect your veins! May the food that you eat rot in your belly! May your riches be scattered like seeds in the wind! May every boy in your house be born crippled and womanish! I call upon all here to bear witness that Joab and Joab alone is to blame for this wickedness. I and the whole kingdom will mourn for Abner, a great prince and a great general.’
I put on the sackcloth and ashes, as David decreed, but I didn’t grieve. Once, I would have shed bitter tears for the mighty uncle of my childhood, who carried me on his shoulders until I touched the sky, and wedged me in the fork of a willow, waving goodbye and filling me with the safest sort of terror. But ever since he handed me back to David, like a cow that had strayed into his neighbour's field, I’d felt nothing but loathing for him. I’d even rejected his offer to seek out news of Paltiel and the boys on his return to Manasseh since, for all that I longed to hear it, I refused to assuage his guilt.
David's curse had no noticeable effect on Joab, who didn’t fall ill or lose his wealth or see his sons grow maimed or unmanly. He wasn’t even banished from the palace and, on the rare occasions that our paths crossed, he gave me a knowing smile as if somehow my fathoming the plot made me complicit. The question that exercised everyone was whether, now that Ishbaal had lost his foremost general, David would march against him, or whether he was afraid of antagonising the Israelite tribes. I learnt the answer from Abigail, the one woman in whom he confided.
‘I bring sorrowful news,’ she said. ‘Your brother Ishbaal is dead.’
‘How?’ I asked, more surprised than saddened. ‘There's been no battle. Did he have a fever? Was he drunk and missed his footing? Did he gorge himself until his heart gave out?’ If she recognised the allusion to Nabal's suspicious death, she hid it well.
‘He was murdered.’
‘By whom? Joab?’
‘No! Why? Two captains of his guard. Brothers: Benjaminites, from your own tribe.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Two days ago. He was in bed asleep.’
‘Defenceless!’
‘So he wouldn’t have suffered. The men told us themselves.’
‘The murderers? They came here?’
‘They brought his head.’
‘Only his head? What about the rest of him?’
‘I don’t know. David sent me away.’
‘Only his head? Is that how they killed him? Or did they cut it off for the journey? Less weight for the donkey. Quicker to give David the good news.’
‘Not at all! He was incensed. He ordered them to be straightaway put to death. He's had their hands and feet strung up by the city well.’
‘Just as with my father.’
‘When the Philistines hung his corpse from the battlements of Beth-shan?’
‘No, when David killed the Amalekite who brought word of his death. You were there then too, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she replied uneasily, as though reluctant to make the connection. ‘He couldn’t help himself. He was so outraged.’
‘Or was it – then as now – an attempt to stop them exposing his collusion? Who is it that gains most from Ishbaal's death?’
‘Us... all of us, if the wars between the tribes cease and we unite under one king.’
‘We were united under one king. But David robbed him, first of his son, then of his daughter, and finally of his crown.’
‘Everything he does is in the name of the Lord who anointed him.’
‘Really? What evidence do you have of that? When Samuel anointed my father, he did so before the elders of all the tribes. When he anointed David, he didn’t even do so before his own clan. There was no one present but David.’
‘Samuel confirmed it when David went to visit him in Ramah the very day he died.’
‘So again there were no witnesses!’
‘There was Samuel's wife.’
‘What was she like? I’ve often wondered.’
‘I never met her. She died not long afterwards.’
‘How opportune!’
‘I know what you’re saying, but you’re wrong. David is a good man, blessed by the Lord.’
‘Maybe when he was young, performing those miraculous feats. But what about now, when even with Abner's endorsement, even with Ishbaal's weakness, he hasn’t secured the support of the Israelite tribes? What about now when, despite all his prayers, my belly remains flat? What about now when the harvest has failed for the second year running and the people see it as the Lord's punishment?’
‘But on the nation, not on him.’
‘If only they made that distinction! Like my father, he's discovering the cost of kingship. Please excuse me, I have to tell my mother that the last of her sons is dead.’
As I walked away, I wondered at the emptiness I felt. Was it shock or indifference? I tried to invoke the love I’d felt for Ishbaal as a baby when I’d dandled him on my knee, teaching him to clap hands that clutched emptily at the air and dance on legs that had yet to stand. But then he grew up, boastful, petulant and snide: the kind of boy whom, according to my aunt, only a mother could love. And she had loved him. I suspected that she’d loved him all the more to make up for how deeply the rest of us despised him, and certainly more than she’d loved me. Now I had to break the news of his death. For once I hoped that the confusion she’d suffered in recent weeks, and which had so frustrated me when I tried to tell her of Abner's death, had become permanent and she would suppose that I was announcing his victory or even his marriage. But, as the Lord would have it, her mind was clear and, with a face drained of colour and a voice of hope, she asked me to describe the circumstances of his death, which I did, as sparingly as I could.
‘Where is he now?’ she asked.
‘The murderers brought him to David,’ I said, glossing over the beheading.
‘I wan
t to see him.’
‘Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather remember him as he was?’
‘He's my son! I have the right, or is even that to be taken from me?’
‘No, of course not, but – ’
‘So shall I entreat the king myself or will you?’
Eager to save her from a further encounter with David, I made my way to his quarters, where Ahitophel informed me that he’d already left for Mahanaim. Before setting out, he had given orders for Ishbaal's remains to be buried in Abner's tomb. I asked whether my mother might see them first, to which he had no objection, while reminding me that the head had been hacked off in haste and endured a hot and dusty journey Recalling my long-ago trick with the idol, I suggested that, before my mother entered, we should place the head on a bed and fabricate the body under the blankets, but he refused to sanction it without David's approval. So I returned to the harem and tried to prepare my mother for the shock, but hearing only ‘Ishbaal’ and ‘here’, she clasped my hand and hurried through the courtyard as if to welcome him home from battle.
The guards at the chamber door stepped back more discreetly than usual as I followed her inside, where my dead brother's head had been covered and laid on a chest like a salted goose in a storeroom. Mother moved uncertainly towards it and lifted the cloth, letting out a gasp, which turned into a wail, which turned into a burst of pitiful yelps.
‘That's enough! You must leave,’ Ahitophel said anxiously.
‘No!’ Mother said, picking up the head. For a moment I feared that she was going to kiss the lips, which had turned the bloodless grey of earthworms, but instead she pressed it to her breast, rocking gently. I watched in silence, unwilling to intrude for fear of what I might release in her, but when a few moments later she stood stock-still, I walked up and slowly prised Ishbaal's head from her grasp. I stared at it, mocked by the resemblance to the man he once was: the dried blood like soup he’d dribbled on his beard; the stench from his gaping mouth like foetid breath. Most lifelike of all were his eyes, frozen in dread as if at the very instant he’d recognised his killers. I placed the head back on the chest more heavily than I had intended and the thud caused Mother to scream. I ushered her away, allowing her a few hours to recover before, in the late afternoon, we accompanied Ahitophel, Rizpah and Abiathar to bury the former king with far less ceremony than we had his general. As Abiathar led the lamentations, I prayed that, despite their recent rift, Abner would protect my brother in death as he had in life.
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