The Anointed

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Why must you try to cause trouble for me?’

  ‘I don’t! Why would you think that?’

  ‘Coming here, disturbing the king! He knows full well that you’re my granddaughter.’

  ‘He does?’ Since when? Did he make the connection when I mentioned Uriah? Did it add to his excitement? If so, his offence is even more odious.

  ‘If you have a problem, why didn’t you ask me?’

  I cannot repeat the lie I told the widow to a man who knows that Uriah's mother is long dead. Yet nor can I tell the truth to a man who cradled me as a baby.

  ‘Speak to Jonadab,’ I say quietly.

  He frowns, as though aware of Jonadab's services to the king. ‘Why? What do you have to do with him?’

  ‘He came to the house at night six weeks ago. He brought me here.’

  Even the oblique admission consoles me. But I’m forgetting Grandfather's age and, as he stands immobile, I fear that my words may have brought on a seizure. He fails to respond when I stroke or shake him, so I call for help. But he recovers before anyone arrives, grasps my hand and marches me through the palace. We reach a door guarded by a soldier, who reddens as he bars the way.

  ‘This is the harem, my lord. You must not enter.’

  ‘It's not I who must not enter but my granddaughter. And I intend to make sure that she never does,’ he says fiercely. ‘Is Jonadab here?’

  ‘I think so, my lord.’

  ‘Call him.’

  ‘This is the harem?’ I ask, as the guard bangs on the door. Grandfather nods grimly. I long to step into the courtyard, which has fired my imagination ever since I watched the palace being built, but I know better than to betray my interest. ‘And no man can enter?’

  ‘Not if he values his life.’

  ‘Except for Jonadab?’

  ‘A shepherd who eats no mutton.’

  His lip remains curled as the man in question opens the door.

  ‘My lord, a pleasure but – ’ Seeing me, he breaks off, a less practised dissembler than his uncle.

  ‘Ask him what you need to know, Grandfather. I can’t speak for shame, but it's the king's shame, not mine.’

  ‘What's that?’ Jonadab asks, regaining his composure. ‘The king's only shame comes from unscrupulous subjects who traduce him.’

  ‘Ask him, Grandfather. Ask how he came to the house in the dead of night and brought me here. Ask him!’

  ‘You should curb your granddaughter's tongue,’ Jonadab says. ‘If it weren’t for my respect for you, I’d – ’

  ‘You’d what?’ Grandfather asks, with a cold fury that makes Jonadab cower.

  ‘Do you know how many women claim to have lain with the king? An Asherite even swore recently that he impregnated her in a dream. I repeat, out of respect for you, I shall say nothing of this to the king.’ He makes to go back into the harem. Grandfather grips his shoulder.

  ‘My granddaughter is with child.’

  I gasp. Jonadab turns and slowly removes the hand. ‘Then it's a blessing that she has a husband.’ He slips back into the harem. Grandfather stares at the door as if weighing up whether to follow him but, as the guard stiffens, he ushers me away. We walk back in silence and I wonder how he knew about the child. Am I putting on flesh already? Or is it the one thing that would have compelled me to act? We return home where he sits and broods, dismissing everything Matred brings him except for a cup of water.

  ‘I’ve served him faithfully for twenty years,’ he says at last. ‘When King Saul died, I could have offered my allegiance to Ishbaal. With both Abner and me by his side, who knows what he might have achieved? And this is how David repays me! This is how he dishonours me!’

  I expect him to chastise me, as he has for so many other transgressions, however unwitting. But while I am grateful that he's directing his anger at the king, I fear that he's ignoring the urgency of my predicament. ‘I’m six weeks with child. Uriah has been away for twelve. What are we to do?’

  ‘That snake, Jonadab, was right. You have a husband.’

  ‘But when will he come home?’

  ‘At once. We still have time. The baby will be born two months early. It will be his.’

  ‘You want me to deceive him?’ This isn’t leaving a sack of grain outdoors and blaming it on Matred; this is giving him a firstborn not of his blood. Even if, like Rebecca, I one day contrive an exchange of birthright, I will have grossly abused his trust.

  ‘Would you rather be stoned? That's the penalty for adulterers. Not for the king of course. He may not even know when the sentence is carried out.’

  I feel the rocks raining down on me, the breath seeping out of me, and know that I must acquiesce. ‘But how can we arrange for Uriah to return?’

  ‘We can’t; the king can.’

  ‘And will he?’

  ‘Oh yes. Not for my honour and certainly not for yours, but for his own. He sleeps in comfort while his soldiers snatch what rest they can on the rough ground. Would they be so loyal if they knew that, while they’re fighting his wars, he's bedding their wives?’

  Grandfather leaves to confront the king. The next morning, an unusually subdued Jonadab escorts me to the palace, where I find Grandfather alone with the king in his private chamber. From his expression, it's clear that they have reached an agreement, and I fall to my knees in both obeisance and relief.

  The king commands me to take a seat. ‘I’ve done you a grave injustice and I ask your pardon,’ he says, with such studied humility that I’m convinced he is picturing penitence rather than feeling it. ‘I have insulted you and, worse, I have insulted your grandfather, who's served me so steadfastly.’ I bridle at that worse, although Grandfather seems to accept it as his due. ‘The child you bear must be your husband's. I have sons from wives whose first husbands are dead. And a wife whom I married twice and yet bore me no son.’ From his ill-concealed rancour, I know that he is speaking of Princess Michal, whose plight is whispered throughout the city. ‘But I can have no son from the wife of one of my captains. So I’ve summoned Uriah to report on the progress of the campaign. The moment that's done, I will send him home and you will conceive your child. He will be born two months before time but lusty and strong as befits such a father.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ Grandfather says. I glimpse a new jewel gleaming on his finger and swallow a wave of nausea stronger than any from my womb.

  ‘No, it won’t work,’ I interject, seized once again by panic. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but Uriah has taken the soldier's oath not to lie with me until the war is won.’ I wonder at his forgetting it, since he professed to have made just such an oath when he begged for the consecrated bread at Nob.

  ‘Surely you can find a way to make him break it?’ he says, much to my disgust. Doesn’t he care that his army consists of men who have taken the selfsame oath and that the Lord's favour depends on their keeping it? ‘How can any man resist your charms? Why, even I...’ He has the grace to fall silent.

  Grandfather takes me home. ‘Didn’t I tell you that I would settle things? And remember, it's the king who has betrayed Uriah, not you. But I’ll never forgive him,’ he says bitterly ‘I’ll continue to serve him, but I’ll never forgive him, not even once you’ve borne Uriah a multitude of sons.’

  Rabbah is two days’ journey from the city, so three days pass before Grandfather sends word that Uriah has arrived at the palace. I immediately prepare for his return, bathing – in my chamber – and scenting myself with calamus and spikenard, braiding my hair and painting my cheeks and lips. Matred cooks her master's favourite stew of pigeon, lentils, leeks and onions. Night falls; the pot simmers on the hearth, yet he still hasn’t come home. At Matred's insistence I lie down, but I refuse to take off my clothes or scrub my face and, when I wake the next morning, my robe is crumpled and my pillow smeared with ochre. In a torment of uncertainty, I send Matred to the palace for news.

  She returns two hours later, her measured breath mocking my impatience. ‘Well?’ I ask, sup
pressing the urge to shake her.

  ‘I saw the master.’

  ‘He's still at the palace?’

  ‘Yes. At the end of last night's feast, the king gave him leave to come home, but he slept at the gatehouse.’

  ‘Why? Does he suspect me? Have Jonadab or my grandfather let something slip? Have you?’

  ‘How can you even ask?’ I stroke her arm in remorse. ‘He told me that he couldn’t sleep in a clean bed, while his men lie in the open or in airless tents infested by flies and locusts.’

  ‘That sounds like him,’ I say, despairing of the decency I once admired. ‘Did you tell him how much I ache to see him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And it didn’t sway him?’

  ‘He said that he's writing to you.’

  ‘Writing! What use is that? I can’t conceive from a scroll!’

  ‘Hush, my lady. As soon as I left him, I went to see Lord Ahitophel. He told me that the king is to keep the master here another day. Tonight, he’ll order him to visit you.’

  ‘There was a time when he didn’t need to be ordered. But no matter, so long as he comes.’

  Once again he fails to appear. Once again I primp myself and Matred prepares a meal. My grandfather even orders one of the palace musicians to play for us, but his plangent chords heighten my misery and I send him away at midnight. Once again I dispatch Matred to the palace at daybreak, but she returns minutes later with my grandfather, who informs me that Uriah has already left for Rabbah.

  ‘What? Why? Why didn’t you stop him?’

  ‘How could I challenge the king? I was present when he summoned Uriah to a second meeting. Having heard his account of the battle the day before, he asked for his assessment of the various commanders. Afterwards Uriah spoke to me, worried that the king wanted him to denounce his fellow officers. I did my best to reassure him, but I could tell that he wasn’t convinced. Then at dinner, the king plied him with wine, trying to get him so drunk that he would forget his oath. I thought he’d succeeded when Uriah staggered out of the chamber amid howls of laughter. But he collapsed in the courtyard and the guard, knowing no better, carried him to the gatehouse where he spent another night. The king has only just found out and, in a fury, he's sent him straight back to the front.’

  ‘No, he can’t! He must recall him. What am I to do?’

  ‘Don’t worry. The king has a new plan.’

  ‘What plan?’

  ‘A plan. That's all you need know.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘No buts. Meanwhile, Uriah wrote you this letter, which I forgot to give you yesterday.’

  Grandfather has barely quit the chamber when I tear open the seal as if the clay were butter. I skim through the message and finding no word of reproof, read it closely: To Bathsheba, wife of Uriah. You will have heard that I’m in the city. I long to visit you, but I must stay away. The king is behaving most strangely. He assures me that I am one of his finest captains, so he must know that my place is in the field. Yet he calls me back for a report that he might have obtained from any messenger. From the questions he asks, I fear that he suspects my loyalty. He's testing me by suggesting that I spend the night with you, since he knows that, were I to do so, I’d break my oath to the Lord, who would withdraw his favour not just from me but from the men under my command. I trust you’ll understand that I must forbear from seeing you until the campaign is won and we can lie together with the Lord's blessing.

  Six days later, Grandfather brings me the news that Uriah is dead. ‘He died the very day that he returned to the field.’

  ‘How? Who killed him? Was that the king's plan?’

  ‘No,’ Grandfather says forcibly. ‘You mustn’t think that. And most of all, you mustn’t say it. It was a coincidence, a happy one.’

  ‘Not for Uriah!’ I am flooded with memories of his goodness, his gentleness, his strength, and the stories he told of his life before he came to the land. I long to mourn the man with whom I was expecting to spend the rest of my days, but the cramps in my belly distract me and all I can think of is what his death means for my child. Desperate to focus my mind, I ask Grandfather how he died.

  ‘As a hero,’ he says. ‘The messenger made that clear. With the siege dragging on, Joab tried to break the deadlock by sending a unit to attack the gates. After a brief foray, they were to pretend to fall back, drawing the enemy into the open, where a second unit would ambush them. At which point the main body of troops would storm the city.’

  ‘But at the gates, wouldn’t they be exposed to arrows and stones and every other sort of missile fired from the ramparts?’

  ‘No doubt, which is why they were ordered to advance with all speed and retreat before the casualties grew too heavy But things didn’t go according to plan.’

  ‘Did the ambush succeed?’

  ‘I have no idea. Uriah's dead. What does it matter?’

  ‘I’d like to think that he didn’t die in vain.’

  Joab himself brings Uriah's body back from Rabbah. Grandfather arranges to bury him in the new tomb he has built on the Mount of Olives. I am touched by the number of mourners who accompany the bier across the valley. I recognise a few of them: Abiathar the high priest and Nathan the prophet, who have come to honour my grandfather as much as Uriah; a group of Uriah's fellow officers, led by Joab. The rest are strangers, among them several women beating their breasts and wailing who, I presume, have either been paid by my grandfather or else owe him a service. It grieves me that Uriah must go to his tomb amid the same dissimulation that he went to his death.

  Abiathar leads the lamentations and he, my grandfather and Joab follow the corpse into the tomb. Despite my grandfather's pointed gaze, I refuse to join them. The sepulchre stone is replaced and we return to the city, where Joab and Abiathar take their leave. The rest of the mourners come back to the house for the feast. No one speaks to me and I feel as though I have been buried alongside Uriah. In the evening, after the company has left and while Matred is clearing the debris, Joab arrives unexpectedly.

  ‘I’ve come to pay my respects,’ he says, as if to an enemy with whom he wishes to fight but has been obliged to parlay. ‘Uriah was one of my most valued officers.’

  ‘Thank you. You may go; I’ll take care of that,’ I say to Matred, who hands Joab a dish of fig cakes. He puts one in his mouth and swallows it whole.

  ‘Besides, I wanted to see if you were worth it.’

  ‘Worth what?’

  ‘Uriah's death. The king's shame. The army's first defeat in years.’

  ‘No, stay,’ I say to Matred, who is halfway to the storeroom. I struggle to stop shaking and turn back to Joab. ‘The king told you?’

  ‘Give me some credit! When one of my best captains hands me a sealed scroll from the king, ordering me to put him at the forefront of the next attack and leave him unprotected, I know that it isn’t a matter of strategy. Either the man has offended against the king or the king against the man. Given the persons involved, I opt for the latter. “So how can the king have offended?” I ask myself and make an informed guess.’ Abandoning all semblance of courtesy, he moves towards me and presses his hand to my stomach. ‘No, not big-bellied yet.’ I gasp and see Matred running up behind him, clasping a knife, but he turns and effortlessly knocks first the weapon and then the woman to the ground. She crawls away, groaning and clutching her mouth. I long to go to her aid, but Joab's brutality has stunned me. ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking me as noble as Uriah. Where was I? Oh yes. More than one hundred men died in the attack. There are wives and mothers and daughters across the land mourning their husbands and sons and fathers.’

  ‘I knew nothing of it, I swear.’

  ‘Of course not; you women never do. I only wish that when the king decided to betray one of my officers, he’d chosen one who was more expendable... Go ahead, cry all you like; I’m not stopping you. But ask yourself who you’re crying for: your husband, his men, or yourself now you find that you’re not who
you thought you were, now your hands are sticky with more than mutton fat and olive oil.’

  ‘What about you?’ I sniff away my tears and confront him. ‘If you supposed the order so wrong, why did you uphold it?’

  ‘Would you have me defy my king? Believe me, I considered it. But then I realised the consequences of what David had done. My troops have been camped outside Rabbah for months, sweltering in the heat, gagging on the dust and staving off boredom. The one thing that sustains them is their love for the king: the king who has led them to so many glorious victories; the king who, when three of his soldiers risked their lives to bring him water, refused to drink it but poured it as a libation to the Lord in thanksgiving for their safety. What would it do to their resolve to learn that, while they were suffering in the field, the king was making free with their wives?’

  ‘My grandfather asked the same question.’

  ‘With good reason.’

  ‘But how would they have found out?’

  ‘Because Uriah did.’

  ‘No, that's not true!’

  ‘He told me so himself. And I admired his constancy more than ever. He came back to the city two weeks ago.’

  ‘The king summoned him.’

  ‘He slept at the palace. The guards told him what had occurred. One – or maybe more of them – saw you leave late at night, hair and robe awry. They thought it only right that he should know.’

  ‘A11 he told me was that he feared the king suspected his loyalty.’

  ‘He showed the king more loyalty than he deserved. As he did me. When I gave the order to charge the gates, an order that he knew meant certain death – unless, of course, there were a miracle, and David saves those for himself – he told me that he knew why. He’d worked out that he’d brought his own death warrant. How could David have been so rash? What if Uriah had opened it along the way?’