The Secret Chord

by Geraldine Brooks

  The remarkable thing is that he recognized me, even then, for what I was. It would be several seasons before I spoke again in that strange voice, and when I did, the message I gave was by no means as welcome as the first. Yet his faith in me never wavered. It has been allowed to me to see many things—bright shards of vision that sometimes foretell events as they will unfold, and other times are waking dreams that come and go with less effect than mist in the valley or the smoke about an altar. Some of these words have become famous; some have been for his ears alone. Some bear my name, some are remembered now as if they came to him directly from the mouth of the divine. It matters not, to me. In fact, it is better—truer—that men think so. For they are not my words. Often, as it was that first time, others have had to tell me what I have uttered.

  He did not speak to me, that first day in his tent, of what I had said. He did not then realize that I did not know. I gleaned the content of my words from the men around him. It was easy enough to do so, for the whole camp was abuzz over what they already called Natan’s oracle.

  I had promised David a throne. More than that: the voice that used my mouth foretold for him an empire and a line that would never fail throughout the generations. Now, when the first two of those promises have come to pass, it is hard to recall how outlandish such words seemed. David, then, was an outlaw. A wanted man, declared a traitor. And the Land, this narrow notch, riven and divided by jagged lines of hills, was hardly the country likely to usher forth an empire. Our tribes were a frayed and flimsy alliance, fragmented by enmity, led by a king whose own anointing prophet, Shmuel, had disavowed him, whose behavior was erratic, if not mad. We were squeezed between the Sea People on the coast, Pharaoh’s armies to the southwest, and the mighty peoples of the Two Rivers to the east. Our chief and nearest enemy, the Sea People, or Plishtim, as they called themselves, controlled access to iron so completely that we were obliged to use wooden boards for our plowshares. Tin and copper, such as we had, were no match for their forged arms. We could not pass freely even in the territory we claimed, that scant strip from Dan to Beersheva. But David believed the words I uttered that day, and so therefore did his followers. They took strength from that belief, and events surged rapidly forward on the tide of their confidence. By the time the seasons turned through four more reapings, he had been crowned king of Yudah. By the time I was counted a man, he had added the crown of the kingdom of Israel and made the tribes of the Name one people at last.

  The day my father died, I left childish things behind me. Even though I remained a mere boy in the reckoning of the world, never again was I treated as one. If I took orders, it was from David, as a man willingly in service to his leader. The tribe of my birth meant nothing to me now. I was neither Benyaminite nor Levite, Yudaite nor Ephraimite, but simply David’s man. No one else had charge of me, or claim upon me. No one else nagged me about what chores to do or when I might come or go. From then on, I walked my own road, always at his side.

  I left behind all my close kindred. I left my widowed mother and my infant sister. My mother returned to her father’s household. Had my uncle been spared, he would have been charged with her care, but as things stood, she had no choice. Our last meeting was bitter. She did not give me her blessing when I left to follow David—how could she?—but she certainly did not press me to stay at her side. She did not like uncanny things, and the voice that had spoken through me had frightened her as she stood there, the screams dying on her lips as I walked forward toward what she thought would be my end.

  I felt, in her shunning, the first of many such turnings-away. It was hard for a child to feel that ebbing love, to sense an estrangement that I could do nothing to gainsay. For my part, I still loved her as much as I had the moment before my mouth opened and the words poured out of me. But like the leper when the first lesion darkens and pits his skin, I was marked in her eyes, blemished, unlovable. I grieved to leave her, and wished I had the power to make her understand that I was still the boy she had carried and suckled, not some strange, tarnished, foreign thing. When she died, of a sudden fever, David was not yet king, so she did not live to know the worth of my gift, to see the words I had spoken become true in fact.

  Given that my place with David made me into an outlaw in the world’s eyes, my grandfather sanctioned no contact with my infant sister. By the time my status changed, she was a betrothed maiden and I, a stranger to her, had no part in her life. I regret this, but as I have set down, I had no choice.

  I knew all this, even then, a boy of ten years. No other human noise was to come between that mysterious voice and me. Accordingly, when the season came to take a wife, I did not do so. I knew that the simple joys and intimacies of a common life were not for me. And in any case, who would want someone like me? The truth is, the people abide my kind, but no one loves us. There is awe, but no affection. We grow used to the turned shoulder, the retreating back, the bright conversation that sputters to a murmur when we enter a room, the sigh of relief when we leave it.

  David alone understood what I was to him, and why he needed me by his side. And that has been my life, twinned with his. Since I joined him, I have known him as well as any man alive.

  But what I did not know—what I would need to learn from several others in order to set down a full and true accounting of his life—was who he had been until that hot, dry, deadly day brought me to his side. I had heard the stories, of course. There is not a person now living in the Land who has not. But the stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip. They pull life from whatever surfaces they cling to, while the roots, maybe, wither and rot until you cannot find the place from which the seed of the vine has truly sprung. That was my task: to uncover those earliest roots. And he had directed me to the seedbed.

  III

  The Sheep Gate was not yet open when I set out. The captain of the guard, recognizing me, quickly gave the necessary orders and I urged the mule on. I never tire of the view from that gate, where the land slopes steeply away from the city walls and the light silvers the leaves of the olive groves that cling so tenaciously to the thin soils. Below, the valley was already a wash of swaying green. Families, early to work in the cool of the morning, bent their backs in their plots of flax and barley, somehow coaxing plenty out of crusty earth that seems more stone than tilth. A man plied his goad on a pair of oxen, prodding them forward ahead of his plow. Nearby, his sons did battle with the sprouting thistles and thorn bushes that threatened the young plantings. That is the only battle they now must do, thanks to the king. Common folk are no longer called away from their fields. Our standing army, trained and organized, is sufficient for such skirmishes as still trouble our borders.

  The road to Beit Lehem is through the hill country and soon enough, the land began to rise again. I let the mule set her own sure-footed pace as we began to climb. Farmland slowly ceded to the fir forests that lie between the settled areas. By the time we passed into the dense emerald stands, the sun had risen high enough to make me glad of the fragrant shade.

  When I reached the outskirts of Beit Lehem I stopped at the well to ask direction. The women drew their mantles about themselves as I approached, but were easily able to point the way to a property on a gentle rise to the east of the town. It was a tidy compound set behind high walls. Within, three small, pillared houses shared a large courtyard. This was divided into two parts by a grape arbor. The noisome things—the kine pens, the dun cakes drying in the sun—occupied the downwind side, while a table and the hive-shaped tannur sat beneath a large old citron on the other. The tree was in blossom, so the tang of citrus mingled with the lingering scent of the morning’s baking.

  It was here that David’s brother Shammah received me. And not with good grace. He had been pacing. The courtyard was etched across with a raw line of yellow earth stamped with the marks of his heavy tread. He was a big man who had let his large frame run to fat in the years since he had left the army
and taken up the role of local judge. He looked nothing like his brother. Not simply because he was a decade older. The two were different in build, coloring, voice, manner, gait.

  There was a table set in the shade of the citron trees, but Shammah did not invite me to sit. So I stood while a boy—Shammah’s nephew or grandson, it was not clear—barred the wooden door behind me and took charge of my mule, leading her to the kine pens. Shammah strode up to me and stood, toe to toe. I am tall enough, but he was taller, and his massive neck and shoulders blocked out the light. “What in the name of a she-ass’s cunt is my brother playing at now? ‘Tell Natan everything.’ What shit is this?”

  I was taken aback by Shammah’s tone, but even more by the implication of his words, his knowledge that I was coming, and my reasons for being there. For word to reach Shammah ahead of me, the king must have dispatched a royal messenger directly after our meeting, even before he sent me the list of names. I must have shown surprise.

  “Did you not know he commanded that I receive you? You think I would have agreed to admit you here on this mad errand had he not? He sent word last night, set my son Yonadav to ride here, in the dark—could have broken his neck—and on Prince Amnon’s own mule, no less, so that he could make good time. My mother’s been locked up in her chamber weeping, ever since Yonadav told her she’s required to speak to you.”

  Nizevet, the name I had not known. The one I must speak to first of all. So she was their mother. All the time I had known David, I had never heard her name. There might be two reasons for a man to hold his mother in such obscurity. He could wish to shield a woman’s honor by seeing that she was not spoken of, or he might be in some way ashamed of his begetting. Shammah gave no clue as to which might be the case, but he continued to vent his displeasure. “I don’t like it, and she likes it even less.” He turned aside and spat into the dust. “I warn you, if you cause her any further distress . . .” He did not finish his threat, for she had appeared in the doorway of the smallest dwelling, leaning heavily on the arm of a young girl.

  “It’s all right, Shammah.” A voice with a quaver that betrayed age, yet a lilting, melodious voice. David’s voice, in female form. “If the king wants this, so be it. He must have reasons that seem good to him.”

  “Reasons? What reasons? Picking at old scars till they bleed—what good can possibly come of it? But you always favored him. Do what you will.”

  Shammah shrugged his immense shoulders and turned away. He lifted the heavy door bar as if it were a straw stalk, flung back the door and strode through, walking at an agitated pace down the hill toward the town. Nizevet raised her head and looked after him, until the boy who had taken my mule ran across the courtyard and drew the door closed. She turned her eyes on me then. They were the king’s eyes: the same luminous amber that seemed to entrap light and shadow. Though hers were swathed in folds of tired flesh, they were set wide and deep, like his, with strong brows defining them.

  “Forgive Shammah. He, too, has his reasons for his actions. And they seem good to him. You will know why, presently, I dare say.” She moved with some effort toward the table, and we sat, the blown blossoms falling upon us like snowflakes. There were bowls of hyacinths about our feet.

  The girl set a pillow behind Nizevet’s frail shoulders and poured watered wine, and then withdrew into the shadow of the portico. You couldn’t see her, but I could hear the scrape of her hand mill, the coarse basalt rider passing over the slab of the saddle, crushing the last season’s wheat. Perhaps Shammah had instructed her to stay close and lend an ear to what was said.

  I set out the reed pens and the phial of ink I had blended, and waited. When the old woman began to speak, her voice had a slight rattle, like a breeze through dry grass. She spoke in low tones, so that I had to strain to hear her.

  “‘Tell Natan everything.’ That was the king’s message. His order.” Her mouth thinned as she said this. There was an awkward silence between us.

  “The message did not please Shammah. It does not please you.”

  “Please me? How should it please me? I have lived very quiet all these years. The story of the king has never included me, and for good reason. I never thought he would want anyone to hear what I have buried so long in silence. You will have to be patient with me, therefore. These things that he suddenly bids told are not easy things. After all the good that has come to him, I cannot think why he wants to probe these old wounds. ‘Tell Natan,’ my son says. As if it were nothing. Well. Maybe it is, to him, now . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and she looked away from me, her eyes welling. The girl was at her side in a moment, offering a bowl of rosewater and a cool cloth. Nizevet took it, and pressed it to her brow for a moment. Her face was scored all over with lines, but the skin was delicate and unblemished, and the bones beneath the aged flesh were very fine. I saw that there had been great beauty, once. I would have wagered a talent that beneath her linen headdress, the silver hair was still streaked through with fading tongues of fire. When she started to speak again her voice was low and full of emotion. I could see the strain in her face as she tried to command herself.

  “The name I gave him. Beloved. It was my act of defiance, you see. He was the only one of my sons I named. Their father had been quick to give names to all the others. But to this one, he would give nothing. Not even a glance. He hated the very sight of him. Had the infant died, Yishai would have rejoiced.”

  What she said shocked me so that I stopped writing and stared at her. She gazed back, a hint of amusement in her troubled eyes.

  “I see in your face that you doubt me. You will know why, presently. The older boys took their lead from their father. They treated their youngest brother as if he were an unwelcome stranger. Even Natanel—the closest in age, the kindest of them—ignored him. That was the best of the treatment he received at their hands. The older brothers put vinegar in his drink and gall in his food. They beat him and accused him of thefts for which he was blameless. No one knows these things that I am telling you. No one outside the family. And—before this odd command of his, if you had asked Shammah or any of the others, they would have denied it.”

  I had known her sons, most of them, but not well. None was close to the king, not one of them part of his inner circle. While she lived, his sister, Zeruiah, stood close in his affection and confidence, and her three sons, most especially Yoav, were prominent men. David’s brothers, by contrast, had enjoyed lesser places at court. Yet in all my time at the king’s side, there had been no hint of enmity. Nizevet seemed to read these thoughts as they passed through my mind. She smiled slightly.

  “No one wants to remember how it was. The king, perhaps, least of all. But I remember. How could I not? When he was barely six years old, his father ordered that he be sent away from the beit av—the family home—to tend the sheep up in the hills. He was to live in a little hut of stone and branches, and come home only to get supplies. It was to get him away from the house, you see, so that Yishai would not have to look upon him. And this, too: the hills were full of lions then—not like now, when one rarely hears of an attack. How was a six-year-old supposed to survive out there alone? I believe Yishai hoped for his death. I wept the day he left, the crook—too large for him—threaded over his narrow shoulders, his slender wrists draped over the cane. He had the cheeses, olives and dried grapes I had packed for him tied in a cloth on his back. He looked small, and helpless, and lonely. My heart ached over it. I was in agony for him. But now I think that it was a good thing he got away from his brothers’ persecutions and his father’s open hatred. Those years in the hills taught him many things. You could say that they made him the man he became. For better . . .” she paused and drew a deep breath. “And yes, perhaps, for worse. Should a mother say such a thing?” She gave a swift, wan smile. “‘Tell everything,’ so he said. And so. Everything.”

  As she spoke, my pen scritched across the parchment and my mind fille
d with memories of David at our first meeting on the high hills above my village. I imagined him as that small shepherd boy, living in the long silences broken only by the baaing of the ewes and the clatter of stones shifting as the herd moved over them. I imagined the sharp scent of thyme crushed under the hooves, and the calls of the little birds in the thorn bushes.

  He must have found ways to fill the long days and the silences. In those silences, perhaps, he discovered the consolations of music. I interrupted to ask her this, and she told how he fashioned his first harp. He had heard a harpist only once, when some itinerant musician had come to play in Beit Lehem. But out there in that hut, from ram’s horn and sinew, by trial and error, he fashioned a crude instrument of his own, and learned how to draw prodigious sound from it.

  He found his voice there, she said. There, where he could sing as loud and as long as he wanted with no one to complain of it.

  As I wrote down her words, it came to me that there was something else he must have found there. Something that a boy who lives all his life in a busy household or a crowded town might never find. He found the ability to hear. In those endless days and in the still nights, I believe he learned what it means to really listen, a skill I had seen him wield to great effect. Men love the sound of their own voices, and David knew how to let them speak. I had seen taciturn fighters and oily-tongued emissaries alike undone by David’s ability to draw them out. He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill.

  And this, too: our holiest men have always gone into the wilderness to hear the voice of the Name. Avram was in the far desert under a star-encrusted sky when the Name promised him descendants as numberless as those stars. Moshe was in the distant hills, and also a shepherd, when Yah spoke to him in the crackling fire. David heard some echo of the divine voice out there, too, I am sure of it. For when the time came for him to speak in the world, his words carried the roar of holy fire. How else to account for his poetry, those words that fill our mouths and hearts and give us voice to praise, lament, beseech and atone.