The Secret Chord

by Geraldine Brooks

  It was late afternoon when we came within sight of the township. Avner ordered that we make camp in the valley rather than proceed into the town at dusk. As the tents went up, he drew me aside. “You’re to take the message to Palti,” he said. “It’s a delicate bit of business. You’re quite the courtier, so I hear. You’ll be able to manage it better than a rude old soldier like me.” He gave the same derisive snort of laughter. “And if anyone’s going to botch it, better it be David’s own boy.”

  I had not been called “boy” in some time. I felt the heat rise into my face. To my chagrin, I was blushing. “I don’t know why this falls to me,” I said. “You were the hand of Shaul, who made this unholy, unjust match. Surely, then, it is the place of Shaul’s man to undo it?”

  “‘Unholy,’ ‘unjust’—I don’t know how you can stand the taste of the cant in your mouth!” He turned and spat, as if to reinforce the point. “This was about power then, it’s about power now. You know about power, Natan. I know you do. No one rises from farmer boy to chief adviser—oh, yes, I know about you—it was my business to know who was stiffening the spine of my opponent and taking the heart out of my king. All that high talk of ‘thrones’ and ‘crowns’ and ‘lines that would not fail.’” He had pitched his voice into a girlish register, in mockery of me. He dropped back into his own gruff rumble. He had a voice like a grindstone. “Powerful weapons, words like those, to wield against a man of ailing mind and waning spirit. Yes, I took the trouble to trace you to the source, to know if you were real or sham. I know all about your butchered father and your ransacked village. Must’ve been something to see, a child spouting all that. I know soldiers; they’re a superstitious lot, always looking for signs and omens. But David’s no fool. He would’ve smelled an obvious charlatan, so I know you must’ve put on quite a show. And I know this, too: no one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them. Get you to Palti, and fetch this woman. Tell him I want her on the road an hour after sunup.”

  Eved hamalek, I thought to myself, as I toiled up the hill in the dusk. And the servant may not choose his tasks. Avner was right: better the message should come from me. I had no doubt Avner would use force, if force were needed. Better that the threat remains at a distance, in a tent in the valley, than comes barging through the front door dressed in military greaves.

  Yet there is no courtly way to break news to a man that one has come to take his wife. Palti received me with curiosity. He was a well-made man, with dark hair and a sensuous mouth. If Mikhal favored her brother, as David said, they would be a handsome couple. Word had, of course, come to him that Avner was encamped in the valley. I think he expected that I had come to ask some service of him in the negotiations between the Benyaminites and David’s Yudaite forces. I began by outlining to him the news that hostilities would soon be over, that Avner had sued for peace and that David had accepted it.

  “Good,” he said, pouring two cups of wine and handing me one. I took it, and drank deeply, looking for courage to say what I had to say. Palti, oblivious, was buoyed by my news. “It is time to put an end to this. Everyone knows that Ish Boshet is no king. The Benyaminites will welcome reconciliation, I am sure of it. The threats we face are become too great for one tribe alone. Gilboa showed that plain.”

  “Avner will be glad of your support, and David the king will welcome it also,” I said. I drained my cup and drew a breath. “There was a condition.”

  “Oh?”

  “Palti, he wants his wife back.”

  “Back? But he has his wives—the Carmelite widow, the Yezreelite, and we heard tell that he recently took another one, part of the treaty with the northerners, the daughter of the Geshurite king, wasn’t it? But I don’t see what that—”

  And then, as my meaning penetrated, he put a hand out to steady himself against a pillar. “He cannot ask this. Not after ten years. What can she mean to him after all this time? We have children—the youngest is not five. All this time, and he never sent so much as a word to her. Even when her father and her brothers lay dead on the battlefield.” He was pacing now, his voice rising. “Not a word to her in her mourning. He cannot have any feelings for her. This is pride, merely—”

  “No, Palti,” I said. “Not pride. Politics. He needs this. You ask what she means to him. That marriage was his invitation into Shaul’s dynasty. Now that Shaul’s house is reduced, he must reclaim that place. David will be king, not just of Yudah, but of Israel, too. Shmuel foretold it. You cannot stand in the way.”

  “If it is foretold, as you say, then it will come to pass whether he has Mikhal at his side or no.”

  I raised a hand. “Enough. Your marriage was not valid under any law but a king’s fiat. That king is now dead. Another king has spoken. Now, go to Mikhal and prepare her. Avner means to ride for Hevron an hour past sunrise. I will return then with a litter for her transport. If you have found joy in these years, be glad of it. But accept that it is over. For it is over, Palti.” I waited a beat. “One way or another.”

  I let the threat hang there between us, and then I turned to see myself out. As I lifted the door bar, I glanced back. Palti had sunk down against the pillar, his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. If he, a stern man, could be felled by this news, how would Mikhal be? I dreaded the morning. As the heavy door closed behind me, I leaned against it for a moment, breathing hard.

  I slept fitfully that night, listening to the grinding snores of the troops around me. At first light, I walked out and woke the men detailed as litter bearers. When we approached the house, Palti came out, dressed for the road. Behind him, walking unsteadily, supported by two maidservants, came a tall, slender figure swathed in a traveling mantle. Before the door closed behind her, I saw a boy snatch up his sister, who was reaching her hands out and wailing. The boy’s own face was tear streaked. When Palti had assisted Mikhal into the litter, I placed my hand on his shoulder. He turned.

  “You can’t mean to go with her, Palti.”

  “I mean to follow,” he said. “I mean to see the king, and beg him . . .”

  “It’s fruitless,” I said. “Stay here, and see to your children.” I dropped my voice. “They need one parent, at least. If you remind David of your adultery, it won’t go well for you.”

  “I have to try,” he said.

  I shrugged. This I would leave to Avner. He was the leader of the expedition. It was for him to order Palti to stay behind.

  But Avner seemed unconcerned. “The heat will get him,” he said. “Or the terrain will. He’s not so young. He has no mule. I don’t think he can keep up with soldiers trained to the march.” Yet as the morning wore on, and the heat rose, Palti showed no sign of faltering. Every now and then he would cry out Mikhal’s name, assuring her that he followed.

  At noon I went to bring bread and water to Mikhal, handing the goatskin through the curtain. She accepted the water with a trembling hand but would not take the bread. I rode my mule back to the rear of the train, where Palti staggered on, his tunic soaked through with his own sweat, his face as purple as a grape. I leaned down to speak to him. “It’s not fair to her, what you are doing. She needs to reconcile herself, to prepare to meet the king. How can she do that when she hears you crying out to her? All you do here is increase her grief.”

  He made me no answer but just kept trudging. So I threw a waterskin at his feet, booted my mule and rode on. When I drew abreast with Avner, he turned to me. “Someone better shut that howling dog up, or I will.”

  Not long after, when Palti cried out again, one of the younger soldiers—a good mimic—started echoing his calls in mockery. Another youth took up the game, answering in a high-pitched voice. Soon a band of them had taken up the call and response, adding ribald suggestions. I turned to Avner.

  “You’d better stop this. It’s not fit to have the king’s wife referre
d to in this way.”

  “You’re right.” Avner turned his mule and rode back to Palti. Palti did not even glance at Avner, but just kept moving forward, though it was apparent his whole body shook from the effort. Avner steered his mule across Palti’s path. “Enough! Turn around, get on home.” Still, Palti ignored him. Without looking up, he stepped sideways, as if to pass in front of Avner’s mule. Avner took the butt end of his spear then and thumped Palti hard just under his shoulder blade, so that he fell backward, raising a cloud of dust. Immediately he put his hand behind, to push himself back up onto his feet. Avner brought the spear butt around swiftly and laid it into the side of Palti’s head, sending him sprawling in the dirt. Blood ran from the cut above his ear.

  “I won’t say it again. Turn around and walk away. The next time I use this spear, it’ll be the blade end you feel.”

  Palti groaned and struggled to his feet. The train had stopped now. Every man in the detail was watching, waiting to see if Palti would turn or take another step forward and be slain.

  Suddenly there was a movement. Mikhal had thrown aside the curtains of her litter and stepped out, blinking in the strong light. Her veil slid to her shoulders and her unbound hair streamed behind her as she ran to Palti. I think she would have run straight into his arms had Avner not kicked his mule in between them. She lifted her tear-streaked face. “Do as he says, Palti. Go back to our children. I will beseech the king. I will find a way to come home to you.”

  Palti’s eyes searched her face. “Swear it,” he said.

  “I swear it.”

  Then Avner jumped from the mule and grabbed her arm. “Shame!” he cried. “You dishonor your husband the king! Be glad if word of this does not reach him.”

  He pulled her in front of him, her arm twisted up roughly at her back. Then he marched her to the litter and almost threw her back inside. He should have a care, I thought. She would remember this. Avner called out gruffly, giving the order to move off. I turned in my saddle and saw Palti, on his knees in the dust, keening. And I saw her pale hand, through the curtain of the litter, reaching out to him. Then we crested a small rise, and turned onto the Hevron road.

  It was near dusk when we arrived at the city walls. Inside, I handed off my mule to the stable lad and went to the litter to fetch her. She had replaced her veils by then, but I could see her eyes. They were not sad anymore. All I could read there was fury. A serpent of anger, coiled up inside her.

  When I brought word to David that she had arrived, he seemed in no hurry to see her. I was surprised—curiosity, at least, I thought, would have goaded him. But also I was glad. I did not want him to have her brought to him as she was, travel stained, tear streaked and weary to the point of exhaustion. He asked how Palti had taken the news.

  “Badly,” I said. “He walked behind us all the way to Bahurim.”

  “Did he so? I’m sorry for it. Have him sent a ram from those Ziklag sheep with the long-staple fleece such as everyone prizes, and a pair of oxen, and some other gifts as seem good to you. I don’t need an enemy there, if I can avoid it. He should know that I do not blame him in this matter.”

  I hardly thought a gift of livestock likely to placate Palti, and I wondered that David could be so callous as to suggest it. It was not as if he were a man without experience of deep affection. Where, then, was his empathy? Buried, I supposed, beneath his self-regard. I waited, girded, for his next inquiry, as to how Mikhal had received the order. But he did not ask. Instead, his thoughts were all on Avner, and his outreach to the Benyaminites. This night, it seemed, he was a king before he was a man. At the time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish that it were always so.

  “I plan to feast Avner and his men tonight. You may send to Mikhal that I don’t expect her. I shouldn’t think she will be minded to attend a soldiers’ feast.” He paused a beat. “After such a long journey.”

  And after being wrenched from her children and seeing her husband of ten years almost cut down in front of her, I thought. But what I said was: “Will Yoav and Avishai be at this feast?”

  “By chance not. They are away. Raiding party.”

  “Just as well,” I said. David nodded.

  “You’ll have to deal with it at some point. And soon.”

  “I know.”

  It was one of the more lavish feasts, the wine abundant, the air thick with the delicious aromas of fat lambs turning on the spits and succulent fowl roasting in the clay ovens. As dark gathered and the torches came in, the flames seemed to dance with extra brightness. The music, too, was remarkable. David had invited some players from Avner’s own tribe, in his honor, which delighted him. There was not a song he called for that they did not know, often in some lively and original variation.

  David was at his best in such settings, soldier enough to join the raucous jests, king enough to make it matter that he remembered some moment of bravery or sacrifice, and praised each man accordingly. To Avner, he was generous, standing on no precedence but offering instead the deference that a young man owes an elder. Everyone present in the hall was allowed to understand that this man was esteemed, even loved, by David. It was clear that the young king and the old soldier were ready to reconcile. Avner basked in the attention. I imagine his recent years at the side of Shaul, alert always for the signs of madness, could have offered few such pleasurable evenings. Late that night, Avner stood up in the hall. He was flushed and unsteady from the drinking, and more than one person looked sideways at his neighbor, wondering what was coming. Avner raised his cup, toasting David.

  “We are your bone and flesh. In times past, you led us out and you brought us home. So let it be again. You are the one who will shepherd all our people. I promise you, the next time we meet, I will deliver all Israel to your banner.”

  The hall erupted in cheers, men thumping on the boards, as David rose and embraced him. More than one warrior dashed the back of his hand to his eyes at the sight of the graying general offering his love and loyalty to his new king.

  Avner departed the next day at noon. Not an hour after, Yoav and his men rode in from the other direction, leading a long train of carts filled with plunder. David sent for Yoav to honor him for his successful raid, but by the time Yoav made his way to David’s apartments he had already learned that Avner had come and gone. He had also likely heard, or gathered, that the tone of the feast had been more than congenial, and that Avner had been treated with distinction. Yoav was a soldier, not a diplomat. He had never learned to school his face. He burst into David’s room, and the expression written there was the same plain rage I had seen as a boy when he flung me against the wall of my father’s house.

  “You had the enemy’s commander in your hands, and you let him go?” He did not pause for David’s response, but blustered on. “How can you think to trust him? All this talk of uniting the kingdoms. You can’t possibly believe he’ll go through with it. He came here to study your dispositions and assess your strengths. He’ll be back with an army behind him.”

  He turned on me then. “Natan, how could you not counsel the king on this? Surely you, at least, can see?”

  “Yoav, what I see is a bereaved brother, who harbors a thirst for revenge. But remember, Asahel attacked Avner first.”

  “That has nothing to do with it!” Yoav was spitting now, his anger uncontained.

  “If that’s so,” said David, “then this outburst of yours is unwarranted and offensive. You are a fighter, not a politician. Do not cross me in this. Avner knows that the tribes must unite, and he needs me to do it. He, at least, is able to put aside personal feelings, and see the broad strokes.” David turned away to pour more wine. “Experience counts in these things.”

  Because he had turned, he didn’t see the expression that crossed Yoav’s face at the mention of the word “experience.” It was not like David to misjudge a man. Later, I wondered if this remark was, in fact, th
e result of misjudgment or rather a calculated goad, to bring about just such a result as it did. But at the time, I thought only that he lacked tact. When David turned back with two cups of wine in his hand and proffered one to Yoav, Yoav, uncharacteristically, waved it off. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m too tired to discuss this now. Let me take my leave.”

  David shrugged, and passed the cup of wine to me instead. Later, he demanded to know why I did not see what would happen that night and the next morning: why I sat there and offered no warning. I could have asked the same of him. One didn’t need to be a seer to understand Yoav’s anger and jealousy, and to foretell that something grievous might come of it. Men raised in a culture of blood revenge do not change in a day.

  • • •

  In the morning, Avner lay dead, just inside the gates of Hevron. Yoav had gone straight from the king’s chamber and dispatched a messenger, supposedly at the king’s request, to find Avner where he had camped for the night at the cistern of Sirah. The message was that David desired him to return to Hevron. Avner, no doubt still basking in the good feelings of the previous evening, made haste to answer the summons. Yoav waited for him. No sooner had Avner entered the gate than Yoav took him by the arm, pulling him into the shadows, saying he must have a private word. The “word” was a dagger in the belly; a brother’s blood debt repaid.

  David called for me just after dawn, when the change of watch discovered the body. He was casting off his night robe and fidgeting as a servant strove to help him into a tunic. “Leave it, I can do it myself,” he said impatiently, pulling at the fine fabric until it tore in his hand. “Never mind. I will have to rend it anyway.” He turned on me then. “How can you not have foreseen this?”