The Secret Chord

by Geraldine Brooks

  Such a dance I had never seen, and will not see again. Writhing, stamping, leaping, his face lit with ecstasy, leading the way before the ark in its procession toward the city gates. The crowds surged to fall in behind him, the cheers and the swell of music deafening. We all of us were caught in the power of his dance, filling the streets with a swarm of prancing, joyful bodies.

  After a time, I could not keep up. My lungs were starved for breath, my chest burned, my feet were raw and bruised from the abrading stones. Yet David leaped ahead, whirling in the air. The light linen of his tunic flew aside, revealing the long line of hard muscle that ran from hip to thigh. He had recently turned forty, but his limbs remained lean and strong, traced over with the fine white puckers of scar tissue from old wounds. He did not care that he exposed himself. He was far away, lost in the dance. There was no regard for kingly dignity, for manly self-mastery. This was naked joy, uncontained, abandoned. He had let go of self. He was a bright flare, a blur of stamping, springing, whirling animal energy. I realized then that what I witnessed was pure worship—beautiful—and I let go of my own inhibitions and danced on, catching the gladness that flew from him like sparks.

  He had ordered a pavilion built atop Har Moriah. Cloths of the finest weave billowed from gleaming copper stanchions. He danced the ark into the pavilion, and then bowed out before the high priest, who made his lonely way to the recesses of the inner curtained enclave where he alone, purified in stringent ritual, might enter. There was incense and the fragrance of cedarwood from the sacrificial fires, and the sharp, delicious scent of the burned offerings. David turned, such a smile of pure delight upon his face, so that a well of feeling brimmed up in me—and I think in all of us who stood close to him. Any reservations or misgivings about the acts that had brought us to this day seemed to melt like the fat on the altar of sacrifice, to rise up like vapor and blow away.

  He clapped me on the shoulder—his hand was hot, heavy—and we turned toward the palace. He had arranged distributions of honey cakes and fine loaves to all the people, and as he passed through the crowd they reached out to kiss his hand or the hem of his tunic. There was so much laughter, and yet my cheeks were wet with tears. A smiling servant held the door for us, and David turned and waved to the cheering crowd before we stepped into the cool interior. I was hot and spent, yet he flared with energy, and though his chest rose and fell, gulping great breaths, and though he was misted all over with a fine sweat, the scent of him was as sweet and fresh as mown hay. His face shone and his flesh gleamed. I did not want the moment to end, so I walked with him, the laughter still on our lips. When we reached the foot of the staircase that led to his apartments, we saw Mikhal on the landing above, seated in the window recess. Here, I thought, glad-hearted. Here is the moment of reconciliation. She’s waiting for him, ready at last.

  “Did you see?” His voice—his beautiful voice—rang high and light. He bounded up the stairs toward her, his arms open for an embrace. She stood, but instead of stepping toward him, she drew back, her face pinched in a frown of revulsion. He, lost in his own joy, did not mark it. He reached out and grasped her. She pushed him off with a violent shove. He was unprepared for it, and lost his footing. He would have fallen on the steps had I not been behind him to extend a steadying hand.

  She spoke then, her voice low and intimate. “Didn’t the king of Israel do himself honor today?” She tossed her head, her eyes narrowed. “Exposing himself before the slave girls of his subjects like a whore.”

  David’s head snapped back as if she had slapped him. The light in his face turned ashen, his joyful expression erased.

  “It was before the Name,” he said plaintively. Then he gathered himself and raised his voice.

  “It was before the Name, who chose me”—he thumped his chest—“me, instead of your father and all your family. Who appointed me ruler over his people Israel!” He took a step toward her, menacing. Even though I felt myself shrinking under his gathering rage, I reached out and laid a warning hand on him. I thought at that moment he might strike her dead.

  He shook me off. “I will dance before the Name, and ‘dishonor’ myself even more, and be low in my own esteem.” He brought his face close to hers, and dropped his voice to an insinuating whisper. “But among the slave girls you speak of, I will be honored!”

  He pushed her aside. He walked on, holding himself stiffly, his demeanor now unmistakably regal. She stood on the landing, staring after him. A slight tremor shivered through her body. Our eyes met. Hers were blank, empty. For years, she had nursed that serpent of anger, coiled tight inside her, eating everything else away. Now, at last, she had unleashed it. It was gone, and had left no spark behind. I turned and followed the king. As I closed the door to his private apartment he did not even turn. “I never want to look at her face again. See to it.”

  “Shall I send her back to Palti?” I should not have asked. I knew it the minute the words were out. I should have just acted. But the words could not be unsaid.

  “Never! She remains my wife. Mine.” He thumped his chest, but his hand was shaking. “I have given her every chance. For years I’ve put up with her coldness, spent time with her, even though there was nothing in it for me. Not a kind word or a soft look, much less the chance to make a child, even though she knew how much I wanted it, and she must have known it would be in her interest. She could have been mother of my heir. So be it. I’m done with her. But here she will stay until she dies. Have her put away in some dark corner, and warn her, upon her life, to keep out of my way.”

  That encounter upon the stairs reverberated for many months following. In the midst of his triumph, in his moment of most intense joy, Mikhal had succeeded in rupturing his heart. She had torn an opening, and hatred flooded into it. Hatred and memory. Mikhal’s insult recalled to him an earlier slight, delivered by her elder sister Merav. I do not think David had wasted an instant pining over Merav until that moment. Merav, who had objected when Shaul, in his first infatuation with David, had promised her to him in marriage. David had preferred Mikhal—flattered by her affection, attracted by her resemblance to Yonatan. But now, in the base mood brought about by Mikhal, he chose to recall this older insult.

  This bitterness spread like a stain on those golden months of making and building. He became obsessed with Merav, and sent to know how many sons she had with her husband Adriel. When he learned that there were five boys, he began to fret over it. The boys were young, even the eldest barely fighting age. But I could see him counting it over, figuring how long he might have before one of them could pose a plausible alternative, if elements of discontent in the Israelite north should ever coalesce and begin to cast about for a descendant of Shaul to raise up against him.

  Of course, we had one such descendant with us, eating every day at the king’s own table. David had kept faith with his promise to Yonatan, that he would be guardian of his house. Unfortunately—or, maybe, fortunately, since there could be no rivalry with the king’s own sons—Yonatan’s “house” consisted of just one living boy, a poor lad sorely afflicted with club feet, who could not walk unassisted. David was unfailingly kind to the boy. And why should he not be, since such a one could never pose the slightest threat to his kingship.

  To Merav, he had made no oath and owed no kindness. Whenever he had too much to drink, he would fall to cursing both women, Mikhal and Merav. I would try to divert him, stating the plain fact that neither woman was anything to him. It was on such occasions that I missed Avigail. She, perhaps, might have found the way to convince David that such old and minor slights—a young girl’s foolishness; a bitter woman’s insult—were not worth the time of a powerful monarch, who should be attending to greater matters, such as his treaties and his borders. I tried to tell him this, and sometimes, for a time, it seemed he listened.

  But my arguments came back to haunt me not long after, when a delegation of Givonites came to negotiate their treaty. With Da
vid and his clan, they said, they had no issue. But from Shaul’s tribe, a blood debt was outstanding. Shaul had tried to exterminate them, in violation of ancient oaths.

  Somehow, by indirection, David led the Givonite delegation to think about Shaul’s grandsons. I was at the audience, and I sensed his manipulation, but I did not at first grasp where it was leading. He pretended he had let slip the fact that the five boys lived and thrived on a thinly defended rural estate, and switched the subject to other matters. But later, at meat, he somehow brought the conversation back to blood debts, and their gravity, and the long tradition among our tribes that allows for satisfaction without reprisal. I saw the leader of the Givonite delegation exchange glances with his associates. I looked at the king. Fox, I thought. He will get the Givonites to do his work, and not for any blood debt. Merely a debt owed to his vanity and wounded pride. I will speak to him later, I thought. I will get him to make clear to these men that the family of Shaul is under his protection. But as I readied myself to confront him on the matter, I decided against it. It was not certain what the Givonites would do, with his tacit sanction or without it. And if these heirs were not removed, and they grew up and later became a threat, David would have to kill them himself, which would bring opprobrium. I decided to let the matter rest, and accept the outcome.

  So the Givonites hunted down Merav’s boys. They carried them off to Givon, where they executed them horribly, impaled side by side on a mountaintop.

  When word came of the manner of the deaths, I felt ill, disgusted at myself for not acting to try to prevent these killings. David feigned dismay. When he did so in public, I let it pass. But when, in a private moment, he began to tell me how saddened he was, I could not let him go on.

  “You can tell the world that,” I said quietly. “Indeed, you must tell the world that,” I said. “But I know how you brought this to pass, and I know why you did—all the reasons, political and personal.” I stopped there. I was on unsteady ground. “I did not counsel you against it, and so I may not condemn you for it. Yet these youths were innocent. I think you would do well to make some public act that separates you from it.”

  He took my advice; indeed, he embraced it, and made a great business of it. He dispatched a party to retrieve the boys’ remains. At the same time, he sent an honor guard to Yavesh, to disinter the remains of Shaul and his sons. He had them all buried together, with great ceremony, in Shaul’s father’s tomb in the land of the Benyaminites. There, he wept once again, most sincerely, for the loss of Yonatan and the memory of Shaul as he had once been. On the outside, all of it seemed well done. But turn over the leaf, and a canker stained it. He did not send for Merav, nor did he send to her to offer condolences. The rot was there, for those who wished to see it. For myself, I fashioned it as one more necessary thing, done to secure the kingship and build the Land. But I never sent to inquire what became of Merav. I imagine her, blank-eyed like Mikhal, doing long, bitter penance for insulting a youth who became a king, living out her empty days in grief and loneliness.

  My days, by contrast, were never empty. My life took its measure from the pace that David set, and in those years, it was a demanding one. I was busy in his service, high in his confidence. Over time, as I have said, we were less and less at war, and I was glad of that. In the lengthening intervals between campaigns, I served as counselor in his handpicked inner circle, and when I was not needed at his side, I spent my time in conversation with the delegates who came to us from other lands, trying to learn from them what I could, gleanings that might serve the king in the future in ways that were not yet clear.

  And so we went on, until the skirmish with the Plishtim, about which I have written, when David faltered for a moment and Avishai stepped in to save his life. In fear and in love, the decision was made that he should no longer lead the army in the field. Like all who cared for him, I was glad of it. But as I have set down, I was blind, and did not foresee either the evil or the good that this decision would beget. When I began to write this chronicle at that time, I knew it for a turning point in David’s life. But I did not then know that we stood on the very brink of a crisis that would rend his soul and alter his destiny.

  I will never forget the day—the stifling, drowsy day—when my eyes first opened to the truth.

  XII

  I’d often thought that if an enemy wanted to spy on David, it would be a simple business. One did not need to penetrate his secret councils or insinuate a man into his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of ears and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind. I have heard people say of a musician that he poured his heart and soul out. In most cases this is exaggeration. Not so in the case of David.

  Since his reckless dalliance with the wife of Uriah, I had noticed a distinct brightening in the nature of his musical selections. When the choirs of singing men and women would come in, after meat, he would ask them for songs of celebration, or victory anthems. His own compositions of that time were mighty things that reflected the building of the city, constructed of solid, symmetrical sounds, perfect fifths stacked one atop the other like the confident edifices of a powerful and joyous king.

  The year had advanced swiftly from the mild days of planting. The full heat of the ripening season was upon us like a millstone, crushing the juice out of everybody. In a gesture that had won him much love from the people, David had instructed the foremen to rest the laborers in the heat of the day. He said this edict was to honor the memory of our ancestors, who had toiled in the furnace heat of Mitzrayim. Those who could—the high officials, the more senior of the king’s servants—also took advantage of the noonday hush and ceased their own work for an hour or two. A stillness would fall over the private quarters of the palace as the lucky ones took their rest.

  Unlike the others, I welcomed the heat. It brought to mind the hot afternoons of my childhood in Ein Gedi. I liked to walk in the garden at that still hour, listening to the low buzz of the bees, enjoying the sharp scent of the dry, fallen cedar needles and the wild zatar that fingered its way between the cracks of the paving stones. From the king’s rooms, the notes of the harp drifted. He was composing, playing through passages, repeating some measures, changing a note here and there. I sat on a bench and rested my back against the warm wall, closing my eyes and letting the music caress my ears. I must have fallen into a doze. I was in some vague, happy dream or reverie. But into that dream crept a note of unease. I shook off sleep, and became aware that the music had changed. David was working with strange intervals. I listened more closely. Not fifths now. Tritones. Uncanny sounds that robbed the music of its power to delight. I became aware of the stone at my back, its roughness. I shifted my weight to relieve the sting of a jutting edge of rock. The sun’s glare stabbed my eyes, a blade of pain. My sight blurred. I raised my hands to my ears, trying to shut out the dissonance. And then I was on my feet.

  As soon as he saw me in the doorway, his hands fell from the strings. He righted the harp and stood. With a gesture, he dismissed the courtiers who had been his audience. As they left the room, his eyes, haunted, scanned my face.

  “So you know.” It was a statement, not a question. His voice was low. “I suppose you’ve always known. You warned me I would be found out. And now, as always, events prove you.”

  He turned and paced, picking up an alabaster vase and turning it in his hands, examining it so that he would not have to meet my eye.

  “How did you learn that the wife of Uriah is pregnant?” I demanded. “Have you seen her?”

  “Of course not. I told you I would have nothing to do with her after that night, and I’ve kept to that. This morning, she sent her maidservant to the open audience. She was wearing the jewel I gave to her mistress, so I would know who she was. I contrived a word in private. What can I do, Natan? It is as you said. This was not well done, to take a man’s wife who fights for me—and brav
ely—while I sit here at home, at my leisure. The army will take it ill. I don’t want an enemy in Uriah, especially not now, when the battle goes in our favor, and largely because of Uriah’s own valor, and the discipline of his men.”

  “There is your answer,” I said. I could see only one way out. Base and dishonorable, but the only way to protect the king. “Send for Uriah. Offer him leave, as a reward for his good service. She can’t be far along with this child.” I counted it in my mind. “Not yet even two months? If he lies with her soon enough, then the child can be passed off as his own.” I did not add that the child would be a mamzer. Nothing could change that. And David, of all people, knew what this deception would mean.

  “Think you so?” His brow creased, considering. “I suppose it might serve. You know, of course, that officers take an oath to be continent during a campaign. But if she were my wife, and I away for two months . . . Uriah won’t be the first to break that oath. I told you she was beautiful. I’d give a lot to see her myself, what the bloom of a pregnancy might do to . . .”

  I suppose he saw my look of censure for he did not complete the sentence. He strode to the door and told the servant waiting outside to fetch a royal messenger. When he turned back to me, the creases on his brow were gone.