The Secret Book of Kings: A Novel

by Yochi Brandes

“She is an independent woman,” Father roared. “Only an independent woman decides whom she wants to marry and takes any man she wants.”

  I looked into Father’s eyes and saw that David was right. It wasn’t suspicion or fear, but hate. “I want to go back to the banquet,” I said aloud.

  I can’t remember the rest of the celebration or anything that happened there. I yearned to fall into my husband’s arms and cry with him over the insult that had been seared into his flesh, but I knew I had to demonstrate regal restraint and play down the scene I’d just caused. Only after the bride’s family left did I allow myself to give him my hand, but then Father commanded me to join him in the throne room.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Right now!”

  I dragged myself after him wordlessly, feeling insulted at the way he was treating me, which was exactly what he had just warned David against. In the course of a single evening I was humiliated and patronized by the two men in my life.

  Father paced the throne room like a caged animal. There was something both savage and childish about him at the same time. I feared the outburst that was about to land on me, so I decided to beat him to the punch, declaring dismissively that what he had seen tonight did not reflect the way my life actually was and that my husband adored me.

  “You don’t realize who you’ve chosen as your husband,” Father cut me off. “Love impairs common sense.”

  “So does hate,” I replied.

  He stood before me, his face burning. “David is betraying us.” He whispered the awful words with astonishment, as if he himself were hearing them for the first time and was having a hard time believing them.

  I couldn’t control the shaking of my body. “Don’t go on,” I whispered. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You and Jonathan can shut your eyes and deny reality, but, as king, I cannot allow myself such luxuries. My spies bring me unequivocal proof. There is no longer even the shadow of a doubt: David is a traitor!”

  I wanted to grovel at his feet, to beg him to have mercy on the love of my life, but his hard expression made it clear there was no point.

  The words flowed out of his mouth as if he’d been rehearsing them. For some time, spies have been tracking David on his family visits to Bethlehem, which had been approved by the naïve Jonathan, who couldn’t conceive of the possibility that the friend he loved as a brother was undermining him and preparing to steal his crown. Some of the spies even live in Bethlehem and know Jesse’s seven sons and three grandsons, the sons of Zeruiah, personally. The ten heroic warriors, who until recently have been loyal soldiers in Gibeah, are now training a guerrilla army that will have the ability to take the kingdom from the inexperienced crown prince when the time comes. The militia is named for the sons of Zeruiah, known for their cruelty, and is led by Joab, the eldest son, who has a reputation throughout Judah as the most dangerous member of the family of Jesse. At first he recruited mostly the distressed and discontented of Judah, but recently about four hundred debtors and escaped slaves from all over Israel have joined him, ready to give their lives for David.

  I decided to make one last effort to try to convince Father that he was wrong, and so I told him what I knew about all the scheming and intrigues that had given rise to this terrible slander. “The sons of Jesse support David?” I laughed derisively. “It’s precisely the opposite. They are envious of their young brother for winning the king’s daughter and are trying to undermine him in any way possible. I’m sure they themselves leaked the false information to the spies in an effort to bring David down.”

  “But they’d be bringing themselves down, too,” Father said, the loathing in his voice momentarily replaced with a hint of doubt.

  “They’d rather die with David. Jealousy is the most destructive emotion in the soul of men. People are willing to hurt themselves as long as the object of their envy is hurt along with them.”

  Father narrowed his eyes in concentration. His face softened. For a moment I believed he was seriously considering my words, and that they might penetrate his heart and cure him of his hatred. But seconds later the hardness returned to his shoulders and his eyes.

  “David will stand trial.”

  The cry rose up in my throat, but I took a deep breath and stifled it.

  He bent his head toward me and laid his hand on the back of my neck. “My messengers are already on their way to Bethlehem, to arrest the sons of Jesse and Zeruiah. I’ve waited for the end of Jonathan’s wedding week. I didn’t want to spoil their joy. Tell David he is to appear before me tomorrow at the throne of judgment. I hope my soldiers won’t have to drag him there in front of the palace servants.”

  I pulled my lips into a serene, almost amused smile. “I’m glad you’re giving him a chance to stand trial and prove his righteousness. He’ll be there tomorrow morning as required, trust me. I can’t wait to see Abner’s face when the verdict is read. Please tell him I said he shouldn’t worry. My husband is a forgiving person. He won’t hold it against him.”

  * * *

  The fresh evening air of early spring caresses my face. I skip down the path with little dance steps, loudly singing the tune David composed for Jonathan’s marriage celebration, making sure the soldiers can hear me all the way home. They are everywhere, especially around the defensive wall, sneaking quick looks at me and then returning their attention to the gates. There are four of them by our house. I greet them cheerfully, and their eyes follow me up the stairs. Coming from inside the house, I hear the usual sounds of bedtime preparations. I step inside. The servants are fluffing up the pillows and smoothing out the sheets. One maid is bent over the water bowl, washing the feet of the master of the house, as she does every night.

  This man, who is currently having his feet washed, is the love of my life. He is sitting on the bed, his back against the wall, his nightgown rolled up above his knees. I walk closer and take in his scent. The moonlight coming in through the window flickers in his pupils, and I see myself in them. His red curls are alight with a mysterious aura, just like the first time I saw him, walking with Merab through the palace garden, when Jonathan called us over to meet Father’s new musician.

  “It’s late,” I tell the servants. “Go home.”

  I get down on my knees, dip my hands in the bowl, and rinse the soles of his feet.

  His brow furrows in astonishment. “You’re an independent woman,” he emphasizes each word with bitterness in his voice. “This is a job for servants.”

  I dry his feet thoroughly, toe by toe, and then I get up, walk to the dresser, pull out a folded tunic, and hand it to him quickly.

  “Take off your nightgown and put this on.”

  He leans against the bed impatiently and adjusts the pillow under his back. “I’m not going anywhere now. If you have to talk to Rizpah in the middle of the night, call the servants back and have them accompany you.”

  “Go,” I tell him. “Run away. Flee!”

  Nothing happens. He sits across from me, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion. A puzzled look passes across his face and instantly disappears.

  “If you don’t run for your life tonight, tomorrow you’ll be killed.”

  Another moment passes. He still doesn’t move.

  “You won’t be acquitted in this trial.”

  “What trial?” he asks, confused.

  “Abner’s spies have exposed the army of Zeruiah’s sons. Soldiers are on their way to Bethlehem.”

  I think I hear his heart beating, but it might be my own. I have no time to find out. I have to take his clothes off myself. His body is completely frozen; the nightgown clings to his skin. I pull it off him savagely. His jaws move up and down, as if he’s chewing something. I throw the clean tunic at him sharply. He shudders.

  “Get out of bed! I need the sheets.”

  He begins to rise slowly, then suddenly leaps up, standing beside me and looking helplessly at the tunic, as if he has no idea what to do with i
t.

  “It was Joab’s initiative,” he mumbles. “I’m not guilty.”

  I pull the sheets off the bed and tie them together with strong double knots, my fingers turning white from the effort. I purse my lips, blood pulses hard in my neck. My entire body is dedicated to tying the sheets.

  He puts on the tunic almost without moving his body. I glance at him quickly. “You look unkempt. Tie the belt and pull down the hem. You mustn’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “I’m not guilty,” he says pleadingly. “You have to believe me.”

  I lower the long rope of sheets out the window, tying the end to the iron doorstop in the wall. “Keep to the sides of the roads. The soldiers will only come looking for you in the morning. I’ll stall them as best I can.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I want you to live. That’s the only thing I care about.”

  “Tell me you believe I’m not guilty.”

  “I am guilty, David. If I’d handled things better at the start we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

  He climbs onto the windowsill, turns his back toward the outside, and grabs the sheet with both hands. His knees are bent, his shoulders straining, his rounded back tightening with effort.

  “This isn’t the end,” he says. “Soon I’ll come back for you, and we’ll start again from the beginning. You are my princess. I’ll never give you up.”

  I stand against the window and take his face in my hands. “Promise me you won’t take revenge on Father.”

  He kisses me quickly. “I promise.”

  * * *

  I drag a large statue into the bed and cover it up with the blanket. I scatter goat hairs onto the pillow and wait for Father’s emissaries in calm serenity. As the hours pass, I sink deeper and deeper into a daydream that diminishes any sense of time, and in a strange way, almost inconceivably, I start to feel something like profound happiness.

  But in the morning, when the soldiers knock on the door, I put on a worried expression and signal them with a nod of my head that they should be quiet. “He’s sick,” I whisper. “Very sick. Tell the king that the trial has to be postponed.”

  They watch the motionless figure lying in the bed and nod sympathetically.

  And the next day, when Father goes wild with rage and asks why I deceived him and helped his enemy escape, I look up at him, my eyes frozen like a mask, and reply with steady confidence, barely moving my lips, “I love him.”

  Fourteen

  So, how is it being an abandoned wife at the age of eighteen?

  It depends on whom you ask.

  Mother never dared voice her own opinions even on less controversial topics, but the tears that welled up in her eyes whenever she looked at me announced her view of my wretched state more clearly than any explicit words could have.

  Father forgave me for helping his enemy get away and said that I had escaped a terrible calamity, and that I was still young enough to “take myself”—that’s how he put it—to take myself a new man who would give me a real marriage, the kind of marriage that a pretty, independent princess like me deserved. Merab agreed with him enthusiastically, beseeching me to put the past behind me and open my heart to the future.

  Rizpah daughter of Aiah changed her mind so many times that I could no longer keep track. Sometimes she consoled me, saying my abandonment wasn’t the end of the story, but rather a mere hiatus before David kept his promise and brought me back to him. Other times she would gloomily summarize the details of my three years of marriage and remind me that, aside from the seven days of banquets that followed our wedding, I had not experienced one single day of happiness. Eventually she took the side of Father and Merab and begged me to take another husband.

  Jonathan’s response was different from all the others. Though he went to bed with a loving wife each night, he felt abandoned himself, and our shared state of abandonment revived the sibling love we had for one another. Once, I was even so bold as to say to him that our competition for David’s attentions had turned us into rival wives, just like what had happened to Rachel and Leah. “I’ve never competed against you, Sister,” Jonathan answered expressionlessly and quickly moved on to his favorite topic, describing enthusiastically how his devoted agents had acquired the latest information about David.

  And only the abandoned wife herself did not share her views with anyone in her family about what it was like to be an abandoned wife at the age of eighteen. A sober, painful assessment of my few and failed years of marriage led me to the conclusion that I’d been to blame for everything. Had I taken care to hold my tongue like a mature, responsible wife, none of the damage and destruction would have occurred. Merab and Abner had managed to infect Father with their hatred of David only after I’d given them the poisoned arrows with my own hands.

  My tortured guilt made me turn inward. I swore never to share my feelings with another person and to deal with the loneliness and longing on my own. My family seemed to take the silence I’d imposed upon myself with equanimity. They must have told themselves that Michal had become withdrawn and introverted, and that it was best to leave her alone rather than risk sending her into one of her out-of-control fits of rage, which made Father’s outbursts seem incredibly restrained in comparison. Even Jonathan, my one ally in the palace, didn’t demand of me that I share my feelings. Our relationship was limited to the acquisition of credible information about our shared love, to counter the monstrous rumors being spread by Abner’s spies.

  The only one who objected to my silence was Rizpah. “We are both abandoned wives,” she told me. “Who could understand you better than I can?”

  “I don’t want to be understood,” I replied.

  “But it would make things easier for you.”

  “I don’t want things to be easier.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  I didn’t tell her that what I wanted was for the longing to go on cutting my flesh anew each night.

  * * *

  I heard of David’s marriage from Abner himself, who didn’t squander his opportunity and came to take pleasure in watching my outrage with his own eyes. Though I was used to his horror stories about my husband and thought I’d become as strong as steel, nothing could have prepared me for such a blow. At first I tried to tell myself that this rumor was just another lie, but within a few days Jonathan confirmed it.

  “David swore to me he would never take a second wife.”

  “She isn’t a second wife—he’s alone,” Jonathan sighed as he gave me the additional details that his agents had gathered about the pretty and clever Judean bride who was now roaming the countryside with David.

  An icy chill ran through my bones, but when I heard her name I gave a sigh of relief. “Abigail is his sister,” I explained. “David has two sisters: Zeruiah is the older one, and Abigail is the younger one. People who saw David in the company of a young and beautiful Judean woman must have assumed she was his wife.”

  “His sister Abigail still lives with her father Jesse in Bethlehem. David’s new wife is a different Abigail, the wife of Nabal the Carmelite, a descendant of Caleb son of Jephunneh. That odd couple was infamous all across the Carmel region: the husband was mean and stupid, the wife beautiful and clever—truly, a match made in heaven. David and his men had guarded the couple’s land in exchange for sheep and cattle from their many herds, and when Nabal died of too much food and wine during one of the sheep-shearing festivals, Abigail came to David in the desert in the middle of the night and asked him to take her as his wife.”

  “She proposed to him?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “And David agreed?”

  Jonathan swallowed a gloomy smile. “You know that he’s attracted to strong, independent women.”

  The image ate away at me and made my nights a living hell. Wherever I went, I saw the pretty, brave widow heading alone into the dark desert to take my husband. I might have taken comfort in Abner’s spies’ version of
the story, which, as always, was completely different from the one told by our agents, but that alternative version was so shocking that I preferred to imagine my husband in the arms of a beautiful and independent woman like me than to believe he’d become a ruthless villain who would murder a rich landowner in cold blood merely because he refused to give him a tithe at the shearing festival, and who would take his wife by force as a deterrent for others.

  When Father summoned me to the throne room, I knew something extraordinarily serious must have happened. Ever since I had extricated David from the palace, Father had avoided almost all contact with me and with Jonathan, focusing all his fatherly feelings on his four other children. Merab had become his favorite daughter and his confidante, but Abinadab and Malkishua received most of his attention and were involved in all matters of state, as if they were to be Father’s successors. Even little Ishvi received more time in the throne room than the abandoned crown prince.

  “The son of Jesse has taken a third wife.”

  He flung the news at me without preamble. I had to lean against the wall to stop myself from falling. I had thousands of questions, but I knew I mustn’t ask them. Not of Father.

  “Are you listening to me?” he asked, coming down from his throne. His eyes were ablaze. “It’s one thing to take another wife. We’ve grown used to that by now. But her name…”

  I knew he expected me to ask him her name. I bit my lip and looked up at the window. It was pouring rain. The sky was split in two by a zigzag bolt of lightning. I thought about my beloved, wandering in the desert, exposed and at the mercy of the cruel forces of nature, and I felt my heart break with longing.

  “Ahinoam,” he said, his voice getting through to me despite the crashing of thunder outside.

  I continued to stare out the window, my thoughts focused on the rain that was now washing over the desert.

  “Don’t you understand what this means?”

  “It’s Mother’s name,” I said, trying to add a tone of derision to my shattered voice. “David’s second wife shares her name with his younger sister, and his third wife has the same name as the queen. Only his first wife was fortunate enough to be given a unique name of her own.”