Delilah: A Novel

by Edghill, India

  I felt heat flood my face, and was thankful for the paint that covered my cheeks. The carmine hid the sign of my shame. It is true; I never thought of that. But Aylah, who had always seemed to doubt, had owned more faith in Bright Atargatis than I, Her avowed servant. If Atargatis chose to bestow Aylah upon Samson, who was I to question Her plan—I, who in my grief and folly had asked too much of Her?

  “You are right, Aylah.” Not what I desire, but what Our Lady desires. “If Atargatis Herself wished to grant Samson’s prayer—”

  “Then you would stand here now, not I. They did not tell you, did they, those who rule Our Lady’s Temple?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “It was not I Samson desired as his wife, Delilah. It was you.”

  I gasped and pressed my hand to my mouth, just like any silly girl in a harper’s tale. “Me? He wanted to wed me? Then why did he take you instead? And why—”

  “Why did the Temple offer up me, and not you?” Aylah laughed and regarded me with the patient tolerance of a mother for her child’s follies. “Oh, Delilah, how can you be so wise and so foolish at once? Do you think the Great Temple spends years training one such as you to be priestess, to dance before Our Lady, to draw gems and gold from men’s hands into the Temple’s treasure-store, only to waste her in a marriage to anyone? You always believed me more beautiful, more graceful, more favored than you—for you loved me, and your heart rules you. But you were always wrong, Delilah.”

  As I stared, trying to summon words to answer, Aylah held up her hand. “No, let me finish. You must listen and believe. The Temple’s eunuch bought me only because the Prince of the City’s servant thought to buy me, and Derceto and Sandarin loathe each other. Who was I? A girl from beyond the North Wind, with no skills and no graces, and nothing save yellow hair as my dower. Had I not been your heart-sister, do you think I would have become a Rising Moon, or been chosen to dance? And your mother is wed to an Ascalon merchant of rank and wealth; the Temple would not choose to offend a generous benefactor.”

  Me. He had wanted me, desired me for his own. Me. For a heartbeat I felt again his hand on my hair as he freed me during the Sun Partridge Dance . . .

  “But if Samson wanted me, why did he accept you in my stead?” I kept my voice soft, smooth. I would not reveal my thoughts, I would not. I tried to forget that Aylah had always seemed to know what I truly felt, no matter what I said, or how.

  “Samson took me because the Temple tricked him, Delilah.”

  “How tricked?” I heard myself ask, and Aylah said, “A bride goes veiled to her wedding.”

  “And when he lifted your veil, I suppose he did not notice—” Anger clawed my bones, growled beneath my words. I do not know what cruelties I would have spoken, but Aylah silenced me by pressing her fingertips to my painted lips.

  “He is simple and good—not simpleminded. Please, Delilah, listen to all I must tell you.”

  Despite my long years of training, I found myself struggling to regain calm. “Aylah—”

  “Wait. There is one thing more. If there is anything you wish to say to me about my husband, heart-sister, say it now and I will listen, and say not one word in return.” She looked at me, her eyes steady, as if she awaited attack.

  Cold slid through me like a serpent. A hundred angry words battled to fling themselves at Aylah, to strike down her happiness. Why should she be happy? Why should she have him, while I— “No,” I said. No, I will not say these things. I will not think them. I will banish them from my heart forever. I will let Aylah be happy with the life she has chosen.

  At last, when I had imprisoned those wild, sickening words of accusation and desire, bound them with silver chains and locked them away in an ivory casket, I said, “No, heart-sister. There is nothing I wish to say to you about Samson. And yes, I will be still, and I will listen well to what you must tell me.”

  Aylah looked keenly at me, then said, “First, you must understand that Samson never lies, and he does not easily see deceit in others.”

  I drew in a deep breath. “He does not lie, he trusts too much. I understand. Now tell me,” I said, and Aylah revealed all that had passed between the Sun Partridge Dance and the day Samson had carried his priestess-bride through the gate into her new home.

  High Priestess Derceto herself had instructed Aylah in the deed she was to accomplish, and how she was to carry it out. That was when, Aylah said, she learned she was being given in marriage to a man who had triumphed in the three impossible tasks assigned him by the Temple, a man who had labored long and faithfully—and successfully—in the belief that he would be granted Delilah Moondancer as his bride.

  “I was afraid, then,” Aylah told me, “for who knew what a man so greatly deceived would do? But I was more afraid of Derceto and what she would do to me if I refused than I was of Samson. And indeed, I wished to do as she ordered me. Part of what she ordered, anyway.”

  “What part?” I asked. Oddly, I felt nothing, neither grief nor joy nor even surprise, at Aylah’s revelations. Perhaps a corner of my mind had always known there was something amiss in the entire affair.

  “The wedding.” Aylah slanted her eyes at me, gauging my reaction. “I wished to be married, Delilah. I love you dearly, sister of my heart, but I am no true priestess. I longed to escape the Temple walls. This deception gave me my chance.”

  As I stood still as a painted idol, refusing to acknowledge the pain these words gave, Aylah spoke on in her soft, careful voice. “I was afraid Samson would know at once I was not the bride he had been promised, but Derceto had me adorned so heavily the gold and gems and embroidered silks hid my form.”

  Yes, that would have been necessary to carry out the deception. While Aylah and I were of the same height, she was full-bodied, womanly, while I still remained slender as a desert hound, all my curves created by dancer’s muscles.

  “Your hair?” Mine flowed like black water down my back; hers glowed like sunlit honey.

  “Braided with black cord, tight-bound so that not a strand escaped. And then there was the bridal veil; I was covered by so long and so thick a cloth that he could not see my face, or the color of my hair. The High Priestess told me to keep the veil on until I entered Samson’s home as his wife—and if I could, to keep it on until he lay with me. Samson told me that the High Priestess told him it was an ancient custom, that a man not see his bride’s face until the marriage had been consummated.”

  “And did you keep the veil on until the morning after?”

  “No. I lifted my veil for Samson as soon as we were out of sight of Ascalon.”

  “And when he saw you, when—” For the first time in my life, I found it hard to summon words.

  “When he realized he’d been cheated by the Temple? He stared at me, and then he laughed and said that he should call me Leah.”

  “Why?”

  “There is an old tale his people tell, of their first fathers and mothers. One man, named Jacob, fell in love with one sister and worked many years to earn her bride-price. But on their wedding day, her father sent her older sister, hidden under a heavy veil, to wed Jacob. Jacob was less fortunate than Samson, for it was not until the next morning, after he lay with her, that he saw his wife’s face and learned that he had not married his beloved Rachel, but her sister Leah. He married Rachel, too, in the end, after working to earn another bride-price.”

  “Samson laughed? He was not angry?”

  “Bitter laughter, but yes, he laughed. And he is rarely angered. He was not best pleased, that I will grant—but I begged him not to send me back to Ascalon and the Temple. He listened, and then said that if the Temple valued me so little, I might as well remain his wife. He did ask why I had been given instead of you, and I told him what I told you. He still desires you, Delilah—he is too kind to speak of you, but I know he has not forgotten the woman he wished to wed. He knew it would be deadly folly to return to Ascalon, to try to claim you there. But you are here, close—only come with me now, and Sams
on would gladly take you to wife as well. We would be together again.”

  For one treacherous heartbeat, I longed to tell her yes. Yes, I will put my hand in yours and—and what? Walk away from Our Lady, from the Dance? I held out my hands to Aylah. “We can be together once more. Come back with me. Come back to the House of Atargatis, where you belong.”

  She shook her head. “I never belonged there. Now I am free of that place, and shall never look upon it again.”

  A pang lanced my heart; Aylah no longer cared for me and for what we had shared. Aylah the Priestess, Aylah Sundancer, had vanished. Aylah my heart-sister had abandoned me.

  “So you have forgotten me and all we shared? You do not even wear the amulet I gave you.” Since the day we had exchanged talismans, our sister-tokens had been knotted into the ends of small braids behind our left ears. I still wore the one she had given me, the lion’s claw a ghost-weapon nearly hidden by my black hair. To remove the amulet, to lay it aside in my jewel box, would be to admit I had lost Aylah forever. But Aylah no longer wore the coral fish I had given her in exchange.

  She smiled. “I no longer wear it braided into my hair, for I am no longer a priestess of Atargatis, and wish those I now live among to forget I ever was.” Aylah reached to her neck, pulled a thin cord from beneath the tunic that covered her from throat to knees. The amulet I had given her the day we became avowed heart-sisters hung upon the cord. “You see? I wear it still.” She regarded me steadily. “But even if I did not, I need no token to keep you in my heart, Delilah.”

  She let the little coral fish drop back beneath her gown. For a moment I thought she wished to speak, but she only looked upon me with an odd expression of loving sorrow.

  “Aylah? What is wrong?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head and smiled. “Nothing.”

  Nothing you wish me to know. Never had I been able to either coax or force Aylah to say anything she did not wish to reveal, but I knew I must try. I held out my hands, and Aylah laid hers in mine. “Something troubles you,” I said. “Tell me. Please, Aylah, you must tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

  “No, Delilah, you cannot. Please let it be.”

  I stood as tall and straight as the Grove Goddess, made my voice heavy with self-importance. “Remember I am a priestess; you may confide in me safely.”

  That brought a smile to her lips, as I had hoped. “I have no more to worry me than any woman who carries her first child.”

  This news drew an answering smile from me—as doubtless she had hoped. “You are with child? Oh, Aylah! Is . . . your husband . . . pleased?”

  “How not? What man does not dream of his sons?” Aylah smoothed her hands down her blue linen garment, revealing the lush rounding of her body.

  “So you pray the child you carry is a boy?” I asked, and Aylah let her dress fall loose again and laughed softly.

  “It would be better if the first is a boy. Then my husband’s father and mother will praise my name and call me blessed, for his people prize sons above all. And perhaps they will then be able to recall my name when Samson takes me to Zorah to visit them.”

  “And so if your child is a girl, they will berate you?”

  “Oh, they will berate me whatever I do; they do not think me fit to be Samson’s wife. But they will greet a first daughter as proof I am fertile enough that they may hope for boys next. So all will be well.”

  Placid and soft with contentment, Aylah’s voice stroked the air. I looked upon my heart-sister, and wondered when and how the Temple dancer had been tamed; the priestess of Atargatis banished. Suddenly fearful—of what, I did not know—I reached out and grasped Aylah’s hands.

  “Come with me,” I said again, although she had already refused my plea that she do so. But an odd urgency forced the words from me. “Come back to the Temple.”

  “No, Delilah. I cannot return there. And besides—” She stopped, and her eyes slid away, did not meet mine. “I am not like you, heart-sister. For all the days I dwelt in Our Lady’s House, I was looked upon only as something rare and strange, something they could raise up and display as—as if I were another idol of ivory and amber. And not for who I am, or for what I can do, but for my face, and the color of my hair. They valued me most because you loved me. I have not the skill nor the calling to be a priestess of any god or goddess.”

  “You do. You do.” Fiercely spoken words, as if I could claim Aylah for my own once more, bring her back to the safety that lay behind the Temple gates.

  Aylah merely shook her head. “No, I do not, and the High Priestess and all the senior priestesses of the Great House knew it. I am not like you—you are passion and faith; you are a true vessel of Atargatis Herself. But I am none of these things. For myself, I have always wished for a quiet life. For a husband, for a home. For children who will not be taken from me. That is what I want, Delilah. Even if the Temple would take me back now, I would not go.”

  “Of course it would take you back. Why not?”

  Aylah hesitated, as if weighing what she should say and what she should not. At last she said, “Forget those words; I should not have spoken them. Remember only that I am content as I am.”

  “How can you be? You could have been High Priestess in Ascalon!”

  “No, I could not. But then, I never wanted to be High Priestess. That was your dream, Delilah. Not mine.”

  There was no bitterness in her words, only clear strong truth. For half a dozen heartbeats, there was only silence between us. Then I forced myself to make an effort to speak calmly, to speak kind words. “So you are happy. I am glad.”

  She smiled then, the close, secret curve of her lips that so resembled the smile on the image of Atargatis that stood in Ascalon’s Temple. “So am I. And when you, too, are happy, Delilah, I will be happier still.”

  “I am happy.” At least, I thought I was. Was I not a priestess ordained, and the Temple’s pride as Dancer Before Our Lady Atargatis? Yet at Aylah’s words, something stirred, uneasy, beneath my heart. I closed my eyes for a breath and banished the strange emotion. My future stretched before me as set and immutable as the ancient spirals in the dancing-floor. I knew who and what I was, and how each day, each month, each year would pass. I would not listen to a small still voice that asked, Is that enough, Delilah? Is that truly all you desire of life?

  Aylah regarded me steadily with her moon-pale eyes. “If that is true, I am glad of it.”

  A priestess learns to wear a mask; I smiled back at Aylah as placidly as if I felt nothing more than pleasure at seeing her once more. “Then be glad, heart-sister. And come to us at Our Lady’s House when your child is born, that the goddess may bless you both. And perhaps—”

  “No, Delilah. My child will not serve in Atargatis’s Temple. And I do not wish to wait. You are a priestess; give me the goddess’s blessing now.”

  There was an urgency in her voice that I set down to the fears many women suffer as they await their children’s birth. But I said only “Of course.” It was my duty, after all. I would have done it even for a stranger, or an enemy, who asked for such a blessing.

  So we embraced as friends, and then, as priestess, I called down Our Lady’s blessing upon her and her unborn child. When the blessing had been spoken, Aylah smiled, and kissed me.

  “Here.” Aylah drew the cord over her neck; she reached out to me and took my hand, pressing the token against my palm. “Take this, to remember that I will always hold you in my heart, beloved sister.” And then, as I stared down at the little coral fish cupped in my hand, Aylah said, “Be happy, Delilah. Remember that now is all the time there is.” Then she went away again; the rites of the Full Moon are not for women already carrying the goddess’s greatest blessing.

  I shall always be grateful that we parted sweetly that day, with no hard words to lie forever between us in the Land Beyond the Sunset. For that was the last time I saw my sister Aylah.

  High Priestess Derceto summoned me months later to tell me news of Aylah. She did not
put her arms around me and weep with me, as Nikkal would have done in her place. Derceto merely told me in plain words that my heart-sister had died, and how. She said nothing of Samson, only that men he had wronged had burned his fields, and his gardens, and his house, with his wife and child inside it. They piled brush and dead wood before the door and across the windows, so there should be no escape.

  Aylah and her newborn daughter died in fire.

  Samson

  It is not an easy thing to give up glory for sweet dull days. Aylah had been a famous temple dancer, had swayed her body before princes who had thrown gems before her gilded feet. Now she lived as a farmer’s wife, unadorned and unlauded. She swore herself content—even happy. Perhaps she truly thought herself so; Orev didn’t know. He only feared that one day Aylah would wake and look at what she had become, and think upon what she had been, and regret her choice.

  And if she did?

  Orev could think of half a dozen tales spun from a woman’s change of heart—and none of them ended happily. But warning Samson would be useless, and speaking upon such a matter to Samson’s wife worse than useless.

  For the wrong words might transmute Aylah’s sisterly fondness for Orev to dislike. And whether she complained of him to Samson or whether she did not, such ill-feeling would poison the peace of Samson’s home.

  I would have no choice but to leave, to set my feet upon the road again. And perhaps I should; I grow lazy and slow-witted here.

  But he was loath to leave; he could tell himself that Samson needed a steady, sensible friend to aid him, but Orev knew that for a lie. He simply did not wish to leave the warm comfort of the home Aylah had created, into which she had welcomed him as she would an older brother.

  And with both Aylah and Samson insisting he remain, Orev found it easy to push away the knowledge that this halcyon life could not endure. Samson had too many enemies—and too many so-called friends who were even more dangerous to him. The Foxes still roved the hills and the roads, killing and plundering, with Samson’s name their battle-cry. Samson now refused even to speak with those who claimed to be his Foxes.