The harper’s curse: to see all that happened, for good or for ill, as the stuff of songs.
Yes, he would remake this tragedy as a song. But not today. Today he would grieve, and wonder why he remained here, staring at a pile of rock, a temple that had become a tomb.
Then he saw her pick her way across the uneven mound, lithely, as if the ruins were a dancing-floor. Orev rose slowly to his feet.
The movement caught her attention; she paused, then walked carefully over the stones towards him. When she stood before him, she let the dark veil she wore slide back enough for him to see her face. For a moment he hardly recognized her; then he realized that for the first time he saw her face without the witchery of malachite and kohl and carmine.
The painted mask had vanished utterly, stripping the priestess away and leaving only the woman. Her eyes were dry. Priestess or woman, Delilah would not weep before him.
“Samson kept his vow.” Delilah’s voice revealed none of the pain and grief she endured. “He is dead, Orev.”
“Along with many others. Yes.” Orev wondered if Aylah would have wished so many killed to avenge her and her child. The Five Cities had paid dearly for the deeds of a dozen people. But that was not a question he wished to ask.
“But he is not lost to us.” Delilah smoothed a hand down over her body, rested it upon her stomach. “I went to him, the night before he brought down Dagon’s Temple. I carry his child, Orev.”
Absolute conviction burned in her dark eyes; Orev said softly, “That is a great blessing, then.”
“Yes. We were given all we asked.”
Orev longed to put his arms around her, to make her weep away her bone-deep anger and grief. But such comfort was not his to give, nor would she accept it. She did what she must, as did Samson, and neither flinched from paying the price demanded for what they desired.
“If you carry Samson’s child—” Orev stopped, silenced by Delilah’s burning gaze. He began again, taking care with his words. “You must know that any child of Samson’s will be born with enemies waiting to ensure its first breath is its last.”
“Yes. But no one living knows of this, save you and I. No one will ever know. I will make sure of that.”
For a few breaths neither of them spoke. They stood in a silent world of stone and dust.
“What will you do now?” Orev asked at last.
“I will walk until I find a Lady Temple that does not offer fealty to any of the Five Cities, and there I shall wait until his daughter is born.”
“Perhaps you bear his son, instead.”
“No.” The certainty in her voice silenced Orev for a moment.
“And then?” he asked.
“And then I shall raise her until she chooses for herself what she will become.”
“And then?”
“And you, Orev? What will you do now?”
Evasion. She does not wish to tell me. He studied her more closely, reached out and wound his fingers in the edge of her dark veil.
“There is nothing more to say.” She turned away, and the veil, trapped by his hand, slid down, over her shoulders, floated free into the dusty stones.
She made no sound, only curved back to face him. Her body still held the grace of dance. But Orev did not think she would dance again. That, too, was gone. Cut away by grief, as sharply as a blade had cut away her shining midnight hair. A widow’s mourning.
She looked into his eyes, waiting, and Orev realized he would say nothing. For there was nothing to say, except good-bye.
Delilah
The last day I saw my daughter—Samson’s daughter—was upon her seventh birthday. That day I bathed her and rubbed her honey-hued skin with oil of roses and myrrh; combed her fire-bright hair with a sandalwood comb and then stroked it with a square of silk until the unruly waves gleamed like a sunlit sea. Then I wrapped her gem-perfect body in scarlet linen and led her to the Temple. At the gateway into the Outer Court, I stopped, suddenly afraid—I, who had faced down the Prince of the City, who had deceived the High Priestess Derceto, who had gone boldly to Samson in the prison below the Great House of Dagon.
It had been long years since I had owned the right to come and go freely in the Great House of Atargatis in Ascalon, since I had danced before Our Lady Herself. As I hesitated, my daughter looked up at me, puzzled. “Why do we stop, Mother? You promised I could go and live with the goddess Atargatis.”
“Yes,” I said. “I promised you that.” I looked at the time-paled serpents coiled from my elbows to my wrists, blue shadows beneath the skin. Once they gleamed vivid as lapis. Now—Now the serpents faded more with each passing moon, symbols of my betrayal of all I had once held dearer than life.
“Mother?” My daughter tugged my hand, summoning me back from a time long gone.
I knew myself bound by that past, those hot memories of love and passion and hate. But our child will not live chained to my sorrows, to his fate. She will live her own life, not ours.
That was why I had promised to surrender her into Our Lady’s keeping. The day I first cradled her in my arms, I had vowed our daughter would live unshadowed by the past. Even then, I had known I could not grant her that freedom. And as she grew, I realized that his laughing daughter belonged to a laughing mother, not a mourning one.
So I told her tales of Atargatis and Her love, of the Temple and the goodness and kindness found within its walls. Every night before she slept, I sang to my daughter of the happiness of dwelling among sisters, of how Our Lady was mother to all. I whispered of the joy I had known when I had danced within Her loving embrace. I taught Samson’s daughter love, not hate. And my heart rejoiced when she asked when she could enter the House of Atargatis, to dance for the goddess as I had done. I knew she would be safe and happy there. But I did not know how hard it would be to give her up, even to a better Mother than I could ever be to her . . .
She tugged again at my hand, her fingers warm and soft within my grasp. This time I let her lead me on, into the Temple.
No one stopped me as I walked with my daughter through the outer courts. No one spoke to me. I might have been a shadow passing among them, or a ghost. My feet knew the path to follow; my hands remembered how to set themselves upon the Ivory Gate. The Gate yielded, and I did what I had once vowed I never would do again. I walked of my own will through the Gate, into the heart of the Temple’s world, into the Court of the Goddess-on-Earth.
There, in Our Lady’s House, I gave my hard-won child into the care of the High Priestess herself. Under High Priestess Nikkal’s rule, the Great House of Atargatis offered love and trust, safety and happiness. One good had come of the evil I had caused seven years ago: now the High Priestess and the Prince of the City fulfilled their duties to Ascalon the Beautiful as joyful partners, rather than as rivals. Nikkal had always been kind as well as pious, and Aulykaran a good man beneath his pretense of being an indolent fool.
Nikkal looked down at my daughter, and smiled. “She will be beautiful, Delilah. Our Lady favors her.”
I looked at the High Priestess’s face, and then at my daughter’s. “If Our Lady truly looks upon her with favor, let her bestow happiness upon her rather than beauty.” I would not curse my daughter with that double-edged gift. I did not wish that for my Sun-Lord’s child.
“You must trust the Mother of us all—” Nikkal began, and stopped as my laughter etched acid in the sweet-scented air.
“I trust Her. But She can no longer trust me.” I lifted my hands and pulled out the copper butterfly pins that held the sky-blue veil over my hair. I had never let it grow long again; I kept it shorn, like a new widow’s.
“Here.” I knelt and laid the pins at Nikkal’s feet. “An offering to your goddess.” Then I let the veil drift over my daughter’s head; the sheer cloth slipped down and she caught it with a swift, sure grasp. “Remember me, my dove.”
I rose, and Nikkal set her hands upon my daughter’s shoulders. “I will take her to the Court of the New Moons myself,”
the High Priestess said, and I nodded my thanks.
But my daughter did not yield at once to the gentle guidance of Nikkal’s hands. Now that the moment of parting had come, she hung back; I knew she had just realized that where she now went, I could not follow.
“Mother?” It was both plea and question.
I summoned a smile from my past—such a smile had deceived princes and priests. It had even, when I had looked into my silver mirror, deceived myself.
“Go with the High Priestess,” I said. “And do not forget all I have taught you, Zhurleen. Be happy.”
As I left the Great House of Atargatis for the last time, I remembered words I had spoken before my child had been born: “Until she chooses for herself what she will become.”
Easy words to say. Now that I had given my daughter into the keeping of Our Lady, I could only hope that she would indeed be happy. In the House of Atargatis, she would live and grow in love and laughter. Perhaps, someday, she too would dance . . .
I had done my best for my daughter—for Samson’s daughter. Now it was time to pay all my debts. Samson’s god and my goddess had granted all we had asked of them. That we had been fools was no fault of either Atargatis or Yahweh.
I turned and looked back through the Temple gate, into the Lady’s joyous house.
And then I set my feet upon the road to En-dor, where my future and my past awaited me.
Epilogue
The Gate of Horn
The strangest hour of his life came long years later, when Orev sang of Samson before the king, in the king’s new palace in Jerusalem. The king had sent for him, and had him brought into the court, where Orev bowed and the king, noting Orev’s lameness, called for a stool and bade the harper sit before him.
“Harpers all are brothers,” the king said. “I have heard you are a great song-master. Sing for us.”
Orev studied the king, gauging the man’s temper as he would that of a blade, before asking, “What shall I sing, Brother Harper?” He knew the answer already; what song would a new king of Israel ask for but that of the Sun of Yahweh?
“Samson,” said the king. “Sing us the Song of Samson.”
Orev looked at the king, and at the golden lions adorning the king’s throne, and then at the woman who sat, another adornment, at the king’s feet. Saffron linen so fine it seemed like sunlight stroked her supple body; a net of pearls trapped hair crimson as summer sunset, hot as the heart of fire. She slanted her painted eyes at him, regarded him with amused interest. Midnight eyes, like her mother’s; laughing eyes, like her father’s. “Out of strength, sweetness; out of bitterness, laughter.”
For a moment the years dropped away like a faded veil. “Are the two of you mad? You’ll both be killed. That won’t help your dead, or the living, either.” His last desperate effort to hammer sense into either hero or priestess.
Samson smiling, draping his arm heavy over Orev’s shoulders. “Who knows better than I how to move stone? And we have Yahweh’s own vow that I’ll succeed.”
“And the Lady’s. ‘The Son of the Sun will destroy a god.’ ” Delilah’s night-eyes glittering fever bright. “The Seer at En-dor saw it.”
So young, both of them, and so certain, and so wrong. And yet—it had happened just as the angel and the oracle both foretold. Or had there been an angel? Hadn’t that been just a village tale? I am too old; I have lived too long. No one will remember me, but they will live forever young, the sun-hero and his night-love . . .
“Brother Harper?” The king spoke gently, as was proper to an elder song-master, yet with a hint of impatience. Courtly manners, but he was still a king speaking to a wandering harper, after all. The seagemmed woman sitting at the king’s feet laughed, softly, and flirted her long dark eyes at Orev.
Strength and sweetness both. Orev smiled back, remembering what Delilah had named Samson’s daughter. Zhurleen. Laughter.
“I crave pardon, my lord king. I am old; my mind drifts. But my songs do not.” He set his fingers upon the harp-strings, and began.
“Once there was a man who loved a woman so greatly that he died for it.” Yes, I am an old man, and this may be the last time I ever sing of them. So this one time I shall sing it as I wish, for the sake of truth, and for their laughing daughter.
“Listen and heed, and I will sing you the Song of Samson and Delilah . . .”
AFTERWORD
The story of Samson and Delilah is endlessly intriguing to artists and authors. As a story, it’s got everything: sex, violence, love, and betrayal. It has been the subject of paintings, operas, novels, popular songs, and movies—and over the centuries, the story of these doomed lovers has acquired layers of significance not actually found in the Bible. The original story is in Judges 13–16, and Delilah herself appears only in Judges 16:4–20.
The Book of Judges covers the period before the Hebrew kings, a time when Canaan was ruled by the Philistines and the Hebrews were struggling to claim its land. Although the modern word philistine means “a crude, uncultured person,” the Philistines were actually cultured, artistic, and wealthy. They would have been quite happy to live in peace with the Hebrews, but the Hebrews considered Canaan a land promised to them by God and intended to have it. The time of Judges was one of growing conflict between the Hebrews and the Philistines, and Samson is one of the key figures in that conflict.
Samson, like Gilgamesh and Hercules, is a hero in the archaic, classical sense: a man of possibly supernatural origin and of superior strength, who acts as he is compelled to by forces beyond his control. The items and actions associated with Samson (among them the supernatural elements of his birth, the incredible strength, the mighty rages, the lion-skin garment) make this clear. And he has a very odd name for a Hebrew, for Samson does indeed mean “Son of the Sun.”
According to Judges 13:5, Samson is to be raised as a Nazirite, one who has taken holy vows or, as in Samson’s case, had them taken for him by his mother before his birth, and “he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” As a Nazirite, Samson is supposed to abstain from wine, women, unclean food, touching dead bodies, and cutting his hair. (Except for not cutting his hair, Samson violates these strictures pretty freely in the biblical account of his life.) Also according to the biblical account, Samson is amazingly attracted to Philistine women. His wife’s a Philistine (Judges 14–15), and after judging in Israel for twenty years, he goes off and spends the night with a Philistine prostitute in Gaza (Judges 16:1).
It’s easy to see why Samson is the Philistines’ worst nightmare. He’s a charismatic hero who takes their women, burns their fields, and slaughters their men—and he can unite the Hebrews against the Philistines. So the Philistines come up with a scheme to ensnare Samson, using as bait a woman with whom he’s fallen in love: Delilah.
And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. (Judges 16:4)
Although she’s usually referred to in popular culture as a Philistine, the Bible never identifies Delilah as such. We actually know nothing about Delilah beyond her name—a name whose meaning is generally given as “weak” or “languishing,” from the Hebrew root dal (weak or poor). But when I began the research for my story, it seemed far more likely to me that the root of her name was the proto-Semitic lyl or lil: night. Since names in the Bible are often used to convey meaning about those who possess them, and Samson is the Son of the Sun, it makes more internal sense for Delilah to be the Daughter of Night than the Weakling.
The Philistines see a chance to render Samson harmless to them, and offer Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver from each of the Philistine lords if she’ll learn the secret of the Hebrew hero’s great strength and reveal it to them. The amount offered is huge, a veritable king’s ransom, and a hard-cash indication of how much the Philistines fear Samson. The stage is now set for Samson’s downfall. It’s clear he trusts Delilah, because three times she asks what will render him helpless, and three times
he tells her a jesting lie, and three times she tries the method he told her—and it doesn’t work. Yet Samson seems totally unaware that Delilah could be up to no good.
So naturally, I asked myself Why?
In popular culture, Delilah is considered the ultimate wily seductress-spy, using almost inhuman cleverness to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. But, as a number of analysts of the story have pointed out, Delilah doesn’t use any extraordinary covert means to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. No, after asking three times and getting three false answers, what she does is nag Samson until he tells her the true answer:
And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth. And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; That he told her all his heart. (Judges 16:15–17)
Realizing Samson has finally told her the truth—that cutting his hair will make him an ordinary man—Delilah waits until he’s asleep and calls for a barber. With his hair shorn, Samson is easily taken captive by the Philistines, and Delilah disappears from the pages of the Bible.
Delilah is regarded as one of history’s great villainesses, the woman who destroyed the great hero Samson. But that’s the Hebrew point of view. To the Philistines, Delilah would have been a great heroine, saving them from Samson’s rages.
To a novelist, this conflict and contradiction is irresistible. And there are so many questions the story raises. How did Samson meet Delilah? He obviously loved her—but what were her feelings for him? Did she betray him in exchange for riches? Or did she have other reasons for her actions? What did she feel when her lover was blinded and imprisoned?
Delilah: A Novel Page 33