by Mary Burns
“Brothers, all shall be well,” he was saying. He was standing in the midst of them, his face flushed with drink, perhaps, or excitement, or both. “King Achish expects us to keep peace on this edge of his lands,” he continued. “This is a market town, after all, not a military camp.”
I edged into the room and stood behind a fold of a long curtain that hung askew in the doorway, partly pulled back to allow the servants to come and go with increasing amounts of food and drink. I glanced around and saw nothing of Doeg, the constable of Ziklag, and assumed he had been dismissed. My eyes burned, and the heady, light feeling in my bones increased. The room began to swim around me.
“But Achish also expects you to be his dog,” Abinadab said, his lip curling. “What do you think our own people, our kin in Judah, will think of us now?”
“And what will you do when Achish requests,” Shammah spoke up, the emphasis heavy on the word, “that you accompany him—nay, that we all accompany him—in battle against our own people! You know it could happen!” Growls and mutters circled the room and rose heavily to the smoky ceiling.
“There is one other thing, most important of all.” Eliab, the eldest brother, rose awkwardly from his chair to address the circle of men. “How will we worship the Lord our God in the midst of this city of Philistines? Do you think Achish will believe us to be allies of his, and enemies to Saul, if he knows we kneel to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” He faced David, across the room and across the gap of twenty years in their ages, the eldest against the youngest, the battle-torn warrior facing the dynamic blessed one of HaShem.
David raised his hand and opened his mouth to speak, but another voice, a loud, strong, piercing voice, stopped him. It was coming from my mouth, and I could not control it. I was walking stiffly from my place behind the curtain into the midst of my father’s council.
“The fox must enter the den of the lion, and the hawk will battle the wind!” I walked up to my father, though I did not see where I was going. “The weak shall bind the strong, and the voice of the Lord’s Anointed will be heard on both sides of the mountain! HaShem God will protect him!” A cold shudder gripped my whole body, and I fell forward into my father’s arms. As my eyes closed I saw his eyes, golden in the firelight, searing into mine.
Chapter 5
“And Achish trusted David. ‘He has made himself hated
by his own people Israel’ he thought, ‘and so will be my
servant for ever.’” 1 Samuel 27:12
Life in the house and town of Ziklag soon became as familiar and ordinary as if I’d been born there. As long as my mother and father were near, I felt I could adjust to anything—and after growing up in rough surroundings, it was, I admit, all too easy to get used to the luxuries of warm rooms, soft clothing, and excellent cooking facilities. I had my own room in a little corner facing away from the town; I could gaze out the narrow window at night into the hills and hear the wind blowing and see the stars. The smallness of the space put me in mind of my little hiding place in the cave, where I could be alone with my thoughts and dreams. It soon became a beloved haven and sanctuary.
But one thing I never got enough of was the marketplace: the ever-changing sounds and smells, the raucous bargaining and give-and-take of the sellers and buyers, the overwhelming variety of every kind of thing and animal and person, week after week. There were bronze-faced traders from far away in the East, carrying sacks of incense rocks and sealed bowls of fragrant spices. Black-skinned people from the distant south, on donkeys and camels, brought woven cloth and nuggets of gold from deep in the mines beyond the great desert. I would accompany my mother and Aloheth on buying excursions into the town and learn from them how to trade. Sometimes we used a precious stone or jewel that had fallen into my father’s hands after raids in the country, but usually we bartered with everyday things, offering a kid goat for several lengths of cloth or a pretty painted jar for a bowl of spices.
My mother was a sharp trader and kept track of every item in her domain. One of the first things she did to organize our large household was to engage the services of the former chieftain’s scribe, a thin, silent man with wary, sloe-shaped dark eyes, and, I thought, a sad mouth. His fingers were long and bony, stained at the ends from the moist, red clay tablets into which he pressed the wedge-shaped sticks of different sizes and widths—implements of his counting. His name was Didymos and he was a slave, passed from trader to trader until he landed at Ziklag, where the previous chieftain had appreciated his skills and treated him with respect. Within the first week of our coming to the town, Didymos was a constant companion to my mother as she made her daily rounds—tallying up animals and goods, swords and shields, wine sacks and blankets. I tagged along, fascinated by the idea that there on his clay tablet, one mark he made stood for twenty sheep, another for fifty broadswords.
“How do you know what they all mean?” I asked him. We were sitting on a low wall near the stables, as my mother was engaged in listening to a long and increasingly suspect explanation about a missing saddle blanket. Didymos was probably only ten or twelve years older than I, but he seemed older than my father or my uncles. He had very little hair on his head and no beard, and his skin was wrinkled and dry, like a grape picked from the vine and left out in the sun.
“I went to school to learn,” he said.
I leaned closer to hear him. He rarely spoke and when he did, his voice was soft and thin, stretched out but clear. He spoke our language well but with a flattened accent.
“What is school?”
“A place where people go to learn things.” He didn’t look up.
I pondered this as I watched his fingers move rapidly over the sticks he used for marking, choosing this one and that, making neat indentations in the clay in lines up and down the tablet. I pointed a finger at a mark he had just made.
“That is the sign for goat,” I said. When he didn’t say anything, I pointed to another one. “That, for blanket, and that one,” I continued, encouraged by his silence, “is for wine.” I withdrew my finger, proud of my quickness. I was rewarded by a quick nod of his head, and then he pointed to the slash marks in another line on the tablet. My brow furrowed.
“Those mean how many,” I said, hesitantly. “But I don’t know how to do that.”
“This means five,” he said, making a row of small dents in a clear space at the bottom of the tablet. “Like the fingers on your hand.” He opened his left hand, palm down, fingers spread. “Twice that is ten, this.” Another indent. I had leaned in so close to him my hair brushed his cheek, and our shoulders were touching, but I don’t think either one of us thought anything of it. We were focused on the tablet in his hands.
“Janaia! Come away this instant!” My mother’s voice pierced the happy cloud I was wrapped in, and I stood up so swiftly that I knocked the tablet from Didymos’ hand. Luckily for both of us, it didn’t break when it hit the ground. My mother seized my arm and pulled me along, but not before I saw her throw a glance at the poor scribe that would have withered him on the spot, I’m sure, had he been looking up.
“Mother, what’s wrong?” Some instinct told me to play the innocent, though I knew, or thought I knew, what the problem was. My mother stopped in her tracks, bent down and grasped my chin in her hand so she could look directly into my eyes. Her own narrowed slightly.
“Hmmph, maybe, maybe not,” she muttered. She let go of my chin, and spoke more calmly. “You are the daughter of the chieftain now, Janaia,” she said, “and not a wild girl running around the caves in the hills. You must choose your companions carefully.”
I pretended to let the words sink in and glanced back at Didymos, who was composedly continuing in his work. I knew what would appease my mother. I shrugged and affected a superior tone. “He is a slave, Mother, but I find his skills useful to me.”
My mother’s eyes opened wide at this, surprised and then amused. I looked her straight in the eye. “I know what’s expected of me,” I said. “You
need not fear. I will never allow myself to be taken by surprise.” I wondered at the words I had just spoken— I hardly knew myself what I meant. The speech seemed to come from a different place than my own being, yet I spoke confidently.
A shadow passed over my mother’s face, and her lips thinned. “Then you will be wiser than all of mankind, child, if you can accomplish that,” she said, turning away.
I stood for a moment longer, feeling a sense of victory and power, though I wasn’t sure why. Turning to Didymos, who was gathering up his utensils so he could follow my mother, I spoke quickly in a low voice.
“I want to learn from you how to do that,” I said, pointing to his tablet. He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were a clear, clean gray rimmed with dark lashes.
“You will bring us both to a bad end,” he said simply.
We looked at each other for a long moment. I saw a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“So be it,” I said, and smiled.
* * *
My lessons with Didymos began soon after that day, though always in secret, and usually at the time of day when everyone else was napping to avoid the heat. Soon I was quite adept at both reading and making the marks that recorded all the material goods we possessed.
I was proud of my new skill, and very proud of hiding it from my mother, whom I knew would not approve. But wasn’t I learning something that would help me be a good household manager? My mother depended on Didymos to keep the accounts, whereas I would be able to do it myself. She was always saying you couldn’t trust people to be honest about such things, although I knew that Didymos was absolutely accurate and honest in his reckonings. And it wasn’t out of fear of being caught; he simply didn’t seem to care about material things.
But my sessions with Didymos were few and far between. The extent of my father’s household meant extra work for all the women, and as I was rapidly approaching my initiation into womanhood—I had just passed my twelfth birthday—I had more claims on my time than ever. Sometimes I longed for the freedom of the caves and my wanderings in the hills, but the future which held out my place as a wife and a mother had its own kind of excitement and perhaps, I thought, freedom of a different kind.
In the back of my mind, though, was always a question about the strange power that had taken over my will and my speech, twice now: would it happen again? Would I be blessed to experience once more that exultant, feverish force that ran through my whole body and lifted my spirit above the ground? I shivered to think of it. But then I would be called from my dreaming to help with my little brother and the other children, or to prepare meals, and I learned to find contentment in the simple family life of every day.
* * *
Time passed swiftly, and my uncle Eliab’s concern about our freedom to worship HaShem, though perplexing at first, turned out not to be a problem. Inside the chieftain’s compound there were only people of our own tribe: the sons of Jesse and those bound to them who had joined us in the days of the cave, fleeing the insane wrath of Saul. Our holy days were celebrated discreetly, and I think this intensified our sense of covenant with the Lord and with each other as His people. In fact, the townsfolk were more interested in the marketplace than the temples, even of their own gods. As time went on, and David’s governance was seen to be just, though stern, the residents of Ziklag knew they benefited from the peace he enforced on the borders. I believe they wouldn’t have turned a hair if we had held full sacrifice and processions in the center of town.
As it was, when our feast days came, the courtyard overflowed with people, including many from the town who came not only for the food and drink and dancing but also for the storytelling. In my father’s house, there were many lively speakers who were adept at telling and acting out the stories of our people, so much of which seemed to me all about killing and sin and destruction—like the brothers Cain and Abel, or the great flood of Noah’s time, or the horrific annihilation of those wicked cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. But the tales were enthralling and captivating nonetheless, and everyone was heartened by the many times God would remember His promises to His people, and after great anger, take them back and protect them again.
All through his exile from the court of King Saul, what mattered most to my father was his distance from the Ark of God. As a young boy, honored through the favor of Saul and the anointing by Samuel, he had been an integral part of the ceremonies of the Ark at Kirjath-Jearim, the City of Forests on the border between Judah and Benjamin, where the Ark had been taken by Saul after the Philistines had captured and then returned it. I had heard him speak of it, though not often, with the greatest reverence. Once, I saw him weep in his longing to be in its presence again. These things I did not understand, but I kept them in my heart as I observed my father carefully.
I learned from listening at the councils that David told King Achish that his raids targeted the Israelites and Judeans—our own people—so Achish would believe David was completely bound to him. In truth, our men raided, plundered, and killed the Philistines of Gath, the Geshurites, the Gizrites, and the Amalekites.
“We must leave no one alive.” I shuddered to my very bones when I heard my father utter this statement, so cold and yet so matter of fact. “Take everything, raze the settlements, leave nothing to tell the tale.” It was what had to be done to survive— was not David the Anointed One? Did HaShem not say He would protect him? But it made me sick inside, and I waited in vain for the Voice, as I had begun to call it, to speak aloud and perhaps change this murderous course.
But I heard nothing. And was the Voice whose instrument I was, God’s voice? I felt confused, and there was no one with whom I could discuss this strange thing that had happened to me, or the conflict I felt about the Voice that spoke through me. My mother seemed fearful of a power that went so far beyond her own seeing, which was in the smaller way of women and love, and whether an unborn child was a boy or a girl, and she would not talk to me about it. And because my father and his people were bandits and runaways, we had no regular priest or holy man to guide our ways—my father himself had led the processions and sacrificial meals on the roughly built altars to HaShem in the hills when we lived in the caves.
All this raiding and killing, then, must be the will of HaShem, I thought, and even as I accepted it, I began to wonder at this god of ours, who was so wanton with human life, so whimsical in His treatment of even His favorites, and who could exact such vengeance as well as command such loyalty.
Chapter 6
“My heart is stirred by a noble theme, in a king's honor I
utter the song I have made, and my tongue runs like the
pen of an expert scribe." Psalms 45:1
One sunny day, after nearly a year at Ziklag, I was sitting in my little corner room with a tablet Didymos had helped me make. I swept a damp cloth across the surface of the clay, erasing the unsatisfactory marks I had just made. I was getting bored with marking down “four hundred sheep” and “sixty wine jars.” The marks had become as mundane as the items they stood for.
I looked out the window; it was nearing spring again, and the air was soft and warm. I would soon be fourteen, and still I had not experienced my monthly flows. My mother tried to soothe me by saying I would be all the more fertile for the delay, but given the number of potions and herbal concoctions she fed me to bring on my courses, I don’t think she believed it herself. There was probably something really wrong with me, and I would be forever barren. Even if some man were paid enough to marry me, I would not be able to have children, I just knew it, and then he would put me aside and get another wife. The thought occurred to me it was all because of the Voice, that somehow the prophesying had made me less than a woman. I didn’t want to be a prophetess, if this was the cost!
A sudden commotion in the courtyard sent a flock of birds shooting up from the trees and the city below my window into the sky—they flew right past me as they ascended into the clear blue. My heart lifted at the sight, and I turned my thoug
hts away from my future misery. How could I capture this feeling of beauty and motion?
I looked at the blank, moist tablet on my lap. Taking a sharpened stylus from the box on my table, I carefully made the mark for “birds.”
I wanted to write, Birds arise from the city to the sky, my heart leaps!—but I didn’t know what marks could mean that. I thought of things that rise . . . the sun! There was a mark for the rising sun, although it was used to signify “morning,” and I placed it carefully next to the birds. I indented the word for city, and then for sky. Now, “heart”—I almost gasped as I realized it had the same sound as one of the names of a deer—“hart”—and it seemed almost magical, that the heart in my chest could leap just as a deer leaps and bounds over the rocks and meadows! I stared in wonder at the symbols on my tablet. No ordinary marketplace items, but something beautiful, something that meant more than it said. I couldn’t wait to show it to Didymos.
I leaped out of my chair, clutching the tablet close, and ran down the stairs. At this time of day, Didymos would be sitting in the warmest part of the courtyard, in the back, against a high wall near a fruit tree—his favorite place. There was a small brick oven there, kept only for baking the tablets he used so the marks could not be erased, his duty exclusively. And there he was, looking as if he had just closed his eyes, his stylus fallen from his fingers next to his tablet.
I crept softly to his side, in spite of my eagerness to show him my great wonder. It isn’t good to wake someone suddenly, I knew, because one’s spirit travels during sleep, and a sudden wakening can cut off the spirit’s entry back into the body, especially if it has wandered far. I began humming a little song, one my mother used to sing to me when I was small. After a moment, Didymos woke up, gently.
“What is it, Janaia, little gift of God?” he said. He had taken to calling me by my middle name, and I rather liked it. Hokhma, he told me, Wisdom, was too great a name for a little girl, and I would have to grow into it; then he laughed, but kindly, so I didn’t mind.