'If two lie together,' Abigail proved to me, 'then they have heat. But how can one be warm alone?'
'How can one be warm alone?' I have tried appealing to Bathsheba lately, designing sneakily to coax her onto my couch.
'You have Abishag for that.' She refuses to budge. 'That's why they gave her to you.'
Bathsheba manages very cozily for warmth with just her burning ambitions for herself and her son.
Abigail was older than I and conceived very late. Well, we had no amniocentesis then, of course; Chileab was born a mongoloid. We tried changing his name to Daniel in Chronicles, but that didn't help. Nothing helped. He remained a mongoloid, and he just sort of died away quietly after that. This remained a perpetual sadness to us. I would have wanted children by Abigail. Even a girl might have been nice. To the end of her days, we would review with affection our years together and marvel at the nature of our coming together so happily through a fortuitous meeting, resulting in a marriage that seems to have been made in heaven. From the start, our conversations were amatory.
'Sweet Abigail, make me immortal with a kiss,' I would request.
'Stay with me until the day break, and the shadows flee away,' she would respond.
She was afraid of the dark. But her voice was ever soft, an excellent thing in woman.
'I wanted you that first day.' I boasted to her so many times in the relaxing talks we shared. 'From the moment you bowed and looked up at me, and I had a clear look at your face. You are always so beautiful.'
'I wanted you,' she never hesitated to admit.
'I thought I could tell. I saw how you kept looking admiringly at the bracelet on my arm.'
'I had to look somewhere. I couldn't keep staring up into your eyes.'
'I didn't want you to go back.'
'I didn't want to.'
'But I didn't want to force you.'
'No, I would not have wanted to be forced.'
'That's not my way.'
'But I would want to know you were thinking of doing it.'
'When Nabal died, I decided to propose to you the moment I heard about it. I wouldn't say I was glad, but I wouldn't say I was sorry.'
'I wanted to hear from you. From the moment he fell sick and was so close to death, that's all I hoped for. If you didn't send for me, I was going to find some excuse for going back to see you again.'
'I love you, Abigail. I've loved you from the beginning. I say that to none of my other wives.'
'Bathsheba?'
'Except Bathsheba. I do say it to Bathsheba, but it means something else.'
'And I love you. But you know that, David. You still suffer so much, my dear, don't you? You never seem able to have much fun.'
'I miss the child.'
'I do too.'
'I'm sorry we couldn't have more. I miss all my dead children. Especially the babies.'
'Would you like some barley bread, darling, with lentils, figs, olive oil, and leeks?'
'No thank you, Abigail. I just had some.'
Whosoever findeth a wife findeth a good thing. And I was so lucky with Abigail that I found fifteen, seven before I triumphed over Abner and his puppet Ishbosheth, and the rest in Jerusalem after I had taken the city from the Jebusites and made it my home and political headquarters. I had the ark of the covenant brought here in a fantastic celebration the likes of which had never been seen before, and made the city a great religious center as well. Solomon the miser tells me seriously that he thinks he might want a thousand wives.
'You need so many?' I ask him, deadpan.
Some of them would have to be for show. None of my other wives came close to Abigail in elegance, taste, and intelligence, although I loved Bathsheba with a heat that was greater. Shall I compare her to a summer's day? Why not? She was so lovely and always more temperate. Ahinoam the Jezreelitess came next in the bridal succession and was with me too when I finally grew weary of running from Saul and crossed over into the service of the Philistines with all of my men and all of our households. Saul had already given my first wife, Michal, to Phalti the son of Laish.
There was never much letup in Saul's obsessive determination to hunt me down, despite the professions of repentance and pardon he called out to me--in front of others yet--so loudly and tearfully after I had him defenseless on the floor of the cave at Engedi and allowed him to depart unharmed. I could have killed him then. I didn't. When I cut that piece from the skirt of his robe, I felt horribly as though I were cutting a strip of flesh from his human person. 'My lord the king,' I cried after him when there was a good distance between us. 'Wherefore hearest thou men's words, saying I seeketh thy hurt?'
'Is this thy voice, my son David?' Saul called back, and lifted up his voice and wept.
'Behold, my father, this day thine eyes can see how the Lord hath delivered thee today in my hand in the cave. I cut off the skirt of the robe and killed thee not. I have not sinned against thee, yet thou huntest my soul to take it.'
And Saul said to me, 'Thou art more righteous than I, for thou hast rewarded me with good, whereas I have rewarded thee with evil.' He wept some more. It did my heart good to see him so remorseful. It was about time. 'When the Lord had delivered me into thine hands, thou killedst me not. And now, behold, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine hand.' If I hear that one more time, I thought, I might begin to believe it. 'Swear now therefore,' Saul continued, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand after another outpouring of tears, 'that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father's house.'
I swore unto Saul as he asked. It did no good. In almost no time at all he was after me again, for when we encamped in the wilderness of Ziph, the Ziphites came unto Saul in Gibeah to tell him where I hid and offered to help deliver me into his hand. I was disillusioned when I heard that Saul had set out after me again. My spies confirmed he was coming back into Judah, having three thousand chosen men of Israel with him. I moved away to higher ground and witnessed him arriving at the place where we had been. They bedded down there for the night.
'Who will go with me to Saul to the camp to see what is what?' I asked the few nearest me.
I took only Abishai. They had posted no watch. None there were awake. We moved about noiselessly. Things were unnaturally still, as though a deep slumber from the Lord had fallen upon them all. We found Saul lying in a trench, and his spear was stuck in the ground at his bolster. Abner and the other people had pitched nearby and lay sleeping round about him. Saul's expression was haggard, his color sickly, he looked gaunt and soft. There were pockets of lax yellow skin under his jaw, along his neck down to his collarbone. In a month he had aged ten years. He was snoring faintly, his breathing was regular. He moaned in his sleep. Once, he coughed. I had crouched near his face to study him. How could I consent when Abishai asked to kill him? Let him die when he would, I made up my mind, let him go when the Lord came to smite him, when the day did come for him to die, or when he descended into battle and perished. I wanted nothing to do with it.
I took his spear and his cruse of water with me when I left, and this time I made my presence known with a taunting reproach for Abner, admonishing him contemptuously for his failure to post a guard about the king. Against Abner I had been accumulating grievances from the day we met. But first, of course, I prudently put a great space between us and was standing on the top of a hill afar off. Crazy I'm not. Saul had his three thousand. And David never had more than six hundred.
'Answereth thou not, Abner?' I jeered at the top of my voice through hands cupped about my mouth. 'Art thou not a valiant man?'
Abner rose with a lurch and whirled to look at me with outrage, answering, 'Who art thou that thou criest to the king?'
'Who is like thee in all Israel?' I replied in a voice dripping with scorn. 'Ye are worthy to die, for ye have not kept your master, the king thy lord, the Lord's anointed. This thing is not good that thou hast do
ne, for there came one of the people in who could have destroyed him. And now see where the king's spear is, and the cruse of water that was at his bolster. Let one of the young men come over and fetch them back.'
By this time Saul had clambered to his feet, looking old. He was tottering as he drew himself fully erect. His face was knotted up against the glare of the sun.
'Is this thy voice?' again I heard him call out in my direction, with deeper feeling this time, as though he had been pining for the sound and sight of only me.
'Who then?' I called back across the chasm between us.
'My son David? It's really thy voice?'
'It is my voice, my lord, O king, my father. They do me wrong who have stirred thee up against me and say I seek to do thee harm. Behold again, I would not stretch forth my hand against thee. Last month it was the skirt of your robe. Today it's your spear and cruse of water. How many more things must I take from you before you believe me? The king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains.'
Even at that late date, I still clung to the belief that I was an innocent victim of some circumstantial misunderstanding, or the object of invidious slander. I could never believe for long that anybody ever really did want to kill me. Not even in battle. Not even Saul. It was so much easier to deceive myself with that fiction than to accept the fact that this august and imposing figure I still looked up to as king, God, and father truly hated me and was certifiably homicidal.
'Oh, David, David, David,' wailed Saul, raising both arms to tear with his fists at his hair. 'I have sinned.'
'You said it,' I concurred.
'Behold, I have played the fool,' he cried, 'and have erred exceedingly.'
'Those are your words, not mine.'
'For if a man find his enemy,' he reasoned, 'will he let him go away?'
'Now you've got it,' I assented, rubbing it in. 'You're catching on.'
'The Lord reward thee well for the good thou hast done unto me this day.'
'That's the ticket,' I responded encouragingly. 'Blessed be thou, my son David,' he went on. His redemption was whole, and it seemed there was now no stopping him. 'Thou shalt both do great things and also shalt still prevail.'
'From thy mouth,' I assented, 'unto God's ears.'
'Return thou now, my son David,' he urged, and went on to make a vow from the bottom of his heart, fervently saying, 'for I swear before God that I will no more do thee harm.'
Bullshit! I decided from the bottom of mine, and determined on the spot that there was nothing better for me to do than to escape speedily into the land of the Philistines if I did not wish to perish one day by the hand of Saul. A living dog is better than a dead lion, and he who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.
Negotiations with King Achish were completed swiftly, and I arose and passed over safely into Gath with the six hundred men that were with me, every man with his household, me with my two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelitess, Nabal's wife when he lived. Achish gave me the city of Ziklag in the south and all of the territory surrounding it. And this was the end of my troubles with Saul. He sought no more again for me, once it was told him where I had fled.
We dwelt in the country of the Philistines a full year and four months, and then Saul was dead, perishing against the Philistines in the great battle of Gilboa. As though drawn inflexibly toward the goal of his own destruction, he fought them head-on; I would have allowed them entry into the valley of Jezreel and then swept down upon them from the rear and the flanks. I beat them for good at Rephaim by surrounding them at night through the mulberry trees. Saul knew the results beforehand. Samuel had given him the gory details the night before in the hideous revelation he unfolded in the house of the witch of Endor. Ghosts don't lie. It's hard to believe Saul did not cherish that outcome.
He took the initiative in arranging his unholy meeting with Samuel, doing so in dread after all the Philistines had arrived and were ready to fight. When Saul saw the great size of the host of the Philistines against whom he had come to do battle, he was afraid--I don't blame him, because I was with them for a day and a half and was awed by their number--and his heart trembled. Mine knocked about in my chest for a few minutes when the other four kings spotted me with Achish and gave vent to the belief that I was there to turn traitor against them once the fight had begun. All they did, thank God, was send me away.
Saul lost confidence, was stumped. He asked for an omen. The Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, dice, nor prophets. In numb desperation, he sent to inquire and went in disguise for foreknowledge to the witch of Endor, elevating himself above the ban he had placed upon wizards and all others with access to familiar spirits. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, says Exodus, and Saul had endeavored to cut all wizards and witches off from the land. Now he was glad to go underground and felt lucky to find one. He put on other raiment and stole away to the woman by night with two companions he trusted.
'Double, double, toil, and trouble,' the witch at Endor greeted him. She became hysterical when she guessed who he was. 'Why hast thou deceived me?'
Saul mollified her, promised there would be no penalty if she would just dredge up Samuel for him to talk to. The ghost of the prophet came up at her beckoning, covered with a mantle. When Saul recognized it was indeed Samuel, he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed, making humble and unresisting submission to the figure who loomed before him like a stern and mournful statue.
True to form, Samuel said, 'What do you want?'
Saul replied, 'The Philistines make war against me, and God is departed and answereth me no more. Please tell me the future.'
'You don't want to know.'
'Who will triumph in the battle tomorrow?'
'Don't ask.'
'What will happen to me?'
'It shouldn't happen to a dog.'
And then Samuel gave it to him.
'Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. The Lord also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines.'
Saul would die, his sons would die, the Philistines would win, and we would lose. We? I wasn't even there. And if I had been, I would have fought for Achish of Gath on the side of the Philistines against my own people. Things worked out perfectly for me. I never would have won the allegiance of Israel if I'd been part of that decisive event in which Saul and all his legitimate heirs died and his army was shattered and dispersed--the people forsook the cities and fled, like harts that find no pasture, and the Philistines came and dwelt in them. Even as it is, I've always had trouble keeping the people of Israel in line.
My men and I responded with fervor when Achish summoned us to make war. We mobilized speedily and came up from Ziklag to Gath to do battle for him and the other Philistine chieftains at Gilboa. We were tough and willing. We were filled with excitement and expectation, we'd been spoiling for a real fight against those who'd been hounding us, and we were impatient for the impending climax that would at last bring one kind of resolution or another to the tension and hostility that had raged so long between Saul and myself and had made exiles and pariahs of me and my men.
We were part of the army of Achish, and we marched under his banner all the way north up to Shunem near Gilboa to the staging area of all the armies of the Philistines. I never saw so many troops. We should have anticipated that I and my band of Hebrews would attract some notice. We certainly did stand out. The princes of the Philistines drew near to look. I was identified, and I began to my horror to hear again those marvelous and euphonic words in the laudatory refrain about me and Saul that by this time I had come to dread.
'Is not this David?' wondered the other princes of the Philistines, huddling closer and ogling me, 'of whom they sang one to another in dances, saying Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten thousands?'
If ever I am remembered, it undoubtedly will be for that.
It goes without saying that Achish told the truth.<
br />
My men were disgruntled and talked of stoning me when the princes of the Philistines refused to allow us to be near at the time of battle and ordered us back down.
'Let him not go into battle with us,' they resolved, 'lest in the thick of things he show himself to be an adversary to us.'
That was that. My men talked again of stoning me when we returned to Ziklag and discovered that a tribe of Amelekites had smitten the city in our absence and taken as captives all of our wives and daughters and sons, and all of our animals. Abigail was gone and so was Ahinoam. I was brokenhearted. They were ready to kill me. I inquired of God and was advised to go after this troop that had invaded the south and carried away our people.
'Pursue,' said God, 'for thou shalt surely overtake them and recover all, positively without fail.'
We did recover them all safely. Abigail and I embraced with Ahinoam. It felt so good to have them both in my arms again. And three days after we were back in Ziklag, it came to pass that we learned of the annihilation of the Israelite army in the battle of Gilboa and the death of Saul and his three sons. The impact on me of these reports was enormous. According to which account you believe, Saul, sorely wounded by archers and unable to flee farther, either fell upon his sword to take his life or begged a passing Amelekite to slay him in his misery and allow him to escape the agony and ignominy of being found alive by the Philistines. To me it made no difference, for I had his crown and I had the bracelet that was on his arm. I did not know whether the Amelekite who brought them to me was telling the truth or not, and I did not care.
'Go near and fall upon him,' I instructed one of my men, who smote him till he died.
I did not want anyone around me to get the idea that one could lift his hand against a king for any reason whatsoever, especially if I was the king. And it was beginning to appear I was going to become one. Who else was now around?
I grieved awhile for Saul and Jonathan, of course. And I composed my very famous elegy, in which I lamented their passing. Also, I bade the Philistines teach the children of Israel the use of the bow. I was truly inspired when I wrote:
God Knows Page 26