I rejected his offer of a final visit to the boys. How could I accept minutes when I had expected years? How could I pretend that we would meet again soon, as I had when I left for Hebron? Even if I found the words, I would never find the expression. My welling eyes and quivering lips would reveal their destination. I would fill their last days with such terror that, as they marched through the parched countryside, the drought that had blighted the crops would shrivel their hearts.
I left Ahitophel and returned to the harem. None of the women spoke, but Abital's son, Shephatiah, toddled up to me and clasped my hand. Too young to know the truth, he must have sensed the horror that his elders were afraid to acknowledge. I kissed his brow and pushed him away before he was splashed by the tears that his touch had triggered. I lay on my bed and, although the heavy door muffled all but the loudest sounds, I heard the boys being led out of the gatehouse and into the street. For two days, I heard the heavy tread as they tramped across the land (no donkey provided, even for Adriel). On the third day, when the footfall died, I knew that they had too.
I ran out into the courtyard, indifferent to the effect of my wild eyes and puffy cheeks on the playing children. While their mothers comforted them, I called for Abigail, who ushered me back to my chamber, where she promised to glean what she could from David in return for my eating the soup that I’d hitherto spurned. Anxious not to antagonize her, I took a few spoonfuls, only to vomit. As she wiped my face, I felt a flicker of hope that my body would rebel against all sustenance and I would die alongside my boys, albeit a more protracted and painful death as befitted a mother. But it was not to be. In the evening, she brought me another bowl of soup, which I stomached, evidence that, no matter the cause, my body refused to let me starve it and my punishment for living on after my sons would be to live on after my sons. For three days, Abigail had nothing to tell me. Then, in a tone whose studied softness made words redundant, she confessed that the boys were dead.
I waited for Rizpah to return. I knew that no detail would be too small for a mother's notice and trusted her not to spare me. My one fear was that her sons had been killed before mine, clouding her eyes for the aftermath. But when days passed with no sign of her, I suspected that she too was dead, either of grief or by her own hand. Abigail swore that she had heard nothing but I sensed her unease and, when I threatened to confront David, she relented.
‘Remember that this was the Lord's will and not the king's,’ she said. I nodded, lest my scorn silence her. ‘The Gibeonites didn’t stone them but hanged them from trees. They died quickly, but the Gibeonites refused to cut their bodies down.’
‘It's the Law!’
‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’
‘How long did they... were they left?’
‘They’re still there.’
‘After two weeks!’
‘That's why I didn’t want to tell you. The Gibeonites insist that they’re kept there as a testament to your father's offence.’
‘So they’ve not been buried?’
‘No.’
‘No prayers said over them?’
‘No.’
‘But left for every vulture and crow to swoop down on... every jackal and hyena to leap up on, tearing the flesh from their faces and arms, pecking out their eyes and tongues, picking their bones clean.’ I felt myself choke and put my hands to my throat. The nooses still tied around their necks were crushing mine.
‘No, not at all,’ Abigail said, clasping my hands in hers. ‘Rizpah has stayed there. She's turned her sackcloth into a shield against the sun. She watches day and night over the bodies of her sons – and yours. Should any predator approach, she springs up, hollering and brandishing a stick to drive it away. The people are in awe of her. They bring her food and wine and fresh linen, but she takes only bread and water and new sackcloth to replace the old.’
‘She puts me to shame.’
‘She puts us all to shame. Ahitophel warned the king that she's creating a scandal and urged him to have her removed.’
‘Maybe he’ll hang her too?’
‘What? Why do you say that? He admires her fortitude... her devotion.’ I snorted. ‘It's true! And he's afraid of creating a worse scandal by expelling her.’
‘No doubt. So how long is she to remain? She can save the bodies from the ravening beasts but not from the blaze of the sun.’
‘Until the king receives a sign that the drought has been lifted.’
‘It's summer! Unless the Lord works a miracle, it’ll be dry for another three or four months.’
‘Then that's how long it will take.’
Her prediction was borne out. As the summer dragged on and the heat seeped into the thick walls of the harem, making the women sullen and the children fractious, I thought of Rizpah enduring a hundred times worse, her sons’ festering corpses in full view. And if the sight were not cruel enough, what of the stench? I recalled the reek of my own body, unwashed during a week of mourning, and multiplied it by seven during three... four... five months of decay. Then, just when it seemed that her vigil would never end, the sky turned grey as swiftly as if it had been dipped in a bowl of dye. The clouds burst as if we were back in the days of Noah. I watched the children splash through the courtyard and echoed their delight. Surely this was proof that the Lord was appeased? Surely David could now give the order to take down the bodies of my sons and my father's sons... no, henceforth I would think of them as Rizpah's sons, since they were honoured as much by her blood as his.
David, ever wary of offending the Lord, summoned Abiathar to cast the sacred stones, which confirmed that the drought had broken. He ordered that the bodies be recovered and prepared for burial in my grandfather's tomb, and that the remains of my father and brothers be brought from Jabesh and placed alongside them. To my surprise, he invited me to attend the obsequies. Since my sons’ murder, he had taken pains to avoid me and, when we met at the city gate, he looked relieved to see me wearing jewels and fine linen, rather than sackcloth and ashes. Once again he had failed to understand me. I was no longer the bereaved mother lamenting the cruelty of the Lord and his anointed, but King Saul's daughter returning to her birthplace to honour her dead.
My father's house looked exactly as I remembered it, but so small and unimposing after the palace. My cousin Keziah was living there and, seeing her for the first time since I married Paltiel, I was seized by a longing for the safety and surety of my childhood, far stronger than when I’d first seen Abner or Ahitophel or even Mother, since, unlike them, she belonged solely to that childhood, a world away from where I was now. With David eager to proceed, we had little opportunity to talk and, after she’d feasted us on all that the depleted storeroom had to offer, we set off for the hills and the tomb I’d last visited to venerate my grandparents fifteen years ago. The sepulchre stone had been rolled away and Rizpah stood beside it. As we approached, I stepped forward to kneel and kiss her hand. ‘No, please, my lady,’ she said, pulling me up. ‘It's honour enough for me that my sons will be laid to rest with your brothers... with theirs.’
I entered the tomb with Rizpah, David and Abiathar. Both larger and lower than I remembered, it exuded a fragrance of frankincense and balsam, as well as something cloying, which was either an oil that I had failed to identify or else the odour that the others were designed to hide. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I made out the bodies of my ancestors laid out on ledges: some covered; others mounds of bare bones, where both the flesh and the winding sheets had rotted. Oil lamps marked the seven new arrivals, mercifully shrouded from view. Fear of a lifetime of broken sleep prevented my lifting the cloths; instead, I knelt and kissed one of the ledges. Shocked by the cold, clammy stone, I turned to see David standing in front of four jars, much like those I’d used to preserve fruit. With a jolt, I realised that they were all that survived of my father and brothers. I gazed at David. Was he thinking of Jonathan, whose warm flesh he had once embraced, reduced to the contents of a storage jar? Or was he wondering wh
at kind of death awaited him?
He placed two swords beside the jars: a gesture that exalted himself as much as them, since it was thanks to his mastering the methods of the Philistine foundries that such precious weapons could be spared. I, in turn, placed a rattle beside the smallest of the shrouds, which I took to be Adriel's. Abital had pressed it in my hand as we set off and, although he had long outgrown it, I trusted that it might give Adriel some comfort as he passed into Sheol. Rizpah and Abiathar brought bowls of food and jugs of wine, which we distributed evenly. Then, with a final glance at the boys to whom I could offer nothing but tears, I followed the others out. Four men sweated to roll the stone against the entrance. Abiathar recited a set of prayers and lamentations, after which we each in turn poured libations and invoked blessings on the dead. I had hoped for some time for reflection, but David was impatient to return to Hebron. So I took my leave of Rizpah who, released from the harem, was to remain in Gibeah. I wasn’t altogether sorry, since, despite my respect for her vigil, too much had passed between us for us to become friends.
We rode back through the driving rain, which David welcomed as though it were almond blossom heralding spring. Conversation, even had we wished it, was impossible but, when we stopped for the night in a cave outside Adullam, I seized the chance to ask him the question that perplexed me.
‘Why did you wait so long to have my father and brothers brought back to Gibeah? Was it because with the murder of my sons, there was no one of our house left to claim the land on which his ancestors were buried?’
‘Michal,’ he said with a sigh, ‘why must you always think the worst of me?’ Forestalling my answer, he asked: ‘Have you forgotten Meribaal?’
‘He's crippled. He can claim nothing.’
‘His claim is to my heart. You charged me with breaking my oath to Jonathan. On the contrary, I mean to honour it and honour his son. Tomorrow, when we’re back in Hebron, I shall order that he be brought to the palace.’
True to his word, he sent Ziba, the servant of dubious loyalty, to fetch Meribaal from Lodebar. A week later, he arrived in Hebron to be welcomed with full pomp. Joining the royal wives, their children and the palace officials in the courtyard, I was both nervous and excited to meet a boy... a man (he was just a few months younger than Penuel), whom I had last seen aged four. He emerged, bent double and leaning on two sticks. After catching his breath, he advanced, half-escorted, half-dragged by Ahitophel and Ziba. While there was nothing of Jonathan in his gait, I found traces in his eyes and nose enveloped in a layer of fat. He hobbled forward, as if each step were a stab of pain, while the assembled company watched in trepidation, apart from Absalom, whose peal of laughter was cut short by his father's rebuke. Having reached within three cubits of David, he fell to his knees and crawled the remaining distance to kiss his feet. My disgust at the alien practice had never been stronger and I glowered at Ahitophel, who had evidently tutored him. Even David was uneasy, since he hastened to raise him, straightening his back and inadvertently revealing his height – at least the equal of my father's, whereupon, with a gesture midway between affection and anger, he pushed him down again, leant over and kissed him on both cheeks.
‘A chair for Prince Meribaal,’ he shouted to a servant, who ran to fetch one. Unsure where to put it, he hovered awkwardly, until David grabbed it from him and slammed it down. ‘I call on all present to bear witness. This is the son of my brother Jonathan, who is to be as my own sons in Hebron, sitting at my table and enjoying the honours due to his father.’
Meribaal grinned abjectly, and I longed to tell him how fortunate he was to be crippled. Had my five boys been dropped in infancy, they might still have been alive.
‘Amnon, Absalom, come to your father.’ David called for his two eldest sons. The first ran towards him; the second shuffled shyly. ‘How are my brave boys?’ he asked, grabbing one under each arm and hurtling around the courtyard, as they screamed with terror and delight. To a burst of applause, he set Absalom down and threw Amnon up in the air, catching him moments before he hit the ground. Gentler with his second son, he slung him behind his back, manoeuvred him over his shoulder and under first one arm and then the other, before depositing him beside the hearth, where he lurched in a daze, his puckered face threatening tears. Maacah snatched him back, half-comforting and half-scolding him for his failure to match his brother. While Meribaal looked bemused, I wondered at David's need for such an overt display of his sons’ robustness. It was as if he were competing with Jonathan even now.
His primacy affirmed, David returned to his quarters and the company dispersed. I hurried to greet Meribaal before Ziba led him to his chamber. He didn’t remember me but appeared reassured by the word aunt and even more by that of grandmother, whom, brooking no objection from the self-serving servant, I took him to meet. I had tried to prepare her for seeing her one surviving grandchild, but her eyes had grown as clouded as her mind. For a time she’d known me by my voice and then by my touch, but now she knew me only in her memory, where I mingled with her dead parents, sisters and children, so that her entire life seemed to be taking place at once. My reference to Jonathan created a predictable confusion and, with a gulp of joy, she clasped Meribaal so abruptly that, frail as she was, she knocked him over. I stooped to help him, but he pushed me away with a look both of fury and desolation. He charged Ziba to take him straight to his chamber and, over the next few weeks, refused all my requests to return. Not until I told him that she was dying – vowing on his father's memory that it wasn’t a ploy – would he agree to come. He sat by her side, wiping the spittle off her chin and gazing intently into her vacant eyes as if searching for a link to the noble lineage of which he was both the remnant and the ruin.
Two days later my mother died. Abiathar and Ahitophel accompanied me to Gibeah to bury her beside her husband and sons. The fields along the way gleamed silver with oats, golden with wheat and amber with barley, the ripening grain fed as much by my sons’ blood as the spring rains. We returned to find the palace astir. David, assured of an abundant harvest, had resolved to mount his long-awaited assault on Jerusalem. He gave orders that as soon as the crops were gathered, the Israelites should muster in the Hinnom valley. He himself set out to rally the Judahites. While the other wives lamented his absence, I relished the respite. With my mother dead and Rizpah freed, I sought out Meribaal, now a familiar figure as he lumbered about the palace, inspiring both affection and mockery. His crippled limbs afforded him entry to the harem, and we would sit conversing in the courtyard, our peace shattered by the shrieks and thwacks of David's sons who, ignorant of the protracted siege, enacted their father's imminent victory. Fraternal rivalries were reinforced as Amnon, always assuming his father's role, defeated the wicked Jebusites, namely Absalom, Adonijah and Shephatiah.
David himself was less fortunate. The city's walls proved as inviolable as ever and, as the weeks wore on, I entertained the hope, treacherous but thrilling, that he would be forced to retreat, prompting the tribes to renounce him. Then Jonadab brought the news that Joab had led a raiding party through an underground water shaft, catching the guards unawares and opening the gates to David's troops. After gaining control of the streets, they had stormed the palace, putting the king, his sons and all the men of his house to death, whereupon the Jebusite elders surrendered.
Leaving Joab to stamp out pockets of resistance, David returned to Hebron in triumph. After making thanksgiving offerings in the sanctuary, he came to the harem, where he embraced his children with a tenderness that would once have touched me. Bursting with pride, he informed us that Jerusalem, where our forefather Adam first worshipped the Lord, where Noah rebuilt his altar after the Flood, and where the Lord sent Abraham a ram to sacrifice in place of Isaac (a substitution, I thought bitterly, that he hadn’t chosen to repeat), was to be the kingdom's new capital and renamed the City of David. As soon as preparations had been made, we were to move there. But our departure was delayed when the Philistine kings, learning of D
avid's conquest, set aside their differences and invaded the valley of Rephaim. Even though his forces were depleted, with half his men serving under Joab and others having returned home for the grape harvest, David won a resounding victory, slaying four of the kings and capturing their idols. With the Philistine threat removed, his peoples’ loyalty was ensured.
Rather than return to Hebron, David went straight to Jerusalem, where a month later we joined him. As we rode through a valley arid even in winter, trudged up a gravelly slope and approached the stepped stone walls, my first impression of the city was grim. Jonadab, buttery as ever, greeted us at the gate and steered us through a warren of eerily empty streets to our quarters at the palace. There we found the late king's widow, bereft of both husband and honour after David had publicly violated her. Abigail insisted once again that he was staking his claim to the crown, but it smacked more of branding his sheep. The makeshift harem was cramped and I shared a chamber with Maacah and her children, Absalom, Tamar and Nechama, an arrangement that Jonadab assured me was temporary, since David had already begun to build a new palace. Eager to outshine the pharaohs, he had summoned the finest craftsmen from Sidon and Tyre and set the vanquished Jebusites to labour under them. The foundations were swiftly laid and, although some people denounced David's vanity, the majority saluted his ambition. They had asked for a king like other nations; they now had one who surpassed them.
David then embarked on his most cherished project: to house the Ark of the Lord in his city. For more than fifty years after its capture by the Philistines, it had languished in the town of Kiriath-Jearim and, in spite of its pre-eminent place in the story of the nation, few of us had ever seen it. David accused my father of having neglected it, thereby doubly insulting the Lord, since it not only served as his throne but contained the tablets of his covenant with Moses. That was a calumny, as he well knew, having often heard Father speak of his desire to bring it to Gibeah. But although the Philistines, punished with plagues and boils, had returned the Ark, Kiriath-Jearim was surrounded by their territory and to enter it would have led to war. Unlike David, Father took up arms only to remove threats and repel invaders, refusing to risk his soldiers’ lives in any other cause. With the Philistines vanquished, David faced no such obstacle.
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