Rigorous arrangements were made for the Ark's transport, with David, Abiathar and a hundred priests forming an escort. Messengers kept Ahitophel apprised of their progress and, when they reached Nacon, he instructed the royal wives to join the Israelite chiefs and Jebusite elders at the city gate to await their arrival. Either from sympathy for my recent loss or residual loyalty to my house, the crowd greeted me with marked enthusiasm, as I took my place between a jealous Ahinoam and a wretched Meribaal, already flagging in the blistering heat. Overruling Jonadab, I ordered a guard to bring him a chair.
One... two... three hours passed, with no movement other than a herd of goats grazing at the edge of the valley. Maacah slipped away to nurse Nechama, leaving Absalom more vulnerable than ever to Amnon's taunts. Only Abigail's timely intervention averted a squabble. Then, offering no explanation, a grim-faced Ahitophel ordered everyone to disperse. As I led Meribaal through the gate, I heard two Jebusite women muttering that the Israelite god had refused to enter their city, and my heart soared. We returned to the harem, where we ate a modest meal, leaving the celebratory feast untouched. By the late afternoon, David and the Ark had still to appear. While the rest of us pondered in silence, Ahinoam voiced her fanciful conjectures, ranging from ravines cracking and rivers flooding to an attack by the Amalekites she abhorred. Finally, Jonadab arrived, eager as ever to be first with the news.
‘The Ark was set on a specially built cart, drawn by a team of oxen,’ he said. ‘But one of them stumbled, and Uzzah, son of the Levite who’d housed the Ark in Kiriath-Jearim, reached out to stop it falling – the Ark, not the ox, that is. So the Lord struck him dead.’
‘Why did he do that?’ Absalom asked, open-mouthed.
‘Because the Ark mustn’t be touched by anyone, stupid!’ Amnon said.
‘Then how did they put it on the cart?’
Amnon looked baffled and was about to answer with his fists, when Jonadab, less concerned to prevent a scuffle than to resume his story, explained. ‘Their hands were covered. When he saw what had happened, the king was shocked and afraid to bring the Ark into the city in case the Lord reproached him for moving it or else Uzzah's touch had left it defiled.’
‘My father's not afraid of anything,’ Amnon said.
‘Mine too,’ Absalom said.
‘He's the same one, stupid!’
‘Your father is afraid of no man,’ Abigail interjected hastily, ‘but even the greatest king must be afraid of the Lord.’
‘Especially one who has sinned as greatly as David,’ I added. The children looked at me in surprise, their mothers in alarm. ‘Perhaps the Lord doesn’t wish to reside in his city?’
‘That's what the king intends to find out,’ Jonadab said. ‘So he has left the Ark in the care of another Levite, Obededom.’ Tamar giggled at the name. ‘He begged to be spared such an honour, but the king was adamant.’
I pictured Uzzah crushed beneath the cart-wheels and asked myself what sort of god would destroy a man who had sought to protect his throne. The answer was clear: a god who had withdrawn his favour from my father on the slimmest of pretexts; a god who had rewarded David, not in spite of but because of his faults, strengthening his position with every rape, theft and murder; a god stamped by ingratitude and perversity. David might regard the events of the day as a temporary reversal, but for me the reversal was permanent. I finally had the measure of my adversary No wonder Samuel told Father that his successor would be a man after the Lord's own heart.
David waited three months to discover whether disaster would strike the Levite. When he found that, on the contrary, the man and his whole household had prospered, he revived his plan to install the Ark in the heart of the city. On the day of its removal, the women of the harem, including the Jebusite queen, were once again summoned to greet it. To my surprise, Ahitophel informed me that I wasn’t to join them. He conducted me instead to the top of the gatehouse, insisting that I would have a better view of proceedings from the window. Politic as ever, he declared that David was concerned that I might be crushed in the crowd, already five or six deep. I thanked him, well aware that someone – most likely Ahinoam, whose honeyed smile concealed a sting – had told him of my warm reception last time, and he would countenance no rival.
From my vantage point, I watched as the Ark emerged from the house, no longer drawn by oxen but carried on poles. After a mere six paces, the procession halted and an ox and a calf were sacrificed at a provisional altar. The ritual was repeated after another six paces and then another, and I realised that the priests were to slaughter two beasts every six paces until they reached the tabernacle. The path ran with blood, and the air was thick with smoke and the stench of burning fat (from this distance, it was impossible to tell whether the spectators were cheering or choking). The musicians blew trumpets, shook timbrels and beat drums, and David began to dance, twisting and turning ever faster. As the priests offered a further sacrifice, David tore off his mantle, robe and tunic and, naked but for a loincloth, whirled like a prophet in ecstasy. To my dismay, I felt a flutter of attraction towards him. It was as though the past twenty years had been swept away and he was once again the youth who had cured my father, except that he had become one with his music. The songs he’d composed on his lyre he now played on his flesh. I gazed transfixed as he soared and spun, sweat spraying from his hair and glistening on his skin, until his loincloth fell loose and he exposed himself in a state fit only for his private chamber. Was he in a trance, conscious of no one but the Lord? Or had he contrived the accident with his usual care, eager to display the member in which he took such pride?
I shrank back in disgust: with David, but also with myself or, more precisely, the tremor in my loins. I left the gatehouse and waited in the street for the procession to arrive, before accompanying it into the tabernacle courtyard, where the priests performed a final sacrifice. They then carried the Ark into the holy place, while David remained outside to bestow the Lord's blessing on the people. To a roar of approval, he announced that his servants were to give everyone present a loaf of bread, a draught of wine and a portion of the thanksgiving offering. Leaving Joab to oversee the distribution, he returned to the palace. I followed him into the courtyard, where Ahitophel handed him a fresh robe, which he brushed aside. Regardless of the consequences, I knew that I must speak out.
‘David!’ I called, trembling as he turned to me, his face red, hair matted and eyes blazing.
‘What is it? I must go and bless my children.’
‘No, you’ll shame them, just as you’ve shamed yourself and the crown you stole from my father. You’ve made yourself the sport of every slave and bondwoman in the city.’
‘Enough, my lady,’ Ahitophel interjected, grabbing my arm.
‘What?’ David glared at him. ‘Do you suppose that she intimidates me or else that I cannot answer?’
‘Not at all, my lord,’ he replied, recoiling.
David drew close enough to bite me. I felt his hot breath on my cheeks and prayed that they wouldn’t flush; I sniffed the heavy musk of his skin.
‘It was your father who shamed himself!’ he said. ‘Your father, abandoned by the Lord and assailed by evil spirits. True, before the people I am the king; but before the Lord I am no more than those bondwomen. I am the meanest wretch, the humblest servant, for I am the Lord's own servant. It's you who shame yourself! You who have failed as a woman, who have failed as a wife. And you’ll carry your failure to the tomb. Let all here bear witness – ‘ he faltered on finding only Ahitophel, ‘that I disown you. Never again shall I lie with you. You’ll live among women who bask in the favour of their king and the love of their children. You’ll watch the triumph of the house of David and know that you have no place in it.’
He walked away. Ahitophel followed. I forced a smile but there was nobody to see.
FOUR
Bathsheba
Just as the Law says that a bird must be free of blood before it can be eaten, so a woman must be free of b
lood before she can be touched. Until then she is unclean but not dirty, although no one has yet explained the difference to me. So once a month I climb on to the roof and cleanse myself of my stain. I would prefer to bathe indoors, especially in winter, but Uriah insists that to fulfil the Law, the water must flow freely from its source. As I have no wish to walk to the Gihon spring, with everyone in the district knowing the reason, I rely on rainwater gathered in the cistern. The prickling cold makes me feel purer than the ritual itself.
My husband Uriah, while not an Israelite by birth, has studied the Law more closely than many who are. When he came to the land, he gave up the worship of his Hittite gods: Wurusema, the sun-goddess, Teshub, the weather-god, and their children with names like tickles in the throat, and devoted himself to the Lord. He even changed his own name from Muttallu to Uriah, which means God is Light, a far more auspicious name than Bathsheba, which merely means Daughter of an Oath.
Uriah is a captain in King David's guard. No sooner had he founded his city than the king set up our first permanent army. Although the troops are drawn from all the tribes, his personal guard consists entirely of foreigners such as Uriah, whom he hired to command his charioteers. He had been impressed by the weaponry when he lived in Philistia, an episode of which it's wisest not to speak. Nathan, the prophet who is chronicling the king's story, maintains that he risked his life, ingratiating himself with the enemy so as to bring back the secrets of the iron swords, spears and chariots without which he would never have vanquished the Philistines, along with our other adversaries. But behind closed doors and in hushed voices, the elders who visited my grandfather spoke of his fleeing there from King Saul, fighting in the Philistine army, and even swearing allegiance to the King of Gath. How was a young girl, for whom the outside world was hearsay, to know what to believe?
The official reason for the king's employing foreigners is that they have skills that the Israelites lack. The Hittites are expert horsemen, whereas few of our men even ride donkeys. But according to my grandfather, the real reason is that the king fears that the Israelites owe their ultimate loyalty to their tribal chiefs rather than to him. He was holding forth to two fellow counsellors while I played with my doll in the courtyard. I paid them more attention than they did me, not because their conversation was interesting but because it was the only one there was. ‘Surely that's wrong?’ I interposed. ‘The king should trust his own people more than strangers.’ Grandfather looked as shocked as if I had aimed a rock at him rather than a question. He sent me upstairs with orders to forget what I’d heard, which was the surest way to make me remember.
My grandfather raised me after the death of my parents. My father was killed, fighting in one of King David's campaigns. I recall nothing of it, except that it was a great victory and the king himself led the procession to his tomb. My mother was pregnant and, in her grief, she gave birth to my sister in her sixth month. They both died, my sister living long enough only to be given a name, Amalya. But I wasn’t allowed to say it out loud because it upset my grandmother. So I gave the name to my doll and for years it was a way both to keep Amalya's memory alive and to stave off loneliness. Then I lost the doll and it felt as if Amalya had died over again.
After Mother's death, my grandmother grew to hate me. She found fault with everything I did, never spoke to me unprompted and froze whenever I approached. Grandfather said it was because I reminded her of Mother, although if she had loved her as much as he claimed, surely she would have welcomed the reminder? Then she died too, and with Grandfather busy at the palace, I spent years alone in the house with no one but servants. As I grew up – too young to be sequestered from men but old enough to be admired by them – Grandfather liked me beside him when he received guests. He warned me against young men, but it was the old men who petted and pinched me, running their hands through my hair and even insinuating them inside my robe. When I complained to him, Grandfather replied that they had known me since I was a child and asked if I wanted to hurt their feelings. ‘Of course not,’ I said and apologised. Later, I wished that I’d asked why he’d allowed them to hurt mine.
My complaints must nonetheless have shaken him for, one day, after telling me that I was attracting too many glances in a tone that implied it was my own fault, he asked if I would like a husband. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ I replied, which was both true and false: true because I had never met a man or a boy I could contemplate marrying; false because I frequently pictured myself married to one of the heroes from the ancient stories, especially Joseph and Samson. They had little in common except for the Lord's favour and my esteem. With Joseph, I would linger in bed all day, stroking his smooth chest and kissing his downy cheeks, as we regaled each other with our dreams. With Samson, I would sink into his sinewy arms and run my fingers through his lustrous hair, taking care not to snap a single lock.
Grandfather looked relieved that there were no illicit attachments to hamper his choice. ‘His name is Uriah,’ he said. ‘A Hittite by birth; an Israelite by adoption.’
I was surprised that Grandfather, so jealous of his standing as the king's principal adviser, wished to marry me to a foreigner rather than the son of a tribal chief. Uriah, who treated me as an equal despite my age and sex, explained. ‘Ahitophel is a very cunning man. He knows that he will benefit from an alliance with one of the king's most respected captains – one, moreover, who will someday command the entire army,’ he said with a twinkle. ‘And who isn’t party to any of the deep-seated rivalries between the tribes.’
‘He told me that was the reason the king employed you,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t anyone in the palace trust anyone else?’
‘We trust our wives,’ he said and, in a rare display of affection (rare, I was coming to see because he loathed display and not because he lacked affection), he lifted me off my feet and whirled me round, before setting me down, deliriously dizzy.
The marriage contract was signed and the elders of the clan and the city attended the feast. Uriah brought several of his fellow soldiers, led by Joab, the king's great commander and our guest of honour. He kissed me with sump-like breath, the result, I later learnt, of a stomach wound that refused to heal. His heavily scarred arms looked as if children had used them to tally scores. Despite the sweep of his shoulders and the men at his command, he seemed lonely, which made me pity as well as fear him. No sooner had the cakes been served than Uriah and two of his friends rose to leave, prompting raucous comments from the men's tables and knowing smiles at ours. I had never missed my mother more, now that my only guidance for married life came from my grandfather, a list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts,’ much like the ones he used to give me as a child. He led me through the winding streets to a small house in the shadow of the palace. Seeing my new husband waiting at the gate, I realised for the first time that the steps I was taking could never be retraced. I would be Uriah's wife, the mother of Uriah's children, and one day, most likely, Uriah's widow. Yet I had never hoped for anything more, not least because my grandfather made it clear that there was nothing more for me to hope. ‘Don’t think you’re special,’ he would say, as he upbraided me for my latest misdemeanour. I didn’t... I don’t; I am happy with what I have.
Uriah smiled at me as though he were saluting; his two friends, whose duties ended at the threshold, greeted me more casually. I tried to ignore the pomegranate in my path, fearing that one of them had secreted it in his robe and dropped it without noticing. All was made plain when Grandfather borrowed Uriah's sword, handed it to me and, in a voice designed to carry (although there was no one but us to hear) declared: ‘May you be as fruitful as the seeds of this pomegranate!’ He told me to slice it open, but I miscalculated, striking the fruit on the side and knocking it down the street. Uriah's friends looked alarmed and Grandfather annoyed, but Uriah reassured them, saying: ‘Among my people it's seen as a good sign: that our children will be born without pain.’ Whether or not that were true, I loved him for it.
The pain of chi
ldbirth was a distant threat; that of the wedding night was imminent. Uriah was twenty years my senior and, unlike me, not obliged to prove his purity. Whereas my meagre knowledge of what lay beneath his tunic sprang from sneaked glimpses of goats in the meadows or, more ignobly, a trussed-up ram in the tabernacle, he was well acquainted with what lay beneath mine. My fear of disappointing him was almost as strong as my fear of his hurting me. Both proved to be groundless. While I expected him to take me with as little prelude as a goat, he showed himself charmed by every contour of my body. He tickled and touched and tongued until I shrieked and squirmed in delight. Who would have thought that the crook of my arm and the back of my knee would be so tingly or that my breasts would thrill to a mouth other than a child's? Ecstasy surged through me as he removed my under-tunic, exposing the part permitted only to him. He pulled off his loincloth and entered me, both celebrating and dissolving the distinctions that had ruled my life ever since I’d learnt about Adam and Eve. Any soreness was lost in a welter of sensations so intoxicating that the stains on the bedsheet the next morning might as well have been wine. What's more, when he hung it over the gate like a victory banner, I felt no shame.
Straight afterwards, he left for the palace as though we had been married for ten or even twenty years. I asked him lightly if he put his duty to the king before his duty to his wife. ‘Of course,’ he said, and I assumed that he was joking, only to discover that Hittites don’t joke. Israelites do, of course, and he told me that the king had teased him about his wedding night, which he clearly found distasteful, although he wouldn’t admit it. I was eager to meet the man who inspired such devotion and Uriah promised to take me to one of the palace feasts. Grandfather, whose unease at the prospect showed how little he trusted me to foster the links that were his life's work, reminded me that I had met the king already, when he attended my father's entombment. But I had been so daunted by the stories of his punishing disobedient children that I hadn’t raised my eyes above his knees.
The Anointed Page 20
