Uriah had no family and I knew none of his comrades’ wives, so my grandfather was my only visitor, although his visits felt more like a tithe collector's than a guest's. For the rest, I was left to my own devices and those of Matred, our Edomite bondwoman, who, I was astounded to learn, had been a priestess in the service of their god, Qaus. I was horrified, then intrigued, then horrified again when she told me that they venerated Qaus not with animal blood but with human seed and their means of extracting it were those of a harlot.
‘Did you use them on Uriah?’ I asked, wondering if that were why he insisted I treat her with respect.
‘No!’ she replied, outraged. ‘The master is a good man, the best I’ve ever known. When your troops vanquished ours, they came into the grove that was our sanctuary and violated the women, as if our bodies were dedicated to the worshippers rather than the god. The master put an end to it, although some of the men were so crazed that they challenged him. He would never do anything dishonourable.’
I see this for myself when he lies with me each night, no matter how far he has ridden during the day. While careful to show my gratitude, I assure him that I shan’t be offended if one night he wishes to rest, whereupon he explains that the same Law that requires a wife to be clean for her husband requires a husband to satisfy his wife.
‘So it's your duty?’ I ask, as evenly as possible.
‘Which I discharge with pleasure,’ he says, smiling. Such a mixture of duty and pleasure is his precept for happiness.
I shall fulfil that precept when I bear a child. I am seventeen years old and have been married for almost a year. How much longer must I wait? Each night as he withdraws from me, I pray that he has filled me with new life, but I bleed as regularly as if my body were a calendar. My frustration is set to continue, since he is leaving to fight the Ammonites, whose king, Hanun, has dishonoured our emissaries in a manner too obscene for Uriah to describe. The king is sending Joab with an army to avenge them. On the eve of their departure, I join the many women making offerings to the Lord but, while I pray for the men's safe return, my foremost prayer is that he will use this last evening to make me fruitful. My hopes are dashed when Uriah sleeps alone, explaining that he and his men also went to the tabernacle, where they swore to abstain from lying with their wives until they achieve victory.
I resign myself to weeks – perhaps months – of loneliness, with nothing to divert me but my loom. I have promised to make Uriah a new mantle but leave most of the work to Matred, whose fingers are more nimble and mind less abstracted than mine. When my monthly blood flows, I am tempted to avoid the weary climb and jet of chilly water but, for all our shared secrets, I’m aware that Matred's first loyalty is to Uriah and fear that she might betray me. So I make my way to the roof. Cleansed, I return to my chamber and have scarcely finished dressing when I’m startled by an insistent knocking at the gate.
No casual caller would come so late and, as Matred hurries downstairs, I’m tortured by the thought that Uriah has been wounded – or worse. But she returns with a spidery man whose imperious smile, otherwise so disconcerting, cannot herald bad news. He announces himself as Jonadab, the king's nephew and steward of the palace. I bow low, which he seems to expect. Looking up, I see his lean cheeks, as pink as a child's, and the trim beard confined to his chin, but the lamp is too dim to make out his eyes. He presses his thumbs under his arms like a bat's wings.
‘What is it that they call you, my lady?’
I laugh with relief. If he doesn’t know me, he can’t have news for me and must be visiting the neighbourhood.
‘Forgive me. I am Bathsheba bat Eliam. My husband, Uriah, is a captain in the king's guard. My grandfather, Ahitophel, is his chief counsellor.’
‘I know them well,’ he says, although the acquaintance seems to perturb him. ‘But what of you? Do you also wish to serve the king?’
‘I am a woman.’
‘Nonetheless. The king has sent me to summon you.’
‘Why?’ My fears return. ‘Has something happened to Uriah?’
‘Possibly.’ He shrugs. ‘News travels slowly.’
‘Then why?’
‘No need to play the innocent with me!’ He moves close. Now I see his eyes and shrink from their malice. ‘Come!’
‘At this hour?’
‘To the king, all hours are equal. Woman, fetch your mistress's mantle!’
Matred does as he bids. I look to her for an explanation, but she refuses to meet my gaze. As I follow Jonadab, I realise that I have only ever ventured out this late in dreams. We enter the palace courtyard and I’m heartened by the soldiers standing guard, who remind me of Uriah. I long to explore and round out his all-too-terse descriptions, but Jonadab beckons me forward. We climb two sets of stairs, the first wide and shallow, the second narrow and steep. Once again I find myself on the roof, although this one is higher and, while it may be my imagination, the air feels fresher. I fill my lungs and forget the peremptory summons as I survey the city below me, glittering in the starlight. Suddenly, a voice, hitherto reserved for crowds, addresses me.
‘He found you. That's good. Very good.’ Jonadab falls to his knees and, with a tug of my robe, pulls me down beside him. ‘Up, up!’ the voice says testily. I know that it is the king's but I am anxious not to acknowledge it too soon.
‘Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, captain of the guard, my lord,’ Jonadab says.
‘Uriah? So your husband is at war?’
‘Yes, my lord. I trust that no harm has come to him.’
‘What? No, of course not.’ He advances on me and grips my chin. It smarts. I close my eyes and sense that he's appraising me much as my grandmother did a prospective servant. ‘Good, good.’ He moves away and I seize the opportunity to study him. Except for my father's obsequies, I have seen him only in parades and processions and presumed that the distance made him seem small. His chest and belly are round and firm. His hair is thin and grey and his scalp flaky, but his face, although heavily lined, remains handsome. For all that, his looks are less imposing than his presence. He exudes gravity and power, even splendour. ‘Why are you still here? Go, go!’ he says to Jonadab, who bows and leaves with an unbroken grin, as if inured to such rebukes, after which the king walks back to me. The night is so still that I hear his breath, which comes faster than his steady gait might suggest.
‘I have longed to see you again.’
‘My lord must be mistaken. He hasn’t seen me since I was a girl.’
‘There's no need to be coy.’ He takes my arm and pulls me towards the parapet. My heart pounds in terror that he intends to throw me off. ‘Look!’ He points to a house two streets away, its roof in full view. How can I have been so blind? Like a child who shuts her eyes and imagines that she can’t be seen, I have assumed that because I can’t look up to the palace roof, no one on the palace roof can look down on me.
‘I was walking here earlier this evening and I saw you bathe. I thought I must be dreaming. Then I saw you dry yourself and knew that I was awake.’
‘I’m so ashamed, my lord. I had no idea that I could be overseen.’
‘Really? Everyone in the city knows that I come up here in the evenings. When an easterly wind blows, the palace is stifling. This is the only cool spot. I’ve had the servants make up a bed.’
I follow his hand to the bed, its rumpled sheets as incriminating as my unemptied tub. ‘Forgive me, my lord. While my husband's away, I live quietly. I hear no news from outside. I didn’t know that it was your custom.’
‘And I say you did!’ His abrupt roar makes me quake, but more frightening than his fury is his certitude. ‘Why else would you bathe in the open?’
‘To obey the Law, my lord,’ I reply, keen to remind him of an authority higher than his own. ‘I was purifying myself after my monthly flow.’
‘Must you?’ he asks, flinching. I’m surprised that a man who has shed so much blood should recoil from that which issues naturally. ‘So now you’re free to lie with
a man again?’
‘But Uriah is away.’
‘Yes, of course. Is he a good husband?’
‘He's the only one I have.’
He laughs as if I’ve made a joke. ‘He has served me well. If all goes to plan, he should advance.’
I glimpse his meaning but blot it out, in case he sees the horror in my eyes. ‘If all goes to plan in the campaign, my lord?’ I ask.
‘There and elsewhere,’ he says, with another laugh. ‘I long to be with them, outside the walls of Rabbah, instead of stuck at home. At least I did until tonight.’
‘You should be there, my lord,’ I say, desperate to distract him. ‘The city could be taken in half – a quarter – of the time.’ I recall Uriah's reverence for him. ‘The men would fight twice as hard with their king at their head.’
‘My nephew Joab and his generals think otherwise. They claim that my presence in the field is too great a risk. What would happen if I were to be injured or even killed? It's true that I have sons, but the oldest is only eighteen. I have yet to settle – ’ He breaks off. The real reason of course is that they consider me too old... no longer the man I was. So where does that leave Joab, who's three years older? How old would you say I am?’
‘Sixty,’ I reply hesitantly.
‘Sixty!’
‘I was about to say that you are as wise as a man of sixty, although you look no more than forty.’
He smiles and I breathe again, whereupon he lunges at me, stinging my lips with a kiss. ‘You’re right. I’ll show you I’m a match for men twenty years younger.’ He grabs me with one hand, while with the other he wrenches the mantle off my back. I try both to resist and shame him, thrusting him away and shouting: ‘No, my lord, please! Think of your honour... Uriah... your daughters... the Lord!’ My words have no effect as he grips the top of my robe, tearing Matred's delicate embroidery. My nail catches his neck and draws blood. At once he smacks me across the cheek. I am startled and hurt but above all relieved to have halted his attack. I know that I must pay for my defiance. He will banish me to the wastes of the Negeb, but Uriah will join me and we shall be free.
‘Make no mistake,’ he says. ‘I am not a man who likes to fight for his pleasures. I fought for the kingdom. The rest I take as my right.’
‘Am I my lord's subject or my lord's slave?’
‘Both, if I wish it.’ He stares at me coldly, but the coldness in his heart hasn’t quenched the fire in his loins. He clutches my mantle, now hanging off one shoulder, pulling it to the ground.
‘I shall scream.’
‘Go ahead. This is a palace; people are accustomed to screams.’
Trapped and silenced, I know that I am lost. He rips off my robe so brutally that I suspect he is picturing it as my flesh. I am overwhelmed by his odour: not the heavy smell of a day's exertion but the reek of a stew left too long on the hearth. His mouth catches mine and our teeth clack. His hands squeeze my breasts so tightly that he seems intent on making them one. He drags me to the bed, cursing as he trips on my trailing robe. He sprawls over me, sweating and salivating, and his wetness is as loathsome as his weight. I pretend that I am a doll, telling myself that I’ve been wicked and must be punished, as if this violence – this violation – were my own choice. He presses his hand over my mouth and I wonder if I have spoken my reproach out loud or if the very quiver of my lips offends him. I bite his palm but, with my mouth crushed, it's a mere peck. I look up at the stars and try to work out which is Kimah and which Kezil, but his sweat blurs my vision. He rams into me as if he were storming a citadel. Then, croaking like a frog before rain, he topples forward and rolls across the bed. He grabs my under-tunic and covers his loins, less, I feel sure, to protect his modesty than his pride.
He claps his hands and the summons is answered with dismaying speed by Jonadab, who compounds my shame as he passes me my robe. Although I recognise it, I am uncertain what it's for, as though the injury I’ve suffered is to the head. ‘Do you want help?’ he asks, and the threat of his slithery fingers touching my skin rouses me. I snatch the robe from him and pull it on, its rips matching my own. I stand upright, aching even in parts of my body that the king hasn’t mauled, and stoop for my mantle, drawing it around me like a shroud. Jonadab offers me his arm, which I slap away. Looking hurt, he steers me towards the stairs, his hand a palm's breadth from my shoulder. Before going down, I turn to take a last – what I trust will be my last – look at the king, who lies slumped on the bed, not acknowledging or seemingly aware of me. Jonadab leads me back through the courtyard, which is still lined with soldiers. I feel an intense urge to shriek out my story, enlightening them about the king they serve, but I doubt that they would be shocked. My life has changed more in two hours than in seventeen years, and I suspect that every man would be a David if he had the chance.
Quitting the palace, we enter a street that's unaccountably calm. The people may be asleep, but I wonder that the stones themselves don’t cry out against the king's villainy. I swat a fly from my ear, only to discover that it is Jonadab's chatter.
‘The king is an incomparable lover,’ he says and, the next thing I know, he is carrying me into my courtyard. ‘Don’t be alarmed!’ he tells Matred. ‘Your mistress swooned in the street, overawed by her good fortune.’
‘I’ll attend to her,’ Matred says. ‘You may go, my lord.’
Jonadab looks aggrieved. ‘Of course. But first...’ He shakes down his sleeve to reveal a whorl of gold bands. He removes one and gives it to me.
‘For you.’
‘From you?’ I ask in confusion.
‘From the king,’ he says, and I wonder whether he hands them out like a foreman's pirn stones.
‘I don’t want it,’ I say, giving it back.
‘You will,’ he says, dropping it at my feet. He then turns and leaves, as though discarding me with equal ease.
Matred helps me up the stairs and bathes me with the rose water I was saving for Uriah's return. Uriah! But I mustn’t think of him. I clasp her wrist as she wipes the fluids cruelly mingled on my loins.
‘You’ll say nothing to the master,’ I order or ask or plead, her loyalty to Uriah now my prime concern.
‘What is there to say? My lady is well. She is young and healthy. She may be bruised but bruises fade.’
I want to kiss her but my lips are tainted, so I squeeze her hand.
Loneliness is my salvation as, with so few visitors, I have little call to lie. My wounds mend and my pains diminish, but my eyes remain raw, welling with tears even when I’m not feeling sad. The news from Rabbah is disheartening. The Ammonites have mounted a vigorous defence, receiving support from their old allies, the Arameans. Matred returns from the well with reports that the king of Damascus has sent twenty thousand reinforcements (a figure that my grandfather derides). Having longed for Uriah's return, I’m now grateful for the delay, since I am not yet ready to face him. I can talk without stuttering; I can even smile when Matred prompts me; but my body needs time to accept that Uriah isn’t David. Until then, I’m afraid of pushing him away.
Matred, whose body was a conduit for her god's worship, exhorts me to forget my violation, as if the darkness and the hour enable me to dismiss it as a dream. But I wrestle with it night and day. Why did the king want me when he is rumoured to keep a harem of a hundred women – wives, concubines and slave-girls – to satisfy his every desire? Was he prowling the roof, bitter at being kept from the field? Was he so hungry for conquest that any woman would have served his purpose, or did something in me arouse him? Was I enjoying the sensation of the water on my skin... the soap on my skin... my skin itself... too much? I vow that, no matter how vehemently Uriah protests, I shall never bathe in the open again.
Six weeks later, I discover that the need for such bathing has passed. At first I think... I hope... I lie to myself that the shock of the violation has disrupted my monthly cycle. Never before have I yearned for the nagging cramps in my belly and thighs. In their place I endure a
queasiness the moment I wake, which returns whenever I eat or drink, smell or even see food. Matred tempts me with simple dishes of buttermilk, lentil cakes and porridge, but I reason that if I starve myself, the new life – the living death – inside me will wither. I implore her to obtain some of the purgative herbs that her fellow priestesses took on falling pregnant, but she claims that they only grow in Edom. When I challenge her, she adds that they’re poisonous and several of the women perished. In desperation, I consider confiding in my grandfather but, when the occasion arises, I’m too ashamed. So I take the one course left to me and appeal to the man I had hoped never to see again, not even leading a victory parade.
My grandmother urged my grandfather not to teach me to write, arguing that nothing good would come of it. Had I had a brother, I’ve no doubt that he would have agreed, but he was determined to pass on his learning to his only grandchild. Never have I been more indebted to him than now, when I write to the king, begging him for a private audience. On the appointed day, I take the petition to the palace and wait at the door of the great chamber with one other woman in a huddle of men. She informs me that her husband died last year and his brother has laid claim to his land. She's appealing to the king to protect her sons’ inheritance.
‘What about you?’ she asks indifferently.
‘My husband is in the army at Rabbah. His mother is dying and I’m requesting that he be granted leave to see her.’
Never before have I lied so easily, but then never before have I had such cause. I enter the chamber and, after giving my name, hear the official announce: ‘Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, captain of the king's guard.’ I steel myself to stare at the king but, if he feels any remorse, he hides it as well as I do my repugnance. Emulating the widow, I fall to my knees and crawl forward to kiss his feet, as sickening as a putrid stew, but I’ve reckoned without my grandfather. How can I have forgotten that he would be here, indeed standing beside the throne? He leans over and whispers to the king who nods and, before I can reach him, Grandfather grabs me and hauls me out of the chamber. We linger in the passage while he catches his breath.
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