How are the Mighty fallen

by Thomas Burnett Swann

  David embraced her and smelled the salt from the sea, “If Samuel’s prophecy should come to pass that the anointed should rule”-he could not bring himself to speak his own name-“then the witch and the sorcerer will once again be welcome in Israel.”

  “He is in Sheol?” Ahinoam asked uncertainly. “I could not be sure.”

  “He is in No-Land,” said David. “It is worse than Sheol. There aren’t even shadows to keep him company.”

  “David, David, what shall we do?” The old eyes in the young face besought his answer. Her question deferred to his strength, but he felt like a lost and forsaken child. She, she should know every answer to every question. She was the queen, she was the Siren, immortal of beauty, powerful even in ruin.

  “He told me to find Saul’s body and those of his sons and give them decent burial. They are in Beth-Shan.”

  “Nailed to the walls of a temple.” She shuddered. “It is the Philistine way. But how can we enter an enemy town without an army?”

  “The Philistines are drunk with their victory. No one will think to guard the bodies.”

  “We cannot go alone. We cannot carry the bodies.”

  “When he first became king, your husband defended the town of Jabesh-Gilead against the army of Nahash, the Ammonite. The people swore fealty to Saul and his descendants. They fought with him gallantly in his last battle, but some, no doubt, escaped and fled with Abner among the hills. They will doubtless retreat to their high-walled town. Let us go there now and ask their help.”

  – The walk was long and difficult; a Night Stalker flew at Ahinoam out of a tamarisk tree and David beat him to death with his bare fists and cast him at her feet. All of the night and all of the following day they walked toward Jabesh-Gilead, the city as old as Cain; sometimes they hid in caves or hovels from the marauding Philistines. There was little to steal in the huts of the Israelites, and the beauty of Israelite women, dark and voluptuous, was not to the taste of the victors, but victory was wine to them and drunkenness made them cruel. Ahinoam hid her gold beneath a rustic’s robe, and David dyed his hair with the brown ocher from the banks of a stream. Sometimes the natives knew them by the way they walked, or the way David moved his arms, with rapid, sure motions, always the slinger, or the way Ahinoam never lowered her eyes, even to face the sun, and gave them provisions and water until they came at last to Jabesh-Gilead, which, like a grim but kindly spirit, guarded a fertile valley of vineyards and olive trees.“ The town was wracked by grief over Israel’s loss, but Ahinoam and David, though kingdom-less, were greeted like a queen and a prince.

  “We bring danger with us,” David was prompt to confess. “The Philistines have turned against me because I would not fight with them against Israel, and they would like to lead Ahinoam in chains through Gaza and Askelon.”

  The answer was unequivocal. “We have our walls. We remember Saul.”

  Ahinoam smiled with the old artless witchery of her youth. “You do us honor, my faithful friends. Yet we have more to ask. Listen to David’s plan.”

  “You owe me nothing,” said David. “After my wanderings in the desert, I served the Philistines for three years. I dined with Achish, the seren of Gath, and ruled in Ziklag.”

  “You are not to blame. It was Saul who hounded you through the wilderness and into the arms of the foe.”

  “Nor was he to blame. His demon drove him to madness. Will you help me recover his body and that of his sons from the walls of Beth-Shan?”

  Without exception the people of the town-and surely the smallest child to the oldest graybeard had gathered to greet these famous exiles-agreed to the plan. It was as if slaves had discarded their chains or cowards had discovered courage. At least a hundred warriors pleaded to join the group, even an old one-legged man on crutches who remembered Deborah; the women encouraged their husbands and sons and promised to offer Yahweh a sacrifice of thirty cattle and sixty sheep, a costly gift for so poor a town.

  But David sought valor and not numbers. It was hard to find men who had not been wounded on the slopes of Gilboa. But finally he chose his band-ten of them-not so much for their strength as for a look in their eyes which seemed to say: “We have fought much but not too much. For Jonathan, the pride of Israel, we would fight the Giants of Gath!” After he had made his choice-and they were quick to answer the famous David of the red hair and rapid arm-he spoke in a quiet firm voice:

  “We will all wear tunics like soldiers and shave our cheeks and trust to the night and the drunkenness of the victors. May Yahweh walk with us.” (The Goddess was little worshipped in Jabesh-Gilead, but Ahinoam whispered to David, “And I will plead with the Lady and shear the locks from my head.”)

  Ahinoam took his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.

  “If I were a man, I would fight at your side,” she said. “Bring back my husband’s body. He loved the earth-seedtime, harvest, and haying-and therefore I loved him, though he was called to the wars against his will and finally came to like them.” (She did not reproach him for Rizpah.) “Bring back my sons to me, and the son whom I loved the best. Once, when you fought Goliath, I hurled green magic against him. I have no magic to send with you now-except my love of the Lady.”

  “I will do as you say,” said David, loving her because she was a great queen who made a splendor of exile and an exaltation of grief; because, like the simplest farmer’s wife, she must suffer the loss of her husband and sons; and because she was Jonathan’s mother. To look at her you would have thought that she had slept on eiderdown and stepped, fragrant and glistening, from her bath. Honey Hair! But David had passed beyond desire or awe; to him she was his second friend.

  – Distances were short, even if difficult and often pathless, in Israel. It was a single day’s walk to Beth-Shan. But the Philistines had overrun the countryside like a plague of flies. No one questioned David and his men. Except for David, they were shorter and shaggier than most Philistines, their features were aquiline, their skin and hair dark. They were farmers and herdsmen who worked in the fields by day and returned to their huts in Jabesh-Gilead only at night; they were not of the sea or the city. But some of the Israelites had fought for Philistia as mercenaries; such seemed David and his men, and no one attempted to question them. David, already brown of hair, smeared his tunic with dirt and blood like a veteran of Gilboa and hid his face with a hood.

  Beth-Shan was enkindled with torches and riotous with merrymakers. The garrison was small; the priests more numerous than soldiers. It was a sacred town, a town of temples to Dagon and Ashtoreth, and no enemy had presumed to attack its low and indefensible walls, not even the Israelites, who, though they execrated Dagon even above Baal, secretly honored the Lady.

  No one questioned them as they entered the gate, between the two stone images, one of fish-tailed Dagon with the face and arms of a man, the other of Ashtoreth cradling fruit in her arms.

  They followed the revelers to the temple of Dagon. The Israelites did not build temples to Yahweh-they worshipped him at an altar of clumsily piled stones or under the spreading limbs of a sacred tree. Philistine temples were foreign to them. Red, swelling columns, blue walls, flat roofs covered with decorative tiles… porticoes and altars of chiseled green marble… courtyards where maidens danced the slow, shuffling Dance of the Crane… priests with shaven heads, the young in loincloths, the old in robes which reached to their ankles: these were the echoes of Crete which honored the fish-tailed god.

  The body of Saul had been nailed to the wall by his hands, and his severed head had been raised on a stake at his feet. His younger sons by Ahinoam, Ahinidab and Machishua, also slain in the battle, hung beside him. Only Jonathan was not with them; the Philistines had respected him even in death; they doubtless knew that he was not Saul’s son; they did not wish or perhaps they feared to dismember a Siren’s son. They had bound him by leather straps to a column of Ashtoreth’s temple. Except for the blood on his face, he was as white as the salt flats around the Dead Sea, an
d sad in sleep, as if he were haunted by dreams. But death, like a lover, had left him beautiful.

  Philistine soldiers were hurling clods of earth at the head of Saul. His features were blurred beyond recognition. The eyes were gone, the gray hair was clotted with blood.

  They were making sport of him with words as well as blows. The Philistines taught their children by questions and answers known as Wisdoms. It was a form which they could raise to an art or lower to a curse.

  “Where is your crown, oh king of Israel who would drive us into the sea? Where are the shepherds who sleep beneath the sky and wield their staves instead of their swords?”

  “On Gilboa,” the answer rang. “Ask the vultures to show you the way.”

  “Where is Rizpah, harlot of Israel?”

  “Seek her in chains beside the unchanging sea.

  Hatred burned in David like the poison of wild gourds. It was not of the gods, whatever men said, this thing which drove them to fight and kill and exult. Or else it was Hate, and men should raise him a temple or heap him an altar of stones. David must fight him now or leap on the revelers backs as if they were a pride of lions. But reason restrained him, the weir which checked the turbulence of his nature. He remembered the similar cruelties of the Israelites. He had seen them conquer a town, massacre women along with men, children along with mothers.

  “We will wait now,” he said. “The Philistines will soon exhaust themselves and sleep. Let us pretend to join them. Sing and dance and reel in the streets, and pretend to hurl clay at our king. But drink neither wine nor beer. Our time will come.”

  The Lady Moon descended the heavens, slowly, slowly, as if she wished to illumine the merrymaking (she was much honored by the Philistines, who mistook her for Ashtoreth; but the Goddess would close her eyes upon such a sight). The cries of merriment dwindled to a low, murmurous titter, then into such a silence as follows a battle, whether defeat or victory. Men fell asleep in their tracks and slid to the earth, friend leaned against friend. Mongrels, a cat, a goat prowled through the streets in search of food but kept their distance from the sleeping men.

  “Now,” said David. ‘

  The bodies were strangely light; Saul seemed an ancient scarecrow, the sons beside him like little children. They had lost much blood. There was an odor of death about them, like the damp and decay in a cellar of moldering bones. Except Jonathan. The wild grasses of Gilboa had cloaked him in a green fragrance. With infinite tenderness, without the help of his friends, David lowered his body to the ground. (No one shall touch him but me. No one shall be his blanket against the cold.)

  They borrowed robes from the sleepers to hide the bodies. Nobody stopped them as they left the town. A drowsy guard at the gate nodded good night.

  “Too much beer?” he mumbled, pointing to the shrouded bodies.

  “Yes, that and the battle.

  “They’ll be drinking beer from Gaza to Bethlehem tomorrow!” he chortled.

  In a forest beyond Beth-Shan, they threaded litters of willow wands and carried their burden for most of the night.

  “Stop here and rest,” said David in a grove of palms and tamarisks, beside a well with crumbling walls and an old copper bucket on a rusted chain. The men dipped water and drank and stretched wearily on their robes and slept the sleep of the dead. The water was clean and cold. The wind made lyre notes in the swaying fronds.

  David leaned his back against a tree, unable to sleep, with Jonathan’s head in his lap. Like most of his people, he had no fear of death; he had fought too many battles. It did not even seem to him that Jonathan was dead.

  “Little brother,” he said. “You were older than I. You taught me how to fight. But I grew taller than you in the wilderness, and at the last it was I you needed to shield you from the giant. I should have taken the arrow in my breast.”

  And David sang:

  “The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places:

  How are the mighty fallen!

  Tell it not in Gath,

  Publish it not in the streets of Askelon;

  Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

  Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

  Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,

  Neither let there be rain, upon you,

  Nor fields of offerings; for there the shield of the Mighty Is vilely cast away, The shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.

  From the blood of the slain,

  From the fat of the mighty,

  The bow of Jonathan turned not back,

  And the sword of Saul returned not empty.

  Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,

  And in their death they were not divided: They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, Who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

  How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

  0 Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.

  1 am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

  Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

  How are the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished.“

  He lifted Jonathan lightly in his arms and laid him on the grass beside the well. He raised a bucket of water and, tearing a linen strip from his own tunic, bathed the blood from Jonathan’s face and started to bind the arrow wound in his chest. He turned the body in his lap, as one might turn a baby to sprinkle him with myrrh. Only then did he see the hunched and swollen back beneath the cloth.

  “They have crippled you!” he cried. “How could I fail to see when I carried you from the town?”

  Angrily he parted the back of Jonathan’s tunic to wash the wounds. Freed of encumbering cloth, amber wings expanded like flames into the air, the great burning glories of the time beyond remembering when the dead ascended, unwearied, to the Celestial Vineyard.

  It is a dream, he thought. I sleep and miracles come to taunt me. (But what had Jonathan said? “ Perhaps you will find a sign…”)

  One of the men from Jabesh-Gilead had wakened to David’s song and walked, unnoticed, to stand beside him.

  He stared in wonderment at the sudden wings.

  “The Goddess?” he asked.

  “She must have called to him.

  “I have heard of such things. There is a place where they go to meet her, those whom she calls. Sirens, and others too who have loved her in life.”

  “The Celestial Vineyard?”

  “It has many names. But it is not like Sheol. It lies above us, does it not? Beyond them” He pointed to the stars, which no longer seemed cold and uncompanionable, but friendly torches against the Liliths and the Night Stalkers. North Star, Dog Star, Great Bear…

  I will greet them when Jonathan comes to find me, he thought. Yahweh, be with me and the queen I love. Forgive us; accept our forgiveness.

  Now I must find a throne and join the mountains to the sea.

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