The Secret Book of Kings: A Novel

by Yochi Brandes

  “We must pray that God gives Goliath into the hands of a scoundrel.” In spite of the situation, I was still able to laugh at the ironic conclusion. “The worse he is, the higher the bride price, and with it your chances of remaining free.”

  She looked up at me. I was startled by the dark circles under her eyes. “If we’re praying, I’d rather pray that God gives Goliath into the hands of Adriel.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea,” I said, impressed. “You must write to him immediately and tell him about the prize.”

  “You think he hasn’t heard about it already? My brave Adriel is at the front line and isn’t allowed to leave his duties to run around between Gath and the Valley of Elah. Only the good-for-nothings who haven’t joined the army can spend their time that way.”

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks, I was so immersed in my sister’s grief that I took no notice of the obvious distress of another member of our family. Mother wasn’t a demanding person, and so it was easy for us to disregard her worries and turn a blind eye to her anguish. Even when the servants summoned us to see her, we assumed it was just for a routine visit. Only when we saw her lying motionless in her bed did we realize what our self-absorption had done to her during these difficult days. My first reaction was paralysis; that’s how I’ve always responded to sudden stress. But Merab, ever the practical one, came to her senses quickly. She massaged Mother’s temples, blew air into her mouth, and called for help. By the time the doctors arrived Mother had already opened her eyes, and all that was left was to give her a strengthening elixir and instruct her to rest. We sat beside her in silence. What could we say? How can one cheer up a mother whose two sons are on the front lines? What words can one say to a wife whose nation’s destiny rests on the shoulders of her husband?

  “The one who saved our ancestors from the Egyptians will save us from the Philistines,” I finally muttered.

  Merab gestured for me to shut up. I, too, felt that such hackneyed slogans only made the feeling of despair worse, and I hung my head in shame. But suddenly we heard a sharp scream, followed by a deafening ruckus. Before we had a chance to go out to see what had happened, Mother’s servant burst inside and fell upon her with kisses. Everyone knew that Mother was a warm and gracious queen, who didn’t put on airs, but kisses from the servants were still unusual. We stared at her in astonishment and awaited an explanation.

  “We won! We won!” the servant cried. “Our soldiers are chasing down the Philistines, killing them in their own cities. They say that we’ve reached all the way to the gates of Ekron.”

  Merab and I traded stunned looks. Our joy over the sudden salvation was mixed with anxiety over what was still unknown, and our complicated emotions left us frozen in our tracks. Mother, who had heard nothing of Father’s prize, shook her head dismissively and ordered the servant out. “The war hasn’t even started yet,” she declared. “I forbid you to spread false rumors.”

  In spite of the queen’s orders, the rumors continued to arrive at the palace all day long, each one more positive than the one before, and by evening everyone in Benjamin had heard them. The people gathered around the palace, cheering, dancing, and celebrating, and they shouted in unison, “Long live the king! Long live the army of Israel!”

  Mother felt she deserved to rest after the difficult day she’d had, and she tried to bury her head in her blankets, but the screaming grew louder. “It’s impossible to sleep in this palace,” she groused. “Those Benjaminites are wild animals—wolves, simply wolves.”

  At the height of her despair, she ordered the servants to summon her daughters back, so that she would have someone with whom to pass the sleepless night.

  “They are not in their room,” the servant reported.

  “They are curious girls.” Mother sighed affectionately. “Especially Michal. Whenever something is happening outside, she feels the need to climb up to the highest room in the palace to look out the window. She loves windows, my little one.”

  Had Mother known where we actually were at that late hour, she would have fainted a second time. Had she known where my love of windows would lead me in the future, she would have begged for death. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Windows will return to my story later on, but at this moment I was sitting on the back of a galloping horse, clinging on to Merab from behind. We’d never been out on the roads by ourselves before, let alone at such a late hour, but my concern for my sister’s fate had given me courage. I wasn’t afraid of runaway slaves, outlaws, or scoundrels. Only one thing made me shiver: the thought of Father’s expression when he found out where his two sheltered princesses had strayed.

  “He will never know,” Merab reassured me as she confidently pointed the horse toward a dark ravine.

  “They’ll recognize us right away at the camp. Many of the soldiers know our faces. We always appear on the dais during the parades.”

  “No one will pay any attention to two girls dressed in rags. They only recognize us in our gowns and our crowns.”

  I tried not to think of the menacing darkness and asked Merab how she had learned the way to Judah.

  “We traveled to Hebron two years ago, don’t you remember?”

  Of course I remembered. As princesses, we spent most of our days within the confines of the palace, allowed to go outside only on rare occasions, and then only within the land of Benjamin. But one year Father took us to celebrate Ephraim’s Festival of Rain at the Shiloh temple. The Judeans protested the royal visit, claiming that our father favored the tribes of Rachel. To appease them, the following year we celebrated Judah’s Festival of Ingathering at the Hebron temple.

  The realization that we would be passing near Bethlehem made me shudder. I focused my thoughts on my beloved and was alarmed to find that I couldn’t conjure up his face, as if a malevolent hand had wiped the memory of him from my mind. But I remembered well the way his face beamed and the sparkle in his eyes, and those images accompanied me throughout the journey.

  “The God of Israel was at our side,” I said with relief when we arrived safely at the Valley of Elah.

  “Let’s hope He stays at our side.” I couldn’t see her face in the dark, but I detected the bitterness in her voice.

  “I’m sure that we defeated the Philistines without killing the giant.” I tried to express my optimism in a decisive tone of voice. “No hero will receive you as his prize.”

  “Let it be so,” she said through her tears. “Please, let it be so.”

  I had imagined a large, well-organized camp with polished soldiers marching in straight lines, as they did in the victory marches, but to my disappointment we found ourselves in a crowded and dirty tent area, in the midst of a boisterous crowd, just like the one that had surrounded our palace the night before. Large torches burned everywhere, inside and outside the tents, and in their light we could see that most of the people were not soldiers, but civilians—men, women, and even a few children—who had heard about the great victory and hurried down to the Valley of Elah. I was relieved to find that Merab had been right. No one gave us a second look. We looked just like the other sweaty women filling the camp.

  “How did we achieve the victory?” Merab asked one of the girls.

  “A panicked retreat,” she said, her eyes alight. “Just like in Mikmash.”

  “Who caused them to flee?”

  “The God of Israel, of course.”

  “But how?” my sister angrily demanded.

  The girl shrugged and walked away, her wooden clogs clacking against the rocky ground and the bells around her ankles softly ringing. When she was already behind us, she turned back. “We killed their giant!” she called. “A heroic warrior brought the king his severed head.”

  * * *

  Merab’s weeping continued until morning, when the crier announced the king’s victory speech.

  “We have to hide,” I said, tugging her arm. “Father might notice us.”

  She gave me a vacant stare but let her
self be dragged into the bushes at the edge of the camp.

  It took a long time before we finally heard the sounds of trumpets announcing the arrival of the king. The crowds stood quietly and looked toward the west. A convoy approached from the hills. I assumed it was being led by Abner son of Ner, guarding Father, who would be riding just behind him. The Philistines had been defeated, but past experience had taught us that a lone Philistine soldier might well be lurking about, ready to try to assassinate Father with an arrow or a spear. I waited for the convoy to get closer, but it stopped far away, on top of a rocky hill. This was the sign for the crowd, which had been waiting quietly, to begin cheering rhythmically, “Long live the king! Long live the army of Israel!”

  The herald climbed to the hill and hushed the crowd. Then, behind him, I saw Father. I couldn’t see his face, but the rays of sunlight coming from the east glinted upon his golden crown, giving him a breathtaking appearance.

  “My brave soldiers,” Father’s powerful voice boomed, making its way from the hilltop all the way to the camp. “After our great victory at Mikmash, we removed the Philistine yoke from our necks, and we warned them not to try to conquer our land. They failed to heed our warnings and invaded the land of our Judean brothers. In the days of the judges, our enemies knew that when they attacked a tribe, or even imposed tribute, the other tribes would ignore their brothers’ plight and carry on with their lives.”

  The huge crowd held its collective breath. Silent and spellbound, the masses watched Father, committing his every word to memory, knowing that they would recount this sublime moment to their children and grandchildren for the rest of their days.

  “Never again!” Father cried. “Never again! Now every tribe comes to the aid of its brothers. Now we all stand united against our enemies. Now we have a single army. The Philistines failed to take our unity into account. They have made a grave mistake.”

  “And they will pay for their mistake!” someone yelled out.

  Relieved laughter accompanied the comment. I laughed, too, until I felt Merab’s fingernails digging into my flesh.

  “Oh, they will most certainly pay!” Father responded, joining in the laughter. “We’ve chased the Philistines all the way to the gates of Ekron and killed the best of their fighters. The Judeans have been freed from the yoke of occupation. Long live the liberated land of Judah!”

  “Long live the liberated land of Judah!” the crowd screamed. “Long live the king! Long live the army of Israel!”

  “Long live the God of Israel!” our father called.

  “Love live our God, blessed be His name forever!” the crowd answered.

  Father turned his head to the side and signaled to a rider sitting erect on horseback and holding aloft a long spike. From where I was positioned, I couldn’t see what the spike had pierced, but just the thought of it made me squeeze my eyes shut with revulsion.

  “Give thanks to the brave hero who killed Goliath the Philistine and led us to victory!” Father cried joyfully.

  “He likes him,” I whispered to Merab sadly. “He likes him very much.”

  “I’ve promised my eldest daughter to the victor,” Father continued. “But the question remains whether he will be able to pay my bride price.”

  Silence returned and enveloped the crowd once again. Everyone awaited the king’s verdict. He paused before continuing, giddily drawing out the suspense, then he suddenly raised his voice: “One hundred Philistine foreskins.” Father laughed. “That is the bride price that the prospective groom must pay.”

  The laughter of the crowd drowned out my sister’s keening. The people in the crowd practically fell over laughing. The young victor joined in, his body rocking forward and backward with glee. He waved the spike from side to side and rode down the hill. The crowd split apart to let him through amid a chorus of cheers.

  Merab’s wails grew louder. I turned to look at her. She was staring at the man, and all of a sudden her face twisted in horror, as if she were seeing a demon rising up from the underworld.

  “No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “No! No!”

  I looked back to the man. He was standing right across from me. The light enveloped him with a blinding aura, as usual.

  “All hail the king’s son-in-law,” Father’s voice echoed from the top of the hill. “All hail David son of Jesse from the tribe of Judah!”

  “Long live the king’s son-in-law!” the people called. “Long live David son of Jesse!”

  Seven

  The idea that we would switch places, as our matriarchs Rachel and Leah once did, floated in the air all the time, but neither of us dared speak of it out loud. I said nothing because I knew that David wanted her and not me, while Merab wasn’t willing to ask me to sacrifice my life on her behalf. She viewed my love for David as nothing but a young girl’s passing fancy, not the considered decision of an adult.

  The silence of Adriel the Meholathite only exacerbated her suffering. In her heart of hearts, she hoped that he would beg her to escape with him to Mount Carmel or some other remote location, but she soon came to understand that his unconditional loyalty to his king was greater than his love for her. She never considered that the reason for her beloved’s silent acceptance was his veneration for the young victor who had won her. As the only person not enchanted by David’s charms, Merab had trouble seeing the signs that others had fallen under his spell.

  I knew it was wrong of me to tell her what I’d seen, but my out-of-control jealousy had poisoned my feelings for her. The thought of that red head buried in her lap and those rosy lips suckling her breasts had driven me mad.

  “It isn’t possible.” Her grief-stricken eyes gaped at me in amazement.

  “You know I wouldn’t make up something like this.”

  “Jonathan gave him his coat?” she repeated what I’d told her incredulously.

  “Not only his coat, but also his tunic, his sword, his bow, and his belt.”

  “And Adriel saw them and did nothing?” she cried.

  “He stood guard so that they wouldn’t be interrupted. When he noticed me, he immediately signaled for them to stop, but it was too late. Jonathan’s entire body turned red, and he hung his head in shame, but David fixed his serene eyes upon me and welcomed me with a confident smile, as if nothing at all had happened.”

  The next day, Jonathan came to see us and pleaded for me to switch places with Merab. “You love David,” he told me. “I saw the way you were looking at him yesterday, while Merab is in love with Adriel.”

  “Michal is in love, too,” Merab whispered.

  “With David, the son of Jesse,” Jonathan declared.

  “With Paltiel, the son of Laish.”

  He tried to process this new information. His high forehead furrowed in concentration, and he fixed his eyes on me, wonder mixed with anger. “Is this true?”

  I nodded silently.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Over a year.”

  “Does Father know?”

  “Leave Michal alone, Jonathan.” Merab’s broken voice tore through my heart. “I’m the prize, not her. It’s my fate, not hers. The daughter of Jephthah also sacrificed her life for her people.”

  * * *

  The tribes of Israel rejoiced over the approaching wedding, especially the tribe of Judah, which had finally achieved its ambition of putting one of its own in the palace. Songs were composed and stories written about the young shepherd from Bethlehem who had become the king’s personal musician, and who scampered alone through the valleys of the Land of Judah during the exhausting period before the war began, carrying neither sword nor shield, but only a staff and a slingshot in his soft artistic hands. When he saw the giant Philistine in the distance, he didn’t run for help. Instead, he quickly gathered five smooth stones and shot them at the monster’s forehead, making him fall backwards with a mighty crash. And then, instead of running for his life, he bent over the terrifying body, pulled out its sword, and chop
ped off its head. With the insight of a brilliant strategist, he saw right away that victory was in his hands, and without another thought he mounted the severed head on a spike and dragged it to the enemy camp. And indeed, when the Philistines saw that their hero was dead they retreated in panic, and the Israelites chased them all the way to Ekron and won the battle.

  “The youngest of Jesse’s sons,” the people of Judah laughed. “Just the way Samuel likes it.”

  The stories and songs spread quickly throughout the land and reached the ears of Abner, who demanded that Father put an end to them. “The Judeans are taking credit for the victory,” he seethed. “You were the one who planned the Philistines’ stampede. The victory is yours.” But Father, as usual, just shrugged his shoulders and went about his business. Many years would pass before I, his youngest daughter, went out to do battle against the stories of Judah. The king’s scribes sit securely in the palace, never imagining that, like a mole burrowing from the inside, I have planted my own scribes in their ranks, and that they are inserting subversive voices into the official stories so that future generations may know the truth. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. We’ll get to the war of stories later on. At this point, my miserable sister is trying on her wedding dress, as the grief on her face tears my heart to pieces with an impossible combination of compassion and envy.

  The white silken dress emphasized her slender body and afforded her noble face an angelic quality. The maids whistled appreciatively and whispered to each other about all the leaders of the region that were expected to attend the wedding. Even the great Egypt would be sending a royal delegation, led by Pharaoh’s Minister of Wheat. The young Kingdom of Israel would surely burst with pride when these honored guests caught sight of our bride and agreed that no other kingdom had a princess more beautiful than she.