often by him in the night. But by day, it was Avigail he wanted by his side.
I knew—everyone knew—that these camp marriages were shadowed by another, earlier match. David’s famous first wife, Mikhal, the daughter of King Shaul, was not with us. She had abetted David’s flight from her father, and in reprisal Shaul had married her off to another man. “Do not speak of it,” Avigail cautioned me. “It is a sore matter with David.” It was a measure of how easy I felt with her that I was able to ask if this grieved her, that he cared still for this lost wife. She smiled. “You are very young,” she said. “Too young, perhaps, to understand such things.” She looked down and studied her hands in her lap. “If there is a child of Shaul’s that excites jealousy in me,” she said softly, “it is not Mikhal.” She raised her chin and looked off into the distance. “No, not her. Not that poor girl.”
VI
A few weeks after, I awoke suddenly from a dream—a confused dream peopled by strange beasts. I was at home again, in the hills of Ein Gedi, fighting off a lioness that had come for my goats. In the dream I was strangely strong, but just as I wrested the goat from the lion’s jaws, she changed shape into a she-bear, and her claws grasped me and held me against her pelt so that I could not breathe. I woke then, heart pounding, glad to find my face pressed only into a greasy scrap of sheepskin. I was lying in the dark, waiting for my heart to slow, listening to a light rain tapping on the earth beyond the cave mouth. I lay there, breathing the scent of damp stone and wet livestock as the men around me shifted and grunted in their sleep.
Then I became aware of another noise. The sucking sound of feet on wet earth. Someone was moving outside the cave entrance. I sat up, to listen more closely, and saw the shadow pass across the opening. There was always a watch set, so I was not at first uneasy. Men had to answer the call of nature, even at night. But these swift steps did not resemble the weary tread of a man making a drowsy path to the latrine. These steps were purposeful, and they were heading directly for David’s cave. I stood, cast my dark mantle over my head and stepped out into the rain.
I caught sight of him just as he reached the cave where David slept. He was tall and broad, and even in the dark I could see that he wore the garb of Shaul’s military. Killer. The hairs on my neck prickled with fear. The rational act would have been to cry out and rouse the guards—armed men who could actually be of use against a trained murderer. But I was far from rational thought. Some other faculty had me in hand, for I sprinted toward David’s cave, my bare feet sliding on the rain-slicked ground. As I reached the entrance, my gut clenched. The bigger man already had David in a wrestler’s lock, pinning him with one massive arm. Then the killer raised his other hand and grabbed a hank of David’s bright hair, pulling his head back to expose his neck. I expected the flash of a blade. As David groaned—a deep, animal sound—I opened my mouth to scream.
The cry died in my throat. The tall stranger had no dagger. As he drew David’s head toward him, he leaned forward, and the dark fall of his hair did not conceal the truth of this encounter. They kissed. There was violence in it, and power, like lightning reaching from sky to earth.
And this, as most of the world now knows, was the way of it between David and Yonatan. A love so strong that it flouted ancient rule, strained the bonds between father and son, and defied the will of a king. When I sat by David’s side as he fought through his grief to compose the lament—“The Song of the Bow,” which everyone now learns by heart as a matter of course—only then, I think, did I fully understand the power of the love they had, one for the other. And I knew what Avigail had known, what she had endured, and why she pitied Mikhal. But that night all I felt was
I knew—everyone knew—that these camp marriages were shadowed by another, earlier match. David’s famous first wife, Mikhal, the daughter of King Shaul, was not with us. She had abetted David’s flight from her father, and in reprisal Shaul had married her off to another man. “Do not speak of it,” Avigail cautioned me. “It is a sore matter with David.” It was a measure of how easy I felt with her that I was able to ask if this grieved her, that he cared still for this lost wife. She smiled. “You are very young,” she said. “Too young, perhaps, to understand such things.” She looked down and studied her hands in her lap. “If there is a child of Shaul’s that excites jealousy in me,” she said softly, “it is not Mikhal.” She raised her chin and looked off into the distance. “No, not her. Not that poor girl.”
VI
A few weeks after, I awoke suddenly from a dream—a confused dream peopled by strange beasts. I was at home again, in the hills of Ein Gedi, fighting off a lioness that had come for my goats. In the dream I was strangely strong, but just as I wrested the goat from the lion’s jaws, she changed shape into a she-bear, and her claws grasped me and held me against her pelt so that I could not breathe. I woke then, heart pounding, glad to find my face pressed only into a greasy scrap of sheepskin. I was lying in the dark, waiting for my heart to slow, listening to a light rain tapping on the earth beyond the cave mouth. I lay there, breathing the scent of damp stone and wet livestock as the men around me shifted and grunted in their sleep.
Then I became aware of another noise. The sucking sound of feet on wet earth. Someone was moving outside the cave entrance. I sat up, to listen more closely, and saw the shadow pass across the opening. There was always a watch set, so I was not at first uneasy. Men had to answer the call of nature, even at night. But these swift steps did not resemble the weary tread of a man making a drowsy path to the latrine. These steps were purposeful, and they were heading directly for David’s cave. I stood, cast my dark mantle over my head and stepped out into the rain.
I caught sight of him just as he reached the cave where David slept. He was tall and broad, and even in the dark I could see that he wore the garb of Shaul’s military. Killer. The hairs on my neck prickled with fear. The rational act would have been to cry out and rouse the guards—armed men who could actually be of use against a trained murderer. But I was far from rational thought. Some other faculty had me in hand, for I sprinted toward David’s cave, my bare feet sliding on the rain-slicked ground. As I reached the entrance, my gut clenched. The bigger man already had David in a wrestler’s lock, pinning him with one massive arm. Then the killer raised his other hand and grabbed a hank of David’s bright hair, pulling his head back to expose his neck. I expected the flash of a blade. As David groaned—a deep, animal sound—I opened my mouth to scream.
The cry died in my throat. The tall stranger had no dagger. As he drew David’s head toward him, he leaned forward, and the dark fall of his hair did not conceal the truth of this encounter. They kissed. There was violence in it, and power, like lightning reaching from sky to earth.
And this, as most of the world now knows, was the way of it between David and Yonatan. A love so strong that it flouted ancient rule, strained the bonds between father and son, and defied the will of a king. When I sat by David’s side as he fought through his grief to compose the lament—“The Song of the Bow,” which everyone now learns by heart as a matter of course—only then, I think, did I fully understand the power of the love they had, one for the other. And I knew what Avigail had known, what she had endured, and why she pitied Mikhal. But that night all I felt was
Similar Books
