fish without scales and the wild boars which their religion forbade them to eat). She mended a goatskin tunic, she asked a bearded old patriarch who had been a friend of Samson about his great-grandchildren, and since Saul was not at hand to accuse her of sorcery, she healed a young man of the White Sickness with a simple laying on of hands.
The men, she knew, regarded her as an earthly Ashtoreth and paused in their tasks to watch her and wonder if, like the Lady, she had known a thousand lovers before she came to this land where women were stoned if they took a single lover. She smiled and nodded and asked about this man’s child, that man’s wound, and spoke of Israel and her victories under Saul. Not since Deborah, the Judge, had a woman evoked such adoration from an army.
“My lady, Goliath has returned. You must flee to Gibeah.” It was Caspir, the limping soldier from Michmash.
“I trust our men to rid us once and for all of that scourge.”
He shook his head. “Saul is unwell. He is not the hero of Jabesh-Gilead. Will my lady share my breakfast with me? I netted a quail last night.”
“No, Caspir, I am not hungry. But you are gracious to ask me.” (Quail turned her stomach; like the Lady of the Wild Things, she loved birds and animals far too much to eat them and lived entirely on vegetables; she was not in the least like Alecto!) “Here, your fire is going out. Arrange the sticks so-in a little pyramid…”
A stench of sour wine and excrement drifted to her across the stream. She had forgotten how silently Goliath and his people could move in spite of their size. She forced herself to turn and confront him, the single red eye, the red patches of hair which bristled through his breastplate and greaves and crested purple helmet and reminded her of a huge, two-legged wolf in armor.
“The Queen of Honey has grown more delectable,” he said. “But the grape unplucked is devoured by birds or shrivels into a raisin.”
The Israelites had begun to gather around her in a defensive circle. She suddenly realized that their wish to protect her was not unmixed with suspicion. She, the legendary queen from Caphtor, so the giant implied, had known him before she came to Israel. Had she lain with him?
“Step back from the stream, my lady,” warned Caspir. “You are within range of his spear.”
She was less afraid of his spear than his revelations. More legends, more whispers. (“Not only does she come from Caphtor, she knows Goliath…”)
Let there be no mistake. She called in a voice as sweet and poisonous as oleander, “The Giant of Caphtor has grown more hideous with the years. His eye is as large as a squid’s and his honeyed words are spoken with a thick and drunken tongue.” Inwardly she shuddered lest he speak of her hidden wings. Still, she did not turn from his stare.
He laughed, “The better to see you with,” and moved down the stream opposite the Israelite campfires and resumed the boast she had heard in the night:
“Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.”
Himself beyond range of Israelite spears, he lifted his own spear-tipped with deadly iron like a battering ram-and hurled it across the stream. It lodged in the back of an Israelite, who had stooped to gather manna from a tamarisk bush. The spear was attached to a cord; before the others could reach and free their friend, Goliath yanked the cord, spear, and body through the stream and onto his own bank. Then, with a look so diabolical that it would have frozen a Night Stalker, he seized the corpse in his hands and tore the head from the trunk.
“Thus for Saul and Jonathan and the other mosquitoes of Israel,” he boasted. “If you do not accept my challenge, I will leap this little rivulet you call a river and swat your king with my fist and crush his son with my boot and take his queen for my pleasure.”
He laughed again and, having repeated his boast, knelt to drink from a quiet pond, protected from the mainstream by a ridge of stone and tree stumps. Ahinoam witnessed a curious sight, unnoticed, apparently, by the men. Momentarily Goliath saw his reflection in the pond. He shuddered and quickly stirred the waters to break the liquid mirror. He is appalled by his own ugliness, she recalled, and recalled, too, the tale that the Goddess had quarreled with the first Cyclopes because they had felled her trees and murdered her animals, and she had laid a curse of ugliness upon them: “You who see with two eyes and see no beauty in all of my creation, shall see with one eye, and ugliness shall stalk you to the end of your graceless days, and you shall be ugly even to each other and yourselves.” And the Cyclopes, who had been like bad, undisciplined children, now became ruthless and crafty adults who warred with all other peoples, smashing what was built, crushing what was grown, cultivating oaths as poets cultivate epithets. There was even a poem among Ahinoam’s people:
Dialogue
“Cyclops,
Red and squid-eyed,‘
Why do you plunder ships?
“Because, kneeling to drink, I meet Myself.”
Understanding could be a curse for Ahinoam. To surmise people’s secrets meant to pity their pain. But she did not pity Goliath, she hardened her heart against him for the sake of Jonathan.
She turned quickly to leave the stream.
Goliath called after her, “I will come for you, Honey Hair.” No one had called her Honey Hair since she had left her hive. Now the name seemed a desecration.
She turned and shouted back to him. “If my son were well-”
“Ah, he must be a young man now. And comely like his mother. I will enjoy breaking his back.”
He wrenched a tree from the ground and cast it into the stream. It seemed to please him to see the yellow flowers disintegrating in the frolicsome current.
“Water is for bathing as well as drinking. Or perhaps your odor is your deadliest weapon,” she said and, with dignity as well as courage, turned her back on him and walked to Jonathan’s tent.
She was shocked to see him standing without support in the door to the tent. His face was pale and thin from the weight he had lost. He looked like a slender figurine of alabaster, woundingly beautiful, pathetically breakable. He was Jonathan, the dreamer, instead of Jonathan, the warrior. He was Jonathan, the boy who had fled to his tree house when his father had scolded him for reading a scroll instead of practicing with his bow. It came to her like the slap of a wave that she who had lost a hundred lovers to hush-winged death, that she who had lost a country and found a kingdom only to lose its king, could not endure the loss of Jonathan.
“Jonathan, you should never have left your couch!” she cried.
“That monster woke me with his threats. Just a few more days and I'll be well enough to fight him.”
He swayed in the door and she reached to steady him. “Not if you rise too soon.”
“Walk with me then,” he said. “It will help me regain my strength.” He put his arm around her shoulders-she felt his thinness and thought of savory broths to plumpen him-and they began a slow inspection of the camp. The soldiers cheered when they saw him on his feet, and she heard them whisper among themselves.
“It’s her healing magic again. Twas a fierce demon he fought.”
“Without her he’d be dead.”
“Soon hell fight Goliath.”
“You hear what they say?” he asked.
“Ignore them,” she said with surprising vehemence. MH you were as strong as Saul in his prime, you still couldn’t match that beast.“
He looked like a little boy who had stubbed his toe. “You’re not a warrior, Mama. Why do you think so little of my skill? I wouldn’t let him touch me. He has the strength but I have the speed.”
“He is swifter than you think. Remember, I knew him on Crete.”
“But now he’s old, and maybe tired like Father. 1
“If you fight him, he will win.”
He shook his head. “Now you’re being a sphinx. The men know you came from Crete, but what must I say when they ask me other questions? You have told me that you are a Siren. But how can you hear the sound which has not been made and see the sight which has not been seen? How can you look so young that you drive the Israelite matrons to dye their hair with henna, and the virgins to practice your walk and your voice and your enigmatic smile? Why do you keep such secrets from your own son?”
