“My dear,” she sighed, her hair a burst of sunflowers, her skin the pink flawless texture of the daffodils along the Philistine coast; an old woman who looked eternally young; a woman who would trade her youth to recover an old love. “We must each have secrets, you and I. Mine are those of age, yours of youth.”
“Secrets are for strangers,” he said. “But you are my mother.”
“All men and women are strangers. Sometimes I think that the Celestial Vineyard is the place where strangeness falls away from us and we accept each other as we are, without the need to condemn or idealize.
“Must we wait so long?”
“Here’s David,” she cried with relief. “Hell take you back to your tent.”
“I want you to take me,” Jonathan said stubbornly. But already David had joined them and encircled Jonathan’s shoulder with a powerful arm. ‹
“I can walk alone,” Jonathan protested.
“Hold still or you’ll fall,” said David. “I don't care if you are a prince. You’re going to do what I say.”
Covertly Ahinoam watched them as they accompanied her to the tent and observed the constraint which had come between them. She was neither misled nor displeased. She knew that unreasoning anger is often the other face of love.
“Stay with him,” said Ahinoam, once in the tent. “I’ll mix his drink. We don’t want the fever to return. The demons are probably still in the vale.”
David settled Jonathan on his couch, propped his head on a cushion, and summoned Mylas from his rug.
“Come and comfort your master,” he said and, obeyed by the bear, he sat on the edge of the couch while Jonathan, silent, stroked Mylas’ fur and tried to avoid David’s look. Ahinoam smiled-how this boy took command with stubborn Jonathan! — and left the tent to prepare her son’s potion from an herbal bag she had brought on her journey.
When she returned, David rose as if to leave her with Jonathan. “He wants to sleep, I think.”
“He will sleep better with you in his tent.”
“Will you, Jonathan?”
Jonathan was slow to answer. “Yes, David. If you sing to me first.”
“I haven’t a lyre with me. Shall I fetch one?”
“No. Just sing.”
David sang with a rough, halting tenderness, and Ahinoam guessed that he was composing the song expressly for Jonathan.
Ihis
— Ihis,
Amber and alabaster:
In the green caverns of papyrus,
He cannot hear the dahabeah’s prow
Sunder the Nile,
Nor the winds from Karnak,
Freighted with sand and incense. But the caverns speak With little myriad voices: Scarab, lizard, and dragonfly Eddying pollen among the lotuses.
What need has the amber bird For winds and rivers?“
Jonathan smiled and touched David on the shoulder. “Sometimes I don’t understand your songs, but they ease my spirit.”
Ahinoam restrained a protest. Understand! Why, the song was as clear as Goliath’s mirror-pool. Like most Israelite poets, David couched his language in metaphors from nature, but it was clear to her-and certainly to her son-that Jonathan was the ihis and that he had no need to confront the winds and rivers of war because David had come to protect him.
David seized Jonathan’s hand. “Why do you want to fight Goliath? You haven’t a chance against him! Probably nobody in Israel has. It would settle nothing anyway, even if you killed him. Goliath’s boast that he would let us depart is meaningless. He’s not a seren, just a hired mercenary. The Philistines pay him with gold and women to fight for them. We would still have to fight Philistia.”
“If I slew him, the Philistines might lose heart. Remember at Michmash how they panicked when Nathan and I pretended to be an army and took them by surprise in the night?”
“But you couldn’t slay him.”
“David, I have to fight Goliath. He’s always been evil and he threatens my mother.”
“You’re speaking of fever dreams,” said Ahinoam hastily, preferring that even David should not know the truths which she had told her son. “They are often lies.”
“I’m not talking about a dream,” said Jonathan, forgetting the reticence of half his life, forgetting the Israelite view of people with wings. “It’s what you-”
Fortunately, Saul and Abner interrupted Jonathan’s confession. Saul, though pale and gaunt, had temporarily mastered his demon and resumed control of the army.
‘I am pleased to see my son improving so rapidly,“ he said. ”Our young David here is good for him, it seems. And you, Ahinoam. You too have helped to make him well.“
“But not well enough to fight Goliath.”
“Has my queen become my general?” he asked with gentle irony. He knew that she was intimately familiar with all of his battles, and he sometimes resented the fact that a woman who looked like one of the old Cretan queens languishing in a garden of blue lotuses should have a warrior’s-indeed a general’s-knowledge of war. Still, he sometimes forgot his resentment and addressed her as an equal.
“Your queen is whatever you choose,” she said.
“The men are deserting by the hundred. They can face Philistines but not this hired horror.”
Ahinoam shuddered. “I know. Someone must fight him, and soon.”
“I will fight him,” said Abner. She liked the man; loved him, in fact, as one might love a father or an uncle. When Saul was mad, Abner commanded the army with quiet and self-effacing skill. When Saul was well, Abner advised him in such a way that every decision seemed to belong to the king. Israel could not afford to lose such a man.
“How many times must I forbid you from such a folly?” said Saul. “Israel loves you as a second king, and I-” confession did not come easily to him-“I depend on your counsel and love you more than my brothers.”
Jonathan pressed his father’s hand. “The demons of fever are no respecters of war. First Goliath, then me. But I am much, much better, Father. Soon I can face Goliath.”
‘The demons have blessed you,“ said Saul. ”Otherwise, not I nor all of my army could have kept you from battling that giant“
“You think I would lose?”
“He could lift you over his head with one hand and toss you across the stream. Even in my youth I doubt that I could have slain him. Do you want to join Nathan in Sheol?”
“At least I would have good company,‘ said Jonathan with surprising bitterness.
“Such words are not worthy of the man who will succeed me as king of Israel. You should turn your thoughts to the mountains and not the Underworld.”
“Forgive me, my father. The fever has left me with a sharp tongue. I am sorry that you and my friend David should hear-”
“He has gone,” said Ahinoam quietly.
“Where?” asked Saul with surprise. Musicians and armor-bearers did not as a rule leave his presence without permission.
“To meet Goliath, where else?”
Alone, in a ring of acacia trees, Ahinoam prayed to the Goddess:
“Lady of the Wild Things,
Harken to my prayer…
Send death to the deadly,
Love to the lovely and loveless.
I, Ahinoam, queen over Israel,
Though an exile from my husband’s tent,
