Goddess.” At other times, the future would intrude upon the present, like a blood-red rain or a river overrunning its banks. She saw Jonathan in battle. The Israelites had been routed by Philistine chariots. Even now a Cyclops and his driver were bearing down on him in a huge chariot with armored sides and great iron wheels, which thundered and crackled over the pitted earth. The Cyclops was drawing his bow and glaring maliciously through his single eye. Was it true what they said in the market place: “Saul has forfeited Yahweh’s favor. He and his sons will meet in Sheol?”
“What is it?” he asked. “There are tears in your eyes. Have I hurt your feelings?”
“Not you, my dear. A vision I had, that’s all. These fancies come to me at times. Memories of the happy days on Crete.”
She had found the one way to win him as a lover. She had made him pity her. He kissed her on the mouth, and then he took her with a tenderness like the descent of a god.
The next morning she returned the shekels with which he had paid for the night “You didn’t buy my love,” she said. “I gave it to you.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “if it were not for David-”
“Ah, but there is David.”
“Yes, there is.” He smiled radiantly as if it were he who was contemplating a god. The loss of him was like a fisherman’s hook in her heart.
“Still, for a little while, you loved me too. It wasn’t that you subtracted from the love you bore David. Rather you added to it. Remember me, Jonathan.”
“As long as I live,” he promised and held her in a chaste goodbye.
She drew away from him before she had to say: “You may forget me very quickly then. But I will bear your son.”
CHAPTER TEN
Saul had settled his family in the palace at Gibeah, which, in spite of its formidable walls and turrets, remained a place in which to live from day to day as well as take refuge from invaders; to mingle in the throne room where Saul delivered judgments and righted wrongs or to seek solitude in the upper chambers with only the mice for company. The marriage of David, slayer of Goliath, to Michal, the favorite daughter of the king, delighted a country wearily accustomed to war. Ahinoam, guiding Rizpah, arranged a wedding feast to shame a pharoah and then withdrew with her attendant, Naomi, to a vineyard and cottage beyond the town, a gift from Saul, in self- imposed exile. As for Michal, her beauty had bloomed like a rose of Sharon. The lithe young warrior maid had spent the days before her marriage at her loom to weave a wedding gown and, rapt in her dream of David, had scarcely noticed how much she owed to Abinoam’s careful instruction: its veil, its trim of Egyptian antelope fur, its embroidered design of swallows encircling a field of saffron grain.
David too had reason to rejoice. Had he not, a shepherd from little Bethlehem, accomplished a miraculous friendship and a royal marriage? But there was a locust in his manna. He had wounded Jonathan. The prince’s smile was frequent but forced, and his gaiety seemed to come from a skin of wine. When David and Michal walked in the garden, Jonathan fled from the palace to visit his mother. When David played his lyre before the king, Jonathan pleaded weariness and withdrew to his silent room on the second floor and communed with Mylas, the bear. Michal, though inexperienced, was a passionate and desirable bride. But David, the bridegroom, was more dutiful than desiring. To the man accustomed to gold, can silver suffice? Is water the equal of wine?
After a week of marriage, David was a thirsty man. He was also a troubled man when he surprised Jonathan leaving the palace as unobtrusively as a servant who has stolen a casket of gems.
“My mother is alone in her new house,” said Jonathan with a look of heartbroken resolution. He carried a leather bag and a bowl for feeding his bear. “I’m going to visit her.”
“But you visit her almost every day as it is. And Naomi sleeps there at night.”
“This time I’m going to stay. Besides, Naomi is deaf.‘
“When will I see you?” cried David.
“I'll come back for Mylas.”
That’s not what I mean.“
Jonathan said without reproach, “David, you chose.”
“But you knew how it would be. It’s only for a little while that we can’t be alone together. Hush now. Here’s Michal.”
She had not overheard them. “Jonathan, my dear, where are you going?”
David answered for him. “He is going to visit your mother and then go hunting for that lion the shepherds have been complaining about. It’s killed a hundred sheep. Dearest one, I would like to go with him. It isn’t fit than Ahinoam should be forgotten in our happiness or that Jonathan should risk his life without his brother beside him. Remember, I have much experience with lions.”
Michal sighed and enfolded David in a warm embrace.
“You’re right, my love. Men need other men for company at times. A man wearies if he lounges about a palace with the womenfolk. Visit my mother and then go on your hunt Jonathan misses your company. Next to me, he loves you best.”
Jonathan brightened like a child with his first goatcart and kissed his sister tenderly on the ear. “We shall bring you the skin to make a rug.”
Refusing armorbearers, they began their journey on foot before sunrise and walked in the rare communion of silence.
Finally Jonathan turned to him and smiled in the old gentle way. “Be patient with me, my brother. For a little while I was first. Second is not yet enough.”
“Michal is second,” said David without hesitation. “How she would grieve if she knew the truth! How much I like her, how little I love her. Every morning she looks at me as if I were going to battle and might not return. Once I mistook her for you and almost called your name.” “Do you think she guesses how it is with us?” “No,” said David. “If we were Philistines, perhaps. But in Israel it is almost unthinkable that a shepherd should prefer a prince to a princess. She takes us only for friends, and so do the people.”
Jonathan smiled with mischief and squeezed David’s hand. “It is fun to sin with you, David. After all, I am a Cretan drone, not an Israelite. How can I love against the custom of my race?” It was his one failure in conscience.
“We love as we must,” said David, pleased to have cured his friend of guilt.
They stripped to swim in a stream and lay on its banks to dry. Jonathan did not try to conceal his wings, small, golden, and perfect, like slender flames at his back. He resembled a fallen angel who did not lament the loss of the sky. Their fingers touched and passion flared between them.
“I don’t want to die,” David cried with a vehemence close to rage. “To to a shadow in Sheol-is it not a terrible thing?” “All men die, people like us first of all. The little folk sometimes hide in their hovels for many years. But death seeks out the palaces and the princes with cruel thoroughness. We have to go somewhere after death. My mother speaks of the Celestial Vineyard, but I was reared as an Israelite like you, and wherever you go I want to follow-or lead.”
David shuddered at the prospect of Sheol. “I expect we shall be poor company for each other. But shadows can meet even if they can’t speak.”
“I don’t like shadows,” said Jonathan. “I don’t like the night. Perhaps we can somehow climb to the Vineyard.”
“Your mother says it’s beyond the clouds and the stars and the reach of the Sky God. Do you think your poor little wings could lift you so high? And what about me who have none at all?”
They did not hear the approach of Philistine soldiers. Abruptly a voice said, more with amusement than threat:
“David, son of Jesse, and Jonathan, son of Saul. I see that it is Ashtoreth you serve now instead of Yahweh.”
The young men jumped to their feet. They were surrounded by soldiers who looked less ominous than
