curious. They pointed at Jonathan’s wings and one of them whispered to his mate, “From Caphtor, I warrant. A Siren’s son.”
A man of middle years, dressed in a purple tunic and a white sash, with a large amethyst ring on his middle finger, confronted them with a smile.
“Is it my Lord Achish of Gath I address?” Jonathan asked. They had met from a distance in battle but never crossed swords.
“It is he.”
Achish was seren of Gath, a man more renowned for his strategy than his sword, more at ease in a palace beside the sea than on a foreign battlefield. He looked like a bard and, in fact, was said to have written an epic about the earthquake which had sent his people on their wanderings to Crete and then to Philistia. It was impossible to guess his age. His hair was gray, but there were no lines to mar his shaved, sun-bronzed face. He smelled of myrrh; his blue tunic was unblemished and unwrinkled even on this hot and dusty day. He would have looked at home on the deck of a ship or ruling an island humped like a giant turtle and murmurous with Tritons. David liked him.
He stared at Jonathan’s wings with admiration. “I had guessed that the prince of Israel belonged to the Old Ones. His mother’s beauty, to say nothing of his own, is fabled even in Philistia, and my great-grandfather knew such beings — Sirens are you called? — on Caphtor. Sometimes we even glimpse them on the coast of Philistia.‘
“Are we your prisoners?” Jonathan asked. “If you wish to take me because I am, as you say, a Siren, I will yield to you. But I must beg you to release my friend. He need not suffer because of me.”
Achish smiled. “You have heard that in Philistia we keep the Old Ones in pools or cages and show them to the multitudes. It is one of the lies told about us in Israel. No, Jonathan, you and your friend are safe from us, and for other reasons as well. Philistia is not yet ready to resume her war with Israel. We do not like to fight. We will not fight until we know that we will win, and if we could find another homeland! — an island with neither earthquakes nor invaders- we would sail away from your bleak little country forever. But I have this to say to you, David and Jonathan. You serve an old, mad king who would kill the both of you-yes, you too, Jonathan-if he knew the nature of your love. In Philistia, however, the Goddess’ own son is the patron of male lovers. Come then and stay with us in our land. We will give you a walled city, Ziklag, and you shall help us to fight against the roving Amalekites who harass our borders and graze their camels among our vines. In peaceful times, you may visit the sea and inspect our ships and-who can say? — voyage to foreign lands in search of apes and ivory, frankincense and nard. We do not ask that you march against your own people when Philistia and Israel resume their war. Only that you do not fight with the Israelites against the Philistines.”
David studied this enemy who offered to be a friend. “You could have killed us while we talked. In spite of the reasons you give, you do not really need to offer us asylum.”
Achish smiled. “If I had killed you in each other’s arms, I would have angered the Goddess and her son, who have not been unkind to me in the past When I was young-how many lifetimes ago? — I had a friend like you. He died in a skirmish with Israelites, smitten, no doubt, by your forbidding Yahweh. But I have a long memory. My heart is a temple wherein I keep his image, perfect and immortal, like green marble. Could I murder my friend for a second time? Go now. We have killed the lion which was raiding your flocks. We heard about him from a shepherd boy and about the princes who hunted him, and I came hunting you. Invent a story for your bloodthirsty Saul. The beast had sprung at Jonathan’s throat and you, David, leapt on its back and broke its neck with your bare hands. You Israelites, so direct and practical in other ways, love such stories and never question their truth. Your famous Samson was a simple-minded rustic who lay with a painted whore. But your poets have changed him into a national hero who loved a woman with the face of a goddess. I ask only that you do not tell Saul about the Philistines wandering in his borders. Have I your word?“
“You have my word,” said David.
“And mine,” said Jonathan.
“Come then, both of you, and let us embrace as friends. The gray hair, the red and the gold.”
“The Goddess was truly with us,” David said, when the last Philistine was a stir of wind and the susurration of dust.
“I wish,” said Jonathan, “that we could have gone with him. We could still overtake him if we ran.”
“There would come a time when we might have to fight our own people, in spite of his promises. He speaks only for Gath. There are four other serens.”
“We could have seen the sea together.‘
But Samuel had mentioned a throne…
“Perhaps when our armies drive to the sea. Now we must return to Gibeah.”
– Before they returned to the palace, they visited Ahinoam’s cottage. She, the great queen, more beautiful than Ruth among the sheaves, was tending violets beside her door. She rose and smiled and held them in a single long embrace.
“Is it well with you, my sons?”
“We miss you, Mama. You must be lonely here.”
“Saul invited me to stay in the palace. I asked for this house because of Rizpah. Sometimes I pity her. She fears that Saul will return to me and I wished to set her at ease. Yes, it is well with me, if David and Jonathan are friends.”
“We are sometimes together,” said Jonathan, “but in the palace-”
“Ah, my son. The nights are long for the lover without his love. But you can endure the cold chaste stars if morning brings sun and David.”
“I could almost wish for war,‘ said Jonathan, the peaceable. ”Then we could share the same tent and fight as one.“
“No, my dear. The Goddess designs our lives. She helps us to grow our crops, to build our houses, to make of the forest a friend. Yahweh disrupts her plans with his petty wars and his jealous concern for one small nation. Do not tempt Sheol”
Rizpah smiled like a child and patted David’s cheek. Michal examined his arms for claw marks and marveled at how he had killed the lion and saved her brother.
“Samson from the wars!” she cried. “But I am a poor Delilah.”
“Better Michal without any shears!” Her scarlet robe was dyed with the dye of the insect called the kermes and she looked like a living flame. Her passion frightened him; he did not want to pretend at love.
“Play for me,” Saul commanded. “One of those tinkling melodies Ahinoam sings. The ones with lines which end with-what do you call it? — rhyme.” He did not speak of their absence. Had a mood possessed him and clouded his memory? He looked neither blank nor pained, but rich in years; battle-scarred, yes, but ruddier, healthier than David had ever seen him.
“He has been well since before the wedding,” Rizpah whispered.
The room was a savage place, with shields on the walls, spearstands on either side of the door, Goliath’s armor standing like a guardian god, the black emptiness in his helmet a single great eye. The floor was covered with reeds; one brazier fought a chilling draft. It was neither Philistine nor Egyptian, it was purely Israelite, and it signified Israel’s strength as well as her weakness, a poor people without time for the graces of life but indomitable in war and, at their infrequent best, unswervable in their ambition to unify the land and worship a single god.
David received his harp from a young attendant, a boy who looked at him as worshipfully as he had once looked at Saul, and began to play, not about battles, not in praise of Yahweh, but about a road to the sea. He addressed his song to Saul, who, hopefully, would not understand the secret allusions, but Jonathan understood them and smiled, and it was to him that David truly sang.
“ ‘I go,’ said the wind,
To a yonder-land
Where the dragon feeds
From a Dryad’s hand,
And the Centaur blows on a silver horn
To call the unicorn.‘
Wind,‘ I cried,
‘Like a vagabond
