sleep.”
“How will it be when both of us sleep? Even Samuel, they say, descended into Sheol. Will we meet as shadows in the land of shades? Or is Sheol barred to us by Yahweh?”
“She was once our queen, your ancestress.”
“In the Cretan palace where I was a little boy-so my mother says-there was a tall alabaster image of a lady with outspread wings. Sometimes the water lapped around her feet, but it never touched her gown.
“‘She was once our queen, your ancestress,’ my mother said.
“Her wings fascinated me. What did she do with them?‘ I asked. (For all of our people had lost their wings, except for the little stubs you have seen on my back.)
“ She played among the clouds.’
“But the Sky God is not our friend. He loves the Cyclopes.’
“ There was a time when he loved the Goddess too.’
“And after the queen was tired of playing?’
“ ‘She flew to the Celestial Vineyard, beyond the stars.’
“And what is it like there, Mama?’
“No one has ever returned to tell us except this very queen. She loved a drone who had lost his wings in a storm and could not ascend in the nuptial flight. It was she who died before him. But some of our people saw her when she returned to lift him into the heavens.
“What is death?“ they cried.
”A place without Cyclopes, without earthquakes, where lovers are reunited with those they love at the time they loved the most.“
“‘Our people carved her statue against oblivion.’”
David sighed and clung to Jonathan’s hand. “It is a lovely tale. But I am a shepherd and not a drone. Where are my wings? And your are too small for flight.”
“Perhaps the Goddess will help us.”
David shook his head. “I am glad that you think her capable of every miracle, and mindful of every prayer.”
“I don’t think, David, I hope, but what is life except a mosaic of hopes-of brightly colored stones-sard and onyx and beryl-which we polish daily and replace if they are lost? I only ask that you keep a stone in your heart And trust me to wait for you.”
“And if I die first-?”
“I shall be first-of that I am sure-for you have a kingdom to rule.”
“I would like to be king,” said David. “I would like to be king and unite this poor broken country. Israel is like a lamb surrounded by wolves. She desperately needs a shepherd.”
“I understand, David. It is what you want most in all the world.”
“It is what I want next to you,” said David, surprised at the truth, for the thought of a throne was unspeakably dear to him. He laid his hand on Jonathan’s sun-wanned hair and felt its softness like the fleece of a lamb. “You are better than I. Gentle without being weak. But I do not think that you would be a happy king. You have never learned how to hate.”
“I hate the evil in men, not the men themselves. But enough of such things. David, sing me another song. This time about yourself instead of me.”
“There is an old folk song among the Israelites, a mirror to both of us. You have heard it many times.”
“Sing it again.”
“O that thou wert as my brother,
That sucked the breasts of my mother!
When I should find thee without
I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house,
Who would instruct me:
I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm For love is strong as death; Jealousy is cruel as the grave: The coals thereof are coals of fire, Which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love’s fire…“
“Tender comrade,” said Jonathan. “For this small moment, let us forget about thrones and exiles. We are larger than mortal things. You are the earth and I am the sea, devoted friends locked in eternal embrace.”
“Then we must swear by blood.” David withdrew the dagger from his sash, a bronze blade with an onyx hilt. He wanted to drive it into his heart. Could Sheol be worse than a wilderness without Jonathan?
“I will be first,” said Jonathan, as if he had guessed David’s wish. He slashed his arm below the sleeve of his tunic. Blood reddened his fingers.
David recovered the knife and made a similar wound, and they mingled their blood in the ancient and irreversible rite which makes brothers of enemies and lovers of friends. They bound each other’s wounds, and exchanged their tunics- Jonathan’s green for David’s blue-and David said:
“My friends shall be your friends, and my enemies shall be your enemies, and neither man nor woman, whether mother, father, brother, sister, wife, or child, shall come before you. Let Ashtoreth bear witness that we honor her above all other deities. Let Yahweh bear witness that we do not swear our love to spite him, but in spite of him. So said my ancestress Ruth, the woman of Moab: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will be buried: The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.‘ '
– David watched him depart among the flowers, and sometimes they hid him, and sometimes his golden head seemed a moving flower, and once he turned and called:
“David.”
“Yes, Jonathan?”
“If I went with you-”
“If you went with me-”
“I would not be the Jonathan you love.”
Crows screamed raucously into the sky behind him and David thought, Thus are the people Jonathan leaves with me. Except Abraham. Yes, even Michal. Then he was ashamed by so heartless a thought and the poet’s soul of him conjured a kinder image:
Daisies are little folk, the shepherds and farmers. Sunflowers are princes and princesses who bend toward their father, the sun, their faces reflecting his light, but warmed no more by the sun above them than by the daisies at their feet.
But the sun may hide behind clouds or even set, and the sunflowers break their stalks, the daisies be trampled by wolves, and one of them cry, “Where is our father, the sun?”
– There were no sunflowers where David fled from Saul, the long, desperate flight which led him eventually to Achish and his Philistines and to the fortress city of Ziklag, where he must wait and watch while the people of his birth and the people who had sheltered him prepared for the ultimate war and the rising of a new sun.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He looked as if he had climbed from Sheol. Muffled and stooped, he stumbled into the tent and she caught him in her arms; she, Rizpah, who had supplanted his queen. He did not tell her where he had been on this night before the battle; he did not need to tell her that he had visited the Witch of Endor in spite of his own edict and asked her the dreaded question: Will Israel crush Philistia at Mt. Gilboa?
“Has my lord heard ill tidings?” she asked, skillfully removing his sandals and robe, easing him onto the couch, pouring a cup of pomegranate wine from a leather flagon. Stupid Rizpah; pathetic Rizpah; she laughed when she heard men speak of her in such terms. She-she with her spies, Elim and the rest-and not Ahinoam or Michal was the strongest woman in Israel. It was she who had urged the king to destroy David. It was she who had urged him to forgive and recall Jonathan, “lest he join David and alienate your people, for he is greatly loved.”
“I have heard the mutterings of a foolish young woman,” said Saul, with the petulance of a child. “She
