conjures a ghost and calls him Samuel. And yet I removed my sandals and knelt before him like a simple shepherd, and trembled before his wrath!”
“Did you not know his face?”
“I saw a shrouded old man who, for all I knew, was the witch’s own grandfather, or the witch herself, deceiving my ears and my eyes with her black arts. I was right to banish such people. I will see to her after the battle.”
She liked to see him angry and spirited, like the lion of Israel in the days of his pride, when emissaries from Egypt had knelt before him with gifts of ivory and gold, and the king of Tyre had sent him a hundred tunics of Tyrian purple for the officers of his growing army. But she was deeply troubled that he treated his visit to the Witch of Endor with suspicion and disdain. The Witch was neither a novice nor a charlatan. The people called her a sister to Ahinoam, for they greatly resembled each other except in the color of their hair and neither had aged perceptibly since they came to Israel from Caphtor. Samuel-and she did not doubt that Saul had truly seen him-must have foretold defeat. She felt as if a Lilith fumbled at her throat But she dared not reveal such forebodings to Saul. With Rizpah, concealment and dissimulation had become genius.
“The Witch of Endor is a woman with a pretty face and dyed hair and no more power than I to conjure the dead. Let my lord sleep and refresh himself for the battle tomorrow.”
“Call Jonathan to me.”
“Would you wake him so late, my lord?” She did not want to share her lover before the battle. She wanted to cradle him in her arms and possess him utterly, if perhaps for the last time. He was her Abraham, he was her Moses, yes, he was more to her than Yahweh or the gods of Ammon, and her devious and calculating mind, her aging body, served him with singlehearted devotion.
“You know he never sleeps before a battle.
The prince was quickly summoned and quick to appear.
“My son,” Saul said, “I think the same demons are besetting both of us. Yet we shall need our strength tomorrow.‘
“It will be as it has always been,” said Jonathan, beardless and young as when he had first met David, though his eyes had turned gray when David went into exile and people said of him, “The sea has gone out of his face.” But the wild chrysanthemums of Elah still burned in his hair.
“But David was with us once. What if he comes against you in the battle tomorrow? For three years I pursued him in the Wilderness. For three more years he has served the Philistines.”
“He will not fight against his own people.”
“But if he should? You, you, Jonathan. If you should meet him in the fray, his arm upraised to strike you with his sword?”
“Then I would kneel and receive his blow and bless him with my last breath.”
Saul looked at him with a long, pitying look. There had been a time when he would have shrieked in rage or hurled a spear. Now he said without bitterness:
“If we win the battle, perhaps you will tell me about David, whom you love above your father and your king. I have loved two women. One brought me pain, one brought me peace. I regret neither. I loved David too as a son. And you most of all. But the love between men which passes friendship-‘
“It cannot be told,” said Jonathan. “Except that it isn’t a sin to those who so love. It came into the world, I think, when the Lady first walked among men. ‘Let there be love, she said. She did not say, ’Let there be love only between a man and a maid or a son and his father.‘”
“Ah, the Goddess. I have served only Yahweh, but he has forsaken me. Perhaps I have judged her ill, and those are wise who have served her as well as a god.”
“David and I, my father.”
“Perhaps David will come back to us.
“You would call him back?” cried Jonathan. “You would forgive him, Father? He was never disloyal to you.”
“It is almost light,” said Rizpah. “And David, I think, will indeed be with those who march against us tomorrow.”
– Gilboa, though often called a mount, was a ridge of limestone hills instead of a single peak; hills like those where Saul and his army, for twenty years, had outfought the Philistines, leaping from crag to crag like wild ibexes, laughing at the heavy armor which encumbered the enemy and the stones which splintered the spokes in their chariot wheels. Now, for the first time, the five great Philistine cities had met as one nation and assembled the largest army ever to march against Israel, with numberless chariots hammered of bronze and iron and armor no sword could pierce. Saul and Jonathan silently surveyed the tents which empurpled the plain like deadly mushrooms; turned and faced each other; and embraced as father and son for the first time in many years.
“I know why David loves you,” Saul said, and the words were like hemlock poured into Rizpah’s ear; she was no longer first. “You are one of those golden angels which Yahweh sent to Abraham to tell him that Sarah at ninety would bear him another child. You fight for me and Israel. And yet you would rather build gardens with David. Or stand on the shores of the Great Green Sea and count the dolphins. And who can say you are wrong? I only know that I have greatly wronged you, whom I love the best.” Then in turn he embraced his younger sons, Ahinidab and Machishua, beardless youths who had never fought a war; strong with a plow, clumsy with a spear. But, being ignorant of Philistines, they were eager to fight. Rizpah, momentarily ignored (how often ignored!), stood behind them when Ahinoam, their mother, came from her tent to embrace them and cling lovingly to Jonathan. Ahinoam did not know of Saul’s visit to the Witch of Endor, but she turned to Saul and said:
“The Philistines have surely learned our ways by now. I fear for you, my lord. I think you should scout the hills behind you.”
It was such a remark as Rizpah would never have made to Saul. A woman advising a king before a battle!
Saul frowned and said, “I have set men to guard the principal passes into the hills. Only ignorant shepherds know the bypaths.”
“Yahweh go with you then.‘ She did not mention the Lady, nor did she remind him that he had failed to sacrifice to any god; that he had been estranged from Yahweh since the death of Samuel.
He looked at her with sudden tenderness. “And the Lady as well?”
“The Lady as well. Even Yahweh acknowledges her power. Or why do his priests so often revile her?”
“You can never forget her, can you? Nor the island of the sunken palaces.”
He kissed her tenderly on the mouth. He accepts defeat, thought Rizpah. Otherwise, he would not debase me before his discarded queen.
“If only you had been less beautiful! If only a little gray had sprinkled your hair! It is not easy to grow old in the company of a goddess. Why, to look at you makes me wish I were still that bold young man beside the well in Endor!“ Then, remembering Rizpah and drawing her to his side, he said, ”Come, my sons. It is time to march. Rizpah will send us on our way.“
Thus he returned to being a king and a general of twenty years, except that now he was old and tired and would rather return to his farm than lead an outnumbered army against a foe he could no longer hate. He is not mad, thought Rizpah. He will not forget his commands or sulk in his tent; he is resigned. David is not with him. All that I wanted I won, but at what a cost! I wanted Saul and took him from Ahinoam. I envied David’s power and drove him into flight. Yet here today, I must confront myself and my chosen fate: fruition or drought; the delectable figs of Sharon or the wizened apples of the Dead Sea Valley.
The day she had first met Saul, when he had come to her, an aging harlot in newly conquered Ammon, she had stared at him, straight and kingly then but starting to gray, and thought: It is not a queen he needs. He is tired of Ahinoam’s beauty, her mind, her pride. It is comfort he needs, a hood instead of a crown; gray robes instead of purple; and I will command the highest arts of my trade into winning his love.
“My lord Saul is weary,” she had said. “Let me anoint his feet with the balm of Gilead…” And she had loved him to her triumph and now, at the last, to her despair.
And what of David? At first she had liked the boy. He won victories for Israel. He was quick, kind, and intelligent. He sang for Saul and treated her like a queen instead of a concubine. But then the maidens sang at the wells, “Saul has slain his thousands. David his ten thousands.” She felt the scorpion sting of jealousy. Saul was her lover, Saul was her lord. Surpassed by a shepherd from little Bethlehem? Why, the boy would demand the throne!
