Queenmaker

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Queenmaker
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For Dad (James Henry Wenk, 1925—1989),
who heard the first 15O pages.
For my sister Rosemary, who read those pages to
Dad and then made sure I finished the book.
For Devra, who taught me
to write in the first place.
And for my first agent, Anita Diamant Berke
(1918—1996), who made me feel like a real writer.
“What can he have more but the Kingdom?”
—I Samuel 18:8
 
There are many who say that David loved me because I resembled my brother Jonathan. That is not true; David loved no woman, though he lay with many. Women loved him.
Even I loved him once. When I was young, my very bones melted for love of David.
Although I was a king’s daughter, I did not think he would ever look at me. David was a hero. A hero should receive great beauty as his prize, and I was not beautiful. When I was young I was thin and dun-colored, like the summer hills.
But I looked at him. When he and my brother Jonathan came riding their chariots through the streets in the pride of their triumphs, I was one of those who waved palms and threw flowers and cried his name. I had no eyes for my brother, it was all for David—David, who glowed hot as the sun, and was as far from my reach.
All the world knows David’s story now—he always had a master’s way with words, and always could tell a tale so that men repeated it to his credit. When I was a child I would sit at my brother Jonathan’s knee and listen while David sang his songs. My favorite was the tale of the death of the Philistine champion Goliath. David had to be coaxed to sing that, but he would always laugh and give in, in the end. “What, that old tune again? Oh, very well—to please you, Michal.”
“Five smooth stones,” he would sing then, smiling down at me. “Five smooth stones did Yahweh put into my hand … .”
He always gave the credit to Yahweh, but I knew better. In those days, the god I worshipped was David.
“Let David, I pray thee, stand before me … .
”
—I Samuel 16:22
 
My father Saul was not born to be a king. He was a farmer, as his father had been before him. He was a good man, too—so men said then.
We were Yahweh’s people, and Yahweh’s people were not like other nations; we had judges and prophets, not kings, to rule over us. This had always been enough. The priests and prophets said it would always be enough.
But our borders were now hard-pressed by the armies of kings, and our warriors, answerable to no one, scattered before them.
At last our people tired of losses and cried out for a king to lead them. First the people called for a king, and then the judges too thought a king would make us stronger. At last only the prophets spoke against it. And the prophet who spoke loudest was Samuel.
Samuel was the greatest prophet in all the land, and heard Yahweh’s voice most clearly. Samuel told the people that a king would bind them and command them, tax them and work them, take their sons for his army and their daughters for his house. But in the end even Samuel saw it was useless. A king the people would have.
And so Samuel agreed to choose a king for them. Who else but Yahweh’s most favored prophet should choose Yahweh’s king?
 
 
Samuel was a tall man, and thin, with eyes that glowed with power—and, I think now, with shrewdness and cunning. Samuel’s eyes were fearsome things the day he came to tell my father that Yahweh had chosen him—Saul, son of Kish—to be king over the people.
My father was sitting in the kitchen-garden, bouncing me on his knee, when the prophet came to him. I was barely three, but I still remember clearly the heat of the day, and Samuel’s eyes, and how my father laughed, holding me tight against his chest so that the noise boomed under my ear.
“Me, king of Israel!” he cried, when he had done laughing. “Samuel, old man, you have been fasting in the desert too long. Come, let me have a place spread for you—fruit and wine, and in the shade. Michal, my little dove, run and get your mother, that we may do honor to the prophet Samuel.” He set me down, but to go I would have to run past Samuel, and after I had looked far up at his eyes, I clung to my father’s knee and refused to move.
Samuel lifted his heavy wooden staff and set it down with a loud thump. “Do not mock Yahweh or me, Saul son of Kish. You are to be king. Yahweh wills it so.”
“Well and well,” my father said. “Mind, Samuel, I think a king a good thing, and so I said when the judges asked us all. There must be one man to make the decisions in the field, or the Philistines will be supping in our houses in another year. But it was to be drawn by lot—or so my women tell me they are saying at the well.” He patted my head absently. “And now you say Yahweh has chosen me.”
Samuel nodded.
“Well and well,” my father said again. “But I am only the son of a humble man, and a Benjaminite—from the smallest house of the smallest tribe in all Israel. Why me, Samuel? Because I was once lucky with my spear?” My father Saul was the only man who had won a great victory since the days of the great judges. He had
taken up sword and spear and saved the city of Jabesh-Gilead from the Ammonites in the same year that I was born.
“Yahweh’s ways are not for us to dispute, Saul.”
“I don’t dispute them, man—but if the oil’s to be on my head there are plenty of men who will!”
A pause. “Send the child away,” Samuel said.
My father laughed again and picked me up. I buried my face in his chest, for Samuel was looking at me. “What? My little Michal? Oh, very well. Down you go, my dove, and off to your mother.” There was that in his voice that meant no argument, so I ran, to get past the prophet safely.
It meant I heard no more, but I did not care. That summer I was only three, and the word ‘king’ meant little to me. It meant more to my brother Jonathan, though. I was playing with him when our father came up to the housetop later that morning and told him what had been said.
Jonathan was not our father’s oldest son, but he was, I think, his favorite. He was some ten years older than I, broad and brown and solid as Saul was. Jonathan was not quick, or clever, but he was kind and gentle, and we all loved him well.
Now he looked long at Saul. When he finished thinking, he picked me up, and held me close, his cheek against mine. Then he said, “I thought it was to be lots.”
“It is to be lots, boy. But who rules the lots, eh? Yahweh.”
Jonathan thought again. “You mean Samuel, Father?”
“Now, now, did I say so? But it’s only sense for Yahweh to choose a man who’s good with a sword, and who knows more of tactics than herding sheep. Sheep won’t drive off the Philistines or the Ammonites, eh?”
Jonathan frowned. “But, Father—”
Saul swooped me out of Jonathan’s arms and swung me high. “King, by heaven! Now there’ll be something done about that miserable excuse for an army—
army
they call it! And Michal here will be a princess with gold to glisten in her hair. Will you like that, my little dove?”
“No!” I did not know what a princess was, but I had learned that ‘no’ was a safer answer than ‘yes’, for then I might be agreeing to all sorts of unpleasantnesses, such as baths and braidings.
My father laughed again, long and loud, and thrust me back at Jonathan. “No, is it? You’ll sing another tune when you’re older, won’t she, Jonathan?”
“There’s never been a king in Israel before,” was all my brother said as he took me into his arms.
My father did not like this. “Well, by Yahweh, there’s to be one now!” he bellowed, and stomped off.
Jonathan stared after him so long I became restless, and wriggled and demanded to be put down. I was sorry afterwards, for Jonathan took me off and left me to the care of the maid who was watching my older sister Merab. He didn’t even finish making my leaf-and-flower doll for me, and when I complained of this the maid slapped me and bade me hush. The other two serving-maids had just come back from the marketplace and could chatter of nothing but the search for a king, and so no one had time for me. Even Merab, who was six, wished to listen, although it could have meant little to her either.
So I sat under one of the beds and sulked, and no one paid me any heed. A king, it seemed to me, was nothing but trouble for Michal.
 
 
And so the lots were cast, and Saul was king of Israel. My life was little changed, save that I saw my father and my brothers less. I still lived in my father’s house in Gibeah; his two wives and his concubine Rizpah still wove and spun, and taught Merab and me to do the same. But I was called ‘Princess Michal’ now, which made me think myself of great importance.
For my brothers all was altered. Saul had seven strong sons, and he took them all to live with the army and fight our enemies.
I thought it a fine thing to have brothers who were princes and heroes. I was proud of them, and twice proud of my father.
Everyone was proud of King Saul then—King Saul, who called the men of Israel and Judah to his banner and led them to victory after victory. All men praised the name of Saul in those days. All men save the prophet Samuel. But it did not seem to matter what one sour prophet said—not while King Saul held Yahweh’s favor—and the borders.
Jonathan tried to explain matters to me once, when he had come home to visit us. That was when Jonathan told me that he believed Samuel had chosen the best warrior to be king, and now regretted his choice. I could not see why; my father had forged the chaotic hordes of Israel into a true army. When Saul’s army fought, it won. Saul had defeated the Philistines, and pushed the Ammonites back and held the borders against them.
Jonathan thought long before he answered, as was his habit. “Because, little sister, our father thinks more of his own way than he does of Samuel’s. He says Samuel is a prophet, not a general, and so should tend to the business of Yahweh and leave the ordering of the army to those who know better how to win battles and hold the peace.”
That sounded like sense to me, and I said so.
“Yes, but Samuel says that the ordering of the army and the kingdom is the business of Yahweh,” Jonathan said.
“And Father does not?”
“And Father does not,” Jonathan agreed. I looked at him more closely; laughter danced in his eyes like sunlight over a brook, and I laughed too, hardly knowing why.
“It is nothing to laugh at, Michal,” he said after a moment. I did not know why, for a moment before he too had thought it funny.
So I tossed my head, and the gold rings in my braids chimed and clashed. “Father is the king. What can an old prophet do to hurt him?”
Jonathan sighed, and put an arm around my shoulders. “That
old prophet made him king, Michal, and now I think he wishes to unmake him.”
“He cannot do that! Father is a great king and the people love him!” I was past eight now. I could not imagine a life where my father was not king—and I was not the daughter of a king.
“They do not love him as well as they love their own way, and Samuel loves him not at all. That time last year when Father would not wait, and made the sacrifices himself—you remember?”
I nodded, for all knew the tale. The Philistines had been massed and ready to attack, and Samuel and the priests had not yet arrived for the sacrifices and blessings. To prevent his army from slipping away, fearful of attacking without Yahweh’s approval, Saul had made the sacrifices himself. He had won the battle, so his deed must have found favor in Yahweh’s eyes—but Samuel had been very angry.
“Well, that was the start of it, I think. I was away with a raiding party, and by the time I returned Samuel was swearing that Yahweh would turn his face from Father for trying to be priest as well as king, and Father was shouting so they could hear him in Ascalon that Samuel—” Jonathan looked down at me and stopped, so I did not hear what Father had called Samuel. Nor would Jonathan tell me, for all my teasing.
He would not talk of his own deeds, either, for Jonathan was a modest man, for all they sang his name in the streets. If I asked, it was always the same; Jonathan would smile and tug one of my braids and shake his head, saying, “It was nothing, little sister. We fought—I lived—others died. I was lucky.”
“You were brave!” I cried. “Everyone says you are a great hero, Jonathan, and killed twenty men at a blow!”
“Go listen to ‘everyone’ then,” he would say, and no more.
But there were many others who were happy to gossip before me. Once I knew there were tales to listen for I learned to sit and keep silent, and soon the house women—and the men, too—would forget I was there, and they would talk.
And so I heard, not only of my father’s victories over our enemies,
but of his bitter quarrels with Samuel. These quarrels grew worse as my father grew older. As he gained more knowledge of kingship, he was less and less willing to let priest or prophet say him nay.
When I was a girl, I thought that my father was a great king. I know better now. Saul was a great warrior, but that is not enough to make a ruler. Saul’s way was to fight hard when attacked and beat foes back beyond their borders.
“Hit a man hard enough and he’ll stay down. Hit an army hard enough and it’ll stay home, eh?” Saul would laugh, and so would his war-captains—all save Abner, his cousin and war-chief, second in command only to Saul himself. But Abner was a man who kept his mouth tight always, and laughed seldom, so no one minded.
I thought it a valiant saying then, and wise. Well, brave my father always was. Wise? I think he was that, too, once. But that was before Samuel poured the sacred oil on his hair and made him king of Israel.
Now when my father was home he smiled less and shouted more, and swore a great deal. This made us all keep well away, when we could. I still remember how sometimes the very stones in the walls seemed to quiver, and people became still as he raged, crying to heaven that he would tolerate Samuel’s interference no longer.
“Who is king in Israel, Saul or Samuel? I am, by Yahweh, and if that dusty, dried-up old man thinks he rules here—we shall see what happens in the next battle! If it’s kingship he wants, well—let him take the field against Moab and earn it!”
There was always much more of this, for even my quiet brother Jonathan seemed to have lost the trick of calming him.
But it always passed, in the end, and Saul would greet Samuel in peace once more, and the prophet would smile upon him and bless him. Samuel could do little else; Saul’s name was still sweet on men’s tongues.
But Samuel’s smiles were sour things, now, and his blessings sounded grudging.
 
 
I heard the final quarrel myself. All the household did, and half the town as well, for it took place in the open courtyard, and my father was never one for quiet words.
It had promised to be a day for feasting and finery—my father had won his greatest victory. For this time Saul had taken the Amalekite army, and the Amalekite king as well. The Amalekites were rich in grain and cattle; this time there had been no slaughter. This time there would be talk instead. The Amalekite king was to come home with my father, and sit at his table. A treaty, Jonathan had said. King Agag would pay us well to return his men and land; he would be King Saul’s friend and pay him tribute.

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