The Secret Chord: A Novel (24 page)

I was in a dead sleep when a servant came to rouse me, saying David wanted me urgently in his chamber. It was the middle of the night as I made my way through the silent halls. The servant, yawning, led me past the night guards. David was sitting opposite a richly dressed young stranger. Yoav stood behind him, looking grim and bilious. The detailed drawings of Yebus lay unrolled on the table.

No introductions were made. “Tell him,” David said tersely. “Tell him what you just told us.” The young man ran a finger along the parchment, between the spring and the town walls, measuring what I guessed to be a distance of some fifty cubits. He inscribed a sharp turn westward for thirty or forty cubits farther. He tapped his finger on the parchment, turned his hand upward and shrugged. I had time to notice that it was a soft hand, unblemished: this young man was neither laborer nor warrior.

Then all at once the carefully drawn lines, etched with such precision, smudged and ran. The ink, wet, traveled in a dark smear across the pale parchment.

“Why do you deface it?” I cried, outraged to see Seraiah’s work so carelessly despoiled. But then I saw that the liquid was not ink, but water. The temperature dropped. I hugged myself against the damp chill. As my eye followed the dark line, moving like a stain now across the drawing, I felt myself pulled down into its shadow. I could hear the water, the steady trickle of a stream finding its way through stone. I was underground, below the soil, into the bedrock, in a deep crevice that was steadily filling. I felt the water rising past my thighs, up to my chest. As the stream fed the hidden basin, it brimmed. Then the pressure of the rising liquid forced its way into a spout in the rock and came gushing upward, outward, tumbling with sudden turbulence through the earth and into the air. Gihon.
Giha.
The word meant rush of water. I was above ground again, beside the Gihon spring, the mighty walls of Yebus looming before me. I watched the water pulse its way out of the earth. Time passed as the hidden crevice emptied itself and the force of the flow lessened.

Touch the
tzinnor
and the town will fall. Wait for the water. When it abates, advance.

The air warmed again. David grasped my shoulders and steered me into his own chair. The map on the table was unsullied, the lines still crisply drawn.

“How did he know?” The young man’s face was pale, his eyes wide. “How did he know about the
tzinnor
? Only the king and a handful of his most trusted servants know this.”

David’s voice was gently mocking. “I assumed one seer would recognize another. Natan, this is Zadok, priest of Araunah, the ruler of Yebus. He says he has had a vision that I will take the town, and he has come to negotiate terms for its people.”

I could not answer, so ill did I feel. I signaled for a basin and staggered into the corner to make use of it. David sent a servant for cool cloths and wiped my face himself. Though I was still addled, with one foot in my fading vision and one in the king’s chamber, I noted that Zadok’s eyes were wide.

When I could speak, I turned to him. “You come with terms for surrender?”

Yoav gave his rough bark of a laugh. “Araunah? Surrender? By no means. He thinks his priest here has come to put a spell on us. He is threatening to turn us all blind and lame if we dare attempt to breach his walls.”

“But we don’t need to breach his walls,” I said.

“What?” said Yoav sharply.

“Go on,” said David.

“We will take the town from inside. A small party. Climbers. They will enter through one of the irrigation pipes that lie in the Wadi Kidron.”

“That’s what you meant when you said ‘Touch the
tzinnor
’?”

“Is that what I said? I don’t know what I said. But what I saw was the water, how it runs from under the city, through the rock, to a spring. . . . I saw a tunnel that has been cut in the rock, from the spring to a shaft. Climb the shaft, and you reach another tunnel. This one runs right under the walls. It’s how the city gets its water during siege. We thought the spring was defended from the fortifications above, but it’s better than that. They don’t have to go outside the walls at all. They have diverted the water to a pool inside the walls, for use in wartime.” I turned to Zadok. “Is that not so?”

Zadok looked stricken. He had hoped to bargain this information for a high price. Now I had given it to David for free. He might have been reflecting on the well-known fact that kings generally do not look kindly on the betrayers of other kings.

Yoav was pacing. “So one need only climb the shaft . . .”

“Only?” said Zadok, finding his voice. “It’s a vertical climb, half again as tall as this building. The walls are slick.”

“We’d be fully armed,” David mused. “If anyone inside gets wind of us, all they need do is drop a rock on our head and it’s over. Bad odds. A job for the brave or very desperate.”

Yoav stepped forward, and reached out to clasp David’s arm. “Someone like you were, King, the day you offered to fight the giant of Gath. You spared my life after Avner. Let me do this, in recompense.” The two men stood eye to eye for a long moment. Then David nodded. “So be it,” he said.

•   •   •

It was the season of reaping. The season when kings go out to war. David marched, in force, to Har Moriah, to the north of the city. It was the first time Israel and Yudah had taken to the field as one army, and it was an impressive display. David had ordered a night march. When the sun rose, the people of Yebus looked up toward a hilltop dense with archers, spearmen, slings.

At daybreak, Araunah played what he thought was his best tactic. Up onto the massive walls shambled a sad army of the deformed, the lame, the blind, the leprous. It was a sight to fill a heart with dread. A taunt, and an attempt at dark magic. Foot soldiers on the eve of battle are notoriously superstitious. Our men believe that to kill an accursed person—one afflicted by illness and disfigurement—is to invite the same curse down upon oneself. In that way, Araunah reasoned, these unfortunates were an effective defensive line. Even the blind and the lame can defeat an army that is afraid to shoot them. And behind that unhappy vanguard, he arrayed his true army, the archers and the pots of oil.

As the Yebusites looked north, I was already south of their walls, with Yoav and the small, handpicked force drawn from the elite warriors known throughout the army as David’s Mighty Men. I was their guide, using the details of my vision to lead the way to the
tzinnor
. Even in the dark, it was easy. I felt pulled to the place as if by a line of force. When we found it, we flung ourselves to the ground and covered ourselves with leaves and boughs so that no sentry on the guard tower could see us as the sun rose. We would have to wait for the water, as my prophecy had advised. In this season, the spring was most active, gushing forth five or six times a day in massive surges that could last for more than an hour. Only just after it abated would it be safe for us to crawl through the pipe, enter the tunnels and attempt to climb the shaft in the short time it took the underground pool to recharge. If we missed our timing, we risked being caught in a narrows during an onrush of turbulent water. We would be trapped and drowned.

Waiting was difficult. I could smell Yoav’s sweat. My own muscles twitched and ached with effort to be still. From the other side of the city we could hear the clash of spear butt on shield and the cries of the armies, taunting each other. We knew that a second, flanking unit was also on the move. David’s best fighters were circling from the west, to be ready to rush the Water Gate if our mission succeeded. A third force, mostly retirees and civilians outfitted to look like fighters, was moving to the east, their only role to confuse Araunah.

At last, I heard another, more welcome sound . . . of water forcing its way through earth. The stream, which had been flowing steadily, gave forth a massive arc of water, a surging pulse, followed by another, and another, for almost a full hour. As soon as we were sure the spate was over, we moved. Yoav went first, fast and low, positioning himself where he could see the Yebusite archers pacing the parapet on the tower above us. He was in a crouch, his own arrow nocked, ready to shoot if one of the guards caught sight of him. Fervently, we hoped that would not happen. We did not want to draw eyes to the western wall. Once Yoav was in position, he waited for the archer to turn, then gave a sign. Avishai crawled forward, as swift as a lizard, flattening himself to enter the muddy pipe. I went next.

The distance through the pipe was not long, but the rough rock tore at my greaves, so that my forearms and shins were raw and bleeding. I inched forward as fast as my strength would allow. The pipe was not of uniform size, and when it suddenly narrowed, I had to discipline my mind not to give way to panic. The water, between surges, was just a few inches of gently flowing stream. But I had to push away images of myself, pinned in the dark, unable to go forward or back as the stream swelled again into a mighty throb of water. It did not help that Avishai, ahead of me, was slighter in build, and might be able to negotiate a girdle of rock where I might be entrapped. I gulped the air when finally the pipe opened into the tunnel, and unfurled myself to stand upright. The tunnel was mostly living rock, a natural fissure, widened only where necessary by hammer and chisel. We felt our way along cool, moist stone, moving toward the telltale shaft of light that indicated the place of ascent.

It was a dispiriting sight—sheer curved walls of slick wet stone rising vertical from the man-made pool that was Yebus’s wartime water store. We did not speak, unsure if the tunnel above was guarded near the shaft, or only, as we hoped, at the tunnel entrance. Zadok had maintained that only a small, elite unit was entrusted with the secret of the pool, just men sufficient to provide a discreet guard in peacetime and to fetch the water during war. Our hope was that those few had been called to duty on the eastern walls.

Avishai pointed up into the dark. High above us, in the ceiling of the cavern, there was a ring of iron set into the rock. In wartime, when the pool was in use, a rope threaded through this ring, so that a large waterskin could be lowered to draw from the pool. Our plan for scaling the shaft relied on that ring. I hoped it was firmly set. Avishai had a length of strong, slender rope wound around his person. I helped him unspool it as we waited for the rest of the men. By the time Yoav, bringing up the rear, joined us, Avishai had the rope furled on the edge of the pool, and had attached the sturdy string, which he had sewn into one end, to the shaft of an arrow. He passed it silently to Ira of Tekoa, who was the best archer in the army. Ira nocked the arrow to his bow, aimed, took a deep breath, exhaled and let the arrow fly. It fell a hairbreadth short, so we had to retrieve it and try again. On the second attempt, it soared straight and true, carrying the rope after it. We all of us grasped the other end as Yoav began the ascent, hand over hand, his strong torso quivering with the burden of his own weight. When he was level with the rim of the shaft, he swung his body, using his weight like a pendulum, until he could reach out and grasp for the rim. On the first try, he missed his grip, and flew back out over the drop, his arm flailing. On the second try, he was able to grasp an outcrop of stone for a moment, but his grip was not firm enough, and again he swung out over the drop, swearing under his breath. Finally, on the third try, he strained to keep hold of the rim, and flung himself onto the ledge, where he lay for a moment, gasping like a beached fish. Then we heard him scrambling to affix the rope, so that it dangled over the edge, allowing the rest of us an easier ascent, able to brace our feet against the slick wall as we pulled ourselves up, hand over hand.

I said “easier,” but I struggled to inch my way up the slippery rock face, my hands rubbed raw and my muscles quivering with the effort. I was shaking like a jellyfish when I finally made the lip of the basin and Avishai’s strong arms drew me safely over the edge. Luckily, depleted as I was, I had little to do with the rest of that day’s work. Yoav’s fighters surprised the two tunnel guards and dispatched them with short swords, swiftly, with no more than a grunt issuing forth as their last mortal utterance. When we came out into the light, we ran to the foot of the wall where the archers held the water gate. Their backs were turned, all their attention fixed beyond the walls to where David’s vanguard maneuvered, just out of range of their arrows. Ira and Shem, our two best archers, nocked arrows and took aim, thinking to shoot the guards as they stood. But Yoav, too honorable to shoot a man in the back, called up to them, so that they turned and were facing their doom as the arrows pierced them. Ira took his man through the eye. He crumpled in place and dropped out of sight below the crenellations. Shem struck his through the throat. He scrabbled vainly at the arrow through his neck and staggered forward until he reached the low parapet and fell. He landed in a crash of armor and a thud of broken flesh right at my feet, a red mist rising. I stepped through it and ran to help work the winches that drew back the big gates. David’s vanguard surged through, surprising the Yebusites from the rear as the main army then swarmed the walls. The town was ours by sunset.

It was the first time I saw the pearly moon rise over these walls, where the rough-hewn siege ladders leaned all askew in the aftermath of the battle, some rungs splintered under the rush of the ascent. David stood on the ramparts, bathed in starlight. He was leaning on the walls, his arms outstretched on either side of him, the blood and dirt of the fighting crusted on his skin. The night wind lifted his sweat-dampened hair. His face was smeared with grime and flecked with blood, but it was radiant. He turned to me, smiling. “Here, it begins,” he said.

I thought of him a few years earlier, prone in the ashes of Ziklag with his outlaw band about to mutiny. If that was the lowest pit of his existence, then this moment, on the ramparts of the city he had made his own, might mark the summit. I stood there, and breathed in the night air, and tried to take in every detail.