The Secret Chord: A Novel (40 page)

Shlomo, for his part, brought a different kind of healing. His presence seemed to raise David’s spirits, and he took comfort in having the youth stay by him. Sometimes, when he had the energy, he would compose. Shlomo would sound the notes of the melody on the harp strings as David directed him, and write down the words. Although the king no longer had the breath to sing, some of these psalms live on as his finest. Shlomo would bring the notes and lyrics direct from David’s chamber to the singing men and women to learn, so that David could hear the psalm he had composed performed for him. David seemed to take pleasure in it, and it delighted Shlomo to be useful in this way.

“You have to hear this one,” Shlomo said. He still liked to come to my house when we were not with the king. It was not a matter of lessons anymore; he had no need of them. But to my joy, he seemed to crave my company, and sought it out whenever he had an hour’s liberty. He had been with the king earlier in the morning and wanted to share with me the new composition they had worked on together. “Listen, it’s lovely—” He hummed the melody, following the lines he’d inscribed.

“‘He who rules justly is like the first light of daybreak, a cloudless clime, sunbeams after showers, fingering forth the green of the earth . . .’
And then there’s this bit, a little further on . . .
‘Will he not cause my success to blossom and my every desire to bloom? But the wicked shall be raked aside like thorns . . .’
I love that—‘raked aside’—you feel the carelessness of the gesture, the violence of divine indifference. I wish I had a voice like his, so I could sing it for him myself. I think I will ask that young singer who came to us from the Yezreel—you know the one? He’s got the purest tones I’ve heard, saving the king’s own, of course—I wish I could—”

He broke off there, and looked up in surprise as Muwat burst into the room, breathing hard and dropping his market bundle on the flagstones.

“What is it?” I said sharply, starting up from my bench. “Is it the king?” Muwat shook his head, wincing, pressing a hand against a stitch in his side.

“No. They say the king’s condition is unchanged. It’s not the king. It’s Adoniyah. The whole market is abuzz. He’s placed vast orders. He’s giving a feast, this day, at Enrogel.” I knew the place—a pleasant spring in the Wadi Kidron, just southeast of the city walls and set in a wide meadow where a large crowd could assemble for major sacrifices and ceremonies. “I could barely find a loaf or a hen for sale, all the food and livestock—oxen, sheep, fatlings—being prepared and sent off. They say that all the princes are invited—”

“All the princes?” I interrupted sharply. “You?” I said, turning to Shlomo.

“Of course not! I would have told you if he’d—”

“That’s what I thought. Who else do they say?”

“The king’s courtiers from the tribe of Yudah—not the Benyaminites, they are not included, or so the rumors say, anyway—and Yoav, and Aviathar the priest is to perform the sacrifices.”

“Is that so? And yet I am not invited, nor Shlomo here, and not Benaiah, either, I’ll be bound.” I turned to Shlomo, who was standing now, wide-eyed. I put my hands on his shoulders—he was almost as tall as me, suddenly—and I felt the power surging through me, painful and raw, as if I’d grasped a naked flame. He felt it, too. His large eyes widened and a deep flush of excitement colored his ivory skin.

“It’s time,” I said. “Are you ready?”

He didn’t answer me in words, but the high carriage of his head and the set of his shoulders gave me my reply.

At the palace, I did not need to ask for Batsheva. She was waiting for us in the anteroom, and as soon as we entered she sent the guards out.

“This is it, isn’t it? Adoniyah is going to declare himself king today.”

“He will—he may be doing so even now. And if he does this, the next thing he will do is kill you, and your son.”

“No!” said Shlomo, enfolding his mother in a protective embrace.

“Let her go,” I said. “Go in there, Batsheva, and tell the king to put Shlomo on the throne. Remind him that he made you this promise, when his sin caused your first son to die.”

She stared at me, her eyes very wide, her face pale. “But he made me no such promise,” she whispered.

I turned my hand, brushing away her concern. “Say it. I will support you.”

“I can’t,” she said, her voice catching. “It isn’t true.”

“You will. If you love your son. You will do what is necessary.”

I heard the words come out of my mouth. David’s words.
What is necessary
. How often had I despised those words—the utilitarian willingness they signified, that anything may be done in the quest for power. Now I, too, was after power, and I, too, would do what was necessary to secure it. “Go in,” I said to Batsheva. “I will come in after you and tell him that it must be.”

“Must be? You mean you know it will be?”

Did I? At this moment, I was no longer sure what I truly knew. I had seen Shlomo crowned, the city grown great, the glory of the temple on the hill. But of how that would happen, and if it would begin today, I had no certainty. I did not share this doubt with her. At this moment, I needed her to believe in me. “I have said it. Now go.”

I gave her a few moments, and then I came in behind her. She was kneeling by David’s bed, his spare, trembling hand clutched in her own. “The eyes of all Israel look this way,” she whispered. “Tell them who shall succeed you on the throne. Otherwise—” Her voice caught. “Otherwise, when you lie down with your fathers, Adoniyah will have us put to death.”

I came up then, and bowed low, as I had not done in some years. “Did you say that Adoniyah was to succeed you as king? Because right now, at the sacrificial feast, with Yoav’s army behind him and your priest Aviathar in front of him, they are claiming your throne. Listen, and you will probably soon hear the shouting. If you have decreed this, without telling me, your servant, then I will say no more.”

“I decreed no such thing, as you well know,” he rasped. His face creased with strain. He struggled to sit upright. He was gasping for breath, his skin mottled. The girl Avishag hurried to assist him, supporting him into a position that eased his breathing, then running her hands across his brow and temples. He shrugged her off. “Batsheva!” he said, his voice clear. “As the Lord lives, who has rescued me from every trouble, I swear that your son, Shlomo, will succeed me as king, and sit on my throne this very day.”

Batsheva bowed her head and kissed his mottled hand. “May you live,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Summon me the priest Zadok, and Benaiah.”

I had already asked Muwat to fetch them, and they were waiting outside. “Get me to the chair,” David commanded. “Bring me my cloak.” David let Avishag and me help him to his high-backed, carved chair. Batsheva draped his purple cloak around him, arranging the folds so as to hide his tremors. When Zadok and Benaiah entered, David intended that they should see a king, not an invalid. I registered the surprise in their faces. Benaiah, who had a daily audience at which the king, at times, was often too weak to raise his head, checked at the door in surprise to see David looking more like himself. I could read real gladness in his face at the change. But when Benaiah and Zadok began their greetings and well wishes, David cut them off abruptly.

“Take my loyal soldiers, and have my son Shlomo ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon. Zadok, Natan, you two will anoint him there, king over all Israel. When that is done, sound every shofar, and proclaim ‘Long live the king.’ Then march up after him, and let him sit on my throne. For I say to you here: He shall succeed me as king; today I designate him ruler over Israel and Yudah.”

As soon as Benaiah and Zadok left the room, David slumped in the chair. We helped him to the bed, where he fell into the pillows, spent. Avishag busied herself with her herbs, crushing a handful of leaves into boiling water so that a sharp, refreshing scent filled the chamber.

I knelt beside David and whispered in his ear: all that I had seen and had not been able to say, the vision of the great kingdom that would arise under his son’s rule, its grandeur and magnificence. The judgments he would render that would make his name a byword for wisdom and good governance through the centuries. “And there will be peace, at last,” I said. “What you started, what you bought with so much blood, that will be over finally. He will finish it. And then, all the days of his rule, the people of the Land will dwell in safety, each under his own vine and his own fig tree.”

David closed his eyes and smiled. But then he gripped my hand. “And the temple?” he rasped.

“The temple!” I built it for him there, dressed stone by dressed stone, the carved cedars inscribed with gourds and calyxes, the solid gold overlay gleaming within the holy of holies. Every detail of my vision I set out for him, and I think, by the end of it, he saw what I had seen. He lay back, breathing easier. After a little, a frown creased his brow. “He’ll have to kill them. Yoav, for certain. Adoniyah, probably. Others . . .”

I laid a hand on his forehead. “Not now. You do not need to think of this today. I promise you, you will have time. Because of what you do today, you will have time to sit with him, to tell him how to be a king. To show him what he needs to do, to tell him what will be . . .” I swallowed, as if to choke back the word, but it came out, as it must “. . . necessary.” But this time, what was necessary also would be what was just. David sighed. “It won’t be easy for him.”

“Not at first,” I agreed. “But you will live to see with your own eyes the beginning of the greatness you have created.”

“With your help, Natan. With your help.” He put his trembling hand on my head, and gave me his blessing. I felt a surge of power pass through him into me, and I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed.

There was a knock on the door then, Benaiah’s aide telling me that all were assembled. “They wait only for you, to start out for the Gihon spring.”

I clasped David’s hand, feeling the bones move under the loose flesh. “Rest now,” I said. “Rest, and listen. May what you hear make you glad.” I stood, and signed to Batsheva. She came and knelt in my place, running her hand tenderly through the strands of David’s faded hair.

Outside, a crowd was already gathering, word running in whispers and cries through the streets of the city. The king’s bodyguard had formed up in ranks, the sunlight flaring off their polished armor and their bright painted shields, their banners snapping in the light breeze. Zadok was there, in his priestly robes, his acolyte holding aloft the great chased horn of sacred oil that resided in the tent of the ark. In the midst of it all, Shlomo, clad in brilliant white linen, gleamed. He was already mounted on David’s mule. They had caparisoned her richly in ceremonial cloths and combed her mane till it rippled. She held her proud head high.

We took our places, Zadok on one side of Shlomo and I on the other. Benaiah gave the order and we marched, the soldiers’ feet on the stones beating a celebratory tattoo. By the time we reached Gihon, the crowd was enormous. I looked up at the high walls that surrounded the pool of the spring. People stood four and five deep on the ramparts.

Shlomo dismounted, and I led him to the spring. “Behold,” I cried, “Shlomo, son of David, whom the king himself chose this day, by the will of the Name, to succeed him, and sit upon his throne, so that he can see with his own eyes the new king, and may the Name exalt him and make him even more renowned.”

Then Zadok stepped forward, and when he raised the horn, a deep hush fell on the crowd. He tilted the vessel, letting the holy oil fall in a sinuous golden thread from the mouth of the horn to the glossy head bowed before him.

Then Shlomo stood, his face, ecstatic, lifted up to the sunshine. The silence erupted. A cry went up, “Long live the king!” And then the shofars sounded, echoing off the walls until it seemed as if the whole city, even its earth, stone and mortar, cried out in joy.

Over in Enrogel, Yoav paused, a juicy lamb shank halfway to his mouth. He turned his head sharply in the direction of the clamor. “Why is the city in such an uproar?” There were flutes now joining in the mix, cymbals and drums, and cheers turning to voices raised in song, as the anointed king made his way back up through the streets to the throne room. Yoav threw down his uneaten meat and pushed his way through the crowd to Adoniyah, who was also on his feet, staring blankly back toward the city.

There, in the palace, in the king’s bedchamber, David heaved himself upright as he heard the cries of acclamation, the blasts of the shofars. He reached for Batsheva, drew her close and kissed her. Then he lay back on the soft bank of pillows that Avishag had arranged to cradle his wasted body. As sometimes happened, there was a moment of respite from the storm of tremors. The ague stilled. David lay quietly, listening.

This is what he heard: All the musicians he had brought to the city. All the singing men and women. All the children who had grown up with instruments in their hands and songs on their lips. His own music. His gift to the people now returned to him in magnificent abundance. He had made of his city an accidental choir, an unintended orchestra. The surge of sound rose and swelled. Then, for a long moment, all the notes came together, all the music of the heavens and the earth, combining at last into one sustained, sublime, entirely glorious chord.

Afterword

David is the first man in literature whose story is told in detail from early childhood to extreme old age. Some scholars have called this biography the oldest piece of history writing, predating Herodotus by at least half a millennium. Outside of the pages of the Bible, however, David has left little trace. A single engraving uncovered at Tel Dan mentions his house. Some buildings of the Second Iron Age period might have been associated with a leader of his stature. But I tend to agree with Duff Cooper, who concluded that David must have actually existed, for no people would invent such a flawed figure for a national hero.

Of the innumerable studies and analyses of David, my personal favorites are Robert Pinksy’s classic monograph
The Life of David
(Schocken) and David Wolpe’s recent study,
David: The Divided Heart
(Yale). Both of these arresting accounts accept David’s character in all its dazzling contradictions rather than feeling the necessity, common in other biographies, of all-out veneration or execration.