Abigail (9 page)

“I know that you will surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hands. Now swear to me by Adonai that you will not cut off my descendants or wipe out my name from my father’s family.”

David studied Saul’s posture, an odd mixture of distaste and pleasure filling him. Behind him, he could hear the whispers of his men. They would tell him not to promise such a thing to the man. But it was Jonathan’s face he saw as he watched Saul begging for mercy before him. Jonathan, with whom he had made a lifelong covenant.

“I will swear it,” he said, knowing he could never destroy Jonathan’s seed, or Michal, should he ever see her again. He was making no promises to the rest of Saul’s house, but the king need not know it.

His words seemed to satisfy Saul, who rose and nodded his appreciation in David’s direction. Then the king of Israel turned and gave orders to his men to return home.

When they cleared out, David would gather his men and find a better stronghold.

11

Abigail set plates of goat cheese, dates, and cucumbers on the low table, placing them just so, then stood back to examine her handiwork. In the month since she had learned of Nabal’s determination to pursue her father and brother, she had done everything in her power to please him, to be visible when he was around rather than ducking into corners and avoiding all contact. Despite her aversion to raising a fool for a son, she wanted, needed, a child. If she could only distract Nabal with a son, then perhaps life would become easier for them all.

She rubbed the ache in her lower back and fought a sense of despair. This morning had shown once again that she did not carry Nabal’s child. Another month of enduring his insults, another month of trying to appease. Surely a child would change things. If only God would have mercy and grant this one request.

She turned at the sound of a groan. Nabal stumbled into the dining area and sank onto the couch beside the food-laden table. His hair looked disheveled and his beard unkempt. Bloodshot eyes looked up at her, and a pained expression crossed his face. He looked in her direction, then turned his attention to the food set before him. She hurried to pour him a goblet of fresh goat’s milk and some herbs for the headache she knew had come from his night of wine bibbing.

He accepted her offering without comment and rubbed his temples in slow, rhythmic motions, his morning repast only half-eaten. “I’ll be gone—I don’t know how long—maybe a week or more.” He met her gaze, then let his eyes roam over her, his expression telling her he was still hungry, just not for food. “If you weren’t so quick to run your mouth off and could be trusted, I would take you with me.” His smug smile turned to a sneer. “The last thing I need is a God-loving woman making a fool of me.”

Heat filled Abigail’s face, and she quickly ducked her chin to avoid eye contact, her hands clasped in front of her.
She
was a fool? Only in regard to thinking he would ever change!

“I need you here,” he added, his voice gruff. Of course he did, to make sure the servants obeyed his every whim, and he knew she would make sure of it. He would take it out on her if they didn’t.

“Yes, my lord.” She glanced up, letting her gaze skirt his as she looked beyond him. “Will you need anything before you go, and what would you have me do while you are away?”

He took a piece of linen and wiped the milk from his mouth, then dropped it on the table and stood. “Zahara will tell you what to do.” How he loved to toy with her authority over the servants and to suggest he had relationships with them, which she found questionable at best. Despite Zahara’s hints to the contrary, Abigail had yet to catch him with Zahara in his bed. Still, somehow she wondered . . .

He walked around the table and came closer until she could feel his stale breath. His fingers stroked her cheek, then lifted her chin so she would meet his gaze. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she was unclean, but before she could open her mouth, his lips silenced her. She felt his arms go around her, and she fought nausea at the taste and odor of his breath. Normally he did not repulse her so, but then he’d never kissed her like this the morning after he’d been drinking.

He pulled back and took her face in his hands, then deepened his kiss. Panic pushed through her that he might demand more than she could give without breaking Adonai’s law. But a moment later he released her, his passion apparently abated. “That was so you’ll miss me.” A cocky smile wreathed his face, and he touched her nose with one finger in a gesture of affection, then walked away, leaving Abigail feeling angry and bereft.

“Do you suppose something has happened to him?” Zahara asked a month later as Abigail twisted yarn through the distaff from the wool of Nabal’s many flocks. The new, multicolored robe they were weaving was one he had commissioned through Zahara the night before he’d left them. The intricate design rivaled a garment fit for a king, which fit Nabal perfectly, since he acted like one.

“You said he was checking the sheep and paying a visit to the king in Gibeah. Such a journey can take time.” It still irritated Abigail that Zahara had been the one to convey this information, something Nabal should have told her directly.

“His visits are usually shorter.” Zahara threaded red yarns through the weaver’s loom, her back to Abigail.

As the sun warmed this section of Nabal’s spacious roof, silence fell between them, provoking Abigail’s long-held curiosity. She cleared her throat. “How did you come to be in this house, Zahara? You are not of our people, so how did Master Nabal come to make you his servant?” The questions had burned in her heart since that first day in Nabal’s house when she’d sensed this girl held her husband’s interest in a way she could never seem to do.

Zahara focused her attention on the loom as though she didn’t want to answer, but at last she straightened and looked up. “I was captured as a spoil of war. Nabal’s father bought me.” She met Abigail’s gaze, then quickly lowered her head back to the loom, but not before Abigail caught the bold gleam in her eye.

“I see.” Part of her felt compassion that the girl had obviously lost her family, but she chafed against Nabal’s obvious favor toward her. He even went so far as to make Abigail, mistress of the house, feel like she was somehow beholden to the girl. “What happened to your family?”

“I don’t know. My home is here now.”

Abigail studied Zahara, catching the defiant tilt of her chin before Zahara respectfully lowered her head. “Tell me, Zahara, how is it you have been with my husband all these years, and yet you have not given him a son?”

The girl looked up at that, surprise etching her features. It was a risky question. Abigail didn’t know for sure that Nabal had been with Zahara. But a part of her told her he had.

“I could ask you the same question, my lady.” Zahara made no attempt to hide her disdain in the lifted brow and scorn twisting her normally pleasant mouth. A strand of her raven hair slipped from beneath the linen head scarf. The jewels Nabal had given her enhanced her dark, exotic beauty. She was dressed in robes nearly as rich as Abigail’s, and her manner when Nabal was not around bordered on arrogance.

“We’re talking about you. What is your precise relationship with my husband?”

Zahara reached for another colored thread, her movements exact, not missing a beat, while Abigail’s thread knotted, forcing her to stop to tug it loose. “There are ways to avoid giving a man a son,” Zahara said, sidestepping the answer Abigail desired. Her voice was a mere whisper.

Abigail’s hands stilled, the distaff slowing. “What do you mean?” Had the girl done something . . . Impossible! And yet . . .

Zahara continued to weave the thread as though nothing they had said held any importance. She met Abigail’s gaze. “My people are schooled in many arts, some of them more practical than others. Women can learn to manipulate men, and there are ways to remove things that are unwanted through certain herbs . . . if the woman would prefer barrenness to the burden of bearing the child of a man who does not deserve an heir.”

Abigail’s heart skipped a beat as she looked at her maidservant in disbelief. “You would kill an unborn child to keep Nabal from having a son?” For all of Nabal’s cruelty, only Yahweh had the power of life and death.

Zahara lifted one shoulder in a shrug, her defiant gaze never leaving Abigail’s. “So you have been with him, but you have destroyed his seed?”

“You are putting words in my mouth.”

“Then speak plainly and tell me the truth.”

Zahara looked beyond Abigail as though seeing something in the distance, then slowly brought her gaze around to Abigail’s once again. “Can you honestly say you would want that man to father your child, my lady?”

The thought had never occurred to her otherwise. Nabal was her husband, after all. But the girl was successfully avoiding a direct answer to her questions and, in the process, doing a remarkable job of making Abigail question her own desires and motives. But what choice did she have? She had no other hope.

Abigail lifted the distaff and turned it to spinning again, meeting Zahara’s gaze. “Of course I would.”

“I know what Nabal did to you, my lady. I know what he has done to others. A man like Nabal does not deserve sons.” Silence hung between them, broken only by the sounds of the distaff and loom and birds twittering among rustling oak leaves.

Abigail’s stomach pitched, the familiar sense of despair swirling, spiraling downward with the weight of Zahara’s words. Was she right? Should a man like Nabal not father sons? But if not for Nabal, she would never become a mother. Could she live the rest of her days without life’s greatest gift?

The thought made the despair deepen. She looked at Zahara, noting the slight defiance in the way she held her shoulders back and in the uplifted tilt of her jaw. Was she trying to manipulate Abigail as she had Nabal all these years? Yet her words and tone spoke kindness and concern.

Abigail rubbed her left temple, her thinking muddled. Had Nabal been with Zahara, or was Zahara only trying to make it appear he had, toying with them both?

Adonai, give me wisdom.
No telling what Zahara’s pagan influence had done to Nabal. Didn’t the law warn against taking foreign wives so they did not turn a man’s heart from Adonai? Was Zahara a foreign wife or concubine? Was she responsible, at least in part, for Nabal’s behavior? Then why would she seem to care how Nabal had treated Abigail?

Even if she tried, could she discover the truth? Nabal wouldn’t care at all for the truth, and he certainly would not change his actions or put Zahara out of his house.

The thought brought a dull pain to Abigail’s heart. She ached for justice—both for Nabal for his selfish cruelty, and for Zahara if she was guilty of destroying Nabal’s unborn seed. But at the same time she wanted them both to repent, to bring them both to the knowledge of Adonai’s peace.

Law warred with mercy in her heart.

Oh, Adonai, what do I do?

David wrapped his arms around Ahinoam’s waist, her back to him. He breathed in the sweet scent of her golden brown hair as his gaze swept the vast wilderness below. Barren red clay stretched in every direction, the narrow paths easily visible from their privileged perch. They were safe here in the stronghold of this mountaintop fortress. Something his timid wife should appreciate.

“A man feels rather small compared to all of this,” David said, bending close to Ahinoam’s ear. “When I consider this, then look up and see that the sky is bigger still, everything else seems so insignificant. What is man that Adonai is mindful of him?”

Ahinoam rested her head against David’s chest. He drew in a contented sigh as he took it all in, threads of a song weaving their way into his mind.

“The desert is big, like it goes on forever,” Ahinoam said, her voice carrying the same awe he felt. He squeezed her closer. Perhaps they had something in common after all. He nibbled her ear, pleased to hear her musical laughter, laughter he had heard too little of late. Someday things would be different. Someday he would give her everything she needed to keep the smile from ever leaving her face.