Queenmaker (25 page)

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Authors: India Edghill

BOOK: Queenmaker
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“Of course I shall tell you, if only you will be silent and listen.” I smiled at her, and put the end of my own veil into the water filling the fountain’s basin. I squeezed the wet cloth until it did not drip, and wiped Bathsheba’s hot face. “Now, this is what the king said—”
I told her that David would send for her husband; I told her that she need only lie once with Uriah. “A simple thing, and then all will be well.”
I thought Bathsheba would see all as easily as I did; she did not. “But Michal—I do not love Uriah, and it is the king’s child. I could not do it! And Uriah would not believe it,” she added.
“No, of course he will not—but the Law will be satisfied, and so will Uriah.”
“But Michal, he will beat me!”
Better beating than stoning
—but I did not say that to Bathsheba. “Not if he knows it is the king’s child—oh, come, Uriah is not a fool. He knows the king will not forget him, if he holds his hand and his tongue. And I will stand your friend—then no one will believe evil of you.”
Bathsheba stared at me, her eyes dark moons. “But the king loves me—he swore it—” Then she turned red and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Michal, I am sorry—I did not mean—”
“Do not be sorry. David loves you as well as he does me.” I smiled, although it was hard; I did not like to see Bathsheba so hurt.
“And you do not understand—you must not be jealous—it was not like that. Why, you are the queen, and tall and beautiful, and—” She stopped, her words as tangled as the fringe of her sash.
“To David we are all beautiful.” I remembered what David had said to me, long ago on our wedding night. “Why, to him you are beautiful as Bathsheba is, and not as Michal is—”
Bathsheba gasped, and tears spilled down her cheeks. She put her hands over her face and would not look at me.
I put my arms around her and rocked her as if she were my
daughter. “Bathsheba, do not cry—see, I love you still, I do not care—David has many women—he did not mean to hurt you—”
At last Bathsheba let me hold her hands and look into her face. Her eyes were swollen and red; tendrils of dark hair clung tear-wet to her neck and cheeks.
“All will come clean,” I said. “Let me wash your face—see, the water is cool.” Once again I used my veil to wash Bathsheba’s face. “There, my love. All will be well, I swear it. Do not cry again.”
“You do not understand, Michal. That is what he said to me, the first time—That I was not beautiful as you were, but—” Her lips quivered; she pressed her fingers to her mouth.
If David had been standing before me then I would have clawed his bright eyes out. My fingers clutched for something to hurt; I clenched them into my skirt. After a moment I found my voice. “He said that because it is true, Bathsheba. Do not think of David now. It is time to think of your husband. When Uriah comes, you must greet him loving, as you always did before. That is all.”
I thought such counsel nothing; I did not see then how far I had come from Gallim. David and I between us had made a tangle of court cleverness and lies. But Bathsheba was sweet and simple; life had not pierced her heart and bled it dry. Even now, Bathsheba still believed in David, and in harper’s tales, and in true love.
And even now, I still did not know how truly cunning David was, or how cleverly he could twist life to his bidding. I should have thought of the words of one of David’s own songs: he had sharpened his tongue like a serpent; the poison of asps was under his lips.
I had thought I had learned all my lessons hard and well. But David had one lesson still left to teach.
For when I had refused Yahweh’s weapon, I gave it into David’s own hand. And the stone I had laid down for love David caught up again, and hurled back to strike my heart.
 
 
“Send me Uriah the Hittite.
”
—II SAMUEL 11:6
 
“I could not, Michal—I could not! How could I let Uriah touch me when I love the king and carry his child beneath my heart? I tried, truly I did, but he—he sickened me. I love the king—I would rather die than let any other man touch me!”
Once again Bathsheba lay weeping in my arms. David had kept his word and sent for her husband Uriah, and Bathsheba herself had unraveled all our careful weaving. Uriah had gone to her, and she had sent him away. Uriah had not set foot into his bedroom or hand upon his wife—and Bathsheba’s servant would be able to swear to it.
I listened, and could not even be angry at her folly. Once I had been as young as she; once I too had loved David and sworn I would die rather than know another man’s touch.
I sighed, and stroked her hair. “Well, it is done now. So dry your eyes and tell me how you convinced your husband that he would not lie soft with you last night. When the king spoke to me, he said Uriah was hot for you—well, he had not seen you or a clean bed since the siege began, and that is some months now!”
“I—I told him he was still as a warrior in the field and he would be unclean for battle if he came to me. And I told him it was my woman’s time besides, so he went down to the soldiers’ tents beyond the city wall to sleep there.”
“And that your head ached, too, I suppose. What a tangle!” I laughed; I could not help it. But I wondered who had told
Bathsheba of the Law for soldiers; she knew nothing of warriors and their ways. Nor did I understand why a Hittite captain should care for Yahweh’s Laws. “Oh, Bathsheba—”
She began to weep again. “Do not scold me, Michal—please do not! I tried, I truly did—but I could not. Not when I saw the king again—”
David.
My blood beat slow and cold, warning of danger. Do not move, it warned. Do not move lest you fall.
“—and he kissed me and told me how much he loved me—that he could not bear to think of me with another—oh, Michal, you are too good, I have sinned against you, but I never meant to—”
“Be silent,” I said. “Bathsheba, what else did you tell your husband, when you sent him away from you?”
She hung her head. “I—”
“Tell me.”
“I told him that the king would not like it, if he took me.” Bathsheba whispered so low I could hardly hear her. “Oh, Michal—I could not lie with Uriah, loving the king. I knew the king could not truly mean to ask it of me. Please forgive me—I do not know why you are so good to me, when I have betrayed you so—”
No,
I thought.
No, he cannot mean to take Bathsheba from me too.
Bathsheba flung herself to her knees and went on begging my pardon; I was too frightened to pay her any heed. I wanted to shake Bathsheba, to slap her, to hurt her to ease my own sick fear.
At last I could speak again. “Bathsheba.” I touched her hair. “Do not cry anymore, you will make yourself ill. Now be silent, and let me think.”
But there was only one answer, and I knew it. Whether he wished to or no, David must now take Bathsheba into his house. It was the only thing that would save her. Somehow I must make David do so, whatever cruel game he played. I cared nothing for what it might cost David.
I did not know what it was to cost me.
 
 
“Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle … that he may be smitten, and die.”
—II Samuel 11:15
 
If my rooms were a queen’s, David’s were twice a king’s. David liked to think himself a lion, strong and bold; in his rooms wooden lions guarded doorways, painted lions prowled walls. Even his bed had a lion’s paws, gold-painted. Ivory claws were set into the painted wood. Many men would be diminished by such rooms; David outshone them—so men said.
I went to David as I was, my gown still blotched dark with Bathsheba’s tears. David was having his beard trimmed and curled, as if he were a Philistine prince. When he saw me, David sent the barber away to wait in the outer room.
“So you have come to me, Michal. Is this another private matter?” And then he smiled, and I thought,
He knows already why I have come.
But I made myself smile back, as if it were all a fine jest, and told David what Bathsheba had confessed. That she had sent Uriah away.
“I am sorry, Michat—but if the woman is such a fool as to refuse her own husband when she is in such a case, what can I do?” David stroked his new-curled beard, and smiled again—the smile of a man who has won.
“You are the king. Surely you have the power to save one woman whose only fault is that she loved you too well? Take her from her
husband into your own house—as you promised her you would. You have done as much before, after all.”
“It is not so simple, Michal. I need Uriah, and his men—and my other foreign warriors too. It is not an easy thing to have foreigners in my army—you know the priests do not like it—”
I cared nothing for all that. “Surely Yahweh smiles upon you, O King, and the priests know it.”
David smiled again. “It means much to me to hear you say that. But as for Uriah’s wife—”
“Bathsheba,” I said, as if he had forgotten. David had forgotten nothing. He toyed with me as a sated lion might toy with a wounded deer. A blow of the lion’s paw, and all would be over. But while the deer lived and struggled, the lion was amused.
“If I take Uriah’s wife, my warriors will say ‘King David does as he pleases, and has no care for us or his words to us.’”
“You knew that when you went to Bathsheba.”
“I did not know I would get her with child,” David said. “I did not know she would refuse her husband after.” He paused, and smiled, and said, “I did not know the woman was such a fool, Michal. Did you?”
I could not answer.
“But you are not a fool, Michal—I have always known that. Now you will ask what it is men will say when Bathsheba is accused as an adulteress, and names me. But you know what they will say, because you are not a fool. They will say she was an unchaste wife. They will say that a woman who opened her arms so freely to me would do as much for any man.”
It was the same beautiful voice that sang his lying songs. It rang in my ears as if I had struck my head, leaving me sick and dizzy.
“I am king, Michal. And I am not like Saul—I will not let the priests use me for their own ends. Yahweh loves
me,
not the priests. No man will use the Law against me. Do you remember what I once told you, when first you came back to me?”
I remembered. “The king is the Law. But David, I care nothing
for that—do as you please with the priests! I care only for Bathsheba.”
I sank down upon my knees and clutched at his hands. “David, you have always sworn before Yahweh that you would grant whatever I asked. You know I have asked for little, when I could have asked for much.” Little, and that little to please Bathsheba. But now I knew the asking had spread my heart open before David’s eyes. “Now I ask you to save Bathsheba. I beg of you, David.”
“And if I do not? You ask much of me, Michal.”
I would have risen, then, but he turned his hands to press down on mine. I stayed on my knees before him; I looked up, and when I spoke I hardly knew my own voice.
“If you do not, I will stand before your throne and tell all men what you have done, and I will charge you before the priests and the prophet Nathan. If David’s own queen tells the same tale as Bathsheba—well, it is such a tale as men are always happy to believe.”
“More mad ravings from my poor queen?”
“Are all the women in Jerusalem mad, that they tell the same tale? Call me mad if you like, I do not care. You will have to kill me to keep me silent.”
“Speak then—but Bathsheba is still guilty, and still will die. That will not change.”
“I beg of you, David. See, I will kiss your feet and beg, if it will please you. Give me Bathsheba’s life. You are the king—surely it can be done, if you will it! There must be a way.”
David smiled, then; he drew me to my feet. “Oh, yes, Michal. There is a way. A royal way. It is rough and harsh, and paved with stones like blades to cut you. But it will save Bathsheba, if that is your choice.”
I was shaking so I could barely stand, or speak. “I will take it,” I said. “Anything, if it will save Bathsheba.”
Again David smiled. His face was beautiful as an idol’s face is beautiful, a king’s image formed from flesh and blood. He slid his
arm about my shoulders and led me to the window that overlooked the city and the rich hills beyond.
“Look to the east, Michal. That is where Rabbah lies, and the fighting there is hot. Battles are hard, the warrior’s life an uncertain thing, easy to lose as a lamb in the mountains. And if a king’s brave soldier should chance to die in the king’s service, would it not be a worthy act to cherish his grieving widow, for his sake?”
“Yes.” My mouth was dry as summer dust. “That would be an act worthy of a king.”
“Uriah is a valiant captain. Such men do not often live to see their son’s sons on their knee. They seek the forefront of the fighting, for honor and glory’s sake. A word sent to Joab would ensure Uriah’s destiny—and Bathsheba’s.”
The snare had been set before my feet, the trap-string ready to my hand. I had only to choose to take it up. An act worthy of a king—or a queen.
This was what David had planned for me; this was why he had gone to Bathsheba and ensured she would reject her husband. But no one could say he had told Bathsheba to deny Uriah. No one could say that.
David had not spoken to Bathsheba of denial. Only of love.
“—he swore he could not bear to think of me with another—”
And Bathsheba had faced Uriah with David’s lying kisses still sweet upon her lips.
This was what David had planned since I had first gone to him and told him that Bathsheba was with child. Each step since that day had led here, to this choice.
I knew I held Bathsheba’s life within my hands. Sweet, foolish, trusting Bathsheba—and her child. David’s child, for whom David cared less than nothing. Against those two lives I must weigh Uriah’s.
I had never seen Uriah. I knew of him only as a good enough man, an ambitious man. I did not know Uriah … .
“Well, Michal? Shall I send to Joab? Uriah returns today to Rabbah—he will be honored to carry the king’s letters to his
war-chief.” David was all smiles and honey, now. His arm coiled heavy about my shoulders. I had thought I hated him before; now I knew that hate had still been only a child’s thing, next to this.
I thought of Uriah, and of Phaltiel. I thought of Bathsheba naked to sharp stones.
“Yes,” I said. I closed my eyes and turned away from the open window. “Send word to Joab.”
 
 

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