Abigail's Story (16 page)

David said nothing for a long time. He stared down at me, and anger made his eyes into black fire.

At last he asked, his voice strained, “Why did you not say before?”

“Before.” I stared at him. “You speak of the time when we first met here, and you did not tell me who you were?”

The side of his mouth made a bitter curl. “I was wrong. You have the eyes of a dove and the heart of a lioness.”

“I am neither bird nor beast. I am the wife of another man, and you are an outlaw king. We must never see each other again.” I drew the water Leha needed and tucked the jug against my hip. “Farewell, Melekh David.”

He did not stop me. He seized me. Water from the jug splashed over the rim and splashed down the front of my khiton. He moved as lightning struck, and that as much as the cold wetness startled a cry from me.

David took the jug from my hands.

“Please, Melekh, I—” I gasped as he tipped the jug and poured the rest of the water down the front of me. “What have you done?”

“No more than you have done to me. I want you to know this fire you have built inside me, Abigail.” He tugged me against the front of his body and held me fast. “It burns without cease.” He pressed my hand under his, so that my fingers were spread over the beating of his heart. “Can you feel the heat of it?”

I felt wet and frightened. “I have done nothing to you. Please, release me.”

“But you have.” He dropped to his knees and rubbed his cheeks and nose against the wet cloth clinging to my belly. “The sight of you captures my eyes. You distract me from my purpose. You make me yearn for nothing but you.”

My hands came up on their own accord and touched his head. “David.” His name could be the only thing
I said for the rest of my life and I would be content. “David, you must not do this. I am married to another man.” And in that moment, I hated Nabal with every part of my being. “Even were I not, I am but the daughter of a poor man. I have no family and no royal blood, no nahalah. I can give you nothing.”

“I know what you did for Yehud and his family. How you brought food for them so they would not suffer. You would save them and let me go hungry.” He looked up at me. “I starve for you, Abigail. For the love of the Adonai, feed me.”

I should have pushed him aside. Even if he was a king to be, he had no right to touch me like this. But his hands were on my hips, and his hair in my hands, and I could not breathe anymore for wanting him.

“Yes.” Slowly he rose, making a path up the wet cloth of my khiton with his mouth. His face and chest were wet as he straightened, and the sun glinted on the droplets beading his thick dark lashes.

Was he weeping for me? If he was, it would tear my heart in two. “I beg you leave me go.”

“I can kill giants and cross mountains, little dove, but I cannot stop touching you.” His hands moved over me, caressing my shoulders, pressing the soaked fabric over my breasts. “I know we cannot be together. I know.” He looked down at my body, outlined as it was by my wet khiton. “But if I am to burn, I would you give me one last sip from your fountain. If I am to die of hunger, let me taste you before I wither away to bone.”

He was not withering. Desire made his male part
thick and hard where he pressed it against the curve of my belly. The words spilling from his lips were beautiful and thrilling, like those of his songs, but I understood what he was asking. He desired me. He wanted to put himself inside me. He wanted to lie with me and give me his child.

Desire was a terrible thing. I knew, for I had burned and starved for him. As I did now.

His rough hands eased my khiton from my shoulders. To my shame, I remembered that I wore no shift under it. The wet wool clung, and he could not slip it down any farther than my breasts.

“Help me,” he murmured against my brow. “I must see you. I must.”

I shook my head, but my back touched stone, and he lifted me off my feet and stepped between my legs, so that I straddled him.

“You cannot deny me.”

I did not wish to. I wanted him. I wanted to be naked with him. As if we were in one of my dreams, my hands lifted again, and I bared my breasts to his gaze. “No,” I said, my voice breaking, “I shall not deny you.”

David gave me more beautiful words, poetry murmured upon my skin as he nuzzled and kissed my breasts. His touch spread the fire through my body. Our lower halves were so tightly pressed together that they wrung the water from my khiton to drip in steady streams. I heard as if from a distance the pattering of the water and the rasp of his beard as he suckled me.

What an eager child passion was, to nurse so strongly.

The stone at my back became prickly grass, and David's arms my bed. The weight of him atop me was heavy, almost to where I could not draw a breath, but then he shifted. His mouth traced my brows, the length of my nose, my lips. I clung to him, dizzy and bewildered by the heaviness of my limbs and the deep, hollow ache between my legs.

Someone said something, and David lifted his head to look around. I went still.

“Abigail?” It was one of the children from camp, Yehud's youngest son, a boy of five. “Are you hurt? Why does Melekh David hold you down so?”

David rolled over and stood, helping me to my feet and hiding me behind him so I could straighten my garments. He gazed down at the boy. “Men do not hurt women. We protect them.”

Yehud's son gave him a solemn nod.

He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Abigail needs a man to protect her as she walks back to camp. Will you do this for me?”

“I shall, Melekh David.” The boy threw his shoulders back and imitated his father's stern glare. “No one will harm Abigail while I am with her.”

“Good.” David came to me and before I could speak and brushed his mouth over mine. “Look after her well, boy. She is a good wife.”

CHAPTER
15

M
alme's labor continued through the night and into the next morning. Leha and I spelled each other, but I could not snatch more than a few moments of sleep. I felt my mouth still damp with his kiss, my body still warm from his touch, and my heart became like a stone in my breast.

If this was what it meant to find a dream, then I did not wish to dream, ever again.

As dawn came, the young mother's battle to bring forth her child turned worrisome. Bloody fluid trickled from between her legs, and her skin turned cold and clammy. The pains that had caused her to moan and complain now wracked her body with agony.

Leha drew me aside. “I cannot feel the baby's head. I think it may be turned the wrong way.” She glanced over at Bethel, who had not risen from her mat. “My aunt is not well enough to attend her, and none of the other women know what to do.”

“Can we send for a midwife?”

She shook her head. “The journey takes a day, and by the time she comes I fear it will be too late to save them.”

“Why are you two standing here gossiping?”

We both turned toward the familiar, complaining voice, and watched as a bedraggled Keseke hobbled over to us, supporting her weight with a stick stripped of bark.

She looked from Leha to me. “What do you here? There is a baby to be born. Tell me what you have done, and how she does.”

Leha hesitated, and then told Keseke everything that had happened through the night. “Have you ever seen such a birth?”

“I had two of my own try to come out that way.” She noticed my stare. “I was not always a servant. My children died with my husband, of the spotted sickness.”

I wanted to touch her arm and tell her how sorry I was, but I was still too angry with her. “How fortunate that you decided to come back.”

“You may take up your stick and beat me later, Mistress,” she advised me. “For now, I shall go to Malme and see what can be done.”

I insisted she wash first, which she did without complaint, and I watched her carefully. If she tried to hurt anyone, I would be the one to stop her.

Malme's entire body dripped with sweat, but she could no longer be roused from her stupor. Keseke eased down beside her and used her hands to check the position of the child.

“It is as you said,” she told Leha. “The baby's feet have already emerged. It is lucky that I have small hands. You will have to hold her down for me. This will hurt her and make her cry out.”

Leha and I took position on either side of Malme, while Keseke knelt and pushed her hand into the young woman's body. Malme reacted with a terrible scream and writhed under our hold.

“Keep her still!” Keseke snapped.

I held on and prayed.

It seemed to take forever, and Malme screamed several times. Then her entire body went rigid, and Keseke eased her hand back.

“Now push,” she told Malme. “Push!”

Malme's exhausted face turned bright red. A gush of blood and fluid came, and then I saw a round head. Malme screamed one final time, and the baby seemed to pop out of her body like the clay seal from a bottle of fermenting wine.

“Here now,” Keseke said, holding the squirming little baby over his mother's belly, “you have a fine son.”

 

A firstborn son was something to celebrate, and the men preceded to do just that. The younger wives joined them, but the older women, Leha, and I stayed with Malme and her baby. The new mother stopped bleeding as soon as the baby was put to her breast, and she drifted into a healing sleep, still cradling her new son.

“He is a greedy one,” Leha said, gently turning
the baby to suckle at his sleeping mother's other breast. “Big and healthy, too. It is almost as if he grew fat while his mother grew thin.”

I laid a hand on the top of his round head. He had a dark pink, wrinkled face and tiny black curls. His hair felt softer than lamb's wool. “There is no creation of the Adonai's more precious or amazing than a newborn child.”

“We have your friend to thank for that,” Leha said, nodding toward Keseke, who was crouched over a water basin and cleaning Malme's blood from her hands.

My smile faded. “Yes.”

I went over to join Keseke. I had no desire to speak to her, but there were matters to be settled. Such as, “Why did you come back?”

“Why not? There was nowhere for me to go. I could not walk all the way back to Maon, and there are no caves near here. Trees do not make comfortable beds.” She nodded in the direction of the forest.

“Yet you left before,” I pointed out. “You remember, when you stole the food from the people who cared for you.”

“There are things out there that are much worse than here, Mistress. I did not know this when I fled.” She shrugged. “Now I do.”

Had she no conscience? “Keseke, you
stole
from these people. You knew they had little food left, and that their children were hungry, and yet you did this. How could you?”

“I was afraid.” She glared at me. “No one here
adopted me as their daughter, did they? No, I was only tolerated because of you.”

I started to argue with her and then remembered how I had felt when Bethel had heaped her scorn upon my head. “What you did was wrong.”

Her scowl deepened. “I saved the life of Malme and her child, did I not? Does that make up for my theft?”

“A good deed in exchange for a bad one; that is your thinking?” She nodded. “Then how will you make up for trying to take my life?”

She went silent and stared at her hands, and then rubbed them against her khiton. At last she met my gaze. “How did you know?”

“It matters not, only that you tried twice to kill me,” I told her. “What do you plan to exchange to make up for them? Must I wait until you can deliver my first two children?”

She rested her face against her hand and wrapped an arm around her knees. Curled over as she was, she began to rock back and forth. “He will never give you children. He did not want you for his wife. He wanted your dowry. Nothing pleases him unless he can have it to himself.”

Cetura had suspected as much, but I had been hoping the evil had come from another source. Still, I had to be sure. “Did my husband order you to kill me?”

Keseke became angry. “I warned you, did I not? But you would not listen.”

I pretended to think. “I recall no words of warning when you gave me that poisoned bread and cheese
on the journey here. Nor before that night, when you made to beat my head in while I slept.”

Shame and defeat dulled her eyes. “I could do nothing else. The master told me that it was your life, or mine. I did not wish to die.”

“Yet you failed twice to kill me,” I pointed out. “Why did you not try again? There were many times you might have succeeded. I ate all the food you prepared; I slept like a child in your presence. There was nothing to stop you.”

“Nothing? What of you, calling me friend instead of servant?” She flung out one hand. “Bringing me here with you, sharing your food and fire, other kindnesses too many to number. You set out to defeat me. You bored into my heart like a worm of goodness.”

Had the woman a single drop of shame in her body? “Yes, I can see how horrible it must have been for you.”

“It was.” She thumped her breast. “I could not do as I had been told. It was the goodness in you, it blinded me.” She ducked her head. “It made me hope when I had vowed never to feel so again.”

“Oh, Keseke.” I wanted to throttle her and embrace her at the same time. “If you did feel that way, then what were you to tell Nabal? How would you explain your failure?”

“I did not intend to die for you, if that is what you mean,” she snapped. “I thought when the time came to return to Maon that we would flee him
together. Only I could not think of how to tell you what he had done, and what I had tried to do.”

“I could see where you might have trouble finding the right words.” I made my voice an imitation of her crossest tone. “ ‘Oh, Mistress, let us run away together into the wilderness so that I do not have to try to poison you again or crush your skull in the night.” '

“Exactly so.” Her mouth softened. “I do not think anything bad will ever happen to you. It is as if the Adonai protects you with a shield no one can see.” She gave me an uncertain look. “Do you forgive, Mistress?”

“You will call me Mistress no more,” I said. “To you I am Abigail.”

“Abigail.” Keseke said it carefully.

“You will work hard for Yehud's wives and make up for that which you stole from them,” I continued sternly. “And you will never follow any orders. I am making you a free woman, of free will. Whether you choose to stay here or leave, you are responsible for your actions from this moment hence.”

“You cannot free me,” she muttered. “The debt of my husband to yours is too large; my servitude is for life.”

“I am still the wife of Nabal. I may incur debt, or I may release it. That is the law. I release you from your debt to my husband.” I kissed her brow. “There, it is done. You serve no one but yourself.”

“Foolish girl, to set free a servant so. I can see you
will need careful guidance if you are not to beggar yourself after this divorce.” Keseke sighed. “I shall stay with you then”—she eyed me—“as friend and companion.”

I smiled at her. “As you have always been.”

 

The food I had brought to Yehud and his family gave them time to gather and replenish their stores. By the time the sheep were ready to be driven to Maon for shearing, the hill people had regained their health and were once more strong and vigorous.

The same could not be said of the dal. Four hundred men required a great deal of food, and the southern shepherds had exhausted the local supply of game. Hunger made the men grow gaunt, yet no complaints were made, and the patrols around the camp and the herds never ceased.

“I would feed them all,” Leha said one day, watching the patrol, “but they are too many. We cannot share without depriving our own children again.”

I knew how she felt. That morning I had seen two of David's men sharing a root from a broom tree. Only the worst kind of hunger would drive someone to subsist on such bitter stuff. “They were to leave after the flocks are driven to Maon for shearing.”

“They must go before that, or soon they will not have the energy to make such a march,” Leha predicted.

The dal were scrupulous in their dealings with Yehud's family, even at cost to themselves. When a young goat somehow escaped the sheepfold during
the night and was found by the patrol, the dal might have taken the kid to their camp, roasted, and devoured it without anyone the wiser. Instead, they brought the animal back to the camp, where they presented it to Yehud, along with a warning about the shepherds to the south, who had been raiding towns and villages for food.

“They cannot exist much longer on roots and grass,” Bethel said to me one evening as we were readying the children for sleep. She tugged a nightdress over the head of one small child and kissed her granddaughter before tucking her under a soft warm blanket.

I thought of David eating weeds to stay alive, and the good meal in my belly turned to a solid lump. “What can be done for them?”

“I have spoken to my husband, but it is as Leha says. We cannot share with them and have enough for our own kin.”

I thought of the raids to which the southern shepherds had resorted. “Melekh David will not lead them against anyone to obtain the food they need, will he?”

Bethel shook her head. “David has prevented too many such attacks to indulge in one himself, no matter how hungry his men are. He has his most trusted men on patrol, and leads the others in long hunts every day. My husband said of late they are killing and eating wolves and lions.”

I grimaced. The flesh of predators could not be much better than bitter roots. Part of me was glad to
know this, though, for it explained why I had not seen David of late. Instantly I felt foolish for even thinking such a thing. “We must pray for them.”

“Pray they leave these lands and find new graze before they begin burying each other,” Bethel said.

Keseke overheard my conversation with Bethel and came to me. “There is an old farm in the hills, beyond the forest of the spring. It is abandoned, but there is wheat growing wild and many fig and olive trees.” She took a twig and drew a crude map of the farm in the dirt.

I examined her drawing. “How do you know this?”

“It is where I stayed when I went wandering.” That was how she referred to her theft and flight during my absence. “There is not enough food for half of four hundred, but what could be gleaned from the fields will be better than lion meat.”

I regarded her carefully. “You did not have to return here, then. You might have stayed at that farm and lived well.”

“I have no talent for farming, and the house was atrocious. Swine would be uncomfortable in such a place.” She sniffed and went to grind grain for the morning bread.