The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

but the skin was delicate and unblemished, and the bones beneath the aged flesh were very fine. I saw that there had been great beauty, once. I would have wagered a talent that beneath her linen headdress, the silver hair wasstill streaked through with fading tongues of fire. When she started to speak again her voice was low and full of emotion. I could see the strain in her face as she tried to command herself.
    â€œThe name I gave him. Beloved. It was my act of defiance, you see. He was the only one of my sons I named. Their father had been quick to give names to all the others. But to this one, he would give nothing. Not even a glance. He hated the very sight of him. Had the infant died, Yishai would have rejoiced.”
    What she said shocked me so that I stopped writing and stared at her. She gazed back, a hint of amusement in her troubled eyes.
    â€œI see in your face that you doubt me. You will know why, presently. The older boys took their lead from their father. They treated their youngest brother as if he were an unwelcome stranger. Even Natanel—the closest in age, the kindest of them—ignored him. That was the best of the treatment he received at their hands. The older brothers put vinegar in his drink and gall in his food. They beat him and accused him of thefts for which he was blameless. No one knows these things that I am telling you. No one outside the family. And—before this odd command of his, if you had asked Shammah or any of the others, they would have denied it.”
    I had known her sons, most of them, but not well. None was close to the king, not one of them part of his inner circle. While she lived, his sister, Zeruiah, stood close in his affection and confidence, and her three sons, most especially Yoav, were prominent men. David’s brothers, by contrast, had enjoyed lesser places at court. Yet in all my time at the king’s side, there had been no hint of enmity. Nizevet seemed to read these thoughts as they passed through my mind. She smiled slightly.
    â€œNo one wants to remember how it was. The king, perhaps, least of all. But I remember. How could I not? When he was barely six years old, his father ordered that he be sent away from the
beit av
—the family home—to tend the sheep up in the hills. He was to live in a little hut of stone and branches, and come home only to get supplies. It wasto get him away from the house, you see, so that Yishai would not have to look upon him. And this, too: the hills were full of lions then—not like now, when one rarely hears of an attack. How was a six-year-old supposed to survive out there alone? I believe Yishai hoped for his death. I wept the day he left, the crook—too large for him—threaded over his narrow shoulders, his slender wrists draped over the cane. He had the cheeses, olives and dried grapes I had packed for him tied in a cloth on his back. He looked small, and helpless, and lonely. My heart ached over it. I was in agony for him. But now I think that it was a good thing he got away from his brothers’ persecutions and his father’s open hatred. Those years in the hills taught him many things. You could say that they made him the man he became. For better . . .” she paused and drew a deep breath. “And yes, perhaps, for worse. Should a mother say such a thing?” She gave a swift, wan smile. “‘Tell everything,’ so he said. And so. Everything.”
    As she spoke, my pen scritched across the parchment and my mind filled with memories of David at our first meeting on the high hills above my village. I imagined him as that small shepherd boy, living in the long silences broken only by the baaing of the ewes and the clatter of stones shifting as the herd moved over them. I imagined the sharp scent of thyme crushed under the hooves, and the calls of the little birds in the thorn bushes.
    He must have found ways to fill the long days and the silences. In those