How are the Mighty fallen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The lost battle reechoed in his brain: the brazen chariots as they stormed the slopes, the bladed wheels as they slashed the wild grasses and the legs of men; the eagle-shrill of arrows; the lightning of spears. Gilboa had come to life and treacherously devoured his mountain-dwelling people. The cruel and unrelenting sun had sparkled the blotches of blood on the plain, and he, David, the exile of Israel, had watched his people routed and overrun; Jonathan felled with an arrow, Saul as he fell on his sword.

After dark, when the slopes lay hushed with their burden of death, he had dared the lions and hyenas in search of life; in search of Jonathan or Jonathan’s body. He was not surprised when a hooded figure approached him across the field.

He knew the queen behind the faltering gait, the hidden face. The sweetness of her in the midst of death affronted his nostrils; finally she groped for words.

“David, my son, they have taken the bodies of Saul and Jonathan and his brothers from the field. I could not stop them.”

He fell to his knees with inarticulate grief. He raised his face to the blank and unresponsive moon, to the heedless mountain, and sobbed a lament for his own comfort and for the unlamented dead. He wanted to stop his ears and hide from Ahinoam as from a demented leper. Life in a field of death was doubly cruel. She had no right to glitter even in the dark, unsmashed beauty amid the ruins.

“You saw the battle?” he said at last.

“I waited with Rizpah on a neighboring crag. I watched them die, Saul and his sons. Jonathan too, the princeliest of them all. We returned to the camp. We fled with the slaves and servants when the Philistines overran us. Rizpah was captured. I hid in a cave with a fox which never moved but stared at me with terrible eyes, the eyes of death. It was your anguish which called to me across the night and I came-not to succor you, for what have I left to give? — but to share, I think, the burden of grief. Perhaps divided it will be endurable. David, my son, was it you who showed the Philistines the secret passes behind Gilboa?”

Sadly he shook his head. “It was not by choice. The Philistines were kind to me, and Achish became my friend. We talked of ships and voyages and the Island of Green Magic, your home. We talked of inconsequential things, never of war. He did not ask me to betray my own people. But once I told him of hunting a lion on the slopes of Gilboa. How I had climbed a secret path which the shepherds knew and surprised the beast in his lair. Achish remembered, and thus only did I betray my people.”

“I believe you, David. You are not to blame for Gilboa, nor even Saul and his madness. It was Yahweh, I think, who forsook his people. And how could the Lady help them? Sometimes they pray to her, but the Philistines build her temples and honor her priests. I believe that she stood apart and wept for both of the armies, but more for Israel. But now we must find the bodies and bury them with proper rites or they will be homeless ghosts throughout eternity.”

“Is Ashtoreth so cruel?”

“It is Yahweh who rules the dead of Israel, though he has lost the living.”

“Isn't he satisfied with the blood he has wrought?” “Sometimes the gods obey a law beyond themselves, the Mother of the Mother, the Father of the Father. Sometimes it is we ourselves who bring on our heads the whirlwind we call the gods. The beauty of Israel is slain upon its high places. That is what history will say, and that is all.”

He did not like speech at such a time. Silence was harsh; speech was intolerable. He must act upon her words. “How shall we know where the Philistines have taken them?” “Alecto, the Siren, will know. We are close to Endor. We shall seek her now.”

“But you are a Siren, Ahinoam. Where are your powers?” “I put them from me when I married Saul, or hid them and let them die. Some remained. I can speak to the living without speech and hear the unspoken language of their hearts. I can call to a bird on the wing or summon a dolphin out of the deeps. But the dead are beyond me.”

He walked in a dream and Ahinoam walked beside him, the queen of unshed tears. She looked at him searchingly and gave him her hand for support (it was he, not she, who staggered, like one with the gift of tongues).

“David, it is I who have brought you grief. It was I who sent you to Jonathan. How could I not have guessed that he would encircle you in his doom? For he was too beautiful to live in this world of toiling shadows.”

“Jonathan was my god,” he said. “Not Yahweh, nor Ashtoreth. He was the bread which I broke at the festival, he was the vintage rich from the treading feet. Would you have wished me godless and songless? All of the days of my life, though I move as a ghost, I will move in grace because I loved him.

They came at last to Endor and found the house of Alecto, the sun-dried bricks with the spindly wooden staircase climbing to the roof. David pounded her door with impatient fists.

When Alecto opened the door, she was garbed in simple green homespun and wearing a single small tourmaline on her smallest finger. She had not aged, but she had grieved; her sea-green eyes were dim with tears.

“Ahinoam and David,” she said. “I have been expecting you. Come quickly into the house. There are still Philistines in the town.”

Net entwining shells; couch made of oars; the figurehead of a ship: Here were the voyages which he might have taken with Jonathan. (“You may voyage to foreign lands in search of apes and ivory, frankincense and nard…”)

He must speak or weep. “They say you can raise the dead. Is it true, Alecto, Siren and Witch of Endor?”

“Men call me a witch because I tell them the truth. Yes, I can raise the dead. The ghosts of Sheol, for they are restless beings, shadows and therefore lonely. I raised the spirit of Samuel before the battle. But the happy spirits of the Celestial Vineyard will not-cannot-answer me.‘

“Can you summon my friend Jonathan?”

“He was a loving boy. He may have attained the Celestial Vineyard.”

“His wings were too small, I think. Will you call to him?”

Alecto’s eyes held conquests and civilizations, burning towers and ravished princesses; the wrath of kings and the infidelity of queens whose beauty had kindled wars. He did not find, in her the civilizing compassion of Ahinoam. The elemental moods of the sea still strove in her; its sudden fury and halcyon calm, the laughter of dolphins, the sinister scything of sharks. Only the Goddess could command her. Only to those she liked would she be kind. Perhaps she approved him; perhaps she accepted him for Ahinoam’s sake.

“Mama, who are these men?”

A small child, asleep and unnoticed in a bed of tortoise-shell, had awakened to peer at them with sleepy eyes. A spray of garlic hung above his bed to protect him from Walk-Behinders and other demons, who might wish to steal him and leave a changeling in his place, for he was a radiant child, with eyes like the sea at the edge of the world and hair as yellow as corn.

“They are my friends,” she said. “They were your father’s friends.”

Ahinoam looked at David with disbelief. “I did not know. For once I did not read his heart.”

“He did not know himself. It is Jonathan’s child, however. We came here together once.”

“And he loved me,” Alecto said, “for the little space of a night. But the night was a tender moon and a field of chrysanthemums.”

“I am glad,” said Ahinoam. “He has left a part of himself in a world diminished by his departure.” She bent to lift the child from his bed.

“Please,” said Alecto. “The Philistines sacked the village before you came. They did not hurt me, nor steal my things, because they knew me to be a Siren. But they frightened Mephibosheth. He fled to his couch, but fell and hurt his knee. You must not touch him except to kiss his cheek.”

“You mustn’t fear the Philistines, Mephibosheth,” said David. “They are my friends and I will protect you from them.”

“And Walk-Behinders. What about them?”

‘1 killed a giant with a sling, and he was fiercer than any demon there is!“

“My father is not coming back, is he? Mama told me a long time ago.”

“A month ago,” she whispered. “It seems an eternity to him. He thinks his father is a great king in a distant kingdom who cannot leave his people.”

“And so he would have been,” said David. “Come now, Alecto. Let us speak to him.”

She will garb herself in the habiliments of a seeress, he thought, the hood and the black robe. She will fall to her knees or sacrifice a goat.

But she had no need for such empty trappings; she, a Siren.

“Sit here beside me on the couch and hold my hands,” she said, a beautiful maiden with arms which were whiter than the whitest lamb. Whether the room grew dark, he did not know. Rather it seemed to him that he was taken to a place of darkness where the voice of Alecto-he could not see her face-rang like a bell on a distant buoy.

“Lady of the Wild Things, Lady of Love,” Alecto whispered, “grieve for a grieving mother and a friend who was more than a brother. Make of their grief a monument to love and raise the spirit of Jonathan, prince of Israel, from the netherland which is Sheol.”

He had waited before a battle with fear upon him. He had waited before he met Goliath with a horror of timelessness, with the feeling that Joshua had stopped the sun and every water clock had ceased to drip. It was worse in this land with no name. He will not come. The old magic is dead. No more does Ahinoam swim in the Great Green Sea nor Alecto sit on the rocks and comb her labyrinthine hair, nor Jonathan ride the dolphins. No more does the terebinth tree enfold its house as if it were a nest against the storm. Like a plague of darkness, the time of the Cyclops has fallen upon the land, and where is Joshua to recover the sun?

Mephibosheth took his hand and said in a small, brave voice, “I came too, David.” He limped in a linen robe which fell to his feet, hiding his wounded knee, and each little foot thrust back and forth, back and forth, like the feelers of a snail. In his free hand, he carried a lamp like an opening chrysanthemum.

“Mama told you she would try to call my father. I heard her. I wasn’t asleep at all. I want to see him too.”

“But how can we find him, Mephibosheth?” David cried, clasping the child’s hand.

“I will call his name. Maybe he will hear us. Papa, it is I, Mephibosheth, and David, your friend. Help us to find you, for we have lost our way!”

In a place without stars, in a place without name, Jonathan came to them out of the white dusk, parting the mist as one parts the flaps to a tent. An arrow clutched at his chest and blood cobwebbed his face.

“Jonathan, my brother, can you hear me?”

“I can hear you, David, but I cannot see your face.

“Your son is with me. It was he who called to you.”

“Is it well with you, my son?”

“Yes, Papa, so long as you speak to me.”

“David is your father now. Look after him as if he were me. He is sometimes sad and you must be like a cricket on his hearth, singing a merry tune to make him laugh.”

“I will do that, Papa.”

“What is this place?” David asked.

“No-Land, wherever that may be. Yahweh has not forgiven my love for you. He has barred me from Sheol.”

David grasped for his hand and his fingers closed on air.

“Perhaps the Goddess will help you reach the Vineyard.”

Jonathan’s smile, ineffably sweet, unspeakably sad, was like a stone from a sling in David’s breast “My wings are memories. How shall they lift me out of this well of night? Even the air is a wet embrace.”

“Ashtoreth,” David pleaded, lifting his arms toward a sky which he could not see. “At least let us touch him, Mephibosheth and me!”

Momentarily the shadow held shape and substance, the dear configurations of the beloved, and David grasped his arm.

“David, David, I can see you at last and feel the warmth of your hand. And you, my son. My two blankets against the cold. David, it was a happy time we had together at Elan and Gibeah.”

“It was not enough,” shouted David. “What is a world without Jonathan?”

“The world must be ruled. Who but my friend, anointed by Samuel, shall rally the scattered armies of Israel?”

Form melted into mist, mist eddied into white and estranging dark.

“Jonathan, wait for me. How shall I find you again?”

“Recover my body and that of my father and brothers from the temple to Dagon at Beth-Shan and give us decent burial. Perhaps you will find a sign…”

– He sat on a couch between the two women, in the cramped room, in the cramped world. Mephibosheth lay in his bed looking at them with large green eyes.

“I saw him,” said Ahinoam. “He smiled and spoke and reached out his hand to me. But I could not even touch him. And you, David?”

“Mephibosheth was with me. Even Yahweh has no quarrel with a child. Both of us held him for a little moment. Alecto, can you raise him again?”

Sadly she shook her head. “It is not possible. Now you must let him rest. Sleep is the only blessing left to him.”

David embraced her and smelled the salt from the sea, “If Samuel’s prophecy should come to pass that the anointed should rule”-he could not bring himself to speak his own name-“then the witch and the sorcerer will once again be welcome in Israel.”

“He is in Sheol?” Ahinoam asked uncertainly. “I could not be sure.”

“He is in No-Land,” said David. “It is worse than Sheol. There aren’t even shadows to keep him company.”

“David, David, what shall we do?” The old eyes in the young face besought his answer. Her question deferred to his strength, but he felt like a lost and forsaken child. She, she should know every answer to every question. She was the queen, she was the Siren, immortal of beauty, powerful even in ruin.

“He told me to find Saul’s body and those of his sons and give them decent burial. They are in Beth-Shan.”

“Nailed to the walls of a temple.” She shuddered. “It is the Philistine way. But how can we enter an enemy town without an army?”

“The Philistines are drunk with their victory. No one will think to guard the bodies.”

“We cannot go alone. We cannot carry the bodies.”

“When he first became king, your husband defended the town of Jabesh-Gilead against the army of Nahash, the Ammonite. The people swore fealty to Saul and his descendants. They fought with him gallantly in his last battle, but some, no doubt, escaped and fled with Abner among the hills. They will doubtless retreat to their high-walled town. Let us go there now and ask their help.”

– The walk was long and difficult; a Night Stalker flew at Ahinoam out of a tamarisk tree and David beat him to death with his bare fists and cast him at her feet. All of the night and all of the following day they walked toward Jabesh-Gilead, the city as old as Cain; sometimes they hid in caves or hovels from the marauding Philistines. There was little to steal in the huts of the Israelites, and the beauty of Israelite women, dark and voluptuous, was not to the taste of the victors, but victory was wine to them and drunkenness made them cruel. Ahinoam hid her gold beneath a rustic’s robe, and David dyed his hair with the brown ocher from the banks of a stream. Sometimes the natives knew them by the way they walked, or the way David moved his arms, with rapid, sure motions, always the slinger, or the way Ahinoam never lowered her eyes, even to face the sun, and gave them provisions and water until they came at last to Jabesh-Gilead, which, like a grim but kindly spirit, guarded a fertile valley of vineyards and olive trees.“ The town was wracked by grief over Israel’s loss, but Ahinoam and David, though kingdom-less, were greeted like a queen and a prince.

“We bring danger with us,” David was prompt to confess. “The Philistines have turned against me because I would not fight with them against Israel, and they would like to lead Ahinoam in chains through Gaza and Askelon.”

The answer was unequivocal. “We have our walls. We remember Saul.”

Ahinoam smiled with the old artless witchery of her youth. “You do us honor, my faithful friends. Yet we have more to ask. Listen to David’s plan.”

“You owe me nothing,” said David. “After my wanderings in the desert, I served the Philistines for three years. I dined with Achish, the seren of Gath, and ruled in Ziklag.”

“You are not to blame. It was Saul who hounded you through the wilderness and into the arms of the foe.”

“Nor was he to blame. His demon drove him to madness. Will you help me recover his body and that of his sons from the walls of Beth-Shan?”

Without exception the people of the town-and surely the smallest child to the oldest graybeard had gathered to greet these famous exiles-agreed to the plan. It was as if slaves had discarded their chains or cowards had discovered courage. At least a hundred warriors pleaded to join the group, even an old one-legged man on crutches who remembered Deborah; the women encouraged their husbands and sons and promised to offer Yahweh a sacrifice of thirty cattle and sixty sheep, a costly gift for so poor a town.

But David sought valor and not numbers. It was hard to find men who had not been wounded on the slopes of Gilboa. But finally he chose his band-ten of them-not so much for their strength as for a look in their eyes which seemed to say: “We have fought much but not too much. For Jonathan, the pride of Israel, we would fight the Giants of Gath!” After he had made his choice-and they were quick to answer the famous David of the red hair and rapid arm-he spoke in a quiet firm voice:

“We will all wear tunics like soldiers and shave our cheeks and trust to the night and the drunkenness of the victors. May Yahweh walk with us.” (The Goddess was little worshipped in Jabesh-Gilead, but Ahinoam whispered to David, “And I will plead with the Lady and shear the locks from my head.”)

Ahinoam took his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.

“If I were a man, I would fight at your side,” she said. “Bring back my husband’s body. He loved the earth-seedtime, harvest, and haying-and therefore I loved him, though he was called to the wars against his will and finally came to like them.” (She did not reproach him for Rizpah.) “Bring back my sons to me, and the son whom I loved the best. Once, when you fought Goliath, I hurled green magic against him. I have no magic to send with you now-except my love of the Lady.”

“I will do as you say,” said David, loving her because she was a great queen who made a splendor of exile and an exaltation of grief; because, like the simplest farmer’s wife, she must suffer the loss of her husband and sons; and because she was Jonathan’s mother. To look at her you would have thought that she had slept on eiderdown and stepped, fragrant and glistening, from her bath. Honey Hair! But David had passed beyond desire or awe; to him she was his second friend.

– Distances were short, even if difficult and often pathless, in Israel. It was a single day’s walk to Beth-Shan. But the Philistines had overrun the countryside like a plague of flies. No one questioned David and his men. Except for David, they were shorter and shaggier than most Philistines, their features were aquiline, their skin and hair dark. They were farmers and herdsmen who worked in the fields by day and returned to their huts in Jabesh-Gilead only at night; they were not of the sea or the city. But some of the Israelites had fought for Philistia as mercenaries; such seemed David and his men, and no one attempted to question them. David, already brown of hair, smeared his tunic with dirt and blood like a veteran of Gilboa and hid his face with a hood.

Beth-Shan was enkindled with torches and riotous with merrymakers. The garrison was small; the priests more numerous than soldiers. It was a sacred town, a town of temples to Dagon and Ashtoreth, and no enemy had presumed to attack its low and indefensible walls, not even the Israelites, who, though they execrated Dagon even above Baal, secretly honored the Lady.

No one questioned them as they entered the gate, between the two stone images, one of fish-tailed Dagon with the face and arms of a man, the other of Ashtoreth cradling fruit in her arms.

They followed the revelers to the temple of Dagon. The Israelites did not build temples to Yahweh-they worshipped him at an altar of clumsily piled stones or under the spreading limbs of a sacred tree. Philistine temples were foreign to them. Red, swelling columns, blue walls, flat roofs covered with decorative tiles… porticoes and altars of chiseled green marble… courtyards where maidens danced the slow, shuffling Dance of the Crane… priests with shaven heads, the young in loincloths, the old in robes which reached to their ankles: these were the echoes of Crete which honored the fish-tailed god.

The body of Saul had been nailed to the wall by his hands, and his severed head had been raised on a stake at his feet. His younger sons by Ahinoam, Ahinidab and Machishua, also slain in the battle, hung beside him. Only Jonathan was not with them; the Philistines had respected him even in death; they doubtless knew that he was not Saul’s son; they did not wish or perhaps they feared to dismember a Siren’s son. They had bound him by leather straps to a column of Ashtoreth’s temple. Except for the blood on his face, he was as white as the salt flats around the Dead Sea, and sad in sleep, as if he were haunted by dreams. But death, like a lover, had left him beautiful.

Philistine soldiers were hurling clods of earth at the head of Saul. His features were blurred beyond recognition. The eyes were gone, the gray hair was clotted with blood.

They were making sport of him with words as well as blows. The Philistines taught their children by questions and answers known as Wisdoms. It was a form which they could raise to an art or lower to a curse.

“Where is your crown, oh king of Israel who would drive us into the sea? Where are the shepherds who sleep beneath the sky and wield their staves instead of their swords?”

“On Gilboa,” the answer rang. “Ask the vultures to show you the way.”

“Where is Rizpah, harlot of Israel?”

“Seek her in chains beside the unchanging sea.

Hatred burned in David like the poison of wild gourds. It was not of the gods, whatever men said, this thing which drove them to fight and kill and exult. Or else it was Hate, and men should raise him a temple or heap him an altar of stones. David must fight him now or leap on the revelers backs as if they were a pride of lions. But reason restrained him, the weir which checked the turbulence of his nature. He remembered the similar cruelties of the Israelites. He had seen them conquer a town, massacre women along with men, children along with mothers.

“We will wait now,” he said. “The Philistines will soon exhaust themselves and sleep. Let us pretend to join them. Sing and dance and reel in the streets, and pretend to hurl clay at our king. But drink neither wine nor beer. Our time will come.”

The Lady Moon descended the heavens, slowly, slowly, as if she wished to illumine the merrymaking (she was much honored by the Philistines, who mistook her for Ashtoreth; but the Goddess would close her eyes upon such a sight). The cries of merriment dwindled to a low, murmurous titter, then into such a silence as follows a battle, whether defeat or victory. Men fell asleep in their tracks and slid to the earth, friend leaned against friend. Mongrels, a cat, a goat prowled through the streets in search of food but kept their distance from the sleeping men.

“Now,” said David. ‘

The bodies were strangely light; Saul seemed an ancient scarecrow, the sons beside him like little children. They had lost much blood. There was an odor of death about them, like the damp and decay in a cellar of moldering bones. Except Jonathan. The wild grasses of Gilboa had cloaked him in a green fragrance. With infinite tenderness, without the help of his friends, David lowered his body to the ground. (No one shall touch him but me. No one shall be his blanket against the cold.)

They borrowed robes from the sleepers to hide the bodies. Nobody stopped them as they left the town. A drowsy guard at the gate nodded good night.

“Too much beer?” he mumbled, pointing to the shrouded bodies.

“Yes, that and the battle.

“They’ll be drinking beer from Gaza to Bethlehem tomorrow!” he chortled.

In a forest beyond Beth-Shan, they threaded litters of willow wands and carried their burden for most of the night.

“Stop here and rest,” said David in a grove of palms and tamarisks, beside a well with crumbling walls and an old copper bucket on a rusted chain. The men dipped water and drank and stretched wearily on their robes and slept the sleep of the dead. The water was clean and cold. The wind made lyre notes in the swaying fronds.

David leaned his back against a tree, unable to sleep, with Jonathan’s head in his lap. Like most of his people, he had no fear of death; he had fought too many battles. It did not even seem to him that Jonathan was dead.

“Little brother,” he said. “You were older than I. You taught me how to fight. But I grew taller than you in the wilderness, and at the last it was I you needed to shield you from the giant. I should have taken the arrow in my breast.”

And David sang:

“The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places:

How are the mighty fallen!

Tell it not in Gath,

Publish it not in the streets of Askelon;

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,

Neither let there be rain, upon you,

Nor fields of offerings; for there the shield of the Mighty Is vilely cast away, The shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.

From the blood of the slain,

From the fat of the mighty,

The bow of Jonathan turned not back,

And the sword of Saul returned not empty.

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,

And in their death they were not divided: They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, Who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

0 Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.

1 am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished.“

He lifted Jonathan lightly in his arms and laid him on the grass beside the well. He raised a bucket of water and, tearing a linen strip from his own tunic, bathed the blood from Jonathan’s face and started to bind the arrow wound in his chest. He turned the body in his lap, as one might turn a baby to sprinkle him with myrrh. Only then did he see the hunched and swollen back beneath the cloth.

“They have crippled you!” he cried. “How could I fail to see when I carried you from the town?”

Angrily he parted the back of Jonathan’s tunic to wash the wounds. Freed of encumbering cloth, amber wings expanded like flames into the air, the great burning glories of the time beyond remembering when the dead ascended, unwearied, to the Celestial Vineyard.

It is a dream, he thought. I sleep and miracles come to taunt me. (But what had Jonathan said? “ Perhaps you will find a sign…”)

One of the men from Jabesh-Gilead had wakened to David’s song and walked, unnoticed, to stand beside him.

He stared in wonderment at the sudden wings.

“The Goddess?” he asked.

“She must have called to him.

“I have heard of such things. There is a place where they go to meet her, those whom she calls. Sirens, and others too who have loved her in life.”

“The Celestial Vineyard?”

“It has many names. But it is not like Sheol. It lies above us, does it not? Beyond them” He pointed to the stars, which no longer seemed cold and uncompanionable, but friendly torches against the Liliths and the Night Stalkers. North Star, Dog Star, Great Bear…

I will greet them when Jonathan comes to find me, he thought. Yahweh, be with me and the queen I love. Forgive us; accept our forgiveness.

Now I must find a throne and join the mountains to the sea.