Read Online The Secret Chord: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks - Free Book Online

feel it pulse within you, around you. The army becomes one with this idea, and then we break upon the enemy with mighty force.
    But that one time, the force was not enough, and the very ark itself was lost. The woe of it sucked the heart out of us. When a messenger brought the news to our high priest and chieftain, Eli, he fell back in his chair and died on the spot. All glory seemed gone with the ark fallen to our enemies and housed, as we heard, in their heathen temple beside their idol, the grain god Dagon, as if it were just any other trophy of war.
    That was when the talk began that we must have a king, as other nations had, to lead us in battle. It was talk born out of a heartsick desperation, the fruit of utter despair. Shmuel warned the people against it. He said that a king would be a yoke upon freedom and a charge upon our purses. He, of course, was famed for taking nothing from the people, not so much as a sandal strap or a sheepskin. But as he grew old, and his sons began to take over some of his tasks, they proved corrupt. And so the clamor for a king grew. Moshe’s law had allowed for the possibility of a king, and in the end, Shmuel gave way. He found Shaul, tall and handsome, and anointed him, just as the people demanded. Shaul, at first unwilling, accepted his destiny and grasped it with a hard hand. He united the people with threats, butchering oxen and sending the pieces to each of the tribes, saying that if they did not join him and fight, they would be butchered just so, in their turn.
    Shmuel, perhaps still not reconciled with the very idea of kingship, drove Shaul hard. It seemed he could do nothing right; Shmuel held him to measure with a harsh rod, and neither Shaul’s worship nor his warfare met Shmuel’s mark. Even the victories against the Plishtim did not satisfy. Instead, Shmuel proclaimed that the Lord of Armies commanded total war be made on the Amalekites, in retribution for ancient grievances. Nothing was to be spared. So, Shaul made war, and routed them, and captured their king. But in the aftermath of battle, when the soldiers were used to take spoils, Shaul wavered. He feared rebellion from his troops if he denied the accustomed rewards after such hard combat. So he allowed them to keep the best of the flocks for themselves. When Shmuel arrived and heard sheep bleating in the pens, he castigated Shaul for disobeying. “As you have rejected the command of the Name, so he has rejected you as king,” he declared, and turned to leave. The king, pleading for forgiveness, reached out and grasped Shmuel’s robe. It tore in his hand. “So has the Name torn kingship from you,” said Shmuel. He withdrew to his own lands at Ramah, and never saw Shaul again as a living man. This estrangement sat heavily upon Shaul. Some say it drove him mad.
    As Nizevet had lived through these times, and I had not, I let her tell all this in her own way, waiting patiently for the thread of her account to stitch up once again to her personal story. Which it did, at last, on a day sometime not so very long after that final estrangement, when Shmuel arrived unexpectedly in Beit Lehem, seeking out Yishai.
    “I did not know how to feel that day,” she said. “I dreaded Yishai involving himself in intrigues against the king, especially with our elder sons serving at his side. Shmuel made pretense that he had come only to sacrifice, and had brought his servant leading a heifer for that purpose. Yishai and all the elders went up to the altar and did the rites in the presence of the townsfolk. Yishai had told me to make everything ready to receive Shmuel after the rites, and so I did. I had asked the servants to take out the mats from the upper chamber and give them a good beating. I was overseeing their replacement, and ordering in the braziers—it was winter, and very cold—when Yishai and Shmuel arrived. I saw the look on Yishai’s face and it surprised me. He was lit like a torch with pleasure and