The Secret Chord Read Online Free PDF

arrange it. There was dread in her expression, and also anger. She turned on her heel and led the way to the wine store. As she lifted the lid from the pithos, her hands were trembling.
    â€œWhat is it?” I whispered. She shook her head and compressed her lips and would not speak. I reached for the dipper and took it from her. Her hands were too unsteady to fill the jug without spilling the wine. “You think Father errs in denying these outlaws?”
    â€œIt is not my place to say he errs,” she hissed tersely. “Neither is it yours to think it. Go, serve and be silent.”
    â€œBut I met a woman in his camp. One of his wives. She warned me that it would be risky to refuse him. Her husband did, she said, and she defied him, and brought the goods herself. That is how she—”
    â€œShhh.” My mother raised her hand and laid her fingers on my lips. They were rough fingers, work worn from the hundred tasks she knew how to perform. But they were gentle fingers, too, always ready with a caress. “Your father heads this household. Leads this village. It is not for us to doubt him. I am no slut like this woman, who threw herself at the feet of a stranger and defied her husband’s will.”
    â€œBut she did it to save—”
    â€œHush, I said. You will obey me, and you will obey your father. Go now. They are waiting for their wine. Serve and be silent as I bid you.”
    A dozen wineskins and a few bushels of dates. It would have been a small price, and I might have lived a different life. I might have stayed in that village lit by the glare of the Salty Sea. Grown tomanhood the beloved son of a prosperous house, learning to become a winemaker at my father’s side. Feeling the weight of the warm grapes fall into my hands as each long summer ripened, plying the pruning knife with skill till the long rows of old vines held their balled fists up to the winter sky. By now, the vineyards would be mine to tend, and I would be teaching my sons in their turn. Or so I like to think. But perhaps this other destiny could not have been gainsaid. I do not know. All I do know is that no supplies were delivered, and I was instructed to take the goats by the southern wadi rather than the stream that ran to the north. Two days later, David sent to ask again. One of his men—a youth, really, no older than David himself—presented himself in the village asking for my father. He was received, and put his requests—or I should say, demands—rather more urgently than David had put them to me. My father became angry. I heard him say hard words: “traitor,” “brigand,” “thief.” The young man became angry then in his turn. He raised his voice even louder than my father’s, so that I could hear every word he said as if I were in the room.
    â€œYou dare to speak so of a man whose spittle you are not fit to wipe. David son of Yishai is the rightful leader of our people, the best leader—the best man—any of us has ever served. The king in Geba knew that, once. Did he not make David his son-in-law before madness seized him? Now he hates David for his very qualities, which are a reproach to his own failures. You should ask Shaul’s son Yonatan, if you doubt me. It is well-known where
his
heart lies. Were it not for the command to honor the father he would be with us now, not propping up a demented, drooling . . .”
    My father cut in then—loud, angry—saying that he would not have such disloyal words uttered in his house. He was not a stupid man: he could see the danger by then, I am sure. Yet he did have a stubborn streak, and a regard for his own opinions. Small flaws, maybe, to cost such a price as he paid for them. But he could not unbreak the eggshell. A few moments later, the tall young strangerpushed past me, thrusting me against the wall so hard that the stone bit into the bare skin of my upper arm. When he looked