The Secret Chord Read Online Free Page B

their knives. There was talk of goat stew this night.”
    â€œPlease, no! My father . . .”
    â€œDon’t concern yourself. Your flock is safe. I was a shepherd myself, not so long since. I do not take without asking. You are from the village below?” I nodded. “You know the head man?”
    â€œMy father is the head man.”
    â€œWell met indeed, then. Give your father my greetings, and tell him that my band will be camped here for some days. We are armed fighters, two score of men, and some few of us have families. We would be glad of provisions. Tell your father that David, son of Yishai the Beit Lehemite, makes this request.”
    My eyes grew wide. “You? You are the one that killed the giant of Gath?” I fingered the side of my head where the pebble had grazed it. A stone not so much larger had turned the tide for us at the famous battle in the Wadi Elah. Every boy in the Land knew that story.
    He smiled. “So they called him. He was big enough, but no giant. He was slow, I was quicker. He underestimated me. That is all.Sometimes, it is good to be small. Remember that. Use it while you still can.” He eyed me, a summing look, as a buyer might cast over a lamb on the hoof. “I see from your hands and feet that you will grow to be a tall man. Is your father tall? Then you favor him. Now come and fetch your goats.”
    I followed him across the wadi and through the date palms into the clearing where he had made his encampment. It was a spare, well-organized and clean affair of four or five large goat hair tents. The kind of camp a military unit might pitch, that can be hastily struck and easily transported. They had herded my goats into their own makeshift thorn break, and as I was sorting mine from theirs, I noticed one of the women regarding me. She had her mantle drawn across the lower part of her face, but her eyes were the same deep green as the balsam fir that shaded her where she sat, and I found myself returning her glance. She lifted a fold of her mantle off a slim wrist, and turned her hand. It was a subtle gesture, but clear enough. She wanted me to approach her.
    As I did, she stood—she was very tall, for a woman—and stepped back, deeper into the shade, out of sight of the main encampment. I followed her, as she clearly purposed. “Did my husband charge you with a message?” Her voice was low and quick. For a moment, I was confused. I did not think that by “husband” she could mean David. This woman was very handsome, but she was some years older than the youth I had just met. In my village, a commonplace thing was for the wife to be much younger than her husband, never the reverse.
    She seemed to understand my confusion. She dropped her veil so that I could see her face. A slight smile played about her lips, which were very full, but already scored with the fine lines of her maturity. Her skin, a pale olive, was gently weathered like my mother’s from many summers in the unforgiving dryness of the Land. But her wide green eyes had a level, intelligent gaze, and the lines that framed them seemed to me more likely etched by amusement than by hardship. “I am Avigail of Carmel, third wife of our leader, David. I am his wifebecause my first husband, Navaal, who was a drunkard and a fool, refused to send supplies for David’s men when he requested them of us. We could afford it—we had three thousand sheep. I knew what the cost of that denial would be to us, so I saw to it myself, and met David on the road with the supplies before he and his band reached our village. Tell your father this: David is no ordinary outlaw, no ordinary man. When my husband died, I came to be his wife, even though I left behind a rich household to live as you see me here, among outlaws, begging for supplies. Boy, tell your father this is no small thing. Don’t let him make the same mistake my foolish husband made. If he does,