Thomas Swann - How are the Mighty fallen

“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.”