Джеймс Миченер - The Source

As for his personal life, he kept one small, dirty room at the rear of the wool merchant’s. He worked as little as he could and still earn his pay. He ate wherever there was free food and drank what he could beg or steal in the wine shop. Among the slave girls of the town there were several who were pleased to entertain him, and he became expert in climbing walls. Whenever possible he picked up bits of silver which he passed along to the guards at the gate, so that they might warn him if the brothers of the dead man tried to creep back unexpectedly and murder him before he could reach the horns of the altar; in fact, wherever he was in Makor he marked the shortest way back to the temple, against that day when he might have to flee once more to its sanctuary.

In the month of Ziv in the fourth year of the digging—when thistles bloomed in the valleys and yellow tulips along the edges of the marsh, when storks had flown to the north and bee eaters were seen darting above red poppies—Hoopoe and Meshab went to the quarry on the other side of the mountain and selected six great lengths of stone, cut in eighteen-foot sections and squared on the ends like timbers for use in building some gigantic temple. They sent slaves in great numbers to drag these six huge monoliths to the well, and during the days when the stones were being transported they directed other slaves to clean out all rubbish from the tunnel and haul it for the last time up through the opening at the well. The water system was now complete except for the final precaution which Hoopoe was about to take, the hiding of the well itself under such depth of rock that no invader could find it or uncover it if he did.

When the rocks reached the well on sledges that ran on saplings thrown under the wooden runners, Hoopoe directed his slaves to dig three pairs of slots running north and south above the well, and when these cuts were straight and deep, three of the large stones were lowered into position, forming a grid over the well. When this was completed, big rocks from the waterwall were thrown in, followed by smaller stones, pebbles and earth, until all was covered. Then three more cuts were made running from east to west, and when these were dug the remaining three long stones were dropped into position, forming a second grid running crisscross to the first, and this too was covered until the surface of the earth was reached.

“Now tear down the old waterwall,” Hoopoe commanded, and the slaves attacked the Canaanite wall with pleasure, knocking it to pieces. The stones were taken inside the town for the building of new houses, and on a bright day when daisies covered the hills back of town, Hoopoe and Meshab climbed to their observation point to see if anything remained that might betray the existence of the well to a besieging army.

“The lines of the old waterwall stand out too clearly,” Hoopoe said apprehensively.

“Grass and weeds will take care of that,” Meshab said, “but there’s something else that would tell me the secret. Do you see it?”

Hoopoe studied the town and saw the flags. “We’ll take them down tonight.”

“I don’t mean the flags. I mean that line of mortar along the wall. It says in a clear voice that some construction used to be attached there.”

“Of course!” Hoopoe agreed. It stood out like a signal, darker rocks that had been protected from sunlight by the waterwall, standing beside lighter ones that had weathered in the sun. The men considered what might be done to obliterate this telltale line and it was the Moabite who found the solution.

“We could build a small tower. As if it were protecting the postern gate.”

“That would do it,” Hoopoe agreed and he asked Meshab to remain the short time required for such a task.

“No, I must go home,” the former slave replied.

But when Kerith heard that Meshab was determined to leave she wept and kissed him as Gershom watched. “Stay with us a little longer,” she pleaded, and to Hoopoe and Gershom she said, “In a dark period of my life this man was greater than a brother.” So against his better judgment Meshab consented to build the tower at the postern gate.

One morning as work progressed Hoopoe came from the governor’s quarters with the news that his wife had been anticipating for three years: King David was at last coming north from Shunem to inspect the water system and to dedicate it as the David Tunnel. When Kerith heard the report she retired to her room and prayed, “Yahweh, you alone brought him to these walls. You alone shall take us to your city Jerusalem.”

At the end of the month of Ziv squadrons of riders appeared at the gate to inform the governor that King David was approaching along the Damascus road, and trumpets were blown, while priests in the temple blew rams’ horns in flurries of provocative sound. All the citizens of Makor lined the walls or stood upon housetops looking eastward, as they did when siege was threatened, and after some time they saw men on donkeys and then a few on horses and finally a palanquin carried by slaves, and this was treated with such deference that all knew the king must be therein.

The procession came to the great gate, where the men on donkeys sounded their trumpets, which were answered from the wall, and the king’s palanquin was borne inside and set carefully before the governor’s house where all the trumpets sounded many times, after which the curtains parted, showing not King David, but one of the most beautiful young women in Israel. “It’s Abishag,” the women of Makor whispered, and all watched in wonder as she stepped forth to greet the governor.

She was the marvel of these last years of King David’s reign, a peasant girl found in the remote village of Shunem after a nation-wide search for some gentle child to live with the old king in his declining years, “a girl to sleep with him on cold nights,” the counselors had explained when they were searching for her, and unlikely as it had seemed at the time, they had found the perfect maiden for the task, an almost flawless girl who served the king with compassion and made his terminal years endurable. A brief time from now, when David was dead, his sons would quarrel more over this radiant concubine than they would over his kingdom, and Adonijah, fleeing the rage of his half-brother Solomon, would be slain because of her, the most desirable woman in Israel.

Now she reached into the palanquin and gave her hand to a frail old man nearing seventy, with white beard and half-trembling hands, and when she brought him before his subjects as if he were a child, Kerith whispered, “Can that be David?” But then the old man heard the adoring cry of the multitude, “David! David!” and he seemed to straighten; sunlight fell across his beard, showing a few strands which still retained the red coloring of his youth. He put Abishag aside and slowly turned his head, nodding his acceptance of the people’s homage, and there could be no question as to who in that assembly was king. His luminous eyes, set deep in their sockets, gleamed as the cheers continued, and his shoulders threw off their weight of age. His body moved with regal grace, and when twoscore trumpets sounded and drums rolled, he became once more the great king, the slayer of Goliath, the extender of boundaries, the builder of empire, the sweet singer of Israel, the sage, the judge, the generous, David of the Hebrews, in all the world the king nonpareil.

Kerith, staring at him as if he were more than king, saw that his beard was trimmed and his garments carefully arranged, for he was vain of his appearance. He wore heavy sandals with golden thongs clasping his ankles, a garment shot through with gold and emerald, and a brocaded cap protecting his white hair. He walked through the crowd with such noble grace that none could have envisaged the emotional wars he had known with Michal, daughter of Saul, and Bathsheba, wife of Uriah. His passionate friendship for Jonathan, son of Saul, was now only an aching memory, and he gave the impression of a man who had finally subdued the violent impulses of his young manhood.