Eleanor Jong - Delilah

‘Delilah!’ Ariadnh’s sharp voice cut through the row. Hemin glanced with relief across the hallway, then smirked at Delilah. The fight wasn’t over yet.

‘What’s this?’ said Ariadnh, reaching for the purple gown as Delilah withdrew it from her reach and folded it away. ‘I thought I told your mother to buy you something plain.’

Beulah cleared her throat, but didn’t speak.

Ariadnh took the orange dress from Ekron, who had been holding it tenderly in his hands. She shook it out in front of her, then ran her fingers along the stiff neckline. ‘Is this the only other dress you bought?’

‘For now.’

‘Then you can wear this one.’

‘But it’s not ready to wear yet, it needs washing and there isn’t time—’

‘Then you should have thought of that and bought something that was ready to wear. Achish will agree that the purple one is completely inappropriate for the betrothal. So you will have to suffer in the orange one or wear that white one you have on.’

Hemin looked smugly at Delilah. Beulah had warned her in the shop that her choices would cause trouble, but they would all have to live with it. The orange would be unbearable to wear, so she’d just have to find a way to wear the purple instead, and hope not to be spotted until it was too late to be made to change. Anyway, when Achish saw it, he’d surely agree that it suited her perfectly.

‘As you wish, Ariadnh,’ said Delilah contritely.

‘You’ll look lovely in the orange one,’ said Ekron.

Hemin scowled at him, but Delilah said nothing. She was watching Ariadnh, who had picked up her own package from the floor and was peering between the layers of cloth that bound it, smiling to herself.

‘Come with me, Hemin. These are for you. I’ve some important things to talk to you about.’

Hemin gave Delilah a final farewell sneer, and took Ariadnh’s hand, skipping girlishly up the stairs after her. As their whispered laughter floated down into the hallway, Beulah crossed the hall to join her daughter.

‘I did warn you.’

‘But it was worth it.’

Beulah kissed her daughter’s forehead without much affection. ‘Was it really?’ She picked up the package of napkins and handed them to Delilah. ‘Take these to the kitchen.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Ekron, standing up.

‘That would be kind,’ said Delilah. She touched the back of his hand as he took the load.

Ekron followed Beulah through the doorway towards the back of the house. Delilah quickly folded her dresses back into their packaging, then slipped off her sandals and quietly ran up the stairs, dropping the dresses onto her sleeping couch before moving swiftly down the corridor towards Hemin’s bedroom.

She generally avoided this end of the house, but today her curiosity got the better of her. There was a large window off the hallway through which she could hear the high and low of laughter and whispering between her stepsister and stepmother.

‘—so that when he slides his hand around your back, and pulls this ribbon, your nightdress will fall smoothly to the floor—’

The rest was lost in Hemin’s gasping laughter. The package must have contained Hemin’s clothes for the wedding night, and Ariadnh was clearly giving her the sort of instructions that only a mother could give. Delilah tucked herself in behind the shutters so that she could listen without being seen.

‘—for if you are to enjoy the first night with your new husband,’ Ariadnh was saying, ‘there is much that you will need to know.’

Delilah felt a nauseous mixture of jealousy and dismay swell inside her. She may have the more beautiful dress, but in one respect at least Hemin would shortly be beyond her.

‘—and what if I don’t please him?’ Hemin was asking.

‘Bah!’ snorted Ariadnh. ‘Men are not difficult to please. Even men as renowned as Samson.’

Delilah put down the tray of empty drinking bowls, and adjusted the ties of her belt so they fell more attractively against her hip. She’d agreed to serve drinks to the wedding guests only after Achish had promised her new jewellery. Hemin hadn’t been privy to the bribe, and had rejoiced to hear that her stepsister would be called upon to look after the guests.

She’d curled her hair for the occasion, and it fell over her bare shoulders in waves of silken ebony. She’d selected her amber necklace, not so much for the colour, but because the pendant nestled at the limits of decency in the shallow valley between her breasts. ‘You should be careful,’ her mother had muttered. ‘I don’t want to lose you just yet.’

The crowd of Israelite men who stood in the shade of the porch made no attempt to disguise their interest in Delilah, and muttered in Hebrew to one another. She couldn’t stop the smile that came to her lips.

Achish had been very clear that morning that they were to make their guests as welcome as possible. These strangers had a roughness about them though, guzzling their wine as quickly as she could fill their bowls.

Betrothal, she thought, seemed to be about a lot of talking and a lot of waiting around. Achish had been locked away in his study for most of the morning with Hemin’s husband-to-be, the man whose name was on everyone’s lips, but whom no one had yet seen. The dial in the courtyard had moved on nearly one full mark since the arrival of Samson and his retinue, and the sun was dipping past its zenith. The scents from the flowers in their basins grew ever stronger, mingling with the thick aroma of the unmixed wine.

‘More drink!’ said one of the Israelites, in clumsy Philistine.

Beulah quickly emptied another third of the jug between the six bowls on Delilah’s tray. ‘Achish wouldn’t approve, but I suppose it’s all in the spirit of the occasion.’

‘They think I can’t understand what they’re saying about me,’ giggled Delilah. ‘They’re very coarse.’

‘In a pack, men are like foxes,’ replied her mother. ‘All snarls and bristling hair. Get one on his own and he’s a different animal. No doubt one of these fellows is eyeing you for himself and you’ll be next.’

Delilah shuddered. ‘I’ll never marry a hairy Israelite.’

‘Your father was a hairy Israelite!’

Delilah laughed and glided back towards the men with the tray of drinks, feeling their eyes follow her as she moved around the room. Of course, the purple dress had quite a bit to do with that, especially the way its richness seemed to light up the blues in her black hair and it clung to the curves of her hips. Not that she wasn’t used to a certain amount of attention, although with her mother or Achish by her side she’d learned to deflect it with a graceful, studied shyness.

Delilah and her mother would be sitting on the groom’s side of the courtyard for the ceremony. With their own kind, Hemin had whispered, none too quietly, to Achish. She smiled inwardly now as she offered drinking bowls to Samson’s Israelite friends. Close up, she couldn’t help but notice how muscular the men were. They had none of the softness that she saw in the Philistine men of Ashkelon. They looked odd in their clean tunics – like a rustic vintage served in fine drinking bowls. Samson was rumoured to be twice as big as any of these fellows, able to wrestle a bull calf to the ground with nothing but his hands. What would her stepsister make of him?

She’d just invited a shy smile from the youngest of the Israelite men – a handsome, curly-haired youth who had done little but stare at her since he arrived – when Ekron appeared, frowning, at her elbow. He’d been hanging around at the bottom of the stairs that morning when she had first come out of her room, and his eyes had been glued almost drunkenly to her as she walked slowly down to meet him. He half-smiled at her now, but he seemed distracted by the Israelites over her shoulder.