Delilah: A Novel (33 page)

Samson had left the farm in Aylah’s competent charge before—and relied, as both Samson and Aylah assured him, on Orev to protect her and the land from danger. Orev accepted this as the meaningless kindness it was; a lame harper would deter no one. On the other hand, the mere sight of Ari and the dogs dozing in the dooryard of the farmhouse
often sent even peaceful travelers circling far to avoid passing the gate.
Appearance is all, for the lion is far gentler than sweet-faced Aylah!

Never before had there been trouble when Samson went away, to find a lost calf or lamb, or to aid someone in building a house or a wall or a well. Orev had no real reason to think this time would be any different. Only an unease of spirit, caused, he supposed, by the malice the Foxes had not hesitated to display, disturbed him.

And unease of spirit, however troubling, was not a true warning. Orev soothed his mind by telling himself that Samson would be gone for only three days. He could not tell if Aylah worried; her face was always smooth as cream. Aylah tended her babe, and Orev practiced a half-formed song. Ari slept in the sun, flat against the hot earth, a living carpet. Two days passed in that tranquil fashion.

Then the Foxes returned, accompanied by other bands of men who believed as the first Foxes did: that force would win the prize they sought.

As predators do, the Foxes appeared at sunset. Orev had been lazing by the door into the house—“Pretending to practice your new song, but really waiting for me to let you rock the baby to sleep,” Aylah had said and smiled, and carried the fussing infant into the house to feed her. With great effort, Ari had roused himself and padded after her, hopeful; the lion knew Aylah was the giver-of-food.

Orev smiled and set his harp aside. The evening was too calm, too beautiful, to waste on any task, however worthy. Clear blue light shadowed the land, deepened as the sun fell lower into the west. Streaks of red and gold stretched out from the setting sun until the western sky blazed fleeting glory. Shadows darkened . . .

And moved. Beneath the trees of the orchard, along the road past the farm, men lurked. And as the light dimmed, the shadowed men moved forward, towards the farmhouse. The farm dogs began to bark, warning of intruders. As the first came close enough for him to see their faces, Orev recognized Enoch and Ichavod.
The Foxes. This is not good
. Orev pushed himself to his feet and called Aylah’s name.

The urgency in his voice brought Aylah swiftly to the doorway, the babe still sucking at her breast. She looked past Orev, and drew in her breath sharply.

“Let me speak to them,” Orev said, and Aylah nodded and pulled her veil over her daughter, as if to hide her from evil eyes.

But it was too late for calm words; the Foxes hunted.

“Keep your mouth closed, harper,” Enoch said. “There is nothing you can say that we wish to hear.”

“We have come to burn away the wickedness that holds Samson in bondage,” Ichavod declared, then turned and beckoned, and flames blossomed against the shadows. Torches.

Orev reached out and grasped Aylah’s arm. “Come,” he said, and began leading her away from the house, hoping to circle around the pack of men converging upon it. Aylah followed, sure-footed and graceful, and for a dozen steps Orev thought he had succeeded. Let them burn the house; Samson would rebuild.

Then Aylah stopped, and Orev found himself facing a dozen men—and Beriah. “Leave now, harper, and live,” Beriah said. “This”—she gestured at Aylah—“this evil must die, that her spells die with her.”

“If you touch her, Samson will surely slay you all.” Orev kept his voice steady, hoping quiet sense would sway those who had come to kill.

Beriah only laughed, mocking him. “Samson is not here to interfere. We only do what is right. We will free him from this sorcery.”

How did they know Samson was gone?
Orev looked past Beriah, saw Terach, the boy who yearned to sing great songs. “You, Terach—is this the deed you wish to honor with your harp and your voice? How a band of armed men slew one woman and her babe?”

Terach stared and opened his mouth as if to speak; Beriah shoved him back with her elbow. “Don’t listen to him, Terach; he’s tainted with her corruption. You have a choice, harper—leave or die with her.”

Orev had never thought himself a brave man; pain was a faithful companion, not an honor he had sought. But now he heard himself saying, “I
will not leave her. Either let us pass or you must murder one of your own people, as well as Samson’s wife and child.”

He put his arm around Aylah’s waist and began to walk away, and for three steps, all was silence. Orev dared hope his calm words had won their lives, soothed the Foxes’ anger. He did not see which man hurled the stone out of the darkness. He only felt the pain as the stone hit, pain that made him stagger against Aylah, his weight pushing her forward. And that was all it took to turn the waiting men into a huge mindless beast. A beast with but one urge.

To kill.

Never afterward was Orev truly sure what had happened, or how. He remembered Aylah thrusting her child at him, and brutal hands tearing the infant away. He remembered blows that sent him to the ground, remembered clinging to the earth as the mob rushed past, carrying Aylah and the child along with it. He remembered the smell of smoke and the sound of fire eating walls and roof.

He did not remember hearing Aylah scream. He told Samson, later, that he thought she and the child had been killed before the house burned around them.

But he was never sure, and to the last night of his life, he dreamed of Aylah dancing in fire hotter than the sun.

When he roused enough to look upon the world again, night had passed and gray dawn revealed what the Foxes had done. The house had burned, and the fields that lay beyond it. The orchard had not burned. But there was little else left.

The farm dogs had fled, but Ari had not. The lion lay sprawled flat upon the earth before the house, and even from where he sat, Orev saw that dried blood stained the beast’s golden coat. Orev struggled to his feet and hobbled over to the lion’s body. Flies rose buzzing from the spear wounds in the lion’s side and from the gash across the great beast’s throat. But fat and lazy though he had been, Ari had done his best to guard Samson’s home. Bloody cloth and a strip of flesh remained
trapped in the lion’s closed jaws. Orev hoped that Ari had fatally injured at least one of the Foxes. He stooped and set his hand on the lion’s mane, then forced himself to turn to the house.

All that remained was a smoldering pile of ash and charred wood. He knew he would find nothing—did not wish to find anything. But he also knew he must look. The roof had burned away and the walls fallen in; Orev supposed the house in which she had been so content served well as Aylah’s funeral pyre. He refused to think of the child, so small and soft and golden.
The daughter went with her mother. That is what they both would have wanted
.

Samson will return. Samson will avenge this wickedness. Samson will—
Orev found himself weeping. Some deeds could never truly be avenged. And when Samson returned, Orev would have to tell him what had happened, and see the light die in Samson’s eyes. Orev did not know if he could endure that. But he knew, also, that he must. He owed it to Aylah and her unnamed daughter. And to Samson himself.

And to the Foxes. Yes, Samson will repay their evil deeds
.

Even that thought did not comfort him. But it gave him a reason to endure, and to face Samson without shame or guilt.

That would have to be enough. Later, Orev knew, he would find himself twisting words, creating a new tale out of this grief.
Because I am a harper, and all harpers weave songs out of all that happens for good or for ill. But I will sing that song later. Not now. Later. Much later
.

After Derceto told me that my heart-sister and her daughter were dead, and how they had died, I sat in my room as if my body had turned to stone. I did not move even when Nikkal came to comfort me; when she put her arms around me, I felt nothing. I could think only that Aylah had foreseen this, had warned me. And that I had done nothing to save her from the cruel fate she had suffered.

“Delilah?” Nikkal stroked my cheek, smoothed back my hair. “Delilah, speak, weep, anything. You must—”

“There is nothing I must do now.” My words fell cold into the air between us. “I did not act when I could have saved her. Now it is too late.”

“Delilah, you are not Atargatis Herself, to say what will and what will not happen. I know how you loved Aylah, but—”

But I ceased to listen. I did not wish to hear Aylah, my heart-sister, spoken of as if she no longer existed. Worse, as if she had never lived.
Oh, Aylah, I love you still. One does not cease to love just because the loved one dies
.

I do not know how long Nikkal remained, trying to console me. Nor do I know how I came to be in my bed, but when I awoke, I lay beneath a soft wool blanket, and one of the Temple maidservants stroked my
face with cool rose-scented water. Beyond her stood a plump man in a robe of white linen spotted with red; a cap covered his hair, and from that cap red leather lappets dangled, framing a round face that seemed oddly ageless. A wide leather collar hid his neck. I could not imagine who or what he was until I felt movement as a warm weight upon my legs shifted. A moment later I found myself staring into soft brown eyes. The dog sniffed my mouth, then turned to look at the waiting priest.

“Ah, she wakes. Milchienzeek’s mercy is boundless.” The priest smiled and motioned with his fingers; the little dog curled up in the curve of my arm and began to lick my chin, quick warm strokes of its soft pink tongue.

So someone—perhaps the High Priestess herself, for had she not sent her own wine to ease my pain?—had been concerned enough to send for one of Milchienzeek’s dogs to aid me. A consort of the god Dagon, the goddess Milchienzeek was patroness of healers; dogs belonged to Milchienzeek, for She had created them, incarnate vessels of divine love. Her temple was small, compared to those of other gods, but Milchienzeek and Her Thousand Dogs were well-loved.

Although all dogs belonged to Milchienzeek, those bred by her temple were the most precious to Her. Small sleek animals, white as cloud save for their soft ears, which were red as new copper, the temple dogs had healed many when all else had failed. Milchienzeek’s priests refused no one who begged aid of Her dogs for any illness of body or of mind.

I supposed Derceto had meant only kindness in sending to Milchienzeek—but did she truly think even a goddess’s dog would make me forget that Aylah lay dead, and her child with her? I closed my eyes and said, “I am well. Leave me now, both of you.”

A pause, then the little sounds of the maidservant gathering her bowl and clothes, of the dog-priest turning away. I lay still as stone, realizing only when I heard the whisper of air as the curtain fell over the doorway that the dog remained at my side.

The dog ceased licking my cheek and began to nudge me with its
cool damp nose. When I did not move, the nudges became more insistent. I opened my eyes and began to push the little animal away; refusing to be rejected, the dog ducked under my hand and pressed against me, licking my fingers.

To force the dog from me, I set my hands upon its sleek body. I intended to lift it off my bed and set it upon the floor, but the dog gazed at me with brown eyes filled with such compassion I could think only that the last time I had seen such loving eyes had been when I said good-bye to Aylah in the Grove at Sorek.

No. When she said farewell to me.
“Be happy, Delilah—”

My heart had been stone since the moment Derceto told me of Aylah’s death. Now that stone shattered into a thousand blade-keen shards; at last I wept, long and silently, as Milchienzeek’s dog huddled against me and licked the hot salt tears from my face.

Since Orev could think of nothing else to do, he took his harp and his walking-stick and left the still smoldering ruin of Samson’s farm. He walked north, on the road to Zorah. He did not hurry; what need? At noon, he met Samson and his parents walking south.

When Orev saw them, he stopped and waited as Samson strode towards him. Orev had rehearsed many ways in which to tell Samson that his farm had been destroyed, his animals killed, his wife and new-born daughter murdered. Now he saw he need say nothing. His face and revealed all Samson needed to know.

“I’m sorry.” Orev’s voice came out hoarse as a true raven’s.

Samson said nothing; he ran past Orev, heading to what had been home only a day ago. Orev, Manoah, and Tsipporah were left to follow, as Orev slowly told Samson’s parents they would never see their first grandchild, and why.

By the time Orev and his parents arrived at the ruined farm, Samson was staring at the pile of charred wood and clay that had been the farmhouse. His hands and arms were dark with ash. He stood silent as Orev told him what had come to pass at the farm in Timnath. Orev spoke quickly and plainly, as if that would lessen the pain. The quiet
broken by the warning barks of the farm dogs. Orev leading Aylah and the babe through the encircling Foxes. “I thought we would walk safe away. Then someone threw a stone. And then—”

And then the killing frenzy as the Foxes tore Aylah’s babe from her arms. Tsipporah began to weep, her sobs the music to which Orev told the rest of the tale. Of the stones, and the fire.

Orev told how he had come back to the world to find the house a burnt-out pyre, and Ari dead. “I think he savaged at least one of them. He had a bloody cloth clenched in his jaws.” Then Orev stopped, and the only sound was Tsipporah’s weeping. Manoah put his arms around his wife.
Ah, you reviled your son’s wife when she lived, but now—Well, what good man or woman would not sorrow over so dreadful a death?

Samson said nothing for a time. At last he looked at Orev, and his sky-blue eyes seemed cold and hard as stone. “They knew I was not there, those who call themselves my Foxes. They knew I was not there. How did they know I was gone, Orev?”