Delilah: A Novel (43 page)

For now that it was too late, I knew what I had wagered, and what I had won. And what I had lost forever.

I had betrayed everyone and everything dear to me. Samson. Aylah. The Lady Atargatis Herself.

The woman in the silver mirror stared back at me, her eyes glittering silver-bright.
All I do now, I do for my daughter. And for his
.

Staring into the mirror, I lifted my hands from my body, raised them to my hair. Slowly I withdrew the ivory pins that imprisoned the tight-coiled strands, until my dark soft hair fell unbound down my back, slid over my cool skin to my knees. I looked for one last time upon Delilah in all her shining glory. Then I reached out to my dressing table and took up the waiting knife.

The horn handle warmed to my touch; the bronze blade shone mirror-keen. For a moment I closed my eyes, seeing my heart’s desire as he had stood that first day, fair as the sun, powerful as love itself.
Goodbye, beloved. And know that if I did not carry your child within me, I would join you now
.

But I had been entrusted with that duty, and I would not fail him again.

Wait for me, sun of my heart. Wait
.

And then I opened my eyes, and lifted the new-honed knife to my midnight hair.

“And the Philistines chained mighty Samson before the altar of Dagon. There Samson called upon his god, and his strength returned to him fourfold. And Samson pulled upon the chains with which the Philistines themselves had bound him, pulled Dagon’s Temple down upon all those gathered within its dark stone walls to mock Samson and Samson’s god . . .”

The dust had settled after a day; the screaming and the searching both had ceased. The Great House of Dagon lay broken, a mass of shattered stone at Gaza’s heart. No one seemed to know what should be done now, for both the Lady of the City of Gaza and the High Priest of the Great House of Dagon had vanished, their bodies crushed beneath the huge blocks of stone that were all that remained of the Temple. More, most of the noble families of Gaza had lost their leaders when Samson brought down the Temple, as had the guilds. Until aid came from others of the Five Cities, Gaza could not help itself. There was no one to give orders—and if there had been, there were few left to follow them.

Children and slaves. That is all Gaza has left
. Orev sat upon one of the fallen stones and gazed at the devastation before him.
Perhaps someday I shall transmute this horror into a song
, he thought, and heard a part of his soul mock, “
Perhaps?” Even now you struggle to grasp the right words to convey the noise
as the stones ground against one another, and the way the dust turned men to ghosts, and the way the ground trembled from Temple to the city wall
.

The harper’s curse: to see all that happened, for good or for ill, as the stuff of songs.

Yes, he would remake this tragedy as a song.
But not today
. Today he would grieve, and wonder why he remained here, staring at a pile of rock, a temple that had become a tomb.

Then he saw her pick her way across the uneven mound, lithely, as if the ruins were a dancing-floor. Orev rose slowly to his feet.

The movement caught her attention; she paused, then walked carefully over the stones towards him. When she stood before him, she let the dark veil she wore slide back enough for him to see her face. For a moment he hardly recognized her; then he realized that for the first time he saw her face without the witchery of malachite and kohl and carmine.

The painted mask had vanished utterly, stripping the priestess away and leaving only the woman. Her eyes were dry. Priestess or woman, Delilah would not weep before him.

“Samson kept his vow.” Delilah’s voice revealed none of the pain and grief she endured. “He is dead, Orev.”

“Along with many others. Yes.” Orev wondered if Aylah would have wished so many killed to avenge her and her child. The Five Cities had paid dearly for the deeds of a dozen people. But that was not a question he wished to ask.

“But he is not lost to us.” Delilah smoothed a hand down over her body, rested it upon her stomach. “I went to him, the night before he brought down Dagon’s Temple. I carry his child, Orev.”

Absolute conviction burned in her dark eyes; Orev said softly, “That is a great blessing, then.”

“Yes. We were given all we asked.”

Orev longed to put his arms around her, to make her weep away her bone-deep anger and grief. But such comfort was not his to give, nor would she accept it.
She did what she must, as did Samson, and neither flinched from paying the price demanded for what they desired
.

“If you carry Samson’s child—” Orev stopped, silenced by Delilah’s burning gaze. He began again, taking care with his words. “You must know that any child of Samson’s will be born with enemies waiting to ensure its first breath is its last.”

“Yes. But no one living knows of this, save you and I. No one will ever know. I will make sure of that.”

For a few breaths neither of them spoke. They stood in a silent world of stone and dust.

“What will you do now?” Orev asked at last.

“I will walk until I find a Lady Temple that does not offer fealty to any of the Five Cities, and there I shall wait until his daughter is born.”

“Perhaps you bear his son, instead.”

“No.” The certainty in her voice silenced Orev for a moment.

“And then?” he asked.

“And then I shall raise her until she chooses for herself what she will become.”

“And then?”

“And you, Orev? What will you do now?”

Evasion. She does not wish to tell me
. He studied her more closely, reached out and wound his fingers in the edge of her dark veil.

“There is nothing more to say.” She turned away, and the veil, trapped by his hand, slid down, over her shoulders, floated free into the dusty stones.

She made no sound, only curved back to face him. Her body still held the grace of dance. But Orev did not think she would dance again. That, too, was gone. Cut away by grief, as sharply as a blade had cut away her shining midnight hair. A widow’s mourning.

She looked into his eyes, waiting, and Orev realized he would say nothing. For there was nothing to say, except good-bye.

The last day I saw my daughter—Samson’s daughter—was upon her seventh birthday. That day I bathed her and rubbed her honey-hued skin with oil of roses and myrrh; combed her fire-bright hair with a sandalwood comb and then stroked it with a square of silk until the unruly waves gleamed like a sunlit sea. Then I wrapped her gem-perfect body in scarlet linen and led her to the Temple. At the gateway into the Outer Court, I stopped, suddenly afraid—I, who had faced down the Prince of the City, who had deceived the High Priestess Derceto, who had gone boldly to Samson in the prison below the Great House of Dagon.

It had been long years since I had owned the right to come and go freely in the Great House of Atargatis in Ascalon, since I had danced before Our Lady Herself. As I hesitated, my daughter looked up at me, puzzled. “Why do we stop, Mother? You promised I could go and live with the goddess Atargatis.”

“Yes,” I said. “I promised you that.” I looked at the time-paled serpents coiled from my elbows to my wrists, blue shadows beneath the skin.
Once they gleamed vivid as lapis. Now
—Now the serpents faded more with each passing moon, symbols of my betrayal of all I had once held dearer than life.

“Mother?” My daughter tugged my hand, summoning me back from a time long gone.

I knew myself bound by that past, those hot memories of love and passion and hate.
But our child will not live chained to my sorrows, to his fate. She will live her own life, not ours
.

That was why I had promised to surrender her into Our Lady’s keeping. The day I first cradled her in my arms, I had vowed our daughter would live unshadowed by the past. Even then, I had known I could not grant her that freedom. And as she grew, I realized that his laughing daughter belonged to a laughing mother, not a mourning one.

So I told her tales of Atargatis and Her love, of the Temple and the goodness and kindness found within its walls. Every night before she slept, I sang to my daughter of the happiness of dwelling among sisters, of how Our Lady was mother to all. I whispered of the joy I had known when I had danced within Her loving embrace. I taught Samson’s daughter love, not hate. And my heart rejoiced when she asked when she could enter the House of Atargatis, to dance for the goddess as I had done. I knew she would be safe and happy there. But I did not know how hard it would be to give her up, even to a better Mother than I could ever be to her . . .

She tugged again at my hand, her fingers warm and soft within my grasp. This time I let her lead me on, into the Temple.

No one stopped me as I walked with my daughter through the outer courts. No one spoke to me. I might have been a shadow passing among them, or a ghost. My feet knew the path to follow; my hands remembered how to set themselves upon the Ivory Gate. The Gate yielded, and I did what I had once vowed I never would do again. I walked of my own will through the Gate, into the heart of the Temple’s world, into the Court of the Goddess-on-Earth.

There, in Our Lady’s House, I gave my hard-won child into the care of the High Priestess herself. Under High Priestess Nikkal’s rule, the Great House of Atargatis offered love and trust, safety and happiness. One good had come of the evil I had caused seven years ago: now the
High Priestess and the Prince of the City fulfilled their duties to Ascalon the Beautiful as joyful partners, rather than as rivals. Nikkal had always been kind as well as pious, and Aulykaran a good man beneath his pretense of being an indolent fool.

Nikkal looked down at my daughter, and smiled. “She will be beautiful, Delilah. Our Lady favors her.”

I looked at the High Priestess’s face, and then at my daughter’s. “If Our Lady truly looks upon her with favor, let her bestow happiness upon her rather than beauty.” I would not curse my daughter with that double-edged gift. I did not wish that for my Sun-Lord’s child.

“You must trust the Mother of us all—” Nikkal began, and stopped as my laughter etched acid in the sweet-scented air.

“I trust Her. But She can no longer trust me.” I lifted my hands and pulled out the copper butterfly pins that held the sky-blue veil over my hair. I had never let it grow long again; I kept it shorn, like a new widow’s.

“Here.” I knelt and laid the pins at Nikkal’s feet. “An offering to your goddess.” Then I let the veil drift over my daughter’s head; the sheer cloth slipped down and she caught it with a swift, sure grasp. “Remember me, my dove.”

I rose, and Nikkal set her hands upon my daughter’s shoulders. “I will take her to the Court of the New Moons myself,” the High Priestess said, and I nodded my thanks.

But my daughter did not yield at once to the gentle guidance of Nikkal’s hands. Now that the moment of parting had come, she hung back; I knew she had just realized that where she now went, I could not follow.

“Mother?” It was both plea and question.

I summoned a smile from my past—such a smile had deceived princes and priests. It had even, when I had looked into my silver mirror, deceived myself.

“Go with the High Priestess,” I said. “And do not forget all I have taught you, Zhurleen. Be happy.”

As I left the Great House of Atargatis for the last time, I remembered words I had spoken before my child had been born:
“Until she chooses for herself what she will become.”

Easy words to say. Now that I had given my daughter into the keeping of Our Lady, I could only hope that she would indeed be happy. In the House of Atargatis, she would live and grow in love and laughter. Perhaps, someday, she too would dance . . .

I had done my best for my daughter—for Samson’s daughter. Now it was time to pay all my debts. Samson’s god and my goddess had granted all we had asked of them. That we had been fools was no fault of either Atargatis or Yahweh.

I turned and looked back through the Temple gate, into the Lady’s joyous house.

And then I set my feet upon the road to En-dor, where my future and my past awaited me.

The strangest hour of his life came long years later, when Orev sang of Samson before the king, in the king’s new palace in Jerusalem. The king had sent for him, and had him brought into the court, where Orev bowed and the king, noting Orev’s lameness, called for a stool and bade the harper sit before him.

“Harpers all are brothers,” the king said. “I have heard you are a great song-master. Sing for us.”

Orev studied the king, gauging the man’s temper as he would that of a blade, before asking, “What shall I sing, Brother Harper?” He knew the answer already; what song would a new king of Israel ask for but that of the Sun of Yahweh?

“Samson,” said the king. “Sing us the Song of Samson.”