The Secret Chord: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

marriage and sons of her own. She knew that Yishai’s lust, if satisfied upon her, would put all that at risk. But I knew it would happen one day. She could not hide from him indefinitely. So I sent her away to my daughter Zeruiah’s house, on a pretext, as my daughter had recently been brought to bed with her third son. In doing so, I angered Yishai, even if he could not say so. She was my servant, supposedly, to dispose of as I liked. So his resentment festered, and he began to turn on me. In any case, that was when he started to rake over the matter of his ancestry, to try to cast doubt on the legitimacy of our union.
    “I have said already that Yishai was ardent in his observation of the laws. And you will know that it has been the law since Moshe that the Ivrim must not marry from among the Moavites, as they were the tribe who denied passage through their lands when the Ivrim fled Mitzrayim. You know also that my husband’s grandmother was the Moavite Ruth, who lay with Boaz just before he died. Some doubted that Yishai’s father, who resulted from that union, was the legitimate issue of Boaz, and there were whispers at that time. This was all finished long before our wedding, and no one raised any question but that Yishai did me honor in choosing me to marry.
    “But as his illicit desire burned him, so he turned to this old gossip about his grandmother Ruth. He flailed at himself, saying our marriage was unfit, that he, grandson of a Moavite, had not had the right to marry an Israelite of pure lineage, and that our marriage was unclean and we must separate. You can imagine how hard it was for me to hear it. Harder still when he refused to lie with me, infrequent as that had become since his passion for my servant took hold of him. Daily, he became more obsessed with the imagined uncleanness he had engaged in. He refused to take a dish from my hand, a cloth to wipe his brow. In the end, he put me by, and I returned, ashamed, to my father’s house.
    “Still, even with me gone from the house, he did not act on his lust immediately. I believe he wrestled with himself, knowing in his heart that desire had twisted his soul. But finally his baseness overpowered him, and he sent to our daughter ordering that she return the Knaanit maid to our home. The girl came to me, in secret, weeping, saying Yishai had made demands that she could no longer gainsay, and that he intended to have her that night.
    “I have said she looked like me. And since the misery of my situation, I had fasted and lost the flesh that comes after childbearing. I had also thrown myself into physical tasks, to take my mind off my sorrows. My own sister had, not long since, taken my face in her hand and reflected, in some surprise, that my misery became me most excellently, and had returned to me my youthful form, even as it had extinguished all my joy. This remark of hers, I think, put the notion in my mind. I told my maid to go back to Yishai, to pour his wine that night unwatered, and as much as he would take. When the time came and he insisted on retiring with her, to claim a maiden’s right to modesty and ask that the lamps be extinguished. At that time, I promised her, I would take her place. Together, we went to the market and purchased some balsam scent. She would wear it that evening, and so would I, when I took her place.”
    Nizevet stopped speaking then. A pale flush had crept up the wattled skin of her throat, and she pulled at her mantle to hide it. I looked away from her, to ease her shame. As the silence persisted, I said, softly, taking care to keep my eyes only on the parchment under my hand: “And so Yishai’s unlawful lusts were answered in the body of his lawful wife?”
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    From the corner of my eye, I could see her hands working, one washing against the other in her agitation. Then she gathered herself, and went on in a great rush.
    “For all my contrivance—I used an egg white to feign a young