The journey begins here with

book one of The Lambswool Chronicles

LEGACY

 

PROLOGUE

I am Eliab ben Jesse, firstborn of my father. Yes, that’s the one—Jesse from Scripture: “This, then, is the family line of Perez . . . Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David” (Ruth 4:18a, 21–22 NIV).

At first blush, you may view me as beguiling, handsome, and even wholesome. Don’t believe it. Don’t spend a moment’s time trying to find a redeeming quality in me. You will only chastise yourself over it or, at the least, realize too late its futility. I do not need your respect or your admiration. I possess enough love for myself to last a thousand lifetimes. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you eventually believe you’re beholding Lucifer in the flesh—the Great Serpent—when you look on me. Maybe you are.

The chronicles of Scripture barely mention me, but don’t be confused. The influence I wielded during my lifetime might make you shudder. You will see.

“When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.’

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

 

CHAPTER 1

The trail was long, but not so long that Eliab could not travel it in a day. No doubt, it would be pleasant. It always was. He had rambled down this stretch of hill more times than he could count. He charted his progress with every tree, every grove, every cistern that he passed, each marker as familiar to his recollection as a prized possession. He felt secure and at ease in this land flowing with milk and honey—the only land he had ever known.

Fair-weather clouds masked the intensity of the sun, and Eliab smiled at this blessing. In the lush country between here and his home in Bethlehem, he could see for miles. He breathed in the succulence of the vegetation that dotted his pathway, happy to finally be off, placing one sandaled foot ahead of the other. He was glad to be getting home, away from the pressures—the pleasures, too—of the palace at Gibeah.

He did not hate palace life. No, far from it. For a scribe of his standing, pleasures lay around every corner.

Her name was . . . What was it? . . . that girl he had met just outside the palace? Well, it mattered little. He might never see her again anyway. In fact, he would make sure of it. But he would not soon forget her eyes or her breasts or the curve of her hip. She had been young and shy but woman enough to understand how to please him. He had rewarded her with more silver than she probably deserved.

It wouldn’t be long before he would have to be more discreet with the company he kept. Back in Bethlehem—where everyone knew everything a man did—he would have to be much more cautious.

He smiled to himself as he took another step. Though still a long distance away—just a speck on the horizon of this remote countryside—Eliab knew he would see his hometown once he cleared the next crag.

He knew he wouldn’t stop his philandering altogether. After all, his passions demanded it. These routine dalliances strengthened him. They sharpened his mind. They made him feel more powerful, more influential. Whichever girl his father would choose for him to marry, she would just have to understand. Eliab had needs, needs that could not possibly be met by just one woman. This wife of his, whomever she might eventually be, would bear his children. She would bear his name. He would love her, he supposed. But he would not be tied to her.

I wonder if my father has made strides toward that end, Eliab thought. Has Jesse found me a wife?

The last time he had visited his father, they had discussed the matter. However, Jesse had not been the one to bring it up.

Eliab shook his head. He could feel himself frown. Why had he struggled so to keep his father’s attention on the subject of marriage? Abinadab, Eliab’s younger brother, had been married for months now. Yet, for whatever reason, Jesse seemed distracted from finding a wife for his eldest son. Have I asked something so difficult, something so beyond the realm of possibility? He smirked at the thought. If Jesse only knew the number of women who have thrown themselves at me . . . how many have begged me to consider a union with them! Why was Jesse so reluctant to see Eliab married off?

The truth was that people were beginning to talk. They wondered why a man of Eliab’s standing, a man of his breeding, his learning, his beauty—if he had heard them right—could still be unattached. Some perhaps thought him a little too beautiful. He’d sensed more than a few questioning his masculinity, behind cupped hands and in hushed voices laced with laughter. They lack the nerve to ask me directly, the cowards.

Perhaps it was these hushed suppositions that compelled Eliab toward the comfort of a different woman every night, whether the virgin daughter of a great man or a common prostitute. He would wrap them in his warmth, and they would reward him in kind. Recollections of his bed would make them flush long after the bedclothes had cooled, and they were bound to whisper their own secrets. If he flexed his manhood at every chance, just as he had been doing, he might squelch the false accusations that sullied his otherwise pristine reputation.

Jesse. Some referred to him as a man of great flocks and fields. Everyone seemed to know him as an individual of unparalleled character. He also loved the Law and was seen as a leader in the rural region of Bethlehem. It was for this reason that he judged at the city gate, along with a few of the other prominent elders of Bethlehem. Eliab was proud of his father’s accomplishments. Yet a part of him seethed whenever he pictured the man, whenever he heard his name. If I had a mere fraction of his influence, what couldn’t I do?

Jesse had frittered away so much, strewing his power like crumbs of bread among those who hadn’t earned it, among those who didn’t deserve his favor. How many times had he come before the king of Israel and given his counterparts the credit for maintaining both peace and sound judgment in the region of Bethlehem when, in truth, the credit should have rested solely on his shoulders? Anyone from that region would have said the same. The man’s depth of humility embarrassed his eldest son.

Eliab spat on the ground, in the hope of ridding himself of the sour taste that thoughts of his father elicited. Eliab guessed that he loved the man, loved him as much as a man could love a father he didn’t fully respect.

Mother, too—when she was alive—had witnessed how Jesse wasted his power. She had spoken of it to her eldest son often. If only she could have convinced Jesse to wield his strong hand a little more forcefully, perhaps Eliab could have found even higher favor in Israel. Even higher favor—the words reverberated in Eliab’s mind in concert with his plodding steps. Even higher.

Mother. My mother.

Eliab couldn’t bring himself to think of her as Ima, that term of endearment a child might use to refer to the one who had given him life. It would come to him no more easily than he could think of Jesse as Abba. The terms seemed too familiar, then as now.

Nahash had been her given name. Strange name for a woman, given that it means serpent. Yet so fitting, considering.

He had not thought of her for so long. His stomach clenched as he wrestled over allowing himself a vicarious glimpse of her beauty, through his discriminating mind’s eye.

Eliab had known he would hold his mother’s firm favor, no matter how many children came after him. That early time as her only child—before Abinadab came along—his mother had cemented her allegiance to her eldest son each time she uttered his name, each time she looked in his direction.

Though he had spent years building a strong hedge against thoughts of her, Eliab now felt weak and vulnerable to them. She had been taken from him when he was too young to reconcile his feelings toward her. He feared he might never do so now. Perhaps it was the heat of the day. He might have gone too long without water. With each step the hedge gave way, a bit at a time. His mother began to materialize, as though in a vision, before him.

He noticed her hair first, like a crown of spun gold upon her head. If she had taken the combs out and let it fall, he could have watched the tendrils dance over her shoulders before spilling down toward her delicate waist. Eliab used to brush it for long hours, despite Jesse’s objections that this job was meant for a maidservant. Eliab had always been careful not to pull it or to cause her any discomfort, for fear that she would ask him to stop. His hands itched now to touch those locks, to become lost in their silken warmth.

He breathed in, deeply and slowly, his nostrils searching for her still familiar smell. Mother had always insisted on infusing her hair with a few drops of jasmine oil. She swore the oil gave it a silken sheen that could be attained in no other way. To this day he found the scent intoxicating.

Her eyes, dark and sultry, bore into him as though reading his thoughts even now. Her lips, full and pink and perpetually curved upward, longed to be kissed. But he dared not. He could not. Could he? Her arms, bronzed by the sun, felt every bit as supple as a maiden’s when he touched her. He yearned to feel them around his shoulders once again. He felt himself dissolving into the allure of his vision before jerking himself back into the present. Eliab stopped on his path, shaking his head vigorously. He jerked at the scarf about his face and used it to wipe his brow, now glazed in sweat. He wiped his mouth and sighed. He could try to forget her—after all, he felt disgust over entertaining these tantalizing, forbidden thoughts—but he never would forget. He would never forget his first love.

All this time later—the woman dead nigh unto fifteen years—Eliab wondered if Mother would be proud of him now, proud of what he had accomplished in service to Saul, Israel’s king.

Eliab shook his head again before continuing toward Bethlehem.

He had planned to go straight to his father’s house. Yet he knew there would be much to see in the town’s few establishments that he would pass along the way. Since the house of Jesse sat on the far side of town, Eliab was bound to run into an acquaintance or two before he reached his family’s threshold.

Though it had been with begrudging assent, Jesse had promised to at least begin the search for a wife for Eliab when they had last spoken of it. Eliab had received his father’s assurance before they had parted. If Jesse did half as well in choosing a girl for Eliab as he had done when he chose Nahash for himself, Eliab could be sure he would be set for a lifetime of wedded bliss.