The Philistine Warrior Read Free

Marriage Contract
     
    Princely Piram spoke: “I’ll steer my ships across the
    Wine-dark sea until I reach
    The land called Crete , and there my Mother’s kin I’ll
    Seek—for Minos’ tribe,
    Achaean-pressed, might join us in this holy quest!”
    Young Rusa swore
    Crete he’d also reach: “Among our Mother’s noble clan,”
    He said, “I’ll find a bride,
    Fair, like her; then onwards sail, help-meet by my side.”
     
    --the Nomiad , Stanza XIV
     
    The corridor by which I approached Zaggi’s chamber was decorated with dolphin frescoes, a Minoan theme added to the palace by my grandfather, Rusa the Great, son of Nomion. Rusa’s favorite concubine, you see, like so many Karian brides, came from Minoan Crete—and she wanted something in her wing of the palace to remind her of her homeland. She didn’t have many friends at court here in Askelon. Besides, the frescoes came in handy because they helped to cover up the damage done by a great fire; it happened when the last
     
    Canaanite king of Askelon attempted to burn the city down rather than see it fall into Rusa’s hands.
    As I passed by the frescoes, I met an officer coming from the opposite direction; apparently he was the “important visitor” whose formal breakfast with the family had been aborted by Aunt’s indisposition. I didn’t have the slightest idea who he was, but by his uniform I took him to be a senior officer of Gaza ; he wore the insignia of that city, a broken cross.
    “Good morning, sir,” I greeted him.
    “G’day,” he grunted, and walked on by. In contrast to my red kilt and blue girdle—and my charioteer’s cape—he wore the brown cloak of the infantry; a big man, he had a square face and looked like the kind of officer who’s worked his way up from the ranks. Not the sort to appreciate dolphin frescoes, I imagined, as he disappeared from view.
    Wooden columns, tapered downwards in Minoan style, framed the door to my Uncle’s ante-chamber; these, too, had been installed by Sheren Rusa for his beloved concubine. That woman was a scandal to the entire family, because Rusa insisted that they must treat her as if she were a legal, albeit second, wife! His first wife, still living at the time of the concubine, was my own father’s mother, as well as mother to my uncles, Maoch and Zaggi; but she retired, or rather got retired, after fifteen years of child-bearing, to be regarded henceforth as a kind of honored sister, replaced in her husband’s bed by that lively Minoan youngster who’d so successfully bewitched the Old Man.
    The result of their union was my half-uncle, Pinaruta, the child of Rusa’s old age, his favorite. But poor Uncle Pinaruta had to pay a high price for it all in the end. After Rusa died, my dear uncles, Maoch and Zaggi, managed to squeeze their half-brother out of his rightful inheritance—on the grounds that he’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket, as Zaggi so frequently put it. Never mind that Rusa had ordered, in his dying words, that Pinaruta must be treated as if legitimate. Pinaruta died at last, in action while commanding the escort of a caravan, set upon by Judaeans—a lowly office for the favorite son of a Sheren, indeed, but that’s the way it
     
    was after Rusa passed away; and then Zaggi claimed Pinaruta’s orphaned child, my cousin Delai, as his ward.
    And now here I was, almost in The Presence, and I recalled Uncle Zaggi’s distinct lack of affection for my own father: Adinai, third son of Rusa the Great. Adinai of the Light Heart, he was, always poking fun at everything, even at the gods—and even (a far graver offense) at his stuffy brothers, Maoch and Zaggi. Maoch had been elected Sheren of Askelon after Rusa’s death because he was the eldest son, not for his native abilities, which were few; and Adinai loved to annoy him by standing up for the hated half-brother, Pinaruta.
    Needless to say, Maoch and Zaggi made sure that Adinai had little to do with the governing of