Delilah

Delilah ignored the awkward implications of her mother’s words and led her into the hallway. The housegirl had left the packages in two neat piles on a table by the stairs and Delilah picked through them, discarding rolls of napkins for the betrothal, and another parcel that they had collected for Ariadnh from the cloth merchant. The betrothal ceremony was to take place a full month before the wedding, as was the Philistine custom. Convenient as well, Delilah thought, in case either party wanted to back out.

Ekron stopped halfway down the stairs and sank down onto a step, his head level with Delilah’s.

‘Did you have fun, Lilah?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

Ekron rolled his eyes. ‘De-lilah.’

‘As it happens, I did. They have some very beautiful fabrics in town, sailed in from all ports on the Great Sea. Even fancy Phicol would find something to please his vain old head.’

‘Don’t let him hear you call him that,’ said Ekron. ‘Besides, if you want me to call you Delilah, then you should call my employer by his proper title too.’

‘Fancy Lord Phicol, Grand Ruler of the Philistine City of Ashkelon?’

‘Lilah!’

Delilah grinned at Ekron and began untying each of the packages. Nominally Phicol was merely the chief of the Philistine lords who administered the city and its immediate vicinity, but over the past years his personal estate seemed to have expanded, with an ever greater retinue of servants. An outsider might think he fancied himself as a king rather than a governor.

From the first package, Delilah pulled out a shift of coarse linen in a vivid burnt orange, which the merchant explained had been coloured with a mixture of red and yellow madder roots imported from a land far to the west. The dress was designed to lie flatteringly low across the shoulders and beneath the neck, but the fabric was still stiff with newness. Three or four careful washes with the launder stone would soften it. She pulled the straps of her own tunic off her shoulders, leaving them bare, and held the dress against her body, turning to the mirror stone in the hallway. Her skin had lost the deep brown of her youth, when she’d spent most of her time in the fields, and now glowed like rich honey. The material worked well against it, and Delilah scooped her long dark hair back over her shoulder. Her tunic slipped a little further down her chest, but Delilah rescued her modesty.

Behind her, she saw Ekron blush and shift on the stair. ‘You will look like the falling sun in that,’ he said.

She pouted at herself: her face had become thinner these last few years, and she’d lost the dimples in her cheeks. But now her cheekbones were more defined too, angling sharply beneath the dark pools of her eyes.

‘Does that mean you like it?’

Ekron swallowed. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Delilah could see Beulah shake her head, so she covered her shoulders again and busied herself unwrapping the second dress. This was of a much finer linen, in a beautiful deep purple, and cut more plainly at the neck. It would need a belt to accentuate her waist, but its skirt was a little longer and fuller than the orange dress. The seller had rattled on about how fashionable the colour was in Egypt, and how the Pharaoh’s wife had adorned the neck of a very similar dress with a collar of amethysts. From the moment she stepped into it, Delilah had thought it the loveliest thing she’d ever seen. Even now, she wanted to press it against her face as if breathing it in would somehow make her more beautiful too. She was just about to show it off for Ekron’s benefit when she heard the unmistakeably angry slap of sandals crossing the courtyard.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Hemin, entering the hallway. The path to womanhood had been generous to Hemin, softening her mean little face with curved cheeks and a neat snub nose. Sadly it had done nothing for the sharpness of her tongue. ‘I thought it was the housegirl. Did you collect Ariadnh’s things?’

‘It’s one of these on the floor.’ Delilah kicked lightly at the packages, then danced back a step or two as Hemin tried to reach for the skirt of the purple dress.

‘What in the name of Anat do you think you are doing with something that colour?’

‘Oh, but isn’t it beautiful, Hemin? I bought it today.’

‘It’s my betrothal ceremony, Delilah. You were told not to buy anything dark in colour because it would distract from my banquet dress.’

‘That plain old blue thing you got last week? Yes, I expect it will.’

‘Shame you wasted so much of my father’s money on it then, because you won’t be allowed to wear it.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t do to look prettier than the bride, but then that wouldn’t be difficult—’

‘Can’t you two leave it for just a few hours?’ sighed Ekron.

Hemin swatted her brother’s caution away, and took a step nearer to Delilah. ‘You can put cheap vinegar in a fine jar but it won’t turn it into wine.’

‘I’m surprised you know that much about the family business,’ replied Delilah.

Hemin sucked a breath through her teeth. ‘You think you’re so clever, cosying up to Father, trying to worm your way into the running of the vineyard. But you will always smell of dusty earth and rotten grapes, and you’ll always be the concubine’s daughter. Even the best dress in the world won’t change that.’

Over Hemin’s shoulder, Delilah saw her mother sadly lower her head, and her anger swelled. ‘At least I know a grape from a grain. What use will you be as the wife of a hill-man, if you can’t tell a sheep from a goat? Samson is a man who gets his hands dirty—’

‘Delilah!’ Ariadnh’s sharp voice cut through the row. Hemin glanced with relief across the hallway, then smirked at Delilah. The fight wasn’t over yet.

‘What’s this?’ said Ariadnh, reaching for the purple gown as Delilah withdrew it from her reach and folded it away. ‘I thought I told your mother to buy you something plain.’

Beulah cleared her throat, but didn’t speak.

Ariadnh took the orange dress from Ekron, who had been holding it tenderly in his hands. She shook it out in front of her, then ran her fingers along the stiff neckline. ‘Is this the only other dress you bought?’

‘For now.’

‘Then you can wear this one.’

‘But it’s not ready to wear yet, it needs washing and there isn’t time—’

‘Then you should have thought of that and bought something that was ready to wear. Achish will agree that the purple one is completely inappropriate for the betrothal. So you will have to suffer in the orange one or wear that white one you have on.’

Hemin looked smugly at Delilah. Beulah had warned her in the shop that her choices would cause trouble, but they would all have to live with it. The orange would be unbearable to wear, so she’d just have to find a way to wear the purple instead, and hope not to be spotted until it was too late to be made to change. Anyway, when Achish saw it, he’d surely agree that it suited her perfectly.

‘As you wish, Ariadnh,’ said Delilah contritely.

‘You’ll look lovely in the orange one,’ said Ekron.

Hemin scowled at him, but Delilah said nothing. She was watching Ariadnh, who had picked up her own package from the floor and was peering between the layers of cloth that bound it, smiling to herself.

‘Come with me, Hemin. These are for you. I’ve some important things to talk to you about.’

Hemin gave Delilah a final farewell sneer, and took Ariadnh’s hand, skipping girlishly up the stairs after her. As their whispered laughter floated down into the hallway, Beulah crossed the hall to join her daughter.

‘I did warn you.’

‘But it was worth it.’

Beulah kissed her daughter’s forehead without much affection. ‘Was it really?’ She picked up the package of napkins and handed them to Delilah. ‘Take these to the kitchen.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Ekron, standing up.

‘That would be kind,’ said Delilah. She touched the back of his hand as he took the load.

Ekron followed Beulah through the doorway towards the back of the house. Delilah quickly folded her dresses back into their packaging, then slipped off her sandals and quietly ran up the stairs, dropping the dresses onto her sleeping couch before moving swiftly down the corridor towards Hemin’s bedroom.

She generally avoided this end of the house, but today her curiosity got the better of her. There was a large window off the hallway through which she could hear the high and low of laughter and whispering between her stepsister and stepmother.

‘—so that when he slides his hand around your back, and pulls this ribbon, your nightdress will fall smoothly to the floor—’

The rest was lost in Hemin’s gasping laughter. The package must have contained Hemin’s clothes for the wedding night, and Ariadnh was clearly giving her the sort of instructions that only a mother could give. Delilah tucked herself in behind the shutters so that she could listen without being seen.

‘—for if you are to enjoy the first night with your new husband,’ Ariadnh was saying, ‘there is much that you will need to know.’

Delilah felt a nauseous mixture of jealousy and dismay swell inside her. She may have the more beautiful dress, but in one respect at least Hemin would shortly be beyond her.

‘—and what if I don’t please him?’ Hemin was asking.

‘Bah!’ snorted Ariadnh. ‘Men are not difficult to please. Even men as renowned as Samson.’

Chapter Three

Delilah put down the tray of empty drinking bowls, and adjusted the ties of her belt so they fell more attractively against her hip. She’d agreed to serve drinks to the wedding guests only after Achish had promised her new jewellery. Hemin hadn’t been privy to the bribe, and had rejoiced to hear that her stepsister would be called upon to look after the guests.

She’d curled her hair for the occasion, and it fell over her bare shoulders in waves of silken ebony. She’d selected her amber necklace, not so much for the colour, but because the pendant nestled at the limits of decency in the shallow valley between her breasts. ‘You should be careful,’ her mother had muttered. ‘I don’t want to lose you just yet.’

The crowd of Israelite men who stood in the shade of the porch made no attempt to disguise their interest in Delilah, and muttered in Hebrew to one another. She couldn’t stop the smile that came to her lips.

Achish had been very clear that morning that they were to make their guests as welcome as possible. These strangers had a roughness about them though, guzzling their wine as quickly as she could fill their bowls.

Betrothal, she thought, seemed to be about a lot of talking and a lot of waiting around. Achish had been locked away in his study for most of the morning with Hemin’s husband-to-be, the man whose name was on everyone’s lips, but whom no one had yet seen. The dial in the courtyard had moved on nearly one full mark since the arrival of Samson and his retinue, and the sun was dipping past its zenith. The scents from the flowers in their basins grew ever stronger, mingling with the thick aroma of the unmixed wine.

‘More drink!’ said one of the Israelites, in clumsy Philistine.

Beulah quickly emptied another third of the jug between the six bowls on Delilah’s tray. ‘Achish wouldn’t approve, but I suppose it’s all in the spirit of the occasion.’

‘They think I can’t understand what they’re saying about me,’ giggled Delilah. ‘They’re very coarse.’

‘In a pack, men are like foxes,’ replied her mother. ‘All snarls and bristling hair. Get one on his own and he’s a different animal. No doubt one of these fellows is eyeing you for himself and you’ll be next.’

Delilah shuddered. ‘I’ll never marry a hairy Israelite.’

‘Your father was a hairy Israelite!’

Delilah laughed and glided back towards the men with the tray of drinks, feeling their eyes follow her as she moved around the room. Of course, the purple dress had quite a bit to do with that, especially the way its richness seemed to light up the blues in her black hair and it clung to the curves of her hips. Not that she wasn’t used to a certain amount of attention, although with her mother or Achish by her side she’d learned to deflect it with a graceful, studied shyness.

Delilah and her mother would be sitting on the groom’s side of the courtyard for the ceremony. With their own kind, Hemin had whispered, none too quietly, to Achish. She smiled inwardly now as she offered drinking bowls to Samson’s Israelite friends. Close up, she couldn’t help but notice how muscular the men were. They had none of the softness that she saw in the Philistine men of Ashkelon. They looked odd in their clean tunics – like a rustic vintage served in fine drinking bowls. Samson was rumoured to be twice as big as any of these fellows, able to wrestle a bull calf to the ground with nothing but his hands. What would her stepsister make of him?

She’d just invited a shy smile from the youngest of the Israelite men – a handsome, curly-haired youth who had done little but stare at her since he arrived – when Ekron appeared, frowning, at her elbow. He’d been hanging around at the bottom of the stairs that morning when she had first come out of her room, and his eyes had been glued almost drunkenly to her as she walked slowly down to meet him. He half-smiled at her now, but he seemed distracted by the Israelites over her shoulder.

‘Ekron?’

‘Oh – what?’

‘Is the ceremony going to start soon?’

‘I think so. I came to tell you that Lord Phicol has finally arrived. I want to introduce you to him.’

Delilah followed his gaze to a group who hovered at the rear of the courtyard. Three were slender young men, each of them bare-chested but for the red military sashes that crossed to wide-pleated skirts and aprons. Behind them stood a short, solid man of about forty years, clothed in an embroidered tunic over his leather skirt. His flat face was sliced off at the brow by the base of a tall, elabor ate headdress that signified the Philistine aristocracy.

‘I suppose that’s him at the back,’ murmured Delilah.

His presence had drawn some excited whispering and covert stares from other guests – notables of Ashkelon and distant relations.

‘When I’ve completed my scribe’s training I’ll be given a tunic in that style to wear on formal occasions, so that I can accompany His Lordship. And a headdress too. It won’t be that grand, of course—’

‘And I hope you won’t look that silly either.’

Delilah was surprised to see how cross Ekron suddenly looked. Lately his sense of humour had all but vanished. ‘It’s a great honour to wear the robes, Delilah, just as it is to work for His Lordship. He is a very clever man, careful about the affairs of our people—’

The Israelites seemed to be making a show of ignoring Lord Phicol and his finery altogether. They talked loudly amongst themselves, as Ariadnh briskly crossed the courtyard to greet each of the guests. The ‘old’ wife, as Delilah always thought of her, gave Ekron a sharp nod. Then her eyes travelled up and down Delilah’s body. Her lips pressed together in a tight smile.

‘I have to go and collect Hemin now,’ said Ekron. ‘She is ready.’

‘At last,’ muttered Delilah.

‘Be kind to her today,’ he pleaded. ‘This is a big day for her, and for our family. It was significant enough that my father married your mother and accepted you both into our family, but for Hemin to marry Samson is a very important step in the relations between our two peoples.’

‘That sounds like a speech right out of Lord Phicol’s mouth.’

Ekron blushed a little. ‘Well, he is right.’

Delilah watched him leave, if only to avoid catching Ariadnh’s attention. Too late. She was bearing down like an angry whirlwind.

‘You were supposed to wear the orange dress, Delilah. You gave me your word yesterday.’

Delilah was about to answer when she noticed movement inside the house. Hemin was pacing awkwardly in the half-covered hallway. Ariadnh’s daughter looked pretty enough, and something clever had been done with her hair, which had softened her angry mouth. But even though the betrothal gown was elegant, a pleated shift of flax-coloured linen, Hemin looked uncomfortable in her own skin, as ill at ease as ever. And as their eyes met, Delilah was delighted to see that her stepsister was unable to conceal her raw fear at being upstaged.

Ariadnh leaned towards Delilah. ‘Go and change your dress immediately, before Hemin enters the courtyard,’ she hissed. ‘Another few minutes will not make any difference, and if you are too long we’ll simply start without you.’

‘Excuse me, madam—’

‘What is it?’ Ariadnh turned on the young man who had appeared at her elbow. ‘What do you want?’

‘The master wants to see Delilah in his study.’

‘What for?’

‘He didn’t say, madam.’

‘Then you can go to your room, Delilah, and change before you go to see him. Achish must not see you like that. He’ll be furious.’

I doubt that, thought Delilah, turning her back on Ariadnh, and following the servant past the Israelite men into the house. But by the door to Achish’s study, the young man gripped her arm. His fingers were warm and strong against her skin and she didn’t pull away, even though he was standing too close to her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Don’t you recognise me?’

Delilah frowned and looked him over. Dark curls smoothed down, sharply angled jaw, large eyes black as the night—

‘Joshua? Is it really you? It’s been—’

‘Three summers,’ he grinned. ‘Achish – master – has had me working at the port.’

Had it been so long? Delilah remembered the days when Joshua, Ekron and she would play together among the vines.

‘I didn’t recognise you without straw in your hair and a barrow of horse muck at your feet.’

He wore a spotless white tunic and a wide leather belt as part of his house servant’s uniform. The last time she’d seen him was as a skinny youth, half-naked in the stables, clad only in the knee-length Egyptian shorts the stable boys found comfortable for their labours, the rest of him strung with whatever ropes and leathers were required to tack up the horses. Something of Ariadnh’s remarks to Hemin yesterday about the mysteries of a man’s body came flooding back to mind, and she instinctively took a step back.

‘I’m not the only one who cleans up well,’ he said.

She blushed, then remembered the summons. ‘I shouldn’t keep Achish waiting.’

‘He doesn’t want to see you.’

‘What?’

‘I made it up. I – well, I thought you needed rescuing.’

Delilah was touched to see his cheeks burn beneath those glorious dark lashes. ‘I’m a lady of the house now. I should have you flogged for such insolence.’

‘But you won’t, will you?’ said Joshua, widening his eyes in mock alarm. ‘I heard Ariadnh and Hemin moaning about you and it seemed so unfair to make you change your dress. It’s not your fault if you’re prettier than—’

Before she knew what she was doing, Delilah had stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, full and soft on the mouth. She lingered for a moment, close enough to feel his breath still on her lips, then rocked back, lowering her gaze. But he didn’t move and eventually she looked up to find him smiling back at her, lips slightly parted.

The smile fell away. She was aware of someone approaching.

‘Don’t you have serving duties?’ said Ekron to Joshua, slipping his hand onto Delilah’s arm. ‘Come along, they’re about to start, Delilah. What were you doing out here, anyway?’

Delilah steered him back towards the courtyard, and pulled his arm close into hers. ‘I was avoiding Ariadnh. She was very rude about my dress.’

‘Never mind. This is Hemin’s day, and she’ll be nervous about it.’

‘You really do sound like Lord Phicol, Ekron. You have to do something about that, or you’ll turn into a stuffy elder of the community before you’ve reached twenty.’

As they walked together, her mind returned to Joshua. Her mother definitely wouldn’t approve, but Delilah was already wondering how she might find a few moments alone with the servant. Ekron could be terribly tiresome, and Hemin’s friends managed to look right through her whenever they met.

She came around the corner and stopped dead, stifling a gasp. In the courtyard, the guests were quiet, and all focused on the man who stood in the centre. He was quite simply the biggest man Delilah had ever seen. Surely the biggest in the known world. Her first thought was of the giants whom the gods had fought before people existed at all. Even his shadow, which stretched along the ground and almost touched Delilah’s feet, seemed solid. He might not have been twice the size of his followers, but Delilah found herself mentally measuring her body against his, handspan for handspan. And down his back, as beautifully dressed as her own tresses, were seven braids of hair, held together by bands. The tresses seemed almost golden as the sun fell on them, then a rich polished ochre as he passed through the shade. It ought to be funny, she felt, this man with a woman’s hair, but the urge to laugh was tempered by a grudging respect. He must have been growing it since boyhood. Even though the braids were oiled and smooth, they looked like seven ropes that had been tied to his head in case he ever needed to be controlled.

He surveyed the gathered guests, and for a moment his gaze settled heavily on hers. Those eyes – they were the deepest blue, like the cornflowers that grew in the rough edges of the vineyard. He must have been in his late twenties at the most, and yet her mother spoke of him as some kind of venerated leader. Delilah forgot her manners and stared back for as long as she was able. Then she glanced downwards, sure he’d somehow read her mind. Ekron tugged on her arm and with her attention still firmly fixed on the floor she followed him into the courtyard to take a seat so the betrothal could begin. Well, he certainly lived up to his reputation, at least in terms of description. He wasn’t handsome in the same way as Joshua, but with his broad forehead and strong straight nose, there was something regal about him. His beard, though full and long, didn’t dominate his face any more than those extraordinary braids. And as for his clothes – well, he was perhaps the least elaborately dressed man in the room. He wore only a long plain tunic of black linen, devoid of embroidery or any decoration, and a narrow black belt with a silver clasp. Had no one told him what a special day this was? There were two worn slots in the belt and Delilah realised that these would normally have held knives or some other small blade. Well, she supposed it wouldn’t have been good manners to turn up to one’s betrothal armed to defend oneself, though a person would have to be mad to take him on.

Achish led Samson towards his daughter, like a farmer leading an ox to market. Seeing him in Hemin’s company for the first time, Delilah decided that not even the sum total of Ariadnh’s wisdom could ever prepare Hemin for marriage to this man. There was a wildness about him that would surely terrify even the most experienced of women.

For the first time in nearly fifteen years, Delilah felt a sliver of sympathy for her stepsister.

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