Delilah. Eleanor Jong De

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СКАЧАТЬ the bruise on Delilah’s…

      Chapter Thirty

      The watery sky was just tinged with the first red…

      Chapter Thirty-One

      Delilah barely stirred when Samson left the tent before dawn,…

      Chapter Thirty-Two

      Delilah traversed the edges of the crowd until she was…

      Chapter Thirty-Three

      Delilah hardly left her room for three days. She was…

      Chapter Thirty-Four

      There were soldiers too. At least ten, clustering around Phicol.

      Chapter Thirty-Five

      Though the night passed peacefully, Delilah was aware that her…

      Chapter Thirty-Six

      ‘I had to go back,’ she said. ‘You understand that,…

      Chapter Thirty-Seven

      She explained to Joshua about the drugged drink. He listened…

      Chapter Thirty-Eight

      Ekron shuddered, a thin groan escaping his lips. His hair…

      Chapter Thirty-Nine

      Ariel reined in the donkeys and the wagon halted.

      Chapter Forty

      The sky was heavy with low-lying clouds that lingered but…

      Jezebel

      The Darling Strumpet

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Credits

       About the Publisher

      Chapter One

      ‘Lilah! Where are you?’

      Delilah tucked her feet more tightly beneath her and closed her eyes. She knew she couldn’t be seen – that was the magic of her tiny nest between the vines, especially now, with the leaves so broad and green and the clusters of grapes beginning to swell on their stems – but it made sense to keep still and wait for Ekron to pass. Up the slope behind her, the sounds of the wedding party were like the rush of a distant river.

      ‘Delilah? I know you’re—’ She heard him break off and clear his throat, growling to himself, trying to keep his voice deep, to give the impression of being the man she knew he longed to be. He sounded so close; he must be in the next row over beside the well.

      ‘I know you’re out here, Delilah. You can’t keep secrets from me!’

      Ekron’s last word came out in one painfully high squeak above the rest of the sentence, and Delilah gulped down the giggles that rose inside her. She could hear him wailing to himself as he trudged away along the path. His face would be burning red like the evening sun by now.

      The scuffs of her stepbrother’s sandals against the dusty earth became quieter as he continued his search further down the slopes. She couldn’t understand his hurry to grow up. She’d be happy if she was eight forever, but he had begun marking off the time until his twelfth birthday even though it was at least four moons away.

      When he was out of earshot, Delilah untucked herself and sat cross-legged against the trunk of the vine. She ran her fingers along a pair of branches that rose over her shoulder, feeling the bark as it twisted around itself, already brown in the late summer heat. One branch was fatter than the other. Her father had once told her that it was branches like these that should be tied to the supports, for they would provide the frame of a plant year after year. The other branch, weaker and thinner, had coiled along the stronger one, strangling it. Delilah knew that if her father had been here, he would have cut the tendril away, even though it already held the promise of fat fruits.

      Thinking about her father made her sad, and she pulled the leaves gently apart to peer up the valley towards the house. There was a strange little hump on this part of the slope that raised these few vines slightly above their neighbours. She’d found the hiding place by accident over a year ago, tripping among the neat rows of vines on her stepfather Achish’s estate as she ran headlong from her mother’s howls and the ritual laments of the gathered mourners. Tearing her dress had been just another horrible part of that wretched day.

      Ekron had come after her then too, like he always did when she was upset, but she’d dodged him and weaved among the vines, faster than him, more desperate to escape than he was to catch her. From the secret nook she’d watched the groundsmen with their spades, repairing the ground that had been broken up to accept her father’s body. His burial had been quick, hurried along by the Israelite traditions of which he had been so proud. Later that night, as her mother stitched her dress and Delilah cleaned the dust and tears from her face, she’d all but forgotten Achish’s words of comfort by the graveside – not to worry, that he’d take care of her. Until that moment, he’d been just her father’s employer, and a man with whom she rarely came into contact. She’d been too young to realise that one day he’d be something more.

      Now, fourteen months later, the earth above her father’s grave looked as brown and smooth as the earth around it, the only mark of its presence a young olive tree that cast a thin shadow across it. Achish had kept to his promise, and today marked the day that he took Delilah’s mother as a wife. They had a new family, a new home, and each night she added the great Philistine god El to her prayers, thanking him for his kindness. Her mother had learned to smile again and Achish had made that happen. Ekron seemed happy enough too, to have Delilah as a stepsister as well as a friend. But Hemin – well, Hemin couldn’t smile if you pasted one on that thin face with clay. And Delilah knew Hemin would sooner make herself sick than call Delilah her sister.

      ‘—of course, it will be very difficult for Achish, raising that Israelite child in his own Philistine family—’

      Delilah let the leaves fall together again and tilted her head to listen. Over by the well she could see the feet of two women, old wrinkly feet in fussy sandals, their painted leather now dusted with dry earth.

      ‘She is a handful, I’m sorry to say.’ That was the voice of Achish’s first wife, Ariadnh. She sounded a bit more formal than usual, as though she was trying to impress the woman she was speaking to. ‘She has no sense of her place, no sense of how lucky she is.’

      ‘Lucky indeed. I mean to say, her mother Beulah seems a pleasant woman—’

      ‘Pleasant enough for an Israelite—’

      ‘But she has married out of her culture and well above her station. Surely Achish knows how people will see it: the effects of such an association on himself, on his children, on you—’

      ‘It’s not merely a question of station, of course. Clearly I couldn’t possibly say this to Achish myself—’

      ‘It’s not a wife’s place to speak frankly to her husband—’

      ‘Although СКАЧАТЬ