Ahaziah died that evening. No one in Samaria other than Bidkar and the company he had led, not at the palace or on the streets, reported having seen Elijah. Shortly after the king’s death, a rider found Bidkar and summoned him to Jezreel, “To meet with Jehu in the morning,” the rider said.
Bidkar laughed at first. “Captains do not meet with generals, soldier,” he said. “There has been a mistake.” But the rider repeated the order in Jehu’s name and rode away.
With the moon well up, Juttah watched quietly from his place beside the hut as Bidkar rode up in Shunem. The captain tied his horse at the gate then whispered into the dark, “Come out, I have a tale.” Zach’s family quit their beds quietly so not to wake the children. Yashar stirred the embers in the pit and, after all of them had taken seats outside around it, Juttah joined them, yawning.
Bidkar, after describing Ahaziah’s horrible injury, told his story. As Zach had prophesied, Elijah had appeared. “I led the company that discovered him in the hills,” the captain said after telling the fates of the companies before them that failed. “We led the prophet without incident to the palace. Elijah met with Ahaziah. Now Ahab’s son is dead.”
“So, another king of Israel meets an ugly end,” Sara said. “What has anyone learned? What will happen to us now?”
“Ahaziah’s brother, Jehoram, will likely take the throne,” Bidkar said. “Jehoram claims to have turned his back on Baal. No one believes him. He will play both ends against the middle like his dad. Jehoram knows better than to contend with his mother. He will nod at the God of Israel, maintain the high places and promote the calf cult as an alternative to worship in Jerusalem.”
“Everything is changed yet remains the same,” Zach said.
It was late. There seemed to be nothing more to say. Bidkar stopped Sara as she headed toward the cottage. “I feared for my life today, Sara,” he whispered in the dark, “though I had believed myself well past that.”
Sara blinked at him by moonlight.
“So then,” Bidkar said, “I will say what’s long been on my heart. My desire to live again, Sara, comes from my regard for you.”
There arrive moments in a man’s life when he will say something impulsively and, even while expressing it, regret that he began. The captain’s confession to Sara seemed an excellent example. Maybe Sara had been distracted. Maybe she had become too hardened by experience to care. For whatever reason, Sara only nodded in the shadows after the captain bared his soul and said, “Good night.”
*
Well before sunup, Bidkar nudged Yashar awake in the hut. “I am to meet with Jehu, my general, this morning in Jezreel,” he said. “I am anxious, wondering, why summon me?”
“Perhaps a promotion?” Yashar guessed.
Bidkar laughed quietly as he dressed. “You suffer from raging ignorance of the military,” he said. “This is unnatural. I fear an attempt to suck me into politics. It is well known that Jehu follows the God of Israel. Jehoram, of course, does not. Ahab was too powerful to oppose, as was Ahaziah in the wake of his father’s death, but now…”
Yashar shrugged. He understood none of it.
“Simply put,” Bidkar said, “this soldier’s nose smells plotting, the kind that leads to blood. Recall, again, Elijah’s warning.”
“A time shall come,” Yashar recited easily from memory, “and you shall surely know the moment, to get yourself out of Israel forever.”
“If this is not that time, son,” the captain said, “it will surely come soon. My first hurdle will be to survive this morning’s meeting.”
“Why don’t we go now?” Yashar said, for his growing feelings for Nurit—which he had not dared share with anyone—troubled him more each day. A change of venue seemed good. “I doubt Zach’s family will come with us but surely one or more of his brothers will step in to help them after we’ve gone.”
“Correct, they will not agree to leave here,” the captain sighed. “I confess, Yashar, I expected it would be light work to one day turn my back on Israel and war, but now…”
Even in the dark, Yashar saw the captain’s pain. “Sara,” he whispered.
Bidkar gave him the slightest nod. “Enough, I ask a favor. After you finish your work here today, Yashar, come to Jezreel and be sure to bring the dog.”
Yashar agreed, though the captain’s request seemed odd.
*
Zach’s boys woke Yashar later that morning laughing beside his cot, running their fingers through his hair, probing his nostrils and tracing the line of his beard along his jaw. “Yashar,” the oldest said, “Grandma says, do not be a lazy fellow; get up and get to work.”
He stepped outside. Sunlight crowned Mount Moreh. Nurit had started a fire. The tools they would use in their work that morning stood stacked against the back gate. Shunem was a dream come true, only lacking grapes.
Zach stepped out for air, wrapped in his shawl. “Boys,” he said, coughing, “leave your poor uncle alone.” So the boys abandoned Yashar to torment Juttah.
After Yashar finished his work, early afternoon, he mentioned that he would head to Jezreel. “I am sure this concerns the captain,” Sara said. “Please, son, be careful.”
How had Sara known? She and Nurit followed Yashar to the gate and hugged him to discomfort. “Ladies,” he said, “I’m headed to town, not war.”
“Just be sure to take care of yourself,” Sara said, “as well as your good friend.”
“The captain is your good friend too, ma’am,” Yashar said.
Sara left them standing at the gate. Nurit remained and demanded reassurance. “You will take very good care of yourself in town, today, you promise?” she asked him more than once. Without permission, Yashar’s heart fluttered with love for Nurit every time their eyes met. Flushed with guilt, he resolved to leave Shunem as soon as able, with or without the captain, while praying even harder, every day, for Zach’s quick and complete recovery.
*
Juttah seemed to smell Jezreel. Acting the pup again, the big dog ripped in habitual circles on the flats and then, anxious for Yashar to keep pace, raced up and down the rocky slopes to the city, following Sara’s stream. After Yashar stopped to pray beside the cave where Naboth slept, they walked through the old vineyard.
What emotions came flooding at the old camp. After little more than two years’ time, Sara’s cottage was a shambles, ripped apart by scavengers or demolished in a storm. The fire pit was overrun with briars, its once white sitting stones strung with moss and scabby things. The vine rows had all but disappeared, every terrace rutted. Last and saddest, most of the roots and stems Naboth had worked so hard to revive had been exposed to air and grown covered with fungus, thatch and prickly plants.
Up top at the plaza, only a few split posts and none of the rails remained of Naboth’s fence. Only Ahab’s boulders remained. Even the king’s watchtower near the gate had disappeared.
What need was there to guard the vineyard? Nothing of value remained.
Juttah refused to follow Yashar across to the gates. Instead, he padded to the spot where Naboth had fallen and lay there, blinking innocently, with his chin upon his paws, deaf to Yashar’s calls, only the third time in his life that Juttah had disobeyed Yashar.
Each incident of disobedience had involved Naboth. What, if anything, did that mean?
Having arrived in Jezreel as Bidkar had requested, Yashar felt no sense of urgency. He took a seat in the shade of the citadel wall and waited, full of patience, for Juttah to south his soul. They would pass into the city when his grieving dog thought best.
*
Bidkar arrived in Jezreel before dawn, stabled his horse and went straight to the watch. A sergeant, expecting him, led him to a room in the tower. “I am told Jehu will come when he will come, sir,” he said, so Bidkar took a seat. The cell in which he waited sat directly above the chamber in which Naboth had been betrayed. Across the hall sat the elders’ offices where Bidkar first met Sara. Something was up in Jezreel. Even at daybreak, the quadrangle pulsed with horsemen and racing chariots. A battle approached but with whom, over what? There had been peace in Israel for two years.
Jehu stepped into the room shortly after, entering alone after posting a guard at the door. A big man with erect posture, long hair and piercing eyes, he returned Bidkar’s salute and sat behind a table, folding his gloved hands upon it then examining the captain at his leisure. When he had finished sizing Bidkar up with the clear, probing eyes of a man accustomed to leading, Jehu spoke loud enough to be heard over the commotion outside on the street.
“Tell me of Ahab’s death at Ramoth-gilead,” the general said.
The story had been told a hundred times but Bidkar recited it as ordered.
“Now tell me, Captain,” Jehu said, “what you saw at Samaria when Ahab and Jehoshaphat consulted the prophet, Micaiah.”
Jehu had been in Samaria himself that day and witnessed the exchange but, again, Bidkar told the tale as ordered, valuing brevity and sticking to facts.
“Now tell me about the vintner, Naboth,” Jehu said, “and how he came to die.”
Bidkar complied again, ending his account with, “Naboth’s own people stoned him. Naboth’s wife, a young man and a dog contended with my garrison in an attempt to save him…” he paused.
Jehu waited.
“…with supernatural strength, sir,” Bidkar said.
“Supernatural?” Jehu asked. “Tell me more.”
The general seemed to be begging Bidkar to lose patience, so Bidkar complied. “Sir,” he said, “I’m an old soldier of modest rank and mean no disrespect. You watch carefully as I speak but pay no mind to what I say. You must easily be as tired of this game as I. What would you like to know? Ask me directly and I will tell you truly.”
Jehu grinned. “As everyone tells me, Captain, you are indeed a forthright man. You are correct. I learned decades ago that, in an interrogation, a man’s words mean nothing. As you spoke, I watched your face for ticks and twitches, a practice that has served me well and for which I make no apologies. To your credit, you’ve offered up your facts clean and dry.”
Bidkar yawned against his will.
“You prefer brevity, then?” Jehu said. “Hear now what troubles me. You served Omri as a foot soldier, Jezreel as captain of his son’s garrison there and defended Ahab valiantly at Gilead. Then, with no objections, you served Ahaziah after that.”
Bidkar nodded.
“I heard you lost a son in Israel’s service, is that true?”
“Two sons, sir,” Bidkar said, “one each in the last two wars with Aram. My wife and daughter died before them, frail women and victims of the drought, so I’m alone.”
Jehu eyed Bidkar for quite a while before asking his next question. “Captain,” he said, “where do you stand with Jehoram, son of Ahab and Jezebel?”
“He is the king,” Bidkar said.
“What I want to hear from your lips,” Jehu said, “is whether he is your king?”
Bidkar dared not speak.
“You are wise to show caution, Captain,” Jehu said, “but it will do you no good. I will say it. Trouble is upon Israel. I am called to action in the name of the Lord. Every man in this garrison reveres you. Fifty in Samaria added to your reputation as a man’s man only yesterday, each swearing that he owes you his life. Like it or not, Captain, honor has found you in this army. But these are tricky times for men of honor. There will be no lines to straddle. Each man must make his stand. I will know, now, whether you are my friend or my enemy.”
“I am your captain,” Bidkar answered.
“A good answer, but it will not do.”
“Perhaps, sir, if you could explain…”
“Who is your god, man?” Jehu shouted. “It is fact that you fought like a mad man beside Ahab’s pagan carcass at Ramoth for the better part of a day. It is fact that you bear a pagan name. You visited the high places. Your sons, before they died, were disfigured with the marks of Baal. Knowing all this I ask again, Captain, who is your god?”
Finally, Bidkar understood. “Your devotion to the God of Israel is well known, sir,” he said. “Could I not now claim similar affection to save my life?”
Jehu smiled for the first time. “Men rise to power upon varying gifts,” he said. “Try to deceive me, Captain, and see how it works for you. I can smell a lie beyond a dung heap.”
This time Bidkar smiled. It was hard not to like Jehu. “I have marched beside men of every belief,” he said. “An army, after all, is no different than its nation. When serving Omri, I visited the high places each spring. As a married man, I built altars and bowed before them. My lady burned incense, coiled her hair in the northern fashion and blackened the rims of her eyes. And yes, sir, I go by a pagan name and my sons marked their faces and forearms with the brands of the Baalim.”
“What say you now?” Jehu asked.
Tears formed in Bidkar’s eyes. “From yonder ramparts,” he said softly, “I watched an old man in sandals outrun the fastest team in Israel. Afterward, I watched an old lady, a boy and one dog, fighting against injustice, stand off an incensed mob and wound a dozen of my men. I have seen a random arrow find and kill Israel’s king at Ramoth-gilead though he was hiding like a coward, according to the prophet Micaiah’s word. I’ve heard testimonies… I’ve witnessed judgments… Why then, sir, would I not turn with all my heart from my past evil to serve the God of Israel?”
“Compose yourself, Captain,” Jehu said softly. “You’ve spoken truly. You are God’s ally and my friend. Be ready, then. The time approaches when I will call upon you for an important work, a difficult one. Jehoram, has promised to tear down the high places but he lies.”
“You wish to restore the God of Israel, in Israel, with violence?” Bidkar asked. “The prophets themselves say Israel is lost.”
“It will not be lost, I promise you,” Jehu said, “upon my watch.”
“Your watch, sir?” Bidkar asked. “You are a general, not a king.”
“I am due an anointing,”Jehu said. “Don’t take my word, only wait. Moab will revolt now that Ahaziah has died. Israel and Judah will be stuck with that for a time.”
“I’ve seen enough war, sir,” Bidkar said. “I hope to retire.”
“When duty calls,” Jehu said, “men of honor rise above personal desire. Tell me, soldier, do you know of the prophet, Elisha?”
“You mean, Elijah, sir,” Bidkar said.
General Jehu smiled a second time. “Stay a moment longer, Captain,” he said, “and I’ll tell you a fascinating tale.”