The Shepherdess (Ebook Shorts) (The Loves of King Solomon Book #2)

© 2015 by Jill Eileen Smith

Published by Revell

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.revellbooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-2339-5

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, Wendy Lawton, Central Valley Office, P.O. Box 1227, Hilmar, CA 95324, wendy@booksandsuch.com

To Kathy K., Kathy K., Kathy R., Joyce, Sue, Jud, Robin, Linda—longtime, dear friends.

I hope you all know how much you mean to me.

This one is for you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prelude

1

2

3

Interlude

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Postlude

Note to the Reader

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by Jill Eileen Smith

Back Ads

Back Cover

Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm. So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.

1 Kings 1:1–4

Prelude

I wonder if anyone really lives the life they expect. Do the very old among us look back and think, This isn’t what I envisioned? Or wish they could go back and live life again, but make different choices?

I think I have always pondered these and other unanswerable questions. Perhaps this was why my brothers were glad to be rid of me when they sent me to work the vineyards and tend the sheep after our parents passed from this earth. They were glad enough to be truly rid of me when the king’s men came to our small town looking for beautiful women. They did not seem to find me so impossible or annoying then.

But why did the king’s men think me beautiful? Did they not notice my darkened skin, tanned beneath the sun’s rays? I was nearly as black as a Nubian! My sisters-in-law faulted me for the color of my skin and they were right, for I often lifted my veil and ran with it sailing behind me in the wind. I danced among the grasses. I chased imaginary dreams through the barley fields. And I sang. Oh how I loved to sing to the small flock sometimes put in my care.

But my singing nearly ended the day the king’s men took me from my beloved fields to enter a walled palace of cedar. Gone were my carefree thoughts and the tasks my brothers assigned me. Gone the daydreams of a young woman in love with the shepherd over the hill.

My life had become the exact opposite of all I expected.

1

973 BC

Abishag, what are you still doing in this house? My sister-in-law Batya leveled her narrow gaze at me in that telltale angry look she had.

I glanced up from the bowl where I had rinsed the last of the pomegranate juice and met her brittle stare.

Dekel will not be happy when I tell him that you wasted the entire day sitting around here doing nothing. She pushed her hands toward me as if to rid the world of my presence. Now get out to the fields and check on those silly sheep of yours before I tell him what a worthless sister he has.

To argue with Batya would get me nowhere, despite the fact that I had spent the day doing her work, breaking pomegranates apart until my fingers were stained beyond hope and grinding grain until they formed new calluses. She would forget her harping and the work she had assigned me in her sudden need to turn me out as though I were a ruined garment.

The familiar ache formed, first a knot in my middle, then probing deeper into the place where my thoughts lived. Why? I searched my mind as I half stumbled past my quarreling nieces and nephews, who should have been working with their fathers in the fields. This house used to be my home, my father’s house, where I once felt safe, comforted.

But my oldest brother, Dekel, owned it now since my father’s untimely death, and had offered shelter to the rest of us, though I, as the youngest and only girl, did not fare as well as my brothers, Eitan and Haim. And once my mother also passed, it was as though he had forgotten I still lived. Had I done something to bring him shame? Had I said unkind words to cause my sisters-in-law, particularly Batya, to wound me with their sharp tongues?

The thoughts churned until even the recent taste of the pomegranate juice lost its sweet savor. I hurried through our courtyard, past the houses of other Shunammite villagers, and fairly ran to the common pens where Dekel allowed me to keep a small flock.

My breath came fast as I breathed the scents of animal and earth and felt the last vestiges of sunshine and the wind’s gentle touch on my cheeks. A sigh escaped me, and with it the slightest sting of tears. I swiped at them as I lifted my gaze toward the hills where the sheep waited. I would not cry. I had spent my tears at my mother’s death, but, in the years since, dared not give in to such emotion again. I gained nothing but ridicule from such honest weakness.

The reminder lifted my determination, and I stopped, drinking in the scents and sounds around me. Ewes bleated at my approach, and as I tilted my head, my ears caught the music of a variety of birds singing their evening songs.

I came to the pens and unlatched the gate, quickly calling the sheep to me. They lifted their narrow faces with their floppy pointed ears and greeted me with their own distinct baas. I laughed. What silly creatures you are. I patted the head of each one as they came and followed me in our traditional dance toward the well at the bottom of the hill. They were silly, but not in the way Batya exclaimed. In the way they sang their greetings to me. And in the way my heart responded in kind.

The ache I had grown so accustomed to slowly dissipated as we descended the hill. I pulled the scarf from my head and let it blow in the breeze behind me. I would survive. And someday I would marry and move away from this place and show my brothers, and more particularly my sisters-in-law, that I was not worthy of their scorn. Adonai, who had created my inmost being, surely cared for me, despite how lowly I appeared in their eyes.

As we approached the well, I saw with relief that the stone still sat angled to the side. But I slowed my pace at the sight of village women standing in groups, water jugs atop their heads and no doubt bitter words spilling from their tongues. I endured enough faultfinding from Batya and Galia. I had no need to hear of the latest betrothal or woman about to give birth, or a complaint that the sun was too hot or too hidden. Such conversations wearied me.

I shook myself, reminded of the sheep, and turned my attention to making sure