Chapter One: The Water and the Roof
I have often wondered why memory clings so tightly to the shape of water—the way it curls, receives, releases, and reflects. Perhaps because the water remembers what I want to forget. Or perhaps because that day, the day that rewrote the lines of my life, began in the soft wash of early dawn, when Jerusalem stirred like a waking child and I still believed myself untouched by the eyes of kings.
I was Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, daughter of Eliam. I belonged to a household of ordinary rhythms—water drawn each morning, bread kneaded before the heat grew sharp, weaving done in the bright window where the light favored my shuttle. Jerusalem was not yet the great city the scribes boast of now; it was dust and stone and market-shouts, a place where women laughed behind veils and gossiped over jars, where soldiers marching at dawn made every doorframe tremble.
I loved Uriah—not with the swooning passion of a song maker, but with something firmer, rooted, dependable. He was quiet, too quiet for some. Many men filled courtyards with their voices, boasting of spears thrown, arrows loosed, stories stretched to impress. But Uriah spoke only when his words were ready. His silences were not heavy; they were safe. In them, I could breathe. He smelled of leather and cedar oil. His hands were always warm. He had the kind of smile that appeared slowly, as if surfacing from a long thought. He was mine, and though he was often gone—months at the battlefield, answering the king's call without hesitation—his absence never felt like abandonment. It felt like duty. And I was proud of him, even when pride carried its own price.
With each campaign, I waited. With each season, I learned the contours of loneliness. Wives of soldiers often shared their emptiness over walls or in the market, but my loneliness was private. It pressed against my ribs when I lay on our mat at night. It whispered to me when I turned, and he was not there. I filled my days with ritual, with work, with the small things that held a woman's world together, but emotion does not ask permission; it lingers even in the most disciplined heart.
In those days, the city was swollen with talk about the king. David—the shepherd-made-mighty, the warrior-poet, the man after God's own heart—was both adored and feared. Women murmured about his charm, men about his victories. Some whispered stories that did not sound like victories at all. Power casts long shadows, and in Jerusalem, shadows frequently had the shape of a crown.
Whenever Uriah returned from the battlefield, those shadows followed him home. He never spoke of the king with anything less than devotion; loyalty for him was not merely a military vow—it was a conviction. But I saw things Uriah did not see or perhaps chose not to see. The way people fell silent when David's name passed their lips. The way mothers clutched their daughters without explanation. The way the palace sent messengers at all hours, as though the king's desire had become a living creature that needed constant feeding. Still, I felt safe then. Royal walls were far from our home. Power, after all, was something that happened to other people. That was what I believed.
It was the end of my purification days, a time of cleansing—a quiet ceremony every woman understood. My body, like my heart, required order. Water was part of that order. The roof was my refuge. Many of us bathed there at dawn or dusk; the walls were high enough, the air cool, the city half-asleep. From my roof I could see the palace in the distance, grand and indifferent, like a mountain carved from sunlit stone. But never once did I think I was close enough for its windows to see me. I carried a jar of water, warmed through the night by coals. The sky blushed toward morning. The city below had not yet risen to its full roar. I felt almost weightless. Ritual has a way of stripping life down to its barest truths: skin, breath, water, the quiet awareness of one's own body as sacred ground. I untied my garments and let the water glide over me. It ran down my spine like a blessing. I closed my eyes and exhaled. I remember thinking of Uriah—how much I wished he were home, how I missed his voice beside me, how I wanted him to return before the season changed again. My heart felt tired from waiting. I wanted life to be simple once more. I wanted my husband's hand on mine. Water made such wanting feel almost holy.
Then something shifted in the air. A Stillness. A weight. A presence I could not name. I opened my eyes. At first, I thought it was a trick of the dawn. A glint on stone. A flutter of movement on the palace terrace. But as my vision sharpened, I saw him. David. The king. Standing where only royalty stood, high enough to see rooftops not meant for him. His gaze—fixed, unwavering—fell upon me like an arrow without sound. My breath tangled in my throat. I froze.
In our world, a woman's privacy was a fragile thing, defended by walls, customs, and decency. Yet none of these stood between the king and me. I might as well have been standing in the palace courtyard, not on my own roof. In that moment, every layer of safety I had ever trusted dissolved beneath his stare. Was I flattered? Perhaps for half a heartbeat. He was David, after all. Stories clung to him like jewels. Songs were written in his honor. Even the women who feared him sometimes spoke with a kind of awe, as though the king existed on a plane just slightly above the sins of ordinary men.
But that flicker of flattery was swallowed quickly by something darker—confusion, dread, and the growing awareness that his gaze was not a question. It was a decision. I glanced down, instinctively wrapping my arms across my body though it did nothing to restore the boundary already broken. Heat rushed to my cheeks. My heart hammered. The water at my feet pooled around me, suddenly feeling less like ritual and more like exposure. I stepped away from the ledge, wanting the world to forget I had ever been there. For a moment, I believed perhaps he had simply looked, and that this would be the end of it. But power rarely looks without wanting.
The knock on my door came before midday. Three men. Palace men. Their garments marked with the king's crest. I felt the blood drain from my face. My throat closed. A woman alone in her home does not refuse the king's men. Even if she wants to. Even if every instinct in her body screams that something is wrong.
"Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam," the messenger said. "The king requests your presence."
Requests. How gentle the word sounded. How false. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My tongue felt thick, my thoughts tangled. I looked at the men, at the insignia on their tunics, at the cold certainty in their eyes. This was not a visit I could refuse without consequences that extended far beyond myself. It was not only my safety at stake. It was my father's. My grandfather's. Uriah's. A king's displeasure could crumble a household. So, I nodded. Silence settled on my shoulders like a cloak. I followed them.
The palace did not smell like Jerusalem. Everything was too polished, too perfumed, too quiet. Echoes lingered in the halls like servants trained never to speak unless summoned. The walls felt awake listening, waiting. I was taken through a corridor lined with carved pillars, each crowned with gold. My feet barely made a sound on the cool stone floor. When we reached a large chamber, the men stepped aside, leaving me at the threshold.
David stood near the window, the same vantage point from which he had first seen me. His silhouette was framed by sunlight. He turned, and I felt again the weight of his gaze—this time with no rooftop between us. He smiled. A soft, disarming smile that kings learn long before crowns are placed upon their heads.
"Bathsheba," he said, as though my name belonged on his lips.
I bowed, though my knees trembled. He stepped closer. Too close. My body stiffened, though I tried to mask it.
"Do not be afraid," he said. But fear had already taken root.
Desire and obedience wrestled inside me like two beasts locked in battle, neither fully formed, neither fully my own. In his presence, words seemed to evaporate. My voice, my choices—fell away like a veil lifted by someone else's hands.
I do not remember everything that followed. Some memories I carry like shards. Others I have buried so deeply they only resurface when the night is very quiet. I know this: I did not seduce the king. I did not have to. Power seduces itself.
When I stepped back into the sunlight of my own courtyard, my legs felt foreign beneath me. I could still feel the palace walls pressing against my skin, even though I had left them behind. I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing in sharp, shallow bursts.
My home—the place where I once felt anchored—seemed smaller now, dimmer. As though innocence, once cracked, casts a shadow long enough to dim the rooms it once brightened. I washed my hands. My arms. My face. The water felt different now, not cleansing, but accusing. I scrubbed until my skin reddened, as though the right amount of friction might erase what had happened, might return me to the woman I was that morning. But innocence cannot be washed off like dust.
When night fell, I lay on Uriah's side of the bed, unable to sleep. The silence felt heavy, suffocating. My husband's pillow still held the faint scent of cedar oil. I pressed my face into it, wanting to remember who I was before the king's gaze turned toward me. Guilt settled into my bones, though I had not chosen this. Loneliness—the kind that has a face and a name—wrapped itself around me. And beneath it all, buried under layers of fear and shame, a truth pulsed quietly:
Something had been taken. Something sacred. And though no one else yet knew, though the city slept unaware, my life had already shifted.
The water remembered.
The roof remembered.
And so, did I.