The Cave of Endor

The cave's mouth was low. To avoid striking his head against the vault, Saul had to walk hunched over. In his rough peasant cloak, it was impossible to recognize him as a king. Except by his height. For there was no other like him in all of Israel. The narrow entrance gradually became wider, as if the walls had parted. Saul straightened. Only the quiet crackle of burning torches disturbed the cave's silence. In their dancing light, long shadows danced upon the wall behind the visitors.

Saul looked around. Inside, the cave was enormous. The torch light drowned in the darkness stretching forward and upward. Beneath his feet, all was clean. It smelled of dried herbs and some fragrant resin.

"Who are you? And what do you want?" A hoarse voice cut through the darkness with unexpected force.

"Are you Orpah, the witch of Endor?" Saul asked into the gloom.

Shuffling steps were heard, and from the darkness emerged a hunched old woman. Her wrinkled face held echoes of former beauty, but in the light of the dancing flames it seemed ominous. Gray hair was gathered beneath a shawl. She watched the visitors in silence.

"I beg you, divine for me. And bring forth one of whom I shall speak," the king's voice sounded pleading.

The old woman watched him silently. It seemed that, peering, she was reading who stood before her. Then, with weight and emphasis on the king's name, she rasped:

"You know what Saul has done! How he drove the sorcerers and diviners from the land. Why then do you lay a snare for my soul, to bring about my death?"

Saul trembled beneath her hypnotic gaze. And by habit, he swore by God:

"As the Lord lives! No harm shall befall you for this deed!"

The old woman smirked.

"Well, yes, no harm... Whom shall I bring forth for you?"

"Samuel!"

The sorceress shuddered, not expecting to hear that name. She turned sharply to leave, but suddenly stopped, as if seeing someone before her. Her cry made the king and both bodyguards start. She turned and, unexpectedly swift and nimble for her years, walked toward Saul. Her eyes blazed.

"Why," hissed the old woman, "why do you try to deceive me, pretending to be another? I would have known anyway—that you are King Saul!"

The king stepped back. He was no coward, but in this fortune-teller there was something that made his heart contract. Feeling the shoulders of his bodyguards behind him, Saul composed himself. He spoke condescendingly:

"Do not be afraid. Do not think of it now. Rather, tell me—what do you see?"

The sorceress, staring into one point, was silent. Then in a low, altered voice she spoke:

"I see as it were a god coming up out of the earth."

"What is he like?" the king pressed her.

"An old man in long robes."

"It is he! It is he!" cried Saul and fell prostrate to the ground.

Suddenly from the cave's darkness came a breath of dampness and a strange, muffled voice. Its sound made the battle-hardened bodyguards shrink back:

"Why have you troubled me to bring me up?"

Saul, lying on the earth, understood the voice was speaking to him. Not daring to rise, he answered:

"I am greatly troubled! The Philistines wage war against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore I have called you, that you might tell me what I should do."

The king's words seemed to hang in the air. In the silence that followed, Saul tried to make out the silhouette of the speaker, to hear breath or catch some movement. He rose from the earth and stepped forward. But the darkness was impenetrable.

Orpah listened to the voice that had sounded in her memory all her life. But strangely—she did not recognize it now in the speaker. This voice was different, cold and foreign.

After a rather long pause, the voice sounded again, and with it a wave of cold dampness washed over those who had come: