Cavalier

Chapter Twenty-One

It's a good day, all in all. After breakfast he and Ahinoam go for a walk around camp and he introduces her to Jashobeam and Eleazar who are polite and charming because they're the mature ones. He warns her that Benaiah is nothing like that, tells her about the one time where Benaiah wrestled a lion in a snowy pit because it totally captures...Benaiah, and she says, earnestly, "He sounds like a pretty neat guy."

They eat lunch. He plays her some guitar as they sit under a tree. Then Benaiah calls.

He frowns at the phone. Benaiah never calls first.

"Sorry," he says. "I gotta take this."

"It's okay," Ahinoam says, and she's not lying. "Bathsheba invited me over to spend time with her whenever I wanted to today, so."

Bathsheba. What a wonder.

"Okay," David says, and watches her until she turns a corner in the camp before he answers the phone.

"Where the heck were you?" Benaiah asks.

"Ahinoam," David replies. "Why are you calling first?"

"There's been a complication," Benaiah says. "Abishai didn't want to be the one to tell you. He says that he'd rather you not find out at all, but I think he's lying and that he just wanted me to extrapolate and act so that's exactly what I did."

David, knowing his nephew, finds it more likely that Abishai wouldn't want him to find out, but he's not about to correct Benaiah. "What kind of a complication?"

"Well, shearing finished today, right?"

"Yeah."

Benaiah clears his throat. "Abishai got us all to pack up and get ready to go while he went to collect the payment and say thanks for the opportunity to be here. Standard procedure, whatever. But then."

David raises an eyebrow when Benaiah doesn't go on. "But then?"

"Nabal refused to pay."

Wait, what? "What?"

"I don't even—" Benaiah sighs as the line crackles, fades out a bit before coming back in. "I guess Nabal said that because there wasn't a signed contract he wasn't obligated to compensate us, or something? And something else about payment being directly correlated with the amount of work done, I don't even fricking know—"

"He won't pay you," David says.

"No, bossman."

David takes a deep breath. "Alright. Okay. I want you, Abishai, and eight other guys to go and talk to him. Say that you're with me, in case that hasn't been made clear already. Give him all the well wishes he could ever ask for."

"Butter him up?"

"You bet. Then remind him, exactly, what you've given up to be there this past week— you're probably the best for this, as disgruntled as you were for going—and remind him of all that you've done for him simply by sacrificing your time to guard his men and animals. Tell him that we weren't aware that we needed a contract because he didn't make it clear, and that we don't want any trouble, just the money he promised us, okay?"

"Mhm," Benaiah says. "I'll call you back if anything else goes wrong. Thanks, bossman."

"Oh, and Benaiah?"

"Yeah?"

"Make sure Abishai knows I'm not mad. Well, I am mad, but I'm not mad at him."

He can hear Benaiah's smile. "Sure thing, bossman."