One Night With the King: A Special Movie Edition of the Bestselling Novel, Hadassah by Tommy Tenney;Mark Andrew Olsen

by Tommy Tenney;Mark Andrew Olsen

  How much more would I have worried had I known that the band of murderers still roamed my native Persia, still seeking my blood and that of all my people? That even as I walked through the years of my childhood, an ancient conspiracy to wipe the children of Israel and their memory from the earth was even now gathering strength-coming together like an evil growth joining its errant shoots? That rather than a safe place, the capital of Susa would soon become the most dangerous place imaginable?

  I am not sure I would have survived even the thought of it. Had I even contemplated such a possibility, I'm certain I would have scurried under my bed, curled up like a small cat and melted into the comforting darkness, never to emerge again. Had you found me there and pulled me from my hiding place, my mind would have been gone, departed forever to a place of safety and peace.

  But somehow, in my naive state I did not consider such a possibility. My immediate surroundings felt safe, so I did not think about an attack ever happening again. Nor about the men who would not rest until I was dead if they even suspected that I could identify them and their horrendous deed.

  That is not to say that the secretiveness did not affect me deeply. From the youngest age I recall thinking that I was different, yet forbidden to speak of why. In fact, since I saw virtually no one beyond Mordecai and Rachel, I wonder how I came to even have a basis for comparison.

  The greatest reason for feeling different lay in the fact that I was a virtual prisoner in my home. I grew up to be a shy and socially maladjusted girl, of that I am sure. Strangers-the few who came by the house for this or that purpose, or the Jewish children Rachel would sometimes bring into the home to play-frightened me. Many days I would back into my favorite corner of the wall and cower, my head lowered. Strangers had killed my family. I had not seen the murderers' faces. How was I to know this wasn't the stranger who had done it? Or at least someone who would betray me to them?

  Mordecai tried hard, when I was young, to put a good face on it. Being Jewish was a gift, he would tell me, and then he'd recount tales of this faraway place called the Land of Promise that was supposed to be our homeland.

  And it worked, for a while. Even though it rarely became more than a background story, in those days it gave me comfort. Actually, I never witnessed hostility toward Jews until years later, when I left the four walls of my home and encountered humanity at large. Essentially I grew up as the sheltered only daughter of a Palace functionary in the capital of the world. At least, that is how I saw it. In those early years, I was content-for a while.

  The truth is, I grew up sequestered both by physical isolation and by emotional devastation-I realize that now. But not knowing anything different, I did not consider it an aberration. I was only grateful for the embrace of a comfortable and expansive home. I played alone under Rachel's watchcare and listened to her stories of Israel and its kings. And I grew.

  I only suppose that if I possess any depth of person at all-and I use this term only because others have used it on my behalf-it must be due to the equal depths of grief and inwardness that my childhood traumas had carved out in my soul. I grew up a quiet child, I've already pointed out. In fact, Mordecai informs me that I hardly spoke for nearly a year after the murders. I must believe him, for of that period I remember absolutely nothing. The fog obscures everything. And I must admit that although I would not wish my losses on anyone, I do believe that long periods of silence and introspection do a great deal to enrich a person's spiritual and emotional dimensions.

  I still would trade these qualities in a heartbeat to have spared my father, mother and brother their horrible encounters with death.

  THE ROYAL ROAD, NEAR SUSA-LATER THAT YEAR

  Haman the Agagite stopped his horse at the top of the very last bend in the great Persian highway, raised his hand to shade his eyes and peered longingly ahead. Below him, shimmering from heat waves and distance, lay the capital of Susa, its broad scattering of white rooftops nestled against the hilltop jumble of the Palace itself.

  He grinned fiercely, exposing his teeth to the hot desert wind in the process. He reined back his shying, impatient mount. Finally here he was. Ever since he'd heard of the Persian Empire for the first time, he had coveted this arrival, this city. Not only was it the seat of staggering power, the repository of untold riches, but he'd been told that the place was stinking with Jews. He had heard a drunken soldier mutter once that there were more Jews in Susa than in Jerusalem itself.

  Just think of the fun to be had, he told himself. Wealth to plunder A king to overthrow. And Jews to kill by the score.

  Paradise on earth.

  And he, already a satrap, was one of the King's key governors, the Princes of the Faces. He was already positioned. The generals knew him from the raids they had conducted together, along with several reprisal attacks against Egypt and Babylon. A lifetime of pillage had turned him into their anointed expert on low-level raiding-a painless alternative to costly, full-scale war. Soon he would call for his family and the rest of his private army, summon the men back from their current raids against the Greeks and show this city who was boss.

  Haman laughed out loud, kicked his horse in the side and galloped off toward his blissful future.

  ometime after I came to live with Mordecai and he adopted me as his daughter, he sat me down on our home's rooftop and made several revelations to me. I remember that it was a spring day, a rare cool day in Susa, and a recent rainstorm had given the air a briskness and pleasant fragrance. Yet despite the milder temperature, Mordecai's face was stiff and his voice was rough with the strain of his disclosures. He looked me in the eye only when he was through speaking.

  “Hadassah,” he said, “there is a great deal I have not told you. You see, I did not seek employment at the Palace and residence in Susa merely for the pay or the prestige of the position. I also went there with the intention of discovering more about who killed our families. I believed that if I could find that out anywhere, it would be here.”

  “And did you find anything?” I asked, my eagerness giving my voice a high, girlish lilt.

  He nodded yes. But his eyes did not express joy.

  “I found out some. I gained access to the royal archives and found, for one, that they were not Persian soldiers. There has never been an order for any unit of the Imperial army to kill Jews. However, permission had been given for a punitive raid mentioned in records against Babylon. But it was to be a politically motivated and politically targeted attack. It had no mention of focusing on civilians, let alone Jews. No, the murders were carried out by an outside mercenary force. A private squad under the protection of the Empire. I have a suspicion they may be Amalekites, for the records I saw keep mentioning a man called The Agagite, a name that refers to an ancestor of the Amalekites. This worries me greatly.”

  “Who are the Amalekites?”

  “Well, Hadassah,” he replied, his voice growing soft and contemplative, “you know that our people once had a homeland in a faraway place called the Promised Land, also called Israel. As a matter of fact, many of our distant relatives left here to return some years ago, when Emperor Cyrus gave his cupbearer, Nehemiah, leave to return there and rebuild our temple.”

  “Yes, of course, Poppa,” I answered with a slight chuckle. “I know of this land, Israel. You speak of it all the time.”

  He ignored my jibe with no more than a patient dip of his eyelids, his usual reaction, and continued. “Well, many, many years ago, when our people were still a band of wandering former slaves, we passed through the land of the Amalekites right before settling in Israel. And they were very cruel to us. In fact, without our having done anything to them, they set out to kill and torture as many of our ancestors as they possibly could.”

  “ VV x7hY•? ”

  “Because they were servants of the Evil One, the spirit who hates G-d. And not only does that spirit hate G-d, but because we are His chosen people, he hates us very fiercely, too. And the Amalekites worship either him or one of his foule
st spirits.”

  “But, Poppa, what can you possibly do to them once you do find them, these Agagites-or Amalekites, whatever they're called?”

  He laughed. “Hadassah, you are so perceptive. The answer is, I don't know. I only know that I have this overwhelming feeling that G-d wants me to find them.”

  And in Mordecai's recent state of mind, that settled it. Any edict attributed to G-d in our household was not to be questioned, not for a moment. I myself did not possess the maturity to distinguish His voice from the multitude of childish choruses going off in my head, but I grudgingly admired Mordecai's unwavering certainty that he could hear it clearly. And I must admit: at this point in our lives he could lay as strong a claim to hearing G-d's voice as anyone I could think of.

  You see, Mordecai had begun to take in traveling or itinerant Jewish brothers and sisters. He still had not relented to the local high priest's insistence that we join the temple, but their impasse had calcified into a sort of grudging respect. The cause of harmony had been helped when Mordecai had put out the word that any Jewish person seeking shelter, for reasons clandestine or otherwise, could knock seven times on our door and receive a hot dinner and a place to sleep as long as he or she needed it.

  The procession of takers for our offer started slowly at first. I remember our inaugural visitor, a teacher. He immediately began a tradition of our guests sitting with Mordecai around the dinner table for hours, even on into the small hours of the morning. I think my cousin began to think of it as a nominal price of lodging for our guests to sit and pass along every piece of gossip or legitimate intelligence they could possibly remember. We learned a great deal that way. And Mordecai would never forget to eventually throw in the perennial question: Do you know anything of a band of Empiresanctioned mercenaries riding around with this emblem and killing Jews?-and at that he would carefully unfold a cloth upon which he had traced their vile insignia, then fold it hastily before the person even had the chance to respond. I had learned only many years after my own first traumatic glimpse that Mordecai, too, had seen the broken cross on a fleeing back that horrendous night.

  Mostly he heard rumors, for the legend of these killers had apparently spread far and wide, especially among Jews. Perhaps Mordecai's own constant badgering was responsible for some of that. But these entreaties never produced much information of value.

  Yet Mordecai did learn a great deal about the realm at large during his frequent visits to the Palace. After all, as the capital of a huge empire, Susa was visited by merchants, travelers and dignitaries from all over the known world. From Mordecai's careful ears as well as the accounts of our visitors, I learned of a huge athletic contest known as the Olympian games, for instance. Local boys were gathering in the land of my empire's enemies, Greece, to revel in the excellence of sport. I learned that Greece was ablaze with all sorts of ideas about people being equal to one another and that they explored these freedoms through elaborate stagings of these readings called theater. Of course I learned endless tidbits about the labyrinthine machinations of Persian Palace life-the jealous Princes of the King's Face, the scheming generals, the wrathful Mothers of the King. I also learned who was impaled that week and who beheaded.

  And then from our exhausted traveling visitors would come news from that place Mordecai usually called the Promised Land. A strange expression would overcome him when such things were spoken of. It was a wistful look, almost as though he were on the verge of tears. And his voice would rise and adopt a breathy, almost feminine tone.

  “Tell me, have they finished rebuilding the temple?” he would ask. “Have they resumed the sacrifices? Has the Shekinah, the presence of G-d, returned to the Holy of Holies?”

  here was one visitor in particular who, my young Queen candidate, became the prime reason for my relating this whole part of our lives. He was a wiry old man, slow of foot and even slower of speech. His coming to us had been wreathed in an unusual frenzy of preparations and high security. He was a very important man, we were told in cryptic terms, but nothing more. He had been brought to our door by a small group of muscled young Jewish men who declined Mordecai's invitation to enter and promptly disappeared into the night.

  I remember my first sight of him. He wore a torn and heavily stained canvas robe tied at the waist by a length of twine. He had a nose longer than any I had ever witnessed on a person and a straggly beard that must have seen fuller, thicker days. He fixed a rheumy yet sincere gaze upon Mordecai and extended his hand, which was bony and nearly the size of a small dog.

  “Mordecai. May our Lord YHWH bless you for your hospitality.”

  “Thank you, Revered Priest,” he replied. “Please consider this your home in Susa. We are honored by your presence, Jacob.”

  The old visitor shakily sought out the nearest chair and sank into it with a loud exhaling of breath that I fleetingly mistook for the creaking of bones. In the process, I must admit that he also expelled a burst of flatulence, which caused both Mordecai and me to examine our sandals with wry, wavering smiles. And he did not smell like spring flowers anyway, our visitor. Evidently he had traveled a great distance with only camels and Bedouins for companionship. In fact, the sight and smell of him made me wonder if our open-door invitation had not led us a little too far afield.

  But while devouring a pot of my lamb stew and gulping draught after draught of our best Persian wine, he also began to speak, and I soon learned that Jacob had just come from Jerusalem, where he had been one of the first priests to offer sacrifices in the newly rebuilt temple. He had traveled to Persia to receive an offering from Susa's Jewish congregation and return with it to Jerusalem. He told us, excitement coloring his voice, that King Xerxes also was making a contribution. Mordecai had told me this newly ascended Persian ruler had received the throne from his father, Darius, and had previously been the Crown Prince of Babylon. In Hebrew his name was “Ahasuerus.” I thought of all this as our ancient guest was talking about the Persian king's gift.

  One Night With the King: A Special Movie Edition of the Bestselling Novel, Hadassah by Tommy Tenney;Mark Andrew Olsen

  In a moment all Jacob's elderly idiosyncrasies were forgotten. He began to speak of temple life and of Jerusalem as the undisputed seat of G-d's presence, in a voice that grew stronger and more emphatic by the second.

  And then Mordecai asked the fateful question. “What was it really like to enter the Holy Place, the dwelling of the Almighty?”

  The old man turned to his host and raised his eyebrows high. I could not tell whether he was giving Mordecai a quick reappraisal or glaring at him for his impudence. Then I saw that his eyes were watering. As he was completely motionless at that instant, I wondered if he was suffering some sort of internal breakdown.

  But then he looked away, and two large tears rolled over the creases below his eyelids only to disappear in the sparse hairs of his beard. No, I could tell he was not angry at Mordecai for asking the question. He was merely preparing his reply with all the strength he could muster.

  “Ah yes, the perennial question. Or at least it once was. Ah, my son . . .” and he trailed off. Then he turned around quickly, with a surprising ferocity in his eyes. “It's not just what you think, you know. Everyone thinks it is all fear and trembling. And some days it was. Especially in my early years. But I will tell you the truth. The memory that keeps my heart strong and my head clear is the thought of days when my heart was pure before Him. When I had spent time reading the Sacred Texts, preparing myself beforehand, had sung His praises, asked for forgiveness of my sins, I would enter the temple and suddenly be engulfed in His presence....”

  At that moment he jerked his head back and stared into the ceiling as if he were seeing some opening into heaven itself. He made a small keening cry, like that of a newborn child. Then he looked down and his gaze was turned so inward he seemed to have forgotten we were even present. Several more tears fell from his cheeks onto the table. Finally he looked up again, not quite back to the ceiling but just
over our heads, as if meeting our gaze would have simply been too much at that moment.

  “G-d really does have a presence, do you know?” He asked it almost petulantly, as though his proximity to tears was due to some skepticism on our part. “My whole being would throb with this awareness of His person. I thought I could feel His heart. And at such times I was glad everyone else kept their distance, because often I would dance and laugh and weep and sing and shout all at the same time because my chest felt like it would truly, truly burst if I did not. I felt-I felt ... well, have you ever seen a young child greet a beloved father after a long absence? The little arms pumping, the little legs churning, the leap into his arms, the tears in the father's eyes? I felt like that. A child so overcome with joy at His return that all I wanted to do in this world was to leap as high into His bosom as I could. And I could feel His tears, too. That's the wonder of it, don't you see? I could feel His Spirit being fed, His heart gladdened, His pain yes, His pain-being healed somehow.” He halted his speech and looked down into his lap somberly. Then he said very quietly, almost a whisper, “I could feel G-d's pain. In fact, I thought of it on my journey here whenever I looked out at the eternity of the desert. G-d's pain because of sin and evil and heartbreak was vast and endless and searing. I can still feel its weight upon my soul.”