With a crunching sound behind me, Jesse joined my descent. He quickly returned the hat and scarf to me, which I jammed onto my head as best I could. Wearing a smug grin that did not dim in the ensuing minutes, he ran to the nearest street opening. I recognized it as the one leading home.
On the less-traveled avenue we increased our pace and actually began to sprint downhill. The nearly parasang of distance I had traveled that morning in about an hour took far less time on our downward run. Small bits of laughter escaped through the panting of our lungs. I loved it. Confined for years in a courtyard home, I had never experienced the sensation of crossing a large distance with such speed before, especially using my own feet.
An old woman beating a rug on the sidewalk looked up at me strangely, then stared at me, and I realized then that I was not running like a boy. I looked back at Jesse. How did he do it? What were his strides like, and how were they different from my own? I began to swing my arms emphatically and plant my feet on the ground before taking the next step.
And I almost ran into his back. He was standing, and stopping alongside him I realized why. We were home. The unfamiliar exterior of my childhood abode stood before me, as unchanged as if I had never left.
I was panting with the unusual physical activity as well as the excitement of my adventure. Then it hit me: the thought of coming back to spend my typical confined afternoon filled me with a sense of dread I could feel in my temples.
I turned to Jesse. He flashed a smile that made him look manlike for the first time in all the years I had known him and grasped me by both arms. He leaned toward me and I thought he was going to kiss me again, but instead he turned slightly and grazed my cheek with his lips. Shivers wracked my spine.
I quickly pecked his cheek in rather perfunctory reply, then turned, took a deep breath and reentered our abode. Rachel, of course, breathlessly awaited my report, and I tried my best to fill the hours with every minute observation that had come my way in such a short time. Every observation, that is, except for the tantalizing events with her grandson.
Three hours later Mordecai returned, seemingly his usual self. Yet my guilty mind thought it caught him eyeing me closely several times from his corner stool.
Did he know? Was he unsure of what he'd seen and trying to gauge the possibility?
I never found out.
SUSA-CIRCA 480 B.c.
he heart of my story, the part that you perhaps have heard of, begins one stifling hot summer day in my nineteenth year. I was used to the heat having known nothing else. I had heard that the King and his court would occasionally escape to Ecbatana for a reprieve from summer temperatures. I was sitting at the table pounding out Rachel's unleavened bread when Mordecai came through the door, breathing heavily. He usually didn't return before sundown.
He fumbled with his outer tunic, the purple velvet piece he'd saved up months to buy and usually folded carefully. Today he briskly tossed it over the sill of an open window, his cheeks flushed the color of a ripe apple.
“I've been invited to a banquet with the King!”
I stopped as though struck by a witch's spell, my fingers frozen white with flour. I had been daydreaming about life in the Palace all afternoon. My face must have asked the question.
“The King's chancellor has just given a general invitation for everyone in Susa to attend a royal banquet lasting for seven whole days. It's the tail end of a military convocation that has been going on for six months. King Xerxes has been whipping his generals into a frenzy over going back to war against Greece. Now he wants to demonstrate the people's affection for him. There'll be food and wine from all over the Empire, and dancers. None of which I have any use for, of course.” He chuckled and looked over at Rachel, whose expression had already grown disdainful.
I felt my lips form the words, then heard them as though they'd floated out of another person's mouth. My head became light and dizzy, filled with a sort of filmy gauze, when my ears actually heard the statement meet the open air.
“I want to go. ”
A year before he would have dismissed the words without even glancing at me. After all, I did not leave the grounds. But something about my new stature and the tone of my voice made him stop quite abruptly and meet my eyes with a dark, appraising look.
“What did you say?” he asked, no doubt for time to collect his thoughts.
“You said `everyone in Susa.' Well, I am someone in Susa, and I want to go. I want to see the Palace.”
“It'll be a drunken brawl. It's the last place I would take you outside of this house.”
“Then why,” asked Rachel, already cocked sideways in her defiant posture, “is a good, observant Jew like yourself going?”
“Because I have to. I'm a Palace scribe. I have to be there. Be seen in attendance by the court. It's-oh, you wouldn't understand.”
Rachel threw down the small rag from her shoulder with an exasperated sound.
“Mordecai, you need to go almost as little as Hadassah does.”
“Besides,” he argued, “the whole celebration will last seven days. I won't be able to come home for a whole week.”
“Then let me meet you for the final night,” I said.
“The final night is the worst,” he answered with a shrug. “Everyone has been drinking for a solid week. It's not safe for a woman of purity.”
“Wait a minute!” I cried out. “I have hardly ever been outside these walls in my life! I hardly know what other people look likein my imaginary world everybody is middle-aged and Jewish, because I don't know any better! And to make things worse, I'm getting older-”
“You're older,” he repeated with a dubious look.
“Yes. Older” I spat out, still riding the steam of my agitation.
But Mordecai began to shake his head like the sage of the centuries. “No. No, my dear. You have no idea what questions I would raise coming in with a beauty like you. `Oh, the bachelor Mordecai has found himself a winsome young concubine. Look at that luscious maiden!' And then if I explained that you were my daughter, I would have to answer even more questions, as I've told everyone I was never married. Even if I were to lie and say that we were neither lovers nor relatives, I would then open the door to countless questionable, even obscene, proposals and physical danger. The King himself might take a fancy to you and keep you as his concubine. And then I would never see you again. It is just too complicated and dangerous.”
“All right, then. I'll go as a boy.”
His eyes grew wide.
“I've done it before, Poppa.”
His eyes doubled in size.
He sat heavily on his stool, his eyes glazed over with the look of a man in furious thought. A man whose view of things has just been twisted upside down.
“You've left here without my permission?”
“Yes.” The word gave me a perverse thrill even as I said it.
“You've gone to the Palace?”
“The portico plaza-once.”
“In a disguise.”
“Yes, Poppa.”
“Well!” He looked up at Rachel, questioning with his eyes whether she'd been an accomplice to this calamity He turned away with the weariness of an old man. Of course, she would have to be an accomplice to some degree, no matter what. She was charged with always knowing my whereabouts. He sighed as though the fate of the world rested in his hands.
“I'll follow along behind you and not say a word,” I continued. Then, as I saw he was beginning to actually contemplate my idea, I turned conciliatory. “Please? You know it will be the most exciting day of my life. To go from being a shut-in to a guest in the Royal Palace?”
When he began to chuckle grudgingly, I knew my case was won.
began working on my disguise with Rachel hours before sunset on the banquet's last evening. Mordecai returned home for a quick bath, then waited for me and watched incredulously while my transformation took place. Shaking his head, he playfully threatened to change his mind if I came out looki
ng too much like a boy. Then, as Rachel's work progressed, he lamented my emerging as too pretty a boy. He threw up his hands in mock outrage at the thought of being considered a lover in the Greek fashion of which he had heard whispered.
Finally, sent on our way with several grudging Jewish blessings from Rachel, we left our gate and were immediately swept into the stream of revelers making their way toward the Palace.
I felt like I had been transported to heaven. The setting sun cast colors of fire against the horizon, and a pleasant hum rose from the crowd. Yet it seemed the volume and thickness of its composition rose with every passing step. By the time we reached the gryphon statues at the portico, the slow current had become a flood. Mordecai reached out and grasped my hand in a grip so tight I almost felt my knuckles were breaking. Unlike on my previous trip, there was no need to fight the tide to reach my destination. Today we were carried along whether we liked it or not. The massive arch I had admired on my previous adventure now swept past me like an afterthought. The swiftness of its passage did not keep me from looking up, admiring its soaring grandeur and imagining that I was all alone-some favored guest of Persia entering on a royal summons, clad in exotic robes and jewels.
My fixation did not last long. The Palace's entrance was truly only the beginning of its wonders. I heard a curious sound beneath me and looked down to see that my feet were treading on marble of the most intricate gold-veined pattern. Looking beyond my own moving legs and feet, I saw a ground covered with this gorgeous stone. All about us lay thick, green foliage and parks ringed by flowers of violet, fuchsia, crimson and pink. The royal gardens, I remembered with a dizzy sensation. In a culture obsessed with cultivating the perfect household garden, those of the Royal Palace were legendary as the finest in all the land.
The crowd suddenly parted around a pool bluer and longer than any body of water I had ever beheld. Its surface seemed to reflect the azure blue of the desert sky as flawlessly as glass. At broad intervals along its sides stood marble benches lined with perfectly colored statues of beautiful young women. Real guards stood at attention between the benches, nearly as still as their stone counterparts.
“Royal concubines,” Mordecai whispered.
I frowned, startled, and realized what he'd meant one second after, one of the female statues actually moved. The figures were real women, dressed in silk robes that shimmered in the sun. I blanched, feeling suddenly quite plain, awkward and poorly dressed even for a boy.
Then the whole scene lurched and stumbled, almost pitching me onto my face. I fought to regain my footing and looked up again, for the source of my predicament was Mordecai himself, yanking me forward with the impatience of someone dragging a toddler to his bath.
One moment later a mountainous stone arch crowded out the sun. We were inside the King's Gate-if such an enormity could even be called “inside.” I was used to low ceilings and a sense of warm confinement. Here was a cool space as tall as a dozen rooms. Susa's own Jewish synagogue now seemed a dim hulk compared to this immensity. I blinked and squinted, craned my neck and walked on. I wondered if I should even try to make a visual inventory of what I was seeing-the richness of detail was too much to absorb, at least at this brisk pace. My senses felt filled to overflowing.
I heard Mordecai's voice whisper to me, low and conspiratorial. “Try not to seem too awestruck,” he said. “It makes you stand out.”
I winced at my own childishness and tried to relax my face into a mixture of nonchalance and faint amusement. I'm sure now, reflecting back, that my new expression was only slightly less ridiculous than the former; such is a youth's sense of nuance. But I should be more charitable to my former self. After the years of confinement, this was an almost shocking immersion in the outside world, and I was trying my best.
One Night With the King: A Special Movie Edition of the Bestselling Novel, Hadassah by Tommy Tenney;Mark Andrew Olsen
Suddenly we were outside again, and the mass of walking humanity parted around a huge marble building. “The inner court,” Mordecai said, pointing. “That's where the King's throne is located. Where he transacts his business and meets with his advisers. Our destination”-and at that he pointed upward, for the third edifice stood as tall as a mountain-“is there. The Central Hall.”
glanced up, for we were passing between a row of columns so tall and massive I could have sworn their summits were piercing the sky At the foot of each one a soldier stood as motionless as if he were part of the carving. At once I winced and recoiled, for a river of western sunlight was gleaming through the columns and glinting off the blade in one sentry's grip. I fought back a rush of memories from that long-ago night, squared my shoulders and looked onward with a sense of defiance.
Had only one of these Palace columns stood before me, I could have spent an hour arching my neck backward to marvel at its height, its intricate carvings and the gracefully curved bulge midway up. But dozens of these monoliths now towered against my horizon in row after orderly row. I tried to count and stopped at the number forty, my mind drenched in awe, with several more rows to go. The hall's breathtaking expanse and majesty made human scale seem antlike. I saw figures walking around the outermost columns and realized I could not throw a stone even half the distance.
Between the nearest of these stone giants hung vast tapestries the size of houses along purple cords, woven in hues of white and violet and fastened between silver rings on which glinted the setting sun. Their rich hues seemed to shimmer like liquid in the torchlight. Something sparkled at me from below, causing me to look down and gasp: the floor now consisted of a fine mosaic inlaid with precious stones and gems!
I looked at Mordecai, who met my gaping expression with a smile and a little shake of his head. I immediately tried to adapt a more natural face. We moved forward slowly. The crowds ahead were beginning to disperse, for on every side stood tables piled high with food in more varieties than I even knew existed. I saw a row of braised geese, baked ducks of every size and form and whole-baked chickens whose shapes were eroding beneath the guests' unceasing fingers. I fought back my retching reflex at the sight of an entire pig, its body baked brown and half eaten, upon another table. Several other fowl and beasts of unknown species lay in various stages of being devoured by the masses.
On another table, through a throng, I could make out row after row of golden goblets, every row a different height and shape, filled with what I could only presume was wine. A phalanx of stabbing hands was rapidly emptying the table.
I looked away for a moment and tried to find a normal sight upon which to rest my gaze. My ears chose this as their own occasion to assault me with not one but countless sources of tumult. This definitely had the look and sound of a celebration that had been going for a while. Streams of human chatter and shouting seemed to roll their way toward me from wholly separate parts of the building.
Then, suddenly, Mordecai and I stopped, and through the shoulders ahead of me I could glimpse the reason why. We had reached the end. The floor ahead suddenly vaulted upward and culminated in a platform crowning steps lined with more purple tapestries anchored by golden rods. Smaller columns, themselves tall enough to support the highest building I had ever seen until that day, held more hangings upon the landing. Large palm fronds waved slowly up and down over a gathering of gold-rimmed couches. And atop the platform stood the greatest sight of all: the King and his entourage, in clothes gleaming so brightly I wanted to shade my eyes.
Which one is the King? As I could not make out a throne, discerning him from the array of revelers proved difficult. Then I saw a formation of soldiers, scimitars drawn in their fists, and traced their glances to an apex. And there, more golden than any of the sights I had seen thus far, lounged a man around whom the light seemed to glow with an unearthly radiance. I made out broad shoulders, dark hair and a beard that had clearly been dipped in some sort of crystalline glitter. He wore a golden robe that draped not only beside him but for yards on either side. It seemed to have been c
arved of solid gold, until he moved and the whole wonder folded and moved with him.
A commotion broke out among the guests, and a large drunken man broke away from the assembly and stumbled onto the bottom step. He jerked his goblet high into the air, spilling its contents over himself, and yelled, “To His Majesty's health!”
The King glanced over and smiled, and the celebrants around me began to raise their own rejoinder to the toast. But then the man, seeing the favorable reaction from Xerxes, let out a guttural shout and began to scramble drunkenly up the steps.
I heard Mordecai gasp loudly at my side.
And then I saw why. Two royal guards stepped deftly over. The soldier nearest the drunken sop swung his axe blade far behind him and then forward again in a savage slicing motion. It was unclear which happened first: the head falling from the intruder's shoulders and the torrent of blood that erupted from the falling torso or the great communal moan that rose from the guests. The head bounced down the steps with discernible sound in the sudden stillness, spewing bright blood all over the purple rugs, then clearing a swath into the crowd when the gruesome object struck the floor and rolled a few cubits farther.
One Night With the King: A Special Movie Edition of the Bestselling Novel, Hadassah by Tommy Tenney;Mark Andrew Olsen Page 9
