Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  Bigthan and another eunuch, Teresh, stood watch on either side of us while servants fanned us and refilled our goblets after each sip we took. We watched people walking to and from the west gate. Sometimes we sang.

  One day an envoy from Nubia walked through the courtyard with two lionesses. The beasts were chained and followed by two men with great glistening muscles who carried whips. One man’s whip was short and the other man’s was so long he wore it coiled around a metal sleeve. Hegai later told me the Nubian had brought the lionesses as a gift to Xerxes, to try to improve the uneasy peace between Nubia and the capital.

  I recognized my cousin the instant I saw him walking alone across the court. The maids and I had eaten our last meal and the sun was lowering itself to the ground. Mordecai was leaving the palace. I knew it was him by the stoop of his shoulders, as though the ledgers he pored over were still in front of him.

  I longed for the time when I had waited each day for him to come home and put his kind eyes on the floor I had swept, the pillows I had plumped, and the food I had prepared for him. I wanted to run and embrace him—something I regretted not doing when I’d had the chance.

  Mordecai was so caught up in his thoughts that he walked by without noticing me.

  The next night I brought two servants bearing platters of dates and honeyed almonds. I did not bring my maids with me and I did not recline on silk cushions. Instead I sat alone upon the marble tiles surrounding the courtyard. This was strange enough that surely Mordecai would look more carefully at me.

  As Mordecai’s stooped shoulders and bowed head came into view I beckoned both servants near. Abruptly I stood up, knocking over one of the platters. The plate of almonds clattered onto the tiles.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” I cried loudly enough for Mordecai to hear me through my veil. I waved my hands at the mess, my robe fanning out like wings on either side of me. “Please get all of this out of my sight.” The woman who had borne the almonds knelt. I turned to the other servant. “Help remove this mess from the courtyard—both of you, hurry—and return with something else, I do not care what. Now go.”

  Once they had left I turned back toward Mordecai. He had come to a complete stop and he stared openly at me. He smiled, and his smile was sadder than any frown.

  I started to walk toward him but came to a halt when some dignitaries bearing gifts for the king entered the courtyard.

  “Mistress Esther,” I heard Bigthan say as he rushed up behind me.

  I did not wish to put Mordecai in any danger, and so I turned away from him. “Escort me back to my chamber,” I told Bigthan. “I am confused with wine.”

  The sadness of Mordecai’s smile kept me awake that night. Though it was not true, I wanted to tell him I was safe.

  The next night I sat farther out in the court, not more than a couple horse lengths from where important officials walked past.

  This time Mordecai’s gaze searched before him as he approached. He slowed when he saw me. I sang, “I have found favor with Hegai. I am happy in the courtyard, happy in the palace, happy in my chamber. All who know me treat me well. When I am hungry there is more food than ten men could eat, when I am thirsty there is wine. When I am tired I sleep soundly on a mattress full of feathers. Perhaps one day I will be queen, but already, I think I am queen enough. I want for nothing.”

  I did not say: Except to embrace you, and return to our home. I mourn for a husband I will never have, and a soldier I have no right to think of.

  Mordecai seemed to know my song was not complete. He had come to a stop.

  “God rains blessings down upon me.”

  “Esther,” he whispered harshly, as if he were giving an order. “Ahura Mazda rains blessings down upon you.”

  To reassure him that I had not revealed my religion, I lifted Erez’s necklace up out of my robe. Mordecai stepped back, as though I had struck him.

  Heat seared up my neck, into my cheeks. I looked pointedly at the tight curls of his close-cropped beard. “It is a disguise no more false than yours, and less elaborate.”

  He did not answer, and my anger mounted. The meals I prepared in accordance with the dietary laws were your only connection to our people, yet you look at me with disapproval for wearing a trinket about my neck? I thought suddenly of my mother’s rosette. “Did the soldier Erez give you my mother’s necklace?”

  “Yes,” he said. I waited for him to pull it from the pocket of his robe.

  “It is safely kept,” he said.

  “What does an accountant want with a girl of the king’s harem?” Bigthan yelled as he came up behind me. “All that will come of looking upon her too long is a new and final home for you upon the gallows. Move along. The day’s accounting is done and there is no more use for you.”

  Mordecai gave no sign that he had heard Bigthan’s threat. He remained where he was, staring down at me as though I were a mirage that might disappear if he stopped concentrating on it. I did not want him to be suspected of taking an interest in a girl of the king’s harem. I turned away.

  I lay awake again that night. The outside world had faded over the four months I had been in the palace. Seeing Mordecai had brought it back. I wondered about his life. Had he taken in a servant to keep his home? A wife?

  The past lay all around me in the dark—the hustle and shouting of merchants, the slow plodding of donkeys weighted down with rugs and other goods, the sounds of children laughing, cries and yelling coming from inside the many huts packed closely together through the city, the feel of the bread I kneaded, the warmth of the goat as I milked her, the curiosity with which she watched as I cleaned her pen. I thought also of Yvrit—long before she was Cyra—calling my name as I led us through a maze of legs, through the colorful market we were not supposed to go to.

  A sudden ache took hold of my chest. Mother.

  No matter how many legs and hips and protruding bellies I ran past, and how lost I might have gotten, I always knew which direction would lead me back to her, toward her worry and then her happiness, emotions that were twin sisters, one prettier than the other but both born of the same source: her love for me.

  Even her anger was welcome. “I have told you too many times! Do not go running off to town!” She was rarely angry, and so it seemed to me she had become angry because her worry was too big to be contained in only one emotion. Her worry was a shawl that seemed to protect me even when she was not near. As I ran through the market, stomped at the flies that surrounded the butcher’s stall, snuck up to the well to throw pebbles in and hear them hit against the rock on their way to the water below, I knew she thought of me, and her thoughts of me would shield me from harm. Cuts and scrapes did not trouble me, because they troubled her. She watched me and would not let anything hurt me.

  Once she died, I had to start worrying about myself. I was sad, but I did not mourn. To mourn is to wade through the sadness in order to get to the other side. I was afraid my mother would not be there. As she had kept me safe with her worry, I kept her near with my sadness.

  Even while I lay in my bed I felt myself lunge for her.

  Mother.

  Mother.

  Over the next month, Mordecai and I continued to see each other in the courtyard. I looked forward to these meetings but also dreaded them. We could not speak freely. Each day, before I quickly looked away from him, I could not help but notice something strange in his eyes. A look he had not had before, as though something was trying to break loose inside him while he fought to hold it still.

  But we have never truly spoken freely, I thought. Why should it bother me now?

  In a dream I saw him. Like Opi’s mother he had no lips, and also like her, he was on the dakhma. Yet his eyes seemed to see, and they looked at me with great disappointment.

  I awoke with the answer to my question. Because he wants to tell me something.

  After this I touched my ear each time I saw him. But he did not speak to me. And though the dream came nightly, one day Mordecai himself ca
me no more.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  LIONESS

  Ten months after arriving at the palace I was awakened from my nightmares by the sounds of people shouting and statues crashing upon the floor. I knew I must rise and hide more quickly than I had ten months before, when the Immortal had come to snatch me from my bed.

  All my maids except Opi, who was with the other women in the harem room, were on their feet, ready to run but unsure in which direction to go.

  They did not get the chance to decide. Two palace guards burst into our chamber. “Do not move,” one of them said while the other tried to steady the beaded curtain that rustled behind them. “If you run you will bring the beast. Stay where you are and be silent. She will have to maul us before she can touch you.”

  “Which beast?” one of the girls asked.

  “The one that belongs to the fat, prideful little eunuch who will soon sway upon the gallows.”

  If Hegai ended up upon the gallows I may as well follow. Halannah would find a way to have me sent to the soldiers.

  “Are there only two of you to guard us?” Utanah cried.

  Their silence was answer enough.

  Statues continued to smash upon marble tile, and women continued to cry out.

  “You are becoming more valuable with each scream,” one of the guards said. “Soon you may be each other’s only competition for the king. That is, you, and the new virgins we will have to round up.”

  “What will happen to Hegai’s lioness?” Crier asked.

  The crashing and running came closer. The guard gestured for us to get behind the screen. “Hurry.”

  Utanah took measured steps, her bells barely jingling. But in the other girls’ haste to get behind the screen they knocked it over and fell down upon each other. Crier screamed.

  “Quiet, your cries will summon the beast!” I said. But no one heard me over the screaming. Screaming which was quickly drowned out by a roar.

  I turned back to see the guards running toward me, away from the lioness. Blood dripped from the many spears stuck in her hide. Her paws too were red with blood. She bounded so close that I could see only her. She roared, and the roar took up all of her face. She had black gums and yellow fangs. Pink drool dripped from her jaw.

  She leapt upon a guard and he went down next to me. With trembling hands, I grabbed hold of one of the spears in her side and tried to take it out so I could thrust it into her throat. But the spear did not move, except when the lioness raised her fangs from the guard and turned to me. Her bloody tongue slapped from side to side as she flung her head back and forth.

  Crier screamed at me to run and then hit the lioness with a silver pitcher. The beast turned and fell upon her. Soon all I could see of my friend’s face was blood. More guards had come up behind the lioness and one thrust a spear into the top of her spine. Another jumped upon her and reached low to slice her neck open with a short sword. Torrents of blood gushed from the beast’s throat as she tried to roar one last time. She choked, and then her body convulsed. After a moment she went limp.

  I rushed to push the lioness off Crier. But my hands only sunk into the loose, warm flesh of the beast, and did not move her. Blood streamed over my favorite handmaiden.

  “Help her,” I screamed as I was pushed away by guards who surrounded the beast, some of them continuing to stab her though she was already dead. I tried to shove one aside to get to Crier but I was pushed away again.

  “The beast is gone, but my friend is still alive,” I cried. “We need a physician.”

  No one heard me. I ran for Hegai’s chamber. In the corridor I almost tripped over a guard whose face was marked by four deep red stripes.

  He was not the only guard slumped upon the floor in the corridor. I wanted to get a physician for Crier before they were busy tending other people mauled in the attack.

  I burst into Hegai’s chamber to find him too upon the floor. He knelt with his forehead almost touching the tile. I saw no blood.

  “My lord,” I said. He did not move even a hair’s width. “My lord.”

  “Child, you are speaking to a dead man.”

  “My friend is hurt, she needs a physician.”

  “I cannot protect you any longer.”

  “Surely you did not set the she-lion free.”

  “You are wiser than you used to be, but not yet wise enough to know that it does not matter. The king sees conspirators and assassins in every shadow. He is no longer governed by reason.”

  “But why would you be suspected of releasing your she-beast? You have more cause to keep her from running loose through the palace than anyone.”

  “You had best listen more closely, little flower. I only have so many words left and I do not want to waste them. My life is over.”

  I started to protest, but he interrupted. “Do not despair. You do not need me.”

  “I have never needed anyone so badly as I need you. If you believe that a peasant can be queen so should you believe that you will survive this.”

  “I do believe you can become queen, even without me. But know that after Halannah there will be other enemies. The higher you climb the smarter and more ruthless your enemies will be. As you can see.”

  “Are you speaking of whoever released your lioness?”

  “I do not know for certain who did it. Bigthan wants my position. Halannah wishes I were not already a eunuch so she could castrate me herself. But perhaps someone more important than these two had a hand in this. Halannah’s uncle, Haman, cannot be happy that I am helping you become queen instead of her.

  “Never forget, little flower, the hierarchy is a vine that grows more thorns at the top.”

  I needed him to look up, into my eyes, so I could plead with him not to give up. “Your words are muffled, my lord.”

  “There are people who will want you dead even more than Halannah does. You must learn the ways of court unless you wish to die soon after becoming queen.”

  I moved closer to him. I planned to throw myself down on my knees and beg.

  “They will protest because you have no royal blood. They will say you were not a maid. Men and boys will come forward to confess that they had you when you were still a girl. They will risk their lives, but their families make them do it for riches, to repay debts or for promise of advancement. Everyone wants their sister or daughter to be queen. Witnesses will say they saw you robbing the feeble, the blind, the old, the sick.”

  His head tilted up ever so slightly. “Do not come any closer.”

  I started to apologize, but he cut me off. “And do not look scared when the king or anyone else tells you of an accusation against you. Laugh. It is the safest sound you can make besides ‘Yes, my king.’ Never forget for a moment that all these problems are better than the ones Halannah will give you if you fail to become queen.”

  “But without you I will not have to worry about any of this. Without you I may as well leave this room and go directly to the soldiers’ barracks.”

  “You will become queen if you heed this advice, which is more important than anything else I have told you: when you are taken in to see the king make certain he sees your hair and face, even if you have to take your veil off without being invited to.”

  I understood how desperate the situation must be for him to advise me to do something so dangerous. In which case I needed him even more than I had thought. “If anyone can fight his way out of this, Hegai, it is you. Suspicion is not enough to remove you from the king’s favor.” I fell upon my knees in front of him, and this is when I saw that he held a sword with both hands. The point was against his stomach. He took a deep breath and extended his arms to better position the sword for a hard plunge.

  “Stop,” I commanded, throwing the little man onto his side and knocking his sword away. I yelled for the guards, not realizing men were already rushing toward us. We were yanked apart and I felt arms wrap tightly around me. Another guard held Hegai.

  “Your
time is up, little girl,” one of them told him.

  “Step back and I will end it then,” Hegai said. He was not begging. It sounded like an order and for a moment it seemed the guard was going to follow it.

  But then he grunted and said, “Be silent. Your games are for women.”

  The arms of the guard who held me loosened for a second and I broke free and ran toward the corridor. I tripped over a body slumped on the floor.

  “Please,” I begged as the guard grabbed me once again, “my friend needs a physician. She saved me from the lioness.”

  “The one who died with her head in the lion’s mouth?”

  “No, she is still alive.”

  The guard turned me to face him, and his tone softened. “Your friend is a hero, unlike many who have trained their whole lives to be heroes—most especially the men who were supposed to guard you. No one will acknowledge that she died bravely, but you will know: she valued your life more than her own. Often the most heroic do not live long.”

  He brought me back to the virgins’ sleeping chamber. “Your chamber is only a lioness’s grave now,” he told me. “Your friend has been taken away.”

  One of my maids was near the door. Without meeting her eyes I asked, “Crier?”

  She whispered so quietly I almost did not hear her. “No.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  * * *