Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  “Do not fear for me. My ears are empty but for the voice of your counsel,” I lied.

  He laughed. “Go before I can no longer control my desire for you.”

  I hope he is what he seems, I thought as I hurried from his chamber.

  “Ishtar!” he called before I reached the door. “How long have you been in the harem?”

  “Ten months, my lord.”

  “Do you know what this means?”

  There had been almost a hundred virgins rounded up along with me, and I had heard that the king was often at his palace in Persepolis, working to finish the construction that Darius had begun, so I had not thought I would have my night with the king exactly one year after entering the harem.

  “Be ready in two months,” Hegai said.

  When Ruti came into my chambers that night, I dismissed my maids and embraced her so tightly that she gasped. We talked until morning as I told her everything that had happened while we were apart.

  “Two months is not so many,” she said. “You have won Hegai’s favor, but Hegai has lost the king’s. You will have to win the king on your own.”

  I did not want to hear this. “I am suddenly very tired, Ruti. I wish to sleep.”

  “Not all on your own. I will help you.” She gently pinched my hip. “As will all the meats, nuts, and dates you can consume in the next two months.”

  The next night I went to the Women’s Courtyard for the first time since learning that Immortals would be returning to the palace. A group of them glanced at me on their way to enter the palace through the Western Gate, but not for very long. I wore many layers of loose robes and a veil with only a small slit for my eyes.

  I had come to the courtyard hoping to see my cousin, and I was not disappointed. Whatever business had kept him away, or perhaps just a desire to avoid me, had ended. “Mordecai,” I called through my veil when I saw him. And then I could not stop my feet from carrying me toward him.

  “Do not come any closer,” he said sharply.

  I stopped. “Forgive me for my foolishness, cousin.”

  “You have done nothing for which you need to be forgiven, Hadas—Esther. I just do not want anyone seeing a virgin of the harem speaking again to the king’s accountant.”

  I wanted to throw my arms around him. Without Cyra, Mordecai was the only one at the palace who knew who I really was. He was the only one who had known my mother.

  “But I will speak to you secretly,” Mordecai said. “Sit by that cypress over there, and do not look at me.”

  Once I was sitting he turned slightly away from me, took a deep breath and looked at the ledger in his hand. “I am glad all is well with this,” he said, as if to himself. “It is important for these numbers to find favor with the king, in case they are needed soon. Discontent rises amongst certain accounts, and ones’ own numbers may be threatened. The mistake Saul made over five hundred years ago will come to cost us all we have.”

  “Cousin,” I whispered, “I am at an utter loss as to your meaning.”

  He glanced at Ruti, to indicate he could say no more with the woman close enough to hear. Because of my veil, I had not noticed her come up beside me.

  “There is no one I trust here more than her,” I assured him.

  “You must become queen. The fate of all our people depends upon it,” he said.

  That night I tried to make sense of Mordecai’s words. But by morning I still did not understand who was threatening our people. Why had Mordecai mentioned Saul, and was the Saul he mentioned King Saul? I considered the possibility that even those I had trusted—my maids, Hegai, and even Ruti—could be somehow linked to whatever danger Mordecai was trying to warn me of.

  As she bathed me, it seemed that Ruti wanted to tell me something. But just when I thought she was going to speak she pressed her lips together. I knew she had kept some secret from me for as long as we had known each other. Had I been wrong to trust her?

  “Did you sleep well, Ruti?”

  We were alone in my chambers, and it occurred to me that Ruti was the only one who would not disturb the beads in the doorway if she wanted to lay her hands on me at night. She had slept upon the floor so that anyone who came in would have to step over her.

  “Probably better than you,” Ruti said, “but no.” She lowered her voice. “I do not trust the eunuch who guards your door. Eunuchs cannot sympathize with girls, they sympathize only with promises of jewels or power. Halannah’s family can provide this.”

  I watched her carefully. “But you do not care for jewels?” I asked lightly.

  “No jewel will bring back the life I could have led had I found favor in the harem.”

  That evening I could find out nothing more from Mordecai because Bigthan’s gaze upon me did not waver. I feared he suspected something.

  The next night, and for several more after that, Mordecai did not appear. When he finally walked through the courtyard again, I could barely keep myself from calling out to him. But I forced my tongue to remain still. He did not wish to bring attention upon himself. His back was stooped as usual, but he kept gazing behind him.

  “Did you think about what I have said?” he asked as he neared the cypress tree.

  “Yes, but it has done me little good. I am as confused by it now as I was when the words came from your lips.”

  Without warning, Mordecai nodded almost imperceptibly and continued toward the Western Gate.

  Bigthan startled me. “The Jew lingers too long.” My veil, which kept me safely hidden from the soldiers, also made it hard for me to tell when someone approached. Bigthan came around in front of me and gazed up into the slit in my veil. “This is quite dangerous for him. Also, for you. What is it worth to you that I not tell the king?”

  If I bribed him it would be plain that I had something to hide. But perhaps it was plain already. I reached inside my robe and pulled out one of the silver bracelets that Hegai had given me when he had made me Mistress Esther.

  As I returned to my chambers I felt a strangeness in my belly. I did not know if the sensation was due to nerves or elation. I had never bribed someone before, yet it had been surprisingly easy.

  “Mistress,” Ruti said that evening in my chambers. “I cannot let you go on wondering what Mordecai was trying to tell you. It may be hard to believe from looking at me—but we are related.”

  “Then it is strange my mother never spoke of you.”

  “We are not first kin, but some of my blood is in your veins, and some of yours in mine.” I allowed her to draw me to sit beside her. “I must tell you what Mordecai does not have the privacy to.”

  “He does not know of this . . . relation?”

  “I have been keeping it secret, waiting for a time such as this. He spoke of Saul, the first king of our people over five hundred years ago.”

  “Our people?”

  She began to sing. “Sh’ma Yis-ra-eil, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-chad.”

  I knew I should not seem to know the meaning of the Hebrew prayer, in case Ruti had only learned it to trick me into admitting I was Jewish, but it brought back memories of my mother singing quietly into my ear in the mornings when she had woken me with it: Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

  No one had sung me the Sh’ma since then. As I listened I felt like a five-year-old girl again. I wanted my mother. I pressed my lips together to try to stop their trembling. I wish you were here, Mother. I need you.

  “You have to trust someone,” Ruti said.

  “No, I do not.”

  “You are right. I meant you have to trust someone or go mad.”

  “Forgive me. I am tired and confused. Please tell me the meaning of Mordecai’s words.”

  “Do you remember the Amalekites?”

  “Mordecai told me of them. They attacked us as we fled from Egypt.”

  “Yes, and they did not attack from the front. They attacked from behind, taking out the old, the sick, children, and anyone whose pace had slowed beneath
the force of the sun.”

  “Why were the weakest left to fend for themselves? Were there no warriors watching over them?”

  “No, that was one of the lessons that only the Amalekites were brutal enough to teach us. I think perhaps it is from them that we learned we must watch over each other more carefully. Later, Saul successfully made war upon them. But he did not kill Agag, the Amalekite king, as God commanded. Instead he took him prisoner. Samuel, a soldier in Saul’s army, came upon the king lying with his queen. He killed the Amalekite king, saying, ‘As your sword bereaved women, so will your mother be bereaved among women.’ But he left Agag’s wife alive. She ran away, careful not to jostle Agag’s seed within her. The seed of our enemies.”

  “Our God wanted her killed too?”

  “All gods are gods of war, our God and all of the false gods people have invented. That is the only kind. Think of the goddess whose name you have taken: goddess of love, fertility, and war.”

  “Is there no other kind of god?”

  “What good would that be? And tell me, are not you too thinking of vengeance?”

  I could not deny that I wanted Parsha, Dalphon, Haman, and whatever Immortal had pulled me from my bed to suffer.

  “Do not be squeamish,” Ruti said. “It is our nature, we are made in His image. Besides, with warring tribes, often only one people can survive. That is the case now. Though the war with the Amalekites is no longer visible to us, still it is raging in Persia, in plots and schemes and vows. We must correct Saul’s mistake.”

  I stood from my cushions and began to pace. Was I wise and courageous enough for whatever this task entailed?

  “Take heart, mistress. We are strong—our enemies have kept us that way. They are the secret of our strength. We would not have to be strong if they were not always rising up from every direction, thirsty for the blood of Israel. Without them we would not know that we can rise up again after any attack, no matter how brutal. But I fear we have met an enemy too big to defeat with strength alone. We will need wisdom and cunning to survive. Haman is descended from Agag. He is hateful and greedy. Suddenly there are rumblings that he is looking for a way to convince the king to allow him and his kin to annihilate us and take all of our possessions.

  “Xerxes is no Cyrus. He will not help us if it does not serve his own interest.” She put her finger under my chin and turned my face toward hers. “You must win him and quickly become more valuable to him than Haman’s council and all the riches he would receive were he to allow Haman to annihilate us.”

  Though she had not directly asked a question, she waited for some response.

  I remembered riding back to the line, holding on to Cyra’s lifeless body. I had asked God not to place so much suffering before me again unless He gave me the power to stop it. Had He heard my plea?

  I knew I could not say no. “Yes,” I said, feeling a huge weight falling down upon my shoulders, “I will win him and save our people.”

  That night I had trouble sleeping, and for the next few days I could not bring myself to eat more than a few almonds or dates.

  One morning as Ruti bathed me, I said, “How can I make the king love me?”

  “If you wish for the king to love you, do not be sad. Your sadness is starting to bring your bones up from your flesh. Just as it will take the womanliness from your form, so too will it ruin your face. Make yourself smile. You must trick yourself into believing you are happy.”

  Perhaps she would not have said this if she knew how I would trick myself. There was only one thing left in the world that allowed me to forget my cares for a moment: thinking of Erez.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  EREZ

  Exactly one month before my night with the king, I saw Erez. I set my goblet down with a hand that shook so violently wine splashed over the rim, onto the cushion I sat upon. I shifted backward until I was leaning against the column behind me. The column supported the courtyard roof, so perhaps it could also support me while my heart beat too hard for me to know what to do.

  I had been waiting in vain for Mordecai every day, but any thought of my cousin fled when Erez appeared. His face looked thinner than before. His cheeks were sharper, and he had deep hollows beneath his eyes. Yet he was the most welcome sight in all the world.

  He was coming from the Western Gate, walking toward the inner courtyard on the other side of the Women’s Courtyard. But he was not coming alone. I heard voices—rough, irreverent and loose—soldiers’ voices. I grabbed the cushion and my wine and hurried behind the column.

  Parsha’s voice rang out across the courtyard. “The king likes you so well, perhaps you should join his harem. Then he can call upon you nightly and you will not have to wear armor in his presence. You will be clothed in nothing but perfume.”

  I peeked around the column and saw Erez casting a look back over his shoulder. “It is not I who need perfume, Parsha,” Erez said, reminding me of how foul Parsha had smelled when he had secured a rope around my wrists so he could pull me behind his horse.

  One of the men looked about, as if he had lost something. “What has become of the maidens we brought the king? Surely there must be some he has tired of. Will he not allow us to add a few of them to our own collection of concubines?”

  “It is amazing how you never tire of yourself,” Erez said. “You are among the least interesting of all the creatures the gods have created.”

  Parsha laughed. “Even the most willful woman does not so desperately protest against a man’s natural desires. When my father convinces the king of the great benefit to the empire, we will go on a mission that will be over almost as soon as it is undertaken. Men and riches lie unguarded throughout the land, wasted on a people who are loyal only to themselves. A people who do not bow down to any but their one god. Each of us will be richer when it is over.”

  I looked to Ruti, who stood holding a pitcher of wine in the doorway to the courtyard. I could see by the blood draining from her face that she too had heard Parsha’s words. “We will have more women in one night than some of you have had in a lifetime,” he continued, “and many times more than you have had, Erez.”

  I pushed with my feet to adjust my position on the cushion so that as the Immortals advanced I would still be on the opposite side of the column from them, hidden.

  I remembered the goblet too late.

  It clattered against the column. I held my breath, afraid that any movement might draw the Immortals’ gazes to me. Bigthan was afraid of them, and I knew he would not come to my aid, but Ruti might rush from the doorway to fetch up the goblet. I hated to think of how the Immortals might treat an old serving woman if they found her on her hands and knees in the courtyard.

  When Ruti did not come, and the soldiers continued talking amongst themselves, I thought that perhaps no one had heard the goblet clatter upon the tiles. I peeked around the column.

  Parsha and the other Immortals continued walking toward the inner courtyard. All except Erez, who was squinting in my direction.

  I did not give myself time to think better of it—I reached my hand up to my neck to lift the Faravahar out from under my robe and set it against my chest. It was small, and in any case it was not unusual for someone to wear a Faravahar, yet Erez looked into the slit of my veil, at my eyes. He came to a halt.

  The Immortal behind Erez stumbled off to the side of the path, onto some polished stones, to avoid crashing into Erez. The others slowed to laugh at the soldier.

  Erez took a deep breath and started walking again. But he stole a couple of glances back at me, and he did not move as quickly as before.

  “Have your sandals filled with rocks to make you walk so slow? Or are you suddenly shy of your master?” Parsha asked.

  “He is your master as well,” Erez said.

  “But I do not serve him as you do, without promise of anything in return. You will march to your death—”

  “I can think of no better way.”

  �
�—sooner than later.”

  Though he walked slowly he did not stop, and soon I watched him disappear into the inner courtyard.

  Ruti’s voice came from behind me. “They have gone to guard the king, and will not be out again tonight.” I turned to look at her, and she moved her gaze from where Erez had disappeared to my face. “Soldiers should not be able to put a girl who hopes to be queen in such a trance.”

  That night my heartbeat seemed to quicken with each new thought. I was filled with a strange, fearful elation at seeing Erez. But the elation was diminished by fear that Haman might somehow successfully convince the king to kill the Jews. I was angry at Xerxes himself for giving power to a person as serpentine as Haman. How could an intelligent king possibly trust in the counsel of such a man? And yet, Erez was loyal to this king.

  Soldiers were never taught to read, so it would do no good to write Erez a note. But perhaps just the sight of me could compel him to think of my people and how he might help us. After my bath, when I told Ruti where we were going, she said, “What foolishness is this?”

  “A foolishness that might save our people. Parsha may speak again of his father’s plans while crossing the courtyard, and so that is where we must be.” I did not mention Erez.

  “If Parsha sees you, your veil will not save you from his cruelty.”

  “He would not touch what belongs to the king.”

  “The king will not restrain them while he is so full of fear for his own life. He believes they are the best guards in the empire. Do not think they will leave you alone because you are the king’s. The king cares more for them than for you, and you are not yet in a position to change that.”

  I sat behind the column where I had hidden the day before, ignoring the irritated look from Bigthan. Ruti had made me promise to eat all I could, so I forced lamb, dates, and honey past the lump in my throat. I used wine to help it into my belly.