Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  Now Utanah did look at me, without moving her head.

  “I will do all I can,” I said.

  “Mistress, there is nothing you can do.”

  “Let me try.”

  “It is you who needs help.”

  I took my hand from Utanah’s shoulder. “Very well.”

  I called for Bigthan, then told Utanah, “I have heard of women’s skin growing around their bracelets and necklaces, until the only way to remove the jewelry is to also remove the surrounding flesh.” Without pausing I turned to Bigthan, who had just come to stand in front of me.

  “Take Utanah to the welder.”

  Bigthan’s eyes brightened. He was happy to get away from Ruti for a while.

  Utanah did not move from my mattress.

  “Come,” Bigthan said impatiently.

  I turned away, so Utanah would not know how desperately I hoped I would not have to carry through with my threat.

  The bells of her necklace and bracelets jangled as she dropped to her knees near my feet. “Mistress. There is no need. I will tell you all you wish to know.”

  I hesitated, as though I were not sure I would give her another chance, then sighed. “Bigthan, I will likely call you back shortly, but for now you can return to standing guard outside the door.”

  When the beads had stopped rustling after him, Utanah said, “I wish I had not taken up a cushion and held it above you, mistress. But I hope you will believe me that I could not bring myself to press it to your face.”

  “You held it up over my head even after Opi’s yelling woke me. Did you wish to be caught?”

  “If I were not caught I would have suffered far worse than these”—she looked at her bracelets—“gifts.”

  “At whose hands?”

  She hesitated, and I turned toward the door as if I were going to call to Bigthan. “Haman.”

  “How did he find his way into the harem to ask you?”

  “He is the one who placed me and a couple of others in the harem. But I am the only one you chose to be a handmaiden.”

  She told me she was from Shushan, and was the oldest of three sisters. Her parents owned half a league of land, two hundred sheep, and had no sons. Haman had promised them that if they gave two of their daughters to the king’s harem, the remaining girl would marry one of his sons. Haman swore his son would not sell the land.

  “Why would your family have any need of Haman’s son? There are women who own land.”

  “There are also women who have lost their land, and since the king’s edict this has been more common. My parents did not wish to risk it. Haman looked us over himself. We thought he would want to take the prettiest for his son, but we were wrong. My littlest sister was mauled by one of the war dogs from India that Xerxes prizes so highly. The dog was badly wounded and the army must have lost track of it. It took my sister’s left eye before my father managed to put it out of its misery.

  “My littlest sister is the one Haman chose for his son. Me and my other sister are the ones he chose for the harem. He said we were to do as Halannah instructed. I thought we would be handmaidens to her.”

  “Your sis—”

  “Will you help her if you can?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Halannah keeps her close and tells me she will have a back like mine if I do not do what she instructs. She asked me to smother you. After I was caught, the other maidens gossiped about it in the harem and Halannah thought I had tried to do as she instructed.”

  “But you could not bring yourself to harm me?”

  “I cannot bring myself to believe Haman and Halannah. If they are so good to those that help them, where are all these loyal girls? Why must they recruit new ones? Haman and Halannah will have me beaten, but, for now, they will not send me to the soldiers. They think I might still do as they have asked. Which they have much reason to believe. After all, Haman’s third oldest son, Aspatha, has my younger sister. I suspect her back hurts more than mine.”

  I did the only thing I could think of to ease her pain. I poured us some wine. She did not object to me serving her.

  “Now that I have told you, I have no choice but to hope you are made queen, so you will help me as you have promised.”

  “I will do whatever I can. So you had best tell me of any plans Haman and Halannah have for me. I can help you better if I am alive.”

  I called Bigthan and Ruti in. To Bigthan, I said, “Take Utanah to the welder and have all these collars removed, then escort her back to my chambers.”

  “Mistress,” Ruti said when they left, “I think it is unwise to call her back here.”

  “I must see the damage I have done.”

  Ruti took my left hand in both of her own. “Do not forget that you are the one who will have to save our people. Even now Haman may be convincing the king to murder every Jew in the empire. Y—”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing yet. But we must prepare. Leaving marks upon a girl who tried to smother you is a small price to pay for the safety of our people. You will surely have to make sacrifices much greater.”

  When Utanah returned her face was the color of ashes. I tried to speak but felt as though my tongue was too big. Any bond between us had been broken along with her shackles. She had a collar of darkness about her neck and bracelets of tender blue around her wrists. But her ankles were the worst. The skin was red and hardened, with patches of dead, flaking flesh.

  I wanted to look away but I forced my gaze to remain steady. The words “forgive me” had gathered in my throat, but from the corner of my eye I saw Ruti looking at me. “We are allowed to wear whatever jewels we like when we go into the king,” I said. “You can pile them one on top of the other until all these marks are hidden.”

  “And if he wants me completely naked, mistress?”

  “There are some jewels that are not easy to take off. But this time you will only wear them for one night, and they will not have bells.”

  The color did not return to Utanah’s cheeks. “You are dismissed,” I told her. To Ruti I said, “More wine.”

  I could not drink away the image of Utanah’s skin. The visions woke me in the night and caused my palm to throb as violently as though my heart itself beat inside my hand.

  When I told Hegai about the danger Utanah was in and asked how we might help her, he ordered that a gash be painted across my neck, and told me that I would walk into the harem room with it. “For Utanah’s sake,” he said. “I will announce only that she has been given other duties. They will have to wonder: the kitchen, the soldiers’ barracks, or is she even now one of the girls who follow on foot behind the soldiers crossing the empire? She will be kept apart from the other virgins until her night with the king.”

  Hegai called a meeting of all the virgins, servants, and eunuchs. He did not dismiss the concubines. He had told me to arrive a few moments late, so everyone would see me. But perhaps that had not been necessary.

  As soon as I stepped into the room girls turned to look at me. A hush fell over the room as I went to sit beside the pool. I knew the horror of what I had done to Utanah showed upon my face. “Mistress,” Opi said, “Utanah may have failed in taking your life, but you do not look like you realize it.”

  I hardly heard her over a strange “oo-oo-ooo-aaa-aaa-aaa” that suddenly rang out from the front of the room. Hegai entered the harem. Instead of the lioness he had a little carob-colored monkey perched on one shoulder, its black toes curling down over his royal purple robe. The animal was dressed to match, and had a gold necklace and bracelets, which he was pulling on as if they were toys. The only part of Hegai’s costume that the monkey did not share was the many rings on Hegai’s remaining fingers. He was holding on to Hegai’s head.

  Hegai pried the monkey off and handed it to one of the other eunuchs who he then ordered to leave the room. Though he did not allow his face to frown, little lines appeared around his mouth as the animal’s noises echoed in the hall.

&n
bsp; He looked over the harem and swept his hands to either side, sending his tunic flowing out around him. “There is one less girl among you. Some of you that remain have schemes that will get you sent to the soldiers before you have a chance to win the favor of the king. I will not warn you again. I have many eyes among you, and those who are plotting or are otherwise at the call of evil will disappear. Perhaps from this very room, perhaps from the baths, perhaps in the middle of the night. You are always watched.”

  At that, he turned and left. The silence may have gone on for some time, if a laugh had not come from the back of the room. “He is without his manhood in more ways than one,” Halannah said. She was walking toward the front of the room. Toward me. “He could no more make a girl disappear due to suspicion than cause the water in this pool to boil just by gazing upon it. His eyes are weaker and far fewer than mine.”

  I stood up from the tiled floor beside the pool and turned to face her. Her sneer stole much but not all of her beauty. “You will never be queen, Halannah,” I said, “not even if you were to send every last one of us to the soldiers. Xerxes may like you beneath him, but he does not want you beside him.”

  Halannah looked down at me. The sneer had fallen away and left her beautiful, though not so beautiful I could not hear the sharp rattle of anger beneath the forced cheer of her laugh. It had been so many months since I had seen Halannah that I had forgotten the power of her dark eyes, eggshell-white skin, and towering height. Her earlobes were elongated by a pair of heavy gold rosettes; she had not fallen in the king’s favor.

  This huge, powerful woman still wishes me dead.

  Perhaps Halannah was struck by me as well. She could not keep the smile on her face, even as she turned from me and said, “This silly peasant knows nothing of womanhood. She will cry like any other virgin. The worst night of your lives awaits. The first time the king has you, you will pray for death to take you before he is done. Do not think to anger or betray me, or I will whet his appetite for the worst ways a man can have a woman.”

  “We have survived marching here,” I said, “and not seeing our families for over eleven months, and listening to your grating laughter whenever you are scared or angry and wish to hide it. We will survive a night with the king.”

  She turned back to me but continued speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Some have not. I told the king about their waywardness—the impurity, the stench, the men who had been there before him. I have rid this harem of more girls than Hegai has.”

  “You have sent your own informers to the soldiers as often as you have sent your enemies.” I was not entirely certain if this was true, but I said it all the same, because I was completely certain of one thing: “You are the enemy of every woman and girl in this room.”

  “No, only you and anyone who helps you.” She stepped closer, so she was no more than a few hands’ widths from me. “That is a strange wound upon your neck. Some seems to have rubbed off on that ugly chain you wear.”

  “That is the thing about blood, Halannah. It spreads.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  THE APPROACH OF MY NIGHT WITH THE KING

  Despite what I had said to Halannah, my courage wavered as my night with the king drew near. I tried not to think of what would take place, and whether I would win the king’s favor, and what would happen afterward to me or to my people. Ruti told me that each of my handmaidens had already been called in to the king, and reassured me that Utanah had not had to take off the bracelets around her wrists and ankles or the thick necklace she had worn when she went to him. Each of the others was allowed to keep at least one of the things she had chosen from the harem jewelry before going in to see the king. Except Opi. She was allowed to keep everything. I was grateful for their good fortune and full of hope for my own night with the king. Perhaps he was in a good and generous mood, and it would not be as painful as some of my imaginings.

  When my night with the king loomed only seven days away, I asked Ruti, “Were they happy afterward?”

  She hesitated. “They were happy with their new jewels.”

  “More wine, please.”

  Ruti did not rush to fill the goblet lying sideways on the tiles where I had dropped it earlier, before passing into darkness. “God chooses cowards to be brave, barren women to give birth to prophets, passionate men to be patient, and a man who stutters to command his people through the desert. So it is not surprising that He has chosen a drunken girl who pouts and sulks like a child to save our people.”

  “Sometimes I wish our peoples’ survival did not depend upon me. Sometimes I am afraid.”

  “Of course you are. Do you expect that you should always be happy? That everything you want will magically appear before you without any effort? If you are to be a woman, you must leave such childish notions behind.”

  “At times I wish I had saved Cyra’s life instead of my own.”

  “Did you do everything you could for her?”

  “I was afraid to hurt her, so perhaps I did not kick her hard enough to keep her alert and marching quickly.”

  “If you did not do all you could, then you did hurt her. Doing what you must is not often pretty. Sometimes you must make a mess, anger someone, be thought cruel. Do not shy away from whatever must be done.”

  “I will try.”

  When I awoke, Ruti was there, kneeling beside my bed. I was about to ask her what she was doing when I realized: she is praying. Her right hand was over her eyes and—very quietly—she sang the Sh’ma:

  “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.

  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise.”

  I remembered the feel of my mother’s hand caressing my back as she had sung this to me each morning.

  “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.”

  “But we cannot write them anywhere,” I interrupted Ruti, “or someone might know us for what we are.”

  “Do not be so literal, child. You will not appreciate all the songs and poetry you are about to inspire.” My sadness must have shown on my face. “What troubles you?” Ruti asked.

  I could not tell her the truth: I hated what I had done to Utanah, I hated that my people were in danger and that their survival might depend upon me, and I hated that the man I most wanted to inspire did not seem on the verge of poetry. He did not seem to care what I did, so long as I left him alone. Instead of answering I reached for my goblet.

  The next two days I did not go to the courtyard. I did not want to watch Erez walking past without stopping.

  “You must eat, and then I will go with you to the courtyard,” Ruti said.

  “My head aches, besides, why would I want to go to the courtyard?”

  “Yesterday there was an Immortal who looked long upon the column you sit by.”

  “How do you know?” I could not keep the eagerness from my voice.

  “I went there, vainly hoping Mordecai would come and ask me to convey some message to you which might inspire you to rise from this mattress, or that Parsha would reveal something of his father’s plan.”

  “And what of this Immortal you speak of?”

  “He walked by but his eyes did not move as quickly as the rest of him. His breath caught in his throat when he saw you were not there. I am certain it was not the first time you have caused him great pain.”

  “Then why did he not acknowledge me all the times I sat waiting for him to look at me?”

  “Did you not just hear what I said? Because it hurts him to look at you. Only so
meone he loves could cause him as much pain as you have.”

  The throbbing in my head suddenly did not seem so great. “Why did you not tell me this earlier?”

  “Because no good can come of you longing for a man you can never have, except if it gives you a reason to get out of bed and keeps you from ruining your face by frowning. Nothing will compel the king to get rid of a girl more quickly than sadness.”

  I wondered what Erez would think of my new body. It had been hidden by my veil and robes every time he walked through the courtyard. Would he like how the food and wine had caused my face to fill out and my breasts to grow so heavy that I felt their weight shifting as I walked? Sometimes in bed I ran my hands over myself to see what it would feel like to touch me. I was careful not to go near the ache between my thighs.

  After the king has had me I will not have to be so careful. I will be able to touch myself as deeply as I desire.

  My own hands were not the ones I truly longed for though.

  “To the courtyard,” I told Ruti.

  As Erez walked by, dark eyes trained upon his destination, I silently repeated Ruti’s words, Only someone he loves could cause him as much pain as you have.

  “You must rest tonight,” Ruti said the night before I was to go in to the king. “Tomorrow, hopefully, you will not get to.”

  “You had just as well tell me to hurl an ox ten cubits into the air with my littlest finger.”

  “At least think good thoughts. Good thoughts make you pretty, dark ones make you old.”

  I looked away from Ruti, so she would not see what I was thinking. “Yes,” she said, “old like me. But tonight I am going to think only good thoughts in my old head, because I know that in two days you will be queen.”

  I waited for her to add something such as “If you do all I have said.” Instead she sat down next to me and rubbed my back as my mother used to do.