Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  Long hair, straightened and slick with olive oil, hung down past his shoulders. His narrow eyes were ringed with kohl. They gazed at me with contempt.

  I thought I heard grumbling from the crowd as the king remained bowed to me for an unusually long time.

  Finally he rose, taking my hand in his own and turning me toward the guests. He reached his other hand across his large chest, and there was a whoosh of air upon my face as he lifted up my veil. “My queen!” he shouted to the crowd.

  I opened my eyes as wide as I could and smiled. Thousands of eyes fell upon my face. I wanted to touch the Faravahar, but I knew this would seem odd to the many onlookers and perhaps to Xerxes himself. Instead I concentrated on the feel of the chain weighing slightly upon the back of my neck, and the winged man resting against my chest.

  “The most beautiful woman from India to Nubia,” Xerxes announced, his voice booming out into the banquet hall. “Bow down to the new queen.”

  In a great mass they bowed. But even as they did, I could see that many did not bow so low that they had to take their eyes off me.

  As I looked over the crowd, I saw my cousin gazing up at me with an expression I had never seen upon his face. He was smiling, and there was a light in his eyes that was visible even from far away. He is proud of me.

  As the mass rose up, someone called out, “From what line is she descended?”

  The words seemed to hit Mordecai directly in the face. His smile fell away.

  How I wished I could cry out, King David, the greatest king who ever walked upon the earth.

  Xerxes let go of my veil and it floated back down between the crowd and me, casting a haze over everything once again. I did not welcome the barrier. I wanted to see clearly enough to know who my enemies were. “I command the man who just spoke to come to the front of the room!” the king cried.

  There was neither sound nor movement anywhere within the great hall. I looked to the back of the crowd, at a sea of faces whose features I could not discern.

  “Send the traitor up before I decide to punish not only him but every one of you as well.”

  “It was this man!” someone cried, and soon the crowd was pushing an Indian man toward the front of the room.

  “Your Majesty,” the man said as he fell to his knees before the dais. “Those words were not mine.”

  His voice was not that of the man who had demanded to know what line I was descended from. I looked to the king. From his furrowed brow it appeared he knew this too. Haman stepped forward. “Guards! Seize him!”

  Two of Xerxes’ own personal guards rushed from beside the throne to grab the man and yank him to his feet. Xerxes did nothing to stop them from dragging the man away.

  “Your Majesty,” I said quietly, “this man does not speak in the same voice as the traitor.”

  “Halt!” Xerxes commanded his guards so quickly it seemed he was trying to recover the time that had elapsed since Haman’s command. “Did I order you to seize this man? Release him.”

  One of the guards holding the man gave him a hard shove that sent him once again to his knees. But at least he was free. I looked back at Haman, and it was as though neither space nor my veil lay between us, and all our thoughts were visible. He would have been happy to wrap his heavily ringed fingers around my neck. I remembered what Hegai had said, about how I should be friends with my enemies. But the smile that came across my face could not possibly be free of the pleasure I felt at keeping Haman from killing an innocent man.

  “Send up the true utterer of the vile words without haste or ten of you—Shushan and Nubian alike—will meet your fates upon the gallows,” Xerxes called.

  Shoving broke out in the back of the hall. “Ungrateful Nubians!” a man cried out. “The lions you brought for the king are not even fine enough to make a peasant’s rug and no tamer than the one that killed a hundred of His Majesty’s palace soldiers. It is no surprise you seek to challenge him by criticizing his queen.”

  The exaggeration of how many men Hegai’s beast had killed made me wonder what sort of exaggerations about me people would spread. I imagined Hegai saying, If there is a rumor you do not like, spread a better one.

  Haman had sidled up to the king. He whispered, loudly enough for me to hear, “I hope this unrest over the queen’s peasant roots will pass, Your Majesty, before it diminishes you in the eyes of the world and strengthens the Greeks’ position against you so much that your subjects cannot be rallied to your cause.”

  A Nubian man was sent up to the front of the crowd. The king did not wait to hear his voice. Before I could protest, the king ordered that he be taken away. “Now that we have done with that, let the feast begin!” he cried.

  Cheering erupted in the hall.

  I was standing on one side of Xerxes and Haman was on the other. Xerxes turned first toward Haman and then toward me. “My queen, meet the empire’s first adviser and nobleman, Haman.”

  I waited for Haman to bow to me. Instead he stood taller. He too seemed to be waiting. Finally he said, “But you may call me ‘my lord.’ ”

  I did not tilt my head up to look at him. “I am certain I will come up with something better.”

  His jaw tightened but he kept a little smile on his face. Why did Xerxes not command him to bow to me? I tried to keep the fear from my voice as I addressed Haman again. “Do you not bow to your king’s bride, at her own banquet”—suddenly I thought of what I would call him—“loyal subject?”

  A tiny smile appeared on the king’s face at my words.

  Haman’s bow was only a slight tilt of his head—a tilt no greater than a man would need to spit upon the floor.

  But it satisfied Xerxes. He clapped his hands together and said, “Come, let us enjoy this feast!”

  As I sat with the king at his low table on the dais, I fought to keep from glancing at Erez through the screen. He seemed interested in neither food nor drink. Lavish courses of ostrich and other exotic meats were accompanied by wines from every province. Erez let each of them pass before him untouched.

  After the third course, musicians entered the banquet hall playing a slow, undulating melody which signaled that dancers were not far behind. When the girls did not immediately appear, the guests looked toward the hall’s entrance. Xerxes finished the wine in his goblet and then he too looked. He had drunk at least two pitchers of wine. Abruptly he stood and knocked the screen from the dais. The guests at the table below screamed and jumped away.

  “Remove this from my banquet hall!” Xerxes yelled at their shocked faces. I could see now that they were Egyptian. “Tonight all shall look upon my queen Ishtar’s beauty, while mortal girls dance for us.”

  As girls flooded the hall, men cheered and called out among themselves and to the dancers, saying things that made my face flush first with embarrassment and then with anger. I put my hand on the Faravahar beneath my robe and kept my eyes fastened upon my wine while the girls danced. Until I heard Erez’s voice:

  “I am tired of your crudeness and even more tired of watching you grab at every girl within reach. Think of your mothers and sisters.”

  I looked out at the drunken, laughing Immortals. Erez’s eyes were narrowed upon Parsha’s hand as it seized at the ankles of the girl dancing on their table. The girl’s smile shook upon her face as she attempted to dance out of Parsha’s reach. “You have had one of these ‘sisters’ plenty of times,” Parsha told Erez.

  “I have had as many as I ever will.”

  “Did you have one that you could not wash off?” asked a huge Immortal whose neck was a series of flesh rolls. By the crude way he stared at the girl dancing before him I feared she would feel his full weight later in the evening.

  “You are even less fun than you used to be,” Parsha said, wrapping his fingers tightly around the girl’s leg.

  “What is fun for you is dishonorable to me,” Erez said, yanking Parsha’s hand off the girl and slamming it upon the table.

  Parsha cried out. The girl fell
and clumsily rushed away.

  The huge Immortal stood up and the other Immortals followed. The men beside Erez grabbed him. “Are you so brave that it takes five of you to bring down one man?” Erez asked.

  I looked to Xerxes. Surely he would stop the men from harming his favorite and most loyal soldier. But Xerxes watched with amusement, as if it were a performance. “My king,” I began.

  He waved a hand to dismiss whatever I might say. “They are restless because they have been confined to the palace too long. Tonight, in celebration of you, my queen, I will let them battle each other.”

  This is how your most elite, highly trained force is allowed to act in front of the empire’s noblemen? People were standing up from their tables to watch. Using the two men holding him to support his weight, Erez kicked Parsha in the stomach. Parsha grunted and doubled over. I begged God to keep him from rising, but he rose up almost immediately, causing the crowd to break into wild, bloodthirsty cheering. Parsha wound his right arm back, turning his torso so far that I thought perhaps he would not be able to aim his fist precisely enough to hit Erez. But his knuckles soared toward Erez’s face and met with his cheek, driving a strange sound from Erez’s lips or nose, I do not know which.

  I wanted to scream. As queen, shouldn’t I be able to stop this? Help him the way he had helped me? But I knew that the men’s numbers and the wine made them so bold that they would not listen to me. My only hope was to convince the king to stop it.

  Parsha slapped Erez with the back of his hand, knocking his face to the other side.

  “My king,” I began again, this time more urgently.

  “Hush, little queen,” he said without looking at me.

  “But, Your Majest–”

  He turned his head toward me without taking his eyes off his favorite Immortals. “You must learn to keep silent in matters you do not understand.”

  “But one of your favorite Immortals is being beaten to death right before our eyes.”

  “This is nothing to him. If he could not overcome this pitiful attack he would not be my favorite.”

  Each time Parsha drove a fist into Erez’s face or torso, I felt it in my own flesh. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. I knew I could not let them fall, or they would smear my cosmetics. I pressed my veil close to my face with a trembling hand.

  The Immortals were not content to merely pummel Erez. They called him self-righteous, impotent, a man too proud to know his true place, a man unworthy of the title Immortal, unworthy even of being called a man. Then they released him into a bloody pile upon the floor.

  “You are barely more alive than the last man to hang from the gallows,” Parsha said. “You are a dead man, as you have been since first making an enemy of my brother.”

  I looked to the king again. Surely now he would intervene. But his face registered nothing except the same amusement he’d had since the beating had begun. He leaned close and whispered, “Watch how he will let them beat him until he is so bruised and bloody no one thinks he can rise up to defend himself, and then he will throw this pack of dogs off his back as easily as a horse swishes its tail to remove a fly from its flank.”

  Erez stood, wincing slightly. His tunic was torn and it hung from his shoulder by only a few threads. In one quick motion he reached back for the table and raised it up over his head. Goblets of wine and platters of meat, fruit, and bread crashed to the floor. People at surrounding tables jumped up and moved back a few steps, but they did not run away. They did not want to miss the fight.

  In the instant before Erez swung the table at the three men who surrounded him, I saw a scar on the back of his arm. Two half ovals of little pink lines. The sort of bite marks the man who had stolen me from my bed would have.

  Parsha backed up enough to avoid being hit as Erez swung the table, but there was a horrifying slap as the table crashed into the other two Immortals. Erez lifted the table again, and again the scar stared out at me. My own scar began to throb beneath the gold plate. I knew Erez would not have taken—kidnapped—a girl from her bed and put her in the hands of the very soldiers who now sought to drive the life from his flesh. But the harder I stared, the darker Erez’s scar grew.

  He suddenly looked at his arm and then up at me. He lowered the table to hide the scar, but he must have known it was too late.

  The other Immortals took the opportunity to set upon him, driving him to the floor.

  I looked away. Whoever is being set upon now is not the man I cared for. And perhaps he does not truly care for me either, and only gave me the necklace because he felt guilty for destroying my life and taking me from my home, not because he thought me beautiful. Maybe this same guilt is what keeps him from defending himself.

  Still, it hurt to hear the sound of fists meeting flesh. I wanted to press my palms to my ears but I could not. I slowly turned my gaze back to where he lay on the floor. He was thrashing so violently that the other Immortals were having a hard time keeping hold of him. The huge Immortal, whose neck was a series of flesh rolls, fell upon Erez’s legs, allowing Parsha to get ahold of Erez’s ankle.

  Erez’s torso shot up and there was a sudden flash of movement toward the huge man. As Erez withdrew his dagger from the man’s neck I heard a gurgling sound and then the man fell forward, already dead.

  “My king,” I cried. “Surely you cannot want to watch your best soldiers fight to the death!”

  Erez used the body to shield himself as the other Immortals set upon him once again.

  “Soon your corpse will rot in pieces,” Parsha said, “each more fly covered than the next.”

  “Enough!” Xerxes cried. “My finest soldier should fight no more tonight—he must save his strength to battle for the empire. The best wines and as many dancing girls as desired for my Immortals.” He said nothing of the huge Immortal who lay facedown upon the marble floor in a pool of his own blood. “And virgins from my own harem!”

  The king snapped his fingers at two servants standing near the entrance to the hall and they hurried to carry out his orders. My heart broke for the virgins and, I had to admit, for myself. Erez’s scar hurt me worse than my own. The Immortal I had cared for was not my ally or protector after all.

  I hate him, I told myself.

  Yet I glanced up to make sure he was not near death. Defending himself against the other Immortals did not look like it had been as easy as it is for a horse to swish his tail and remove a fly. He was standing now, but he swayed upon his feet, his face swollen grotesquely, blood pouring from his nose.

  Exactly what he deserves, I told myself. Even so, I felt as though a cold hand crawled up my spine as I saw how Haman glared at him.

  The king finally seemed to realize that Erez was injured. “And Egypt’s finest physician!” he added. He looked impatiently down at the Egyptians whom the screen had fallen upon. As if they were moving too slowly, he said, “Is not this physician already among us here in the palace, or must I dispatch you to return home and fetch him?”

  A small Egyptian man pressed a swath of Erez’s own ripped tunic to his nose and, with the help of another Egyptian, began to lead him from the room. Erez looked at me, wincing at some pain as he turned his neck. Looking back caused my new hatred of him to waver. I knew only anger could keep me strong, so I gazed away. He was leaning so heavily upon the physician that from the corner of my eye I saw the small man stumble.

  Xerxes had turned his attention back to the wine and food that continued to pour forth from the kitchens. He urged me to take some sugared date plums from a tray a servant held before us.

  “Are you not hungry, my queen?” Xerxes asked. “Why do you not lift your veil and delight in all that has been brought for you?”

  “I am only nervous for tonight, Your Highness.”

  He smiled. “I would not want you any other way.”

  My stomach hurt so badly I feared that if I stood and began walking I would not be able to keep down the little I had consumed. I must forget about Erez, and thin
k of my people. I had to focus on what needed to happen next. And after that I would again focus on what came next. That is what I would do—all I would do, and all I would think of—from now on. Putting one foot in front of the other, concentrating on my feet as though each step took the full force of my will, which sometimes it might.

  After the banquet, will we go to the king’s chambers, or am I to go to my own chambers and wait for him to call for me? And if we do go directly to his chambers, am I to walk beside him or behind him?

  “Let us retire to my chambers,” Xerxes said after the platters of meats, fruits, dates, sugared pistachios, and pastries had been cleared. He rose, and everyone in the great hall quickly followed. “We will leave you to enjoy all the best that the empire has to offer,” he told his guests. Then he smiled down at me. “Almost all of it.”

  Without waiting for a reaction from me he moved toward the stairs that led from the dais. His escort quickly took their places around him and my own escort hurried to take their places as well. I followed my husband toward the entrance to the hall.

  “May the king have many strong sons,” someone cried out.

  “To the strength of the king’s seed!”

  “May the queen’s womb flow with milk and honey enough to please the king and keep him at his task until she brings forth a son!”

  “A son with a warrior’s strength and a lion’s heart!”

  “With eyes keener than a bird of prey!”

  I imagined this son the crowd was making: huge-muscled arms and legs, beady eyes, and a bloody lion’s heart beating within his chest. I imagined him growing in my belly. Was this truly the sort of son Xerxes would plant in my womb? And would this son fill the emptiness spreading through me? It was an emptiness where the loss of my parents and Cyra had eaten away at me. If I did not stay angry enough at Erez, he too might add to the hollowness inside me.

  I could not allow the crowd to know my unhappiness. I raised my left arm up and waved. Cheering erupted in the hall. But not only cheering. “Peasant!” a man shouted. He did not shout loudly, but still, I heard him.