Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  “Xerxes is the most powerful man in all the world,” Ruti continued, “yet his seed is not half so strong as what is inside us. Xerxes will not be able to take the One God out of his son’s blood.” She squeezed my hand. “And what of Halannah’s cruelty in the harem?”

  “The king said it would be dealt with.”

  Ruti dropped the damp cloth and clapped her hands together as it made a slapping sound upon the tiles. “You have done what no other person has been able to. Hashem has guided you to this great moment. Perhaps He will guide you to many more.”

  “First I hope he will guide me to a deep and dreamless sleep.”

  Not long after I had returned to my chambers, God granted my wish.

  I awoke to find Ruti staring down at me. “Hegai is here to see you.”

  “Help me dress and I will go to him.”

  “You are the queen. He has come to you.”

  “How long has he been waiting?”

  “You are queen, how long he has been waiting is not your concern. It also is not your concern that he is furious.”

  “Because he had to wait?”

  “He was angry before he had to wait. But yes, now he is furious.” Ruti was not able to fully suppress a smile.

  “Oh, Ruti.”

  When Ruti opened the door Hegai burst into my chambers. His cheeks were red with rage. He ran the fingers of his complete hand over the stubs of his shortened hand. “What did you tell the king of my harem?”

  “Surely you mean ‘Your Majesty, what did you tell the king of his harem?’ ”

  “It is you who have forgotten yourself. Two days ago you were a harem girl with the special privileges I granted you. Today you are a girl who has been queen for one day, and that is how you are spoken of. Tomorrow you will be known as the girl who has been queen for two days. You will not be only ‘queen’ for at least a year.”

  “I will not allow anyone to give me less than my proper due. Because you have helped make me queen, you honor not only me but also yourself as well when you address me properly.”

  “Your Majesty, Bigthan has been removed from the harem and put instead at the king’s gate. Halannah remains.”

  Ruti exhaled as though she had been punched in the belly.

  “I do not understand,” I said. “I did not mention Bigthan. Only Halannah.”

  “Was the king overfull with wine when you spoke to him?” Ruti asked. Without waiting for me to continue, she said, “You waited too long to make your request. His tolerance is not so great as yours is now.”

  The crown which was so heavy upon my head seemed to be invisible to them. If my own servants did not pay homage to the crown, how was I to expect anyone else to? Before I could reprimand Ruti for speaking disrespectfully to her new queen, Hegai said, “Your Majesty would be wise to think more and drink less. Hopefully the king will call for you again this evening. If not I will send the most unattractive of all the harem girls to him.”

  I stared at him. “You will send whoever you choose? He does not care who you send him?”

  “Sometimes he asks for a virgin, but usually he says ‘One is as good as another.’ Except for one woman who he has asked for by name many times.”

  I thought of Halannah’s many bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. I remembered her earlobes elongated by a pair of heavy gold rosettes. The king had given her a fortune, and now I knew that she was the only harem woman he truly lusted for or perhaps even loved. It felt as though a handful of rocks had just been dropped into my stomach.

  “I did not tell you because I did not want you to lose courage,” Hegai said. “But now you must know your enemy’s strength so you are prepared. It does not appear you were ready for your task last night. It takes more than a crown upon your head to be a queen.”

  I knew a true queen was one who outsmarted her enemies and did great things for her people. But in the meantime I could dole out punishments and rewards to remind them of who I was. “I am your queen and you will give me my proper due or you will no longer have my ear.”

  Hegai looked like he might say something, but he swallowed it.

  “Up until now you have served me well,” I said, “and I wish to reward you for it.”

  I turned first to Hegai. “I know you have as many riches as a man could want, but I wish at least one of them was from me. Is there nothing you desire?”

  “There is only one gift you can give me.”

  “Yes, removing Halannah from the king’s harem. Very well. If you have nothing more to tell me, you may go.”

  Though he left, the disapproving look he gave me seemed to linger.

  Ruti was more easily won over. When I told her to pick whatever she liked from the wardrobe, her eyes widened like a child’s. Once she had made her selections, I spoke to the wardrobe attendant. I spoke firmly so that she would not dare to look strangely at me as I ordered her to have clothes for a queen made into a servant’s dress-up things. Ruti would not be able to wear her new robe and head scarf outside of my chambers, but this did not seem to dampen her happiness, just as my failure to get Halannah removed from the harem no longer dampened it. She twirled before me with a surprising grace that had been hidden in her sack-like garb. The gem-encrusted purple robe she had chosen brought out hints of green in her brown eyes.

  “It is a good color for you,” I said.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. I feel as though I am floating.”

  She looked like she was floating too. Happiness had lifted some of the creases from her face, and I could see that she had once been beautiful.

  Even with all the mistakes I have made, and whatever is to come while I am finding my way, at least there will always be this moment in which Ruti seems as light as though she never cleaned a single chamber pot or suffered beneath a multitude of soldiers.

  All because of a robe and a head scarf. If only everyone could be so easily won over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  * * *

  MY SERVANT, MY GUARD

  I had risen as high in the world as a woman could, yet the afternoon following my night with the king I had the same thought as the lowest girl of the harem: Will the king call me to him tonight? By the last meal of the day I knew he would not.

  “It is a blessing from Hashem,” Ruti said. “You look terrible.”

  But surely it was not a blessing from Hashem when the king did not call for me the next night, or the one after.

  After the third night that the king did not call for me, Ruti returned from the servants’ quarters with news. The king had spent the last two nights with Halannah and had called her to him once again. “But, my chil—queen, I have been instructed to keep track of your monthly bleeding. Surely this instruction comes down from the king himself. It is likely he does not call you to him because he does not wish to risk disturbing the new life in your belly.”

  “How long will this go on?” I realized what a foolish question this was as soon as the words left my mouth.

  “Hopefully nine months.”

  When I bled a few days later, Ruti tried to hide her disappointment. “Well, now you will have a chance to see the king again,” she said, “and make your request before he is overfull with wine.”

  As soon as my time of bleeding had passed word was sent to the king. He did not call upon me that night either. Even in sleep I could not escape a thought: Is he punishing me for getting up after the first time he lay with me?

  I awoke to a familiar voice screaming for me to hide. Then came a wet, sinewy sound. Flesh being opened with a sharp blade. There was a cry that hurt me as much as if it were my own flesh being torn. Though the voice was distorted by pain, I knew it was Ruti’s.

  I shifted my feet off the cushions, but when I tried to stand my foot came down upon a goblet that lay on the tile.

  “Hurry—hi—” Ruti choked and went silent. I knew I needed to obey her command and hide. But it was too late. Someone fell upon me, straddling my chest and taking hold of my hair. I pu
t my hands up to protect my neck.

  Footsteps—not the light flying footsteps of assassins but the heavy footsteps of soldiers—rushed closer. The soldiers’ torchlight reached me before they did. I saw that my attacker was all in black, his face hidden by a mask. In his hand—the one that did not hold my hair—was a knife. It was exactly as it had been when Halannah attacked me. I raised my right hand just in time to catch the knife as it came rushing down toward my neck. The knife point hit the gold plate, bending back my wrist and then sliding off to strike the tile beside my head.

  Soldiers were upon us—five of them—dragging the man off of me. I shuffled back away from them and stood up. A sixth soldier rushed up behind them. Parsha. “I am sorry,” my attacker stammered when he saw Parsha. Before he could say more, Parsha grabbed him by the hair, bent his head back, and slit his throat.

  Bodies lay all around us: two of my servants, the two Immortals who stood guard inside my chambers, and two men in dark tunics and no sandals, like the man who had attacked me. “Who has sent you?” I asked him. “Who has sent you to kill me?” But it was too late. The man was choking and making horrible gurgling noises.

  Three soldiers carried the bodies of the attackers from my chambers. The bodies bounced against their backs, blood pouring unevenly down the soldiers’ legs.

  I heard Ruti choking and noticed blood pooling upon the marble tiles around her head.

  “My servant,” I cried. “She must be tended at once!”

  I stumbled past Parsha, to where Ruti lay upon the floor. The blood poured from a long wound upon her face, some into her own mouth. I turned Ruti’s head to the side so she would not choke to death, my hand nearly slipping from her face because of the blood gushing down it.

  “Have you not tended to each other in battle?” I yelled at the remaining soldiers, who I now saw were Immortals. I wondered where the Immortals who stood guard outside my chambers were. The ones before me did not follow my command with any urgency. One pulled Ruti’s back up against his chest and pressed his fists into her stomach until she threw up blood.

  I stood and grabbed Ruti’s shaking hands. She flinched and I quickly let go of the one which was cut. My surviving servants reentered my chambers and one immediately rushed over with a cloth and began to wipe my hands. I grabbed the cloth from her and pressed it to Ruti’s face. “Can you not see with your own eyes who is injured?” I asked the servant. I knew from looking at her face that she was ashamed she had run away. She moved to hold the cloth against Ruti’s face while keeping her gaze low.

  “You will be cared for by the best physicians,” I promised Ruti as she gazed at me out of huge, terrified eyes. “And when you are well again you will be elevated to the highest position I can make for you.”

  I instructed one Immortal to rush Ruti to the physicians’ chambers. He threw her over his shoulder like a captive, ignoring the servant who tried to keep the cloth pressed to her face.

  “No!” I yelled at him. “In your arms, as you would carry your own child, with a servant to stop the blood flowing from her face.”

  The Immortal pulled Ruti back over his shoulder. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying at the sight of her bleeding face. I ordered two additional servants to see to it that Ruti was brought to the physicians, and then report back to me. They looked at me incredulously. They were not accustomed to reporting on Immortals. “Go!” I said.

  As the Immortal who held Ruti disappeared through the doorway, one of the other Immortals looked at me and muttered, “Child.”

  Did he truly think I could not hear him? I remembered Hegai’s words: “It takes more than a crown upon your head to be a queen.”

  Parsha had wandered deeper into my chambers, and he was looking around with what seemed to me to be too much care. I could not think of any good reason for him to be memorizing the layout of my chambers. He turned and gazed at me with more scorn than I would have thought could fit on just one face. He was standing near my bed, and this unsettled me almost as much as if he were within arm’s reach of me. “Are you surprised no man has thrown himself behind your cause? Only one man is fool enough, and he is not here. Men do not willingly give up their lives for a girl who has temporarily fooled a king into believing she is worthy of him.”

  “If you spoke for an entire army you would not need to send men sneaking into my chambers to kill me.”

  “Another woman will occupy this bed soon,” he said quietly.

  “Seize this traitor,” I commanded the two remaining Immortals.

  One of them began laughing. The third did not meet my eye nor do as I had commanded. He followed Parsha, advancing farther into my chambers. He stopped to pick up the goblet that lay overturned and empty upon the marble tiles next to the cushions I had fallen asleep on. He smirked. “So it is as we have heard,” he said to the other Immortals. As though I was not there. As though I was not queen.

  I fought to keep the distress from my voice. “The king will hear of this.”

  “He seems to have desired only one night with you, and you cannot approach him uninvited unless you wish to die,” Parsha said. “By the time you see him again you will probably have forgotten this slight, buried it beneath all the other slights you are certain to receive each day you play at being queen.”

  I looked about for an ally. The servants stared at the floor or busied themselves with small tasks. One hurried to wipe the tiles where my goblet had lain.

  I knew there was only one threat that would send Parsha hurrying from my chambers. An offense the king would not hesitate to put a man upon the gallows for. I approached him and stood so that not even a cubit separated us. He did not smell as terrible as he had on the march, but still there was an unpleasant odor about him, something both bitter and sour at the same time. “Get out now,” I whispered, “or I will tell the king you sought to take what he has claimed for himself. Even if I have to risk my life to do so.”

  Parsha considered me a moment. “Your life is worth little now,” he said, “and so I believe you.”

  He brushed past me as he left my chambers, taking the remaining two Immortals with him.

  In addition to the two Immortals who had died in my chambers, two of the four Immortals who stood guard outside my chambers had died of the injuries they had sustained when they were set upon by the five men who had come for me. The two Immortal guards who had not died were being tended to by the physicians. Of the five assassins, the two who had not made it into my chambers had not given up their secrets, and they were all dead now. Perhaps Parsha had made certain of that. This is what Hegai told me after he entered my chambers without knocking.

  “Have I no guards?” I had demanded when he stepped in unannounced. I was studying the new dent in the plate over my palm in the daylight that had just begun to peek under the balcony doors. I had not dared open those doors or any others. The servants I had sent with Ruti had returned to report that she had indeed made it safely to the physicians. I had sent one of them back for news of Ruti’s condition and the other to bring word of the attack to the king. I was pacing while I awaited their return.

  “Unless you find eunuchs to be suitable defenders, then yes, you are unguarded.”

  “This cannot be true. If it were I would not still be alive.”

  “Seven of my own men are outside your door. Soldiers will soon take their place.” He smiled sadly at his own jest.

  “Some wine for my guest,” I told one of my servants, in my distress forgetting that Hegai did not drink wine.

  “I desire privacy,” Hegai said, “and nothing more.”

  I instructed my servants to wait outside the door. Hegai did not speak until it had been closed behind them.

  “You have survived an attack of Immortals. When I was informed of the attack upon you I had one of my men follow the attackers’ bodies as they were carried from your chambers. They have the cuts and calluses of archers. While all Immortals must have some skill with a bow and arrow, these Immortals specialize
d in it. Haman, or whoever hired them, did not get the best men for the task. I suspect Haman is involved because Dalphon does not seem to have reported any men missing from the ranks.”

  When I wrapped my arms around myself Hegai gave me a look that told me he liked this gesture no more than he liked crying. I dropped my hands to my sides and assumed a more regal posture.

  “Do not think this is an attack only upon you, little queen. It is also the king who is attacked. There are always those who desire the king’s position. The king’s own army could mutiny if incited. Surely some ambitious noble would be happy to spread word that choosing you proves Xerxes is unfit and that the tides have turned against the king. Perhaps he will whisper that this is the decline of the empire.” Before I could ask him what he had heard, he said, “I do not know if this is already happening. The only things I do know are that you should not hold out hope for Ruti and that you are in great danger.”

  “Ruti was alive when she was taken from my chambers, and if she was properly tended to she is alive now,” I said. Before he could respond heavy footsteps sounded toward my door. Hegai did not have to tell me to hide. I rushed to my wardrobe and hid there until Hegai came calling for me.

  “You are guarded by whole men again, my queen. Four of them will escort you to the king. He has sent for you.”

  I started toward the door of my chamber but Hegai stopped me. “You may want to refresh your cosmetics, Your Majesty. And do not forget your crown.”

  When Hegai opened the door a few moments later there were four Immortals I had never seen before standing guard. Erez was not among them. I was reminded that I had one less ally than I thought I did the week before. Or two, if Ruti did not recover.

  “Take me to my husband,” I told the Immortals.

  Hegai fell in behind me. If I am only to have one ally, I am glad it is the most cunning man in the palace.