Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  A servant rushed to kneel before me. Despite Hegai’s words from a few moments before, I was flooded with hope for Ruti. “Yes? Speak.”

  “Your Majesty, the physicians have tended to Ruti and she is resting.”

  “She will recover?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Though the servant went silent after this, I could hear that there was more. Something the servant was afraid to say.

  “Fully?”

  “She will be deeply scarred, Your Majesty. Her face . . .”

  “It is her mind and her strength which concern me.” Without them she will not survive here, and the attacker will have taken from her what he meant to take from me.

  “The king awaits, Your Highness,” Hegai quietly reminded me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  * * *

  HEAVY IS THE HEAD

  I resisted the urge to look frantically about as we made our way to the throne room. Perhaps no one would know how closely I listened if I kept my head straight and my face expressionless.

  I must see from the corners of my eyes and with my ears. I must act as though nothing has happened.

  We stopped in front of the guards who stood before the entrance to the throne room. If they resented me the way Parsha and some of the other Immortals did, the only way to deal with them was to make them love or fear me and I did not have time to make them love me. “My husband awaits,” I told them in a voice that would have caused a dead man to rise up and do as I commanded. The guards stepped aside and the doors were opened. Though I was queen, and though I had been summoned, I was not allowed in the throne room until the king held out his scepter to me. Only the king’s advisers were permitted to enter freely.

  I held my head high as I was announced by one of the king’s eunuchs. I wanted the king to know his queen was strong, even in the face of danger. Strong enough to bear the son who would rule the empire Xerxes was building for him.

  Xerxes himself appeared far from strong. He sat—huge and fragile-looking—upon his throne. He stared down from the slightly elevated platform upon which his throne was mounted, his head lowered and hair falling forward from his crown. His face was half-hidden from me. Advisers crowded around him, Haman closest of all. Behind them was a sparkling backdrop of treasures that did not seem worth the burden of ruling a kingdom.

  If I looked only at Xerxes, shutting everyone else out and letting my eyes blur the crown from his head, he was a large man weighed down by his thoughts. When I let everything come into focus again, I saw that he was weighed down not by his own thoughts but by theirs, and by the crown upon his head.

  I wished I could pluck him out from the circle of advisers and just for a moment lift away the crown. If he were not king, what sort of man would he be? How would he speak to me? How would he touch me?

  Haman smiled slightly as Xerxes continued to stare down at the floor. The king did not seem to hear that I had been announced. I stood tall, struggling to keep my fear from making its way onto my face. Finally he heaved a great sigh. He held his scepter out to welcome me before using it to wave the circle of advisers away. He still had not glanced up.

  My escort stepped aside to make way for the king’s advisers to exit. Haman lingered, not looking at me directly. I knew he was aware of me because he moved into my path and turned away from me, trying to claim the king for himself. But he was not large enough to completely block my view of my husband.

  Still without looking up, the king waved his scepter at Haman. As Haman stepped back I watched him just barely stifle an indignant huff or grunt of some kind. He narrowed his already narrow, kohl-ringed eyes at me on his way out, passing much closer than any man should come to a queen. Almost as close as his son had come to me not long before.

  I rushed forward to fall upon my knees before my husband. I hoped he would order me to stand and come closer so he could wrap his huge arms around me and tell me he would do anything to keep me safe.

  “Rise,” he said. I peeked up from beneath my eyelashes. My cosmetics had been wasted. His gaze was still weighted to the floor as he said, “I know the old woman is precious to you, and so I had two of my most trusted advisers check on her. There is no longer a place for her among your servants.”

  Are you certain you have two trustworthy advisers, and do you believe Haman is among them?

  “King—husband, I stand before you now because of Ruti’s loyalty and courage. Ruti saved my life.” I put the slightest emphasis on Ruti, hoping to make it more difficult for him to think of her as only “old woman.”

  He still did not look at my face. I had the terrible thought that maybe he wished the assassins had been successful so he could choose another queen. Halannah, perhaps. “She is too scarred. The palace’s servants are the finest. You are not a girl newly risen from peasantry who must take whatever old woman is nearest.”

  “Please, Your Maj—”

  “No!” His head jerked up and suddenly he was shouting. “She will be a reminder that people wish you dead, that they do not respect my choice of queen. That they do not respect or fear me.”

  My heart beat wildly in my chest, but I did not step back or soften my words. “You are king, anyone can see that. Ahura Mazda has made you larger than other men so that you might easily rule over them. But no king is without enemies. Will not all see your strength when you show them how your choice of queen has survived an attack? How weak your enemy and how vigilant Ahura Mazda’s watch over you must be if a mere servant was able to thwart three men?”

  He gazed directly into my eyes, and this time his voice was so calm it frightened me. “Six of my own men died, little Shushan.”

  I held myself rigid so I would not recoil at this news. Hegai had only told me that four had died. I would have to find out what had happened to the others. “If they died, without first stopping the attack, then they were unworthy of their position. Ahura Mazda has rid you of them. Just as many of your bravest men have been scarred battling for you, so my servant was scarred in battle for me, a battle she fought bravely, even though she must have known she might lose.”

  Keeping his eyes upon mine, he lifted his chin so high that he stared down at me as though he towered twenty cubits over me. There was great sadness upon his huge face. I imagined what I would tell Ruti of this moment if I saw her again. It is hard to see a great king so sad—it feels as though the whole world must be sad.

  After a moment, he lowered his head again and said, “She will stay with you. But she will always wear a scarf that can be pulled up to shield our eyes from the sight of her.”

  “Thank you, my gentle and generous king.” I fell again to my knees. I put my forehead upon the floor and stayed bowed before him while tears of relief pooled beneath my eyes. The crown was tightly fastened to my hair, and though I felt the pull of its weight, it did not slip.

  “She will carry two daggers,” he said. “One in a belt for all to see, and one in a sheath beneath her tunic.”

  Does he not have trained men to protect me? I looked up at him. “Very well, my king. And which soldiers will watch over your queen now that some have proven unworthy of the task?”

  “Many of my men are not suited to palace life. They are not on their guard as they should be. They think their enemies will always wear the uniform of a foreign army. My finest soldier would not have allowed any man who came near your chambers to live. Not even one in the same saffron uniform that he wears. His arrows have landed in a hundred men’s hearts—more perhaps, and I have seen him kill, with his bare hands, a Greek soldier a whole man larger than himself. He has held a fellow Immortal’s hand to a flame for trying to keep the spoils of war for himself. He is more loyal to me than any dog to his master.”

  I dropped my eyes back to the floor so the king would not see me wince. I knew he spoke of Erez. Though I hated Erez, I also hated for him to be compared to a dog.

  “He is training to battle once again for the empire,” Xerxes continued. “But perhaps the true battle is here.”r />
  I felt a sudden ache in my palm where my scar had slowly pulled my flesh tight beneath the gold plate. I had lost the ability to move my right hand freely. When the plate was taken off at night it felt rigid and weak. I told myself that all my weakness was contained in my palm, leaving the rest of me strengthened for whatever sort of battle I must fight. Was the makeup of my escort a battle I should join? Was it worthy of whatever capital I had left with the king? My husband and a stranger. I looked back up at him. I did not have the right words, I had only the truth and it would not do: Please do not send Erez to guard me. I loved him until I found out he was the one who tore me from my bed and forced me on the journey that ended here, with me becoming the hated queen of a weak man.

  Xerxes continued, “He will kill anyone foolish enough to stand against the empire, from outside, or from within.”

  Not me, but the empire. Soldiers did not belong to women, or children, or to the people who raised them. They did not belong even to themselves. A soldier belonged first to the king, then to the second highest–ranking man, then the third, then the fourth . . . Erez would always be the king’s man, even if he did not like the king or the duties the king had given him. He would be the king’s man because that is who he had trained to be since he was seven.

  Even if I were not the queen or a girl of the harem, Erez would never have been mine.

  “Return to your chambers,” Xerxes ordered. “Your servant will be returned to you when my physician thinks it is time. I will carefully consider which soldiers will be entrusted with your safety, and if my finest will be among them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  * * *

  THE QUEEN’S MEN

  As I walked back to my chambers, a single thought walked with me:

  I am going to die.

  My feet dragged along the tile, growing heavier with each step.

  I am going to die too soon.

  I was unlike many in the palace. I was unlike Erez. I did not think of myself as the king’s, or the empire’s. Once my parents were killed I was my own. I remembered standing on the steps at the end of the march, wondering if anyone outside of the palace would ever see me again. I had known that however obscure and miserable my life was, still I would fight for it. And perhaps I had already known that I would need to.

  I no longer had any reason not to fight. If I did nothing and allowed Parsha and the other soldiers to threaten and disrespect me, I would be killed. If I fought back they might kill me, or they might come to fear and respect me.

  As I walked toward what was likely my death, I told myself that even if I failed in keeping assassins from my body my legacy was mine to make. I would take away the power of time to bury me. All I had to do was put my name upon peoples’ tongues, a place from which Haman could not remove it by sending men with daggers through the dark.

  I will not die before they kill me and when they do take my life they will do so with great shame.

  I would no longer be critical of the king’s desire to expand the empire. Whether it was right or wrong, I understood it. I would tell the Immortals I respected their valor, that if they killed me they were also killing a queen who wished to see them victorious. I would tell them I wanted for them what I wanted for myself: to be bigger than only my time upon the earth.

  I would make them kill me or lay down their swords at my feet.

  When we arrived at my chambers, I ordered the four men who were my temporary escort to walk with me into the Women’s Courtyard. Once there I instructed them to take me east through the courtyards in the center of the palace—the Women’s Courtyard, the inner courtyard, and the central courtyard. Surely they thought this strange, but they obeyed my commands.

  Before we got to the outer courtyard, my escort slowed. We could hear soldiers training—clashing swords, an officer yelling commands, the whoosh of arrows.

  One of the two guards who walked in front of me turned back. “Your Majesty, this is the military courtyard.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. If he were to disrespect me by suggesting another route I would not make it easy for him.

  “There is surely another way to get wherever we are going, Your Majesty.”

  We had walked all the way across the palace. There was no mistaking that this was our destination. “Do you wish to be dismissed so you can slink back to my chambers?” I asked.

  “No, Your Maj—”

  “Then you dare to suggest that the king would want the woman he has chosen from among hundreds to creep along the edges of the palace?”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “Your Majesty, please forgive me if I have given offense.”

  “I will forgive you. Once.”

  I checked to make sure my crown was still tightly fastened to my hair. If someone wants it he will have to take my whole head. I took a deep breath, pushed past the guard, and walked through the western entrance and into the noise of the military court.

  It was a huge open courtyard, almost as large as the banquet hall. Hundreds of common soldiers were packed up against the northernmost wall, where they sharpened their spears and daggers and sparred lightly. Those were not the men I was concerned with. The Immortals, though there were fewer of them, were spread over most of the courtyard. Some practiced hand-to-hand combat, the others held bows with arrows pointed toward five huge bull’s-eyes along the southern edge of the court. When a few of them noticed me in the entranceway, their arrows slackened in their bows. Two men turned and bowed to me, but they quickly stood again when they saw that no one else did the same. Not even the slaves lined up behind the Immortals bowed to me.

  Only a few have noticed me, I could turn back now. My humiliation would be far less than if the whole court sees me and does not bow. But I could not turn back. This was likely to be my last chance to speak to them.

  “Release,” an officer cried from about eighty cubits to the right of me along the western wall. He stood beside the front row of archers.

  A flock of arrows flew up with a whoosh. They hovered overhead for an instant, casting a shadow over the court. Then they fell as fast as stones. They made countless little thuds as they hit the targets on the southern wall, the wall I had started walking toward.

  As my escort rushed to take up their places around me, Immortals looked to see what the commotion was. Some murmured as they watched me walk, but none bowed. The officer remained standing to the side of the first row of Immortals, directly in my path.

  “Load.” I recognized his voice. “Pull.” It was that of the man most responsible for Yvrit’s death. “Release!” he cried.

  I walked toward Dalphon, fighting not to let each line of unbowed soldiers I walked past puncture my dignity more deeply than the last. My escort stopped when they reached him. He did not acknowledge us. “The queen,” the guard who had suggested we take another route through the palace announced.

  “The king surely does not want a woman here,” Dalphon said.

  I moved to the front of my escort. “I am no mere woman. I am queen.”

  “A queen does not interrupt the empire’s most elite soldiers as they train to enlarge the kingdom,” he said.

  One of the archers called out, “Peasant for fourteen years, queen for a handful of days.” His voice too was familiar.

  “And no more!” someone called out.

  “No more!” another man echoed.

  I looked at the archers and saw Parsha sneering at me. I knew he had been the first to call out. I turned back toward Dalphon. He would not touch me in front of so many men. I walked past him toward the southern wall.

  “Load!” Dalphon called from behind me.

  My escort did not assume their places around me again. Perhaps Dalphon was not letting them pass. I did not check. I would appear weak if I looked back, and besides, I told myself, it did not matter if they were with me. In fact, it is better that they are not.

  I passed all the men and moved into the empty space over which their arrows would fly. A space not
meant for anyone except the slaves who would pull the Immortals’ arrows from the targets and collect the fallen ones from the ground.

  I was walking out in front of the hundreds of men in the military court.

  “Pull,” Dalphon shouted.

  I had almost reached the front southwestern corner of the court, where I would turn left so that I could walk east along the wall lined with targets.

  “Release,” Dalphon ordered.

  Whoosh.

  The hall filled with the sound of vibrating bowstrings for an instant as the arrows hovered overhead. I braced myself for the sharp pierce of an arrowhead in my back. I suppressed the urge to cover my head or to glance up. I gazed instead upon the nearest target. I watched the arrows hit with quick, crisp thuds. I watched their tails quiver and go still.

  I had not been hit.

  The beat of my heart was so loud it provided a rhythm for me to march to. Every four beats of my heart equaled a step. 1-2-3-4 step. 1-2-3-4 step. I continued until I reached the front southwestern corner of the court. I turned left, and began walking east along the wall lined with targets, the first of which was not more than twenty-five cubits away.

  “Load . . . pull . . . release!” Dalphon said again, and again arrows rose up into the air, blocking out the sun. While darkness hovered over the courtyard I prayed, God please guide their arrows.

  Again I was not hit.

  I kept walking toward the first target. When I was not more than six cubits from it, once more Dalphon cried, “Load!”

  Do not think, do not feel. Just keep going.

  “Pull.”

  Time slowed. I tried not to think about how long a man could hold an arrow pulled in his bow before his arms began to tremble. Still I could not help but watch them from the corner of my eye. Arm muscles bulged where sleeves had fallen back. God, please keep them strong, let their grasps upon their bows not waver.