Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  “What do you suggest I do?”

  “Keep drinking the tea until you bleed.”

  “Is not there a safer way?” Ruti cried.

  Hegai glanced at Ruti as though a foul odor came from her. “A knife is more precise than poison, but also much sharper,” he said. “It leaves marks.”

  “But whoever has poisoned the tea will surely not continue if he discovers that the queen knows.”

  “Whoever has made the tea does not own all the pennyroyal in the empire,” Hegai replied. “Someone else will make the tea for us.”

  “What of secretly calling upon a physician?” Ruti asked.

  “When the queen starts to bleed we will call upon the finest one that can be trusted. There is no use doing so now.”

  I tried, but I could not bring any more of the tea to my lips.

  “What do you plan to do, Majesty?” Ruti asked.

  “I do not know. I only know what I will not do.”

  I did not get long to think about what would happen once my child was born—how I would keep him from being taken to the nursery and how I would protect him from the scorn of any who might see whatever deformity he would have. That very night, the hand that I sometimes felt clenching within my belly squeezed so hard I cried out.

  “Dismiss all of your servants. Quickly.” Ruti said.

  The violent wrenching pains in my belly worsened. Ruti gave me opium tea to drink and put blankets under my hips, but surely I bled through them. I could feel a warm sticky wetness pooling beneath me. It was not just blood. Some of it was thicker. I had the terrible thought that it was my child. My hands tried to grasp at the wetness beneath my hips and there was a new pain.

  “Your Majesty, please give me your hand.”

  It was Erez’s voice. Despite the pain I could not stop clutching at the wetness beneath my hips. Someone grabbed my right wrist and I felt the plate being removed. Then my hand was naked. As naked as the inside of my womb. Ruti gave me more tea, and after a while I fell asleep.

  When I awoke I knew that my child was gone. Carried away in blankets that were buried or burned. Ruti did not want me to get up, even to use the chamber pot. “You have already lost a lot of blood.”

  “I have lost more than blood.”

  “I know, Your Majesty.”

  I looked at her in the scarf, which only showed her eyes. “I know you have lost as much as I have.” We are all in danger now.

  “We must stop thinking of what we have lost or we will lose everything we still have. Do not forget that you are still queen.”

  “Where is my taster?” I asked Ruti after two new tasters—a eunuch and a woman my age—appeared with my breakfast of bread and honey. The woman was pregnant.

  “Hegai took him.”

  “Certainly he could not have known anything.”

  “Nothing is certain.”

  Over the next few days I fought to keep from saying the sad, cowardly things that kept rising to my lips like bile. I am not without a child. Sorrow is my child. He will be with me forever. I have ingested a poison that turns a womb to an empty space that can never be filled—not by food or love or wealth or power. I have lost what was most important to me in all the world.

  When Hegai returned to my chambers to check on me, or perhaps to instruct me, I told him, “I must have Hathach dispatch a messenger to Persepolis. What message shall I send?”

  “I was poisoned,” Hegai dictated to me, as though it were me who would deliver the message, “and had a miscarriage. I am well now and cannot wait to behold my beloved king’s face once again.”

  “What of the person or people behind this? If I do not find out who poisoned me, I fear I will always suspect everyone a little.”

  “As you should, Your Majesty, if it will make you more careful.” Before I could say anything he went on, “A girl has confessed to making you pennyroyal tea instead of mint tea. But it does not matter who made it. It matters who ordered it made, and she does not know—she only knows who told her she must do it if she wished to keep her parents safe. None of those she named has implicated Halannah, but none needs to do so for me to know it was her. This is a crime one woman commits against another, and none has more reason to cast you from the king’s favor than she does.”

  The loss of my child felt nearly too great for me to bear. I was not yet ready to think of the advantage Halannah would gain from my loss. But I could not help asking about the servant who had poisoned my tea. “What has become of the girl?”

  “She is missing her hands now, the hands that dropped the pennyroyal into your tea. I thought it best to keep her around where she would be a reminder to others, but after more thought I decided the story left behind by her absence might be more advantageous. She is now useless for all but one task. When she heals, she, along with the others she has implicated, will be one of the now-handless girls who are paraded through the palace and then sent to follow in the train behind the Immortals with the camels, mules, and other concubines who attend them on long expeditions.”

  “This is ugly work,” I said.

  “Matters of life and death often are.”

  “I can hardly bear to look.”

  “But you must, and do so without flinching, Your Majesty.”

  Hegai drew out the words “Your Majesty.” Like Ruti, he seemed to think I needed to be reminded that I was queen. “My eyes are open now,” I told Hegai. “I will not look away from anything, no matter how ugly.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  * * *

  XERXES’ HOMECOMING

  Upon receiving my message about the miscarriage, the king returned from Persepolis. “He summons you to come to him as soon as you have stopped bleeding, Your Majesty,” Hathach informed me.

  I did not like to think of what words passed between Hathach and the king. I had always trusted Hegai to look out for my interests when he spoke to the king because my interests were the same as his own. I was still uncertain of Hathach’s interests.

  “How does he know I still bleed?”

  “Do you clean your own chamber pot?”

  I stood from my cushions and stepped closer. My voice was not as steady as I wanted it to be. “Do you remember that I am queen?”

  Hathach bowed low, transferring so much of his weight that I was not sure he would be able to stand up without stumbling. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. In my concern for you I spoke to you as though you were a child and not the resplendent queen you so clearly are.”

  After I dismissed him, Ruti turned to me, “He spoke improperly, but he helped us. He was angry at us for not protecting our secret. For some reason he wishes to help us. I will clean the chamber pot from now on.”

  Before half a month had gone by I stopped bleeding. Afterward I felt an even greater sadness.

  “There is nothing left of the child,” Ruti said. “It is time to start again.”

  I did not tell her of the pain within my belly. I promised her I would seem as carefree and happy as any woman seeing her beloved husband again after a long absence.

  “I know you will, Majesty.”

  Even with perfume, cosmetics, and a robe of red and gold I did not feel beautiful. It does not matter how you feel, I imagined Hegai telling me, it matters only how you appear to feel.

  As my guard escorted me to the king’s chambers, I kept my gaze upon Erez’s back. I focused on how broad it was and how steadily he walked. I had never seen him falter or truly lose control, not even when he had gotten angry and told me not to talk back to any of the soldiers, or when he fought Parsha and the other Immortals at my wedding banquet. He was like a boulder that could roll slowly down a mountain without succumbing to the earth’s pull.

  When we arrived at the king’s quarters and the doors were opened before us, I reminded myself that I had walked before a military court full of hostile soldiers without being harmed. I could surely walk into the chamber of a disappointed king. As I approached the doorway I brushed slightly against Erez. “Courage
,” he said quietly.

  I stopped just inside the entrance and forced a smile. From across the room, the king studied me. I had forgotten how massive he was, how each of his hands could have wrapped halfway around my waist. How his torso was so huge that if he ever needed to be carried it would take several strong men to move him. I raised my head as high as possible and then bowed. “My king, I have missed you during your long absence.”

  “Sometime you will accompany me to Persepolis, and see what a masterpiece I have sculpted while I was away. I have completed the banquet hall.”

  I was grateful he did not wait for a reaction. It would have been difficult to feign excitement that he was completing his home away from me. “Come, my queen, you should not stand when there are cushions so near.”

  He held out his right hand and I walked across the room, my sandals whispering along the floor too loudly to my ears. I was surprised when he pulled me in and bent to press his lips to mine. Because of how tall he was he nearly had to bow to kiss me. He wrapped his left hand—the one that was not holding mine—around my back so I did not stumble from the force of his kiss.

  My heart moved in my chest, a hopeful trembling.

  Xerxes rubbed his thumbs against my hip bones, silently asking a question a king does not need to ask.

  “Yes, I am ready,” I answered.

  He lifted me into his arms and carried me toward his bedchambers. The guards there threw open the doors and stepped out of the way just in time to avoid a collision. “You are dismissed,” he told the servants.

  He kissed me and I lay back on his bed and opened myself to him. He was gentler than usual. Afterward he continued to kiss me and lightly rubbed his hand over my stomach, comforting my womb.

  When we awoke the next morning he did not beckon the serving girl to hand-feed him. Instead he waited until all the servants were assembled and then announced, “I am finally home. Home is where my queen is, and all who are blessed enough to live in my home must treat it as a temple to my queen. If ever I find that anyone has tried to harm her, or has withheld any knowledge large or small that might keep my queen safe, he will experience the boats.”

  The Immortals, eunuchs, musicians, dancing girls, and servants with platters of bread, fruit, honey, and wine suddenly stood like statues, watching him.

  “Have you heard of the boats?” he asked them. Without waiting for an answer he continued, “I will tell you. Listen carefully so you do not forget a single detail, as you will be asked to describe it many times during your service in the palace. If you forget any of what I am about to describe to you, you will spend your last days helping us perfect this technique.

  “A man is laid in one boat, with his head, hands, and feet left outside. A second boat is placed over the first. Then the man is drenched in milk and honey. It is poured not only into his mouth but also over his whole face. Soon the man cannot even see the sun for all the flies that are biting him. They are a cloud layered one, two, three flies high. For the man, now, it will always be night. His face is kept turned toward the sun though, so that the milk and honey continue to bake. He has no chamber pot other than the boat he lies in, and soon he is no longer alone there. All manner of creeping things and vermin spring out of the mess he has made and they enter him through his bowels. The man does not die, not completely, for many days, and neither does his family.”

  Haman and Halannah will have trouble devising a better torture than this, I thought as I looked at the horror-stricken faces of Xerxes’ servants.

  And indeed, there would be no more attempts on my life for nearly five years.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  * * *

  THE ONLY PLACE

  Erez and my other guards escorted me back and forth to the king’s chambers almost a hundred times over the next two years. The king and I were hopeful at first. But then, secretly, I lost two more children, and I was only pretending to be hopeful. I still drew my knees into my chest after lying with the king. But as soon as the king began to snore I gently lowered my legs to let his seed flow out of me. I did not want to lose any more children.

  I lost another child in the third year of my reign. “That is not a child,” Ruti said as she collected the bloody blankets. “It is only part of the home your body was preparing for one.”

  “I did not bleed last month, it is a child.”

  “A queen’s people are her children,” Ruti said.

  That is when I realized that she knew it too: I would never have a child.

  Sometimes when the king was gone at Persepolis I wondered if that was where his son Artaxerxes was. He had begun looking at me differently, as though from a great distance. Sometimes he did not seem to see me at all. A few times this slowed my feet as we neared his chambers.

  One day when the doors to the king’s reception hall swung open before me, I walked forward a few steps and then stopped. I could not bring myself to walk past Erez. I wanted him between me and the empty look in the king’s eyes. But I could not afford to bring suspicion upon myself and Erez so I pushed myself forward, into the king’s chambers and into his bed.

  When we were done the king did not bring a goblet to my lips and hold my head so I could drink. I did it myself, feeling his seed spilling out of me onto the bed where we had briefly coupled.

  In the morning, one servant girl fed him dates from her own fingers and another massaged his shoulders with her tiny hands. I did not look at the girls’ faces; I did not want to remember them. I tried to keep a serene expression upon my face between bites of bread, cheese, and fruit. The relief I felt when the king kissed me and sent me from his chambers was so great that the corners of my mouth lifted even higher than where I had forced them.

  “You are even more eager to leave than usual,” he said quietly.

  “It is only that my servant’s herbs await, Your Majesty.”

  “Perhaps your servant should try a new recipe.”

  My chest tightened. “I will make certain of it, my king,” I said. I did not care that he was about to get into a golden tub behind a screen where two serving girls awaited him. I only wanted to get away from him and the disappointment that had grown between us more quickly than a child ever could have.

  I was not completely certain that the king had lost all hope until the night when I arrived at his chambers just as another woman was leaving.

  Halannah did not have her usual elaborate braid piled high on her head, but her skin was as white as ivory and the heavy lining of kohl around her huge brown eyes had not run so far down her face that I did not recognize her. Xerxes stood in his reception hall watching her leave. They seemed of a size, matching figures. How could I fill the large space she took up? She looked victorious as she emerged. She barely glanced at my face before dropping her gaze down to my belly. Her cheeks swelled with satisfaction.

  As I walked past the protective shield of Erez and Jangi, my hand twitched with the desire to puncture Halannah’s bloated cheeks with the blade between my fingers.

  “Oh, are you still coming to my lover’s chambers?” Halannah asked quietly, continuing to gaze at my belly for a moment before looking up at my face.

  I forced a smile and touched the crown upon my head. “I am grateful that when I leave the king’s chambers tomorrow morning, it will not be as a concubine returning to a harem full of them.”

  She laughed, and then dropped her gaze once again to my belly and her voice to a whisper. “I did not leave anything for you, but it is doubtful you could have made use of it even if I did. Perhaps one day you will only wish you were headed back to the harem, instead of the hovel you are certain to end up in if you survive.”

  “I promise I will not get there before you,” I said, and walked past her into Xerxes’ chambers.

  “Your queen has arrived, my king,” one of Xerxes’ eunuchs announced. Reluctantly, the king took his eyes off Halannah. I bowed slightly, straining to keep the smile on my face.

  Perhaps he saw my distress. “My queen,
food cannot be truly savored when you are too hungry,” he explained. “Come.”

  I knew I would not be savored. My feet were heavy as I followed him into his bedchambers.

  The next morning I was too humiliated to look into Erez’s eyes. But still, it was comforting to follow him back to my chambers, falling into the steady rhythm of his walk and losing my gaze in the pattern of tiny stars that decorated his saffron tunic. His back was not as broad as Xerxes’, but it was not so high above me either; it made a better shield.

  “Your Majesty,” Ruti said after my bath. “You look wooden. Are you unwell?”

  “I am tired of hope,” I told her. “To hope is to look around you and say, ‘This is not enough.’ ” Before she could correct my youthful foolishness, I said, “And yet I know it isn’t enough, and still it is disappearing even while it appears to be here every bit as much as it was yesterday.”

  “Your Majesty, we must find something to occupy your mind before you become strange.”

  I continued, “Think of how quickly I almost lost you.”

  I could see from her eyes that she frowned. She gestured to the screen behind which the musicians had just begun to play for me. “Would you like the musicians to play a faster melody, perhaps one that does not lend itself to so much musing?”

  A faster tempo did not keep me from my thoughts. I thought of not just my own life but also those of the people around me. I thought of how one woman of the harem might grow wealthy from the king’s gifts, another might be made drunk in front of the eunuchs or king and be sent immediately to the soldiers. Some might go back and forth to his bed enough to grow rich from his gifts, others might see him only once and never again. They would spend each day knowing they were one day closer to servitude. Did any of them even realize that Hegai’s favor was more important than anyone else’s? That it was usually Hegai, and not the king, who decided which woman went to the king’s chambers each night? I regretted this thought, which led me to an even darker one. The only woman the king asked for besides me was my worst enemy. The woman who had taken my child from me and now wished to take my husband.