Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  “The wine which I have procured for the king is not good enough for you, Haman?”

  His mouth was still twisted in disgust. “This is not a king’s wine.”

  I gasped. “Is not my husband a king? Is not any wine he has drunk a ‘king’s wine’?”

  Haman glared at me for an instant before catching himself and smiling. He forced himself to take another sip, and the victorious look from the day before returned to his face as he managed not to twist his mouth in disgust this time. “The king is most dear to me, and to the empire. I only said ‘this is not a king’s wine’ to make certain of your loyalty.”

  I was going to say “You insult the king,” in the hope that the king would see that he should be insulted. But I did not have to. The king’s voice was that of a man who owns the world and everyone in it. “I chose this woman, with the help of Ahura Mazda, from among hundreds. She has helped save my life. Yet you dare to test her, and therefore also to test my judgment?”

  Haman’s eyes bulged so much from their kohl outlines that I could see little red lines in the whites surrounding his large pupils. He bowed his head and said, “Your Highness, I am your most devoted and loyal servant. You are more dear to me than all else in this world. I would give you the lives of my other eight sons if it would prove my devotion to you.”

  The king had not yet taken the lives of Parsha and Dalphon, yet Haman so easily counted them among the dead? Thank you for ridding me of any pity for you, I thought.

  The king laughed. “Perhaps I am only testing you too. You are still my wisest adviser. The one who is best at enriching the royal treasury.”

  Do not wait, a voice inside my head commanded. It was not my mother’s voice, nor Ruti’s, nor Hegai’s. It was my own.

  I fell upon my knees before the king. “My most beloved king, there is someone who would take from the empire a greater treasure than the wealth that comes from coins. He would take from you some of your most loyal subjects, including Mordecai.”

  The king looked as alarmed as I had hoped. “Mordecai, whom I honored only today for saving my life?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. This evil man I speak of wishes to kill the devoted subject without whom you might not have survived. If his wish had been granted when he first desired it, he would right now be pouring money into his own coffers, not yours.”

  The king stared at me with something held back in his huge eyes. Did he hold out hope that I would start laughing and declare it all a jest so he would not have to consider giving up the wealth Haman had promised him?

  Haman said, “Your Maj—”

  “Quiet,” Xerxes said to him, and then turned to me. “Do not speak in riddles.”

  “Your Majesty, the people he wishes to destroy, I am among them.” The king’s grip upon his goblet tightened with a jerk, sending wine splashing over the rim. Haman gasped. “He has sold my people to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated.”

  In a voice that shook the ground, the king commanded the servants, “Leave us! Every one of you.” He turned back to me. “Whom do you speak of? Where is the man who dares insult me by endangering my queen?”

  “He is right here, Your Majesty,” I said, pointing at Haman. “He is the man who does not wait for you to choose your place before choosing his own. He is the man who insults the palace wine. He is the man who walks beside his king instead of behind him.”

  Haman’s voice trembled as violently as the hands he held out to the king. “I thought only of my love for you, Your Majesty, when I devised a way to enlarge the royal treasury. If I had known your queen was—”

  “Only a fool would threaten what is mine,” Xerxes cried. “I am the most powerful king in the world. No man should insult my wine. No man should walk beside me, or seek to stand shoulder to shoulder with me as you have done so often, or choose a place at the table before I have chosen mine.”

  Haman was on his knees now. “Please—”

  “Silence!” The king threw his goblet upon the table and came to his feet.

  Haman cowered in the shadow the king had thrown over him. He began moving backward on his knees. “I beg of you—”

  “Be silent before I cut out your tongue. Your voice hurts my head and the sight of you blinds me with rage. I cannot think here. I must clear my head before my rage overtakes me.”

  The king stalked off toward the palace gardens, leaving me alone with Haman.

  Haman leaned toward me. “Please, my queen, please forgive me. We will be more powerful as allies than enemies. I will find another people to enrich the royal treasury. I will pour the spoils not only into the royal treasury but also into your own personal coffers.”

  I placed a hand over my empty womb. “You have murdered the king’s heir and the descendants he would have had. Only God can forgive you.”

  “Your Majesty, it was Halannah who ordered the pennyroyal for your tea and bribed the servants with the king’s gifts to her.” His voice rose nearly as high as a eunuch’s. “It is she who threatened them with long, agonizing deaths.”

  “Then we will put her upon the gallows beside yours.”

  “Please, my queen, I hold much sway and will do you any favor, procure anything you desire”—he swept his arm to one side—“wipe out your enemies.”

  “You can rid me of my enemies by climbing onto the gallows you built for Mordecai.”

  He stood and came to throw himself at my feet. “Anything, everything I have, my queen, it is yours.”

  “I want nothing from you except your life.”

  He was crying now and he moved from my feet to my legs, sobbing his way up my body as he pled for his life. When he pressed his head into my lap, my heart began to beat as loudly as anything he was saying.

  “There is nothing you can say or do to win back your life, Haman. It is gone. The only choice that remains to you is whether you will die as a coward or a man.”

  He looked up at me and his eyes darkened. He squeezed my thighs through my robe—squeezed them as hard as Halannah had done my first night in the palace. “Jew.” The wine smelled much worse on his breath than it had in the pitcher. “If you do not convince the king to save me, I will tell him of our love, the seeds of which you foolishly planted in his head yesterday. I will tell him Mordecai arranged everything for us—Mordecai came to your chambers with a message for you and found us together, then came up with a plan to keep our secret. When the king returns he will see how you offered yourself to me one last time.”

  He threw his whole body on top of mine, crushing the wind from my lungs. His face was so close to mine I could see only his eyes. I saw not only the little red lines in them but also the dark lines beneath, where kohl had seeped into the creases of his skin. I tried to yell for help, but my cry was muffled by his beard filling my mouth and then by his hand across my lips.

  “I will die either way,” he said, “but this is the way you will die.”

  My left hand was trapped beneath his body, but that was not the hand I wanted. I brought my right hand up and slashed his face. He cried out.

  Heavy footsteps rushed toward us. There was only one man whose footfalls were heavy enough to be heard over another man’s cries.

  “What goes on here?” the king demanded.

  Haman lifted himself from my body and, without turning to face the king, said, “It is she who invited me to lie on top of her.”

  Blood was falling from Haman’s cheek onto my robe. “My king,” I said. “I tried to drive him from me. Look how I cut him.”

  The king’s face was nearly as red as Haman’s blood. “Turn around,” he commanded.

  The hatred in Haman’s eyes as he stared at me did not fall away completely but receded enough to allow something else to enter: respect. Little, barren peasant queen, you win. He took a deep breath and turned toward Xerxes.

  The king waited for Haman to face him completely before he spoke. “Oh, my doomed adviser. Blood is falling from your face where soon tears will follow. My queen would
not have cut you if she wanted you near. What lack of wit could compel a man to try to ravish my queen in my own palace?” When Haman tried to stammer a reply the king silenced him. “You have uttered the last lie you ever will.”

  Behind the king were more guards than I could count. Two of them grabbed Haman and pulled a black hood over his face. One of the eunuchs beside the king said, “This traitor has erected a gallows at his house, fifty cubits high, which he made for Mordecai the Jew, the man who saved your life.”

  Beneath the hood I saw Haman struggling to say something or perhaps simply to scream.

  “Hang him on it,” the king commanded.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  THE KING’S DREAM

  I went to see Haman and his ten sons—Parsha, Dalphon, and their eight younger brothers—upon the gallows. To look at them I had to stare up into the sun. They were just tiny dark spots, the opposite of stars. All the ugliness we had been through illuminated the beauty that lay over us. Where the gallows ended the sky began.

  Haman’s lands were given to me. I knew they were not only a gift but also a warning. What had happened to the man whose lands I owned could happen also to me. I had seen a second black hood when the soldiers came for Haman. The soldier who held it had carried it back with him as Haman was dragged from the courtyard.

  When the king called me to him that evening to give me Haman’s lands, he did not seem to sit as tall as usual upon his throne. I fell at his feet and pressed my forehead to the floor. “Thank you, my wise and just king.”

  “I am not as wise as I once thought. I knew something plagued you. I thought it was someone. Now I see it was many people—your people, whose weight you carried with you into my chambers and could not set down, even when we were together. I wish I had known sooner. My queen, you should have come to me immediately, instead of fawning over the traitor in an attempt to win him over and save your people.”

  He reached down to where I knelt before him and jerked my chin so I looked up at him. “There is only one man’s wrath you should fear.”

  I knew then that he was only going to warn me; I would not be punished in any way. Perhaps I was spared because of Mordecai’s loyal service, or perhaps because if I were punished along with Haman, the empire might conclude that he had been cuckolded by his own adviser.

  I looked up at him. “My king, please forgive me. I was desperate and did not want to trouble you.” You are moody and the truth alone could not be counted upon to sway you.

  “I summoned Mordecai after I had Haman taken away. Your cousin wears my signet ring now, the one Haman wore this morning. He is now my highest, most beloved official, and he has vouched for you. He revealed your relation and told me how you were an orphan when he took you in.

  “Now we have something in common, my queen. He has saved both of our lives.” His voice held no joy or relief.

  “I am honored to share this good fortune with you, my king. But my peoples’ fate is still uncertain. They are in great danger. The edict that went out calling for their deaths cannot be taken back, even with Haman gone, because it was sealed with your signet ring. And so I shall do as you command, and bring my plea directly to you.” From where I knelt upon the floor, I tilted my head farther up to him, so he could see the tears rolling down my cheeks. “Their only chance of survival is that a dispatch be sent throughout the empire, declaring that the Jews shall be allowed to fight back if anyone takes up arms against them.”

  “My queen, did you not hear what I have told you?” He wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Mordecai wears my signet ring. He will write as he sees fit.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I tried to keep my breathing steady so he would not know how afraid I was of what I must ask next. “There is one more thing. Haman’s niece, Halannah—”

  “When Haman was tortured he named her and many others who have betrayed me in one way or another.”

  I saw the great sadness in the king’s eyes. I wanted to tell him I understood the sacrifice he was making. “I know how you loved her.”

  “No, you do not. You only saw the worst of her. For a long time she was the only girl who seemed unafraid of me, the only girl who it brought me any pleasure to please. I did not feel alone when I was with her. I liked things exactly as they were and did not wish for anything to change between us, so I did not make her queen, even though I knew that was what she most longed for. I did not give her what she wanted so she took what was mine.” He leaned down and put his hand upon my stomach. “Forgive me. I allowed my love for her to blind me to her cruelty and to the danger you were in.”

  “You do not need my forgiveness, my king.”

  “She was not half so beautiful nor so kind as you are.” He moved his hands to either side of my head and pressed his face against mine. I thought he might kiss me but instead his great body shook and I felt wetness upon my cheek. “Forgive me that I did not love you as I should.”

  I waited for him to say that from now on he would love me, but for a moment he was quiet.

  “My foolishness has cost us a son,” he said. “Every time you lay beneath me, he is with us.”

  “I am sorry that instead of a child I have given you a ghost.”

  “There was a ghost here when you arrived. You and the other virgins were brought here to help me forget her.”

  Vashti. Her son was heir to the throne, but the king did not reveal whether she herself was alive or dead.

  “The longer you live the more you live among ghosts,” he said. “If I live much longer I will be surrounded by more ghosts than people: the men I have killed with my own hands, the men I have had killed, the people who died because I wanted, always, to rule more of the world than the world allowed.”

  “You no longer wish to enlarge the empire?”

  “I have suffered defeats, and defeats only, for the last few years. I have learned that my most trusted adviser is an evil man, and I have watched him assault my queen. In a dream, I have foreseen the hour of my own death.”

  I tried to pull back to look at him, but he held me tighter. “In fewer than ten years someone powerful will betray me,” he said, “but I know it will not be you, because if I die, Mordecai will die too, and likely you and all your people along with him.”

  “Even if that were not so, Your Majesty, I would never harm you or allow anyone else to do so. I am your loyal servant.”

  “My little Ishtar, while I have not loved you as much as I should, I have loved you greatly. It just has not been constant. With us there have always been peaks and valleys. Added together and divided by the number of days we have known each other, I have loved you as much as I have loved any woman, perhaps more.”

  As his crying turned to sobs he slid from his throne and buried his head in my hair. I strained to hold him. He was so big that he could never be truly held the way other people could, feeling someone’s arms wrapped all the way around him. But he gave me some of his weight and cried for a few moments while I held him as best I could.

  Abruptly he pulled away and rose to sit again on his throne. “You are dismissed,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  * * *

  PURIM

  In the coming days my people rose up against those who wished to destroy us and take all we had worked for. We killed seventy-five thousand men and did not lay hands on the treasures of even one. We wanted only our lives.

  A holiday, Purim, was made of the two days that followed our victory. Mordecai ordered every Jew to observe Purim each year with feasting and merrymaking.

  “You commanding people to partake of feasts and parties?” I teased.

  He smiled briefly at me. His responsibilities had been increased tenfold. He did not attend the parties very long himself. He always had something else he needed to see to. But I did not let that, or anything else, concern me. I had let life go, and it had come back to me. I had decided I would hold it with more loving hands.

  The year follo
wing my peoples’ victory, I was approaching the banquet hall to join the Purim celebration when I saw Erez. I had not seen him since I had come out of the king’s chambers to find him gone. I had so badly wished to see his face that sometimes it seemed if I just turned my head surely I would find him standing guard behind me, or if I would just open the doors to my chambers, he would be on the other side of them.

  As I continued to walk toward where Erez stood guard outside the banquet hall, my legs felt strange beneath me; I wanted to run but I could hardly walk. He looked as he always had: calm, watchful, surer of himself than he was of anyone else in the world.

  I did not want to quickly walk by and then have to wait another year to see him. I needed something—quiet words or at least a look—to pass between us.

  I slowed my pace, almost to a halt. What could I say? I have missed you with all my senses, my soul has missed yours? I have longed so deeply for you that sometimes I have been certain you were with me?

  Besides the slight rise and fall of his chest, only his eyes moved. Without turning his head, I saw him glance in my direction. Then I saw his hand disappear inside his tunic and emerge clutching something so small I could not see what it was. I ordered the two Immortals beside me to move in front of me and continued at a snail’s pace so Erez could transfer whatever was in his hand to mine unseen.

  I tried not to look into his eyes but could not keep from glancing briefly at their dark centers. I knew that he was watching me in the way I had watched him when he was my guard—watching from the corner of one eye while seeming to stare straight ahead. As I came close I could see his pulse throbbing in his neck. He pressed something into my hand. It was hard not to tighten my fingers around his as soon as they brushed my palm, but I waited an instant and his hand was gone, leaving something in its place. I wrapped my own hand around it, being careful not to grasp it too tightly. I could feel that it was a tiny scroll.