Hadassah

by Tommy Tenney

  “What is the matter?” I shouted back.

  He waved even more wildly and shouted more forcefully, but the louder his voice became, the less I could understand him. So I crossed a few long steps into our street to hear better.

  And that is when I heard what Mordecai was shouting about.

  From behind me, uphill from him, came the sound of marching feet. I turned, and only then did I hear Mordecai’s shout clearly for the first time. It sounded eerily like the cry that had just ripped from my chest a few moments before.

  “Nooooooooo!”

  I backed away from the center of the street, away from the oncoming column, still not understanding the cause of Mordecai’s extreme reaction. After all, army patrols happened all the time—it was certainly an occasion for prudence in choosing one’s path but hardly cause for that sort of anguished cry.

  I flattened my back against the wall, wanting to make sure I obstructed nothing of the soldiers’ progress.

  But the column veered and came straight toward me.

  Before I could take another breath I was surrounded by soldiers. I could feel a dozen pairs of eyes travel up and down my body and even though I was clad in nightclothes, I wished immediately that I could have yanked on a heavy cloak.

  One of the men, not a soldier, stepped forward from the rest and eyed me slowly from head to foot. I began to feel embarrassed at the disheveled state of my appearance, as I had bolted straight from my bed when this adventure had started. The man turned to a soldier behind him.

  “A little unkempt, but still, she is beautiful, no?”

  The other nodded, his eyes glued to the upper part of my body. “You’re right, sir. She is stunning. A great face, a most appealing figure. She must be the beauty they told us about.”

  The civilian nodded his agreement with a smirk that sent a cold chill through my veins.

  Just then the sound of tumult came up the street; Mordecai had finally reached the scene and was shouting, out of breath, nearly incoherent with panic.

  “Please! Do not take her! She is exempt! She is exempt!”

  The man frowned and turned Mordecai’s way. The soldiers parted quickly to clear the path between the two men.

  “Why is she exempt?” the soldier barked.

  “Well, for one thing,” Mordecai answered, pausing to try and recover his wind, “she is a member of a foreign people. . . .”

  “Which one?”

  “Well . . .” Mordecai gritted his teeth in his effort to decide whether to answer.

  “Which one?” came the question again, this time more impatient.

  Mordecai shook his head no. “Forget it. It was a lie—I take it back.” Then he fixed me with a tear-stained look. “My dear, don’t mention anything on that subject. Don’t say anything, no matter what you do, about, you know . . .”

  I numbly nodded my assent. Only Mordecai would have thought about the stigma of my Jewishness at a time like this.

  “Look, it doesn’t matter. This is a royal edict,” the man interrupted, his voice growing more clipped with every passing second, “and to royal edicts there are no exemptions. The only question for you is, is she a virgin?”

  Mordecai stopped still, his eyes darting from side to side in search of an answer. Finally he began to shake his head.

  “She is not. She was—she was raped by bandits a few years ago.”

  Unfortunately, the man turned to me with a reappraising glance just as I grimaced at Mordecai’s lie.

  “What?” I began to protest. “But I am . . .” Again, the imprudence of youth and inexperience.

  The soldier turned back to my uncle. “You’re lying. I have a mind to have you run in.”

  “I am a royal scribe,” Mordecai babbled, pleading now. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll pay you any price.”

  “Yes, I recognize you. From the King’s Gate. And I am the King’s agent in Susa, charged with finding virgins for his bed. We heard a rumor that one of the most beautiful young women in the kingdom lived in hiding somewhere around this neighborhood. How long has she resided here?”

  Mordecai’s jaw flexed grimly. It was then that I remembered the times Mordecai had escorted me beyond our home with his hand gripping my elbow to steer me forward—my eyes downcast as he’d instructed, our gait swift and hurried. He had been trying to protect me from prying and lascivious eyes. I glanced his way with the briefest look of gratitude, then back at the agent whose swaggering figure filled my sight.

  “Sir, if you were not a Palace aide,” the man sneered, “I would have you run through with a sword already. Now answer me. How long has she lived here?”

  “Her whole life,” Mordecai replied after a long pause.

  And that is when I truly began to understand the soldiers’ intent. They were going to take me into the Palace, just like Jesse. I would not be mutilated, but probably—my mind spun with the conclusions—I would become one of those girls on the benches, one of the gilded statues, one of the disposable women, a mere Palace decoration. . . .

  Worse still, Mordecai had often described these women’s solitude to me. They lived as virtual prisoners—something I had once considered myself—yet without friends or family to comfort them.

  As the realization began to sear its way through my body, an attitude that had begun as mere bemusement swiftly turned to terror. I shrank back into the wall, wishing with all my heart that I could melt into the bricks and disappear.

  The agent stepped toward me and brought his face within inches of mine. I could feel his gaze upon me like a physical blow. Then his fingers found their way into my hair; I recoiled only to have my shoulders pinned against the wall. Rough hands groped at places no one had ever touched before.

  “Careful,” said a voice behind us. “If she’s that beautiful, she may end up as your queen before it’s all over.”

  The man in my face snickered and backed away a little. Suddenly I was looking at his back.

  “All right, men,” he said loudly, “return two days from now and take her. We’ll give the man some time to clean her up and dress her decently.”

  The King’s agent leaned into Mordecai’s face. His eyes went cold. “A favor,” he said, almost in a low growl. “From one royal staffer to another. If she’s not out on this street two days from this minute, ready to go, it’ll be your neck and hers. You understand?”

  Mordecai nodded numbly.

  And prepare we did. Mordecai stayed home from work the next two days, claiming sickness—and “sick” was actually close to the truth in describing his overall state during that period. In fact, many moments during that span found me afraid that he might succumb in some manner to the extreme distress my predicament had plunged him into. Perhaps concern for him proved a welcome distraction for me, for I often thought he was taking the news worse than I was. After a determined consideration of the options, we came to the dismal conclusion it was death or cooperation. There was nothing else.

  When he was able to keep his emotions in check, Mordecai maintained a running commentary on the protocols of Palace life and the best strategies for maintaining my purity and faith as a follower of YHWH. He refused to sleep or allow me slumber; instead my poppa rocked from side to side like some mystic reciting an endless creed, his eyes focused on nothing in particular, intoning his ceaseless instructions without pause. On and on it went—admonitions on keeping a godly diet, on following the commandments, on dealing with the eunuchs and other officials, on conducting myself with the other candidates. The longer he continued, the more I realized that he was not just trying to prepare me for a rushed departure but actually seeking to compensate for a whole lifetime of social deprivation.

  “Tell no one of your Jewishness,” he muttered over and over again. “It will become an issue. It could actually mean your life.”

  By the time he began to speak of how to approach my time with the King, Mordecai’s themes had begun to flow together in a seamless verbal torrent. “I know you are frightened by
what your capture implies, but my dear, you must realize that there are greater things to fear than the unknown regions of sexual intimacy. Much more than the King’s bed partner is at stake. Hidden powers are jockeying for position here. Just stay as observant a Jew as you can. Privately, G-d will understand the things you are compelled to do upon pain of death. And you will be forced to break some commandments. But try your very best not to. Remember who you are, even if you keep it silent. Keep up your prayers to the Lord. Do not follow the others—the common sentiment—but remember what I taught you about the Word of G-d.”

  I suppose Mordecai’s alarming behavior helped shield me from the full shock of my impending fate. I spent the two days in a sort of daze, trying my best to absorb the best of what he was attempting to impart and at the same time distinguish his true nuggets of wisdom from product of mere panic. In the end I slipped into a sort of numb state of my own, a mindset that I can barely remember to this day. Thank G-d, the time passed all too swiftly.

  The fateful dawn arrived. I stood just inside our door arrayed in a fine tunic that Rachel had purchased for me at the King’s Gate bazaar. Rachel had come early, and I was bathed, perfumed and beautified to the best of her experience. I now recall with some amusement that I actually believed myself to be as clean and fragrant as a girl could possibly be, that any further beauty treatments before it came to be my night with Xerxes would just be futile excess. How little I knew! And how naïve! I was able to form the phrase “my night with Xerxes” not understanding even a small portion of what that meant.

  Finally, just as we stood to face the door and all the fearfulness awaiting outside, he turned to me with tears in his eyes.

  “Hadassah, my dear,” he said in a broken voice, “I think it is best if you leave your star necklace with me.”

  I gasped in shock and dismay. For some reason, surrendering the one relic from my dead family seemed like the cruelest loss of all—more grievous somehow than losing my freedom, my innocence or even my future.

  Yet I knew from the crushed look upon Mordecai’s face that he had my highest good at heart; it was no easier for him to ask it than for me to relinquish it. So I numbly felt my fingers reach to my neck, unclasp the medallion and hand it to him. Then I turned back for the door, opened it and stepped outside into a chill morning and the sun’s bright rays emerging over the tops of nearby buildings.

  Right on schedule, the synchronized slapping of boots on cobblestone was heard approaching our place. Rachel began to sob; Mordecai merely draped an arm over my shoulder, squeezed hard and stared at the opposite side of the street. The only motion in his face was that of his lower lip, which now quivered, I must admit, like that of a baby.

  And then they were beside us. Today’s column was far more military and precise than the one that had found me two days before. After their captain had barked out his order to stop, the men stared straight ahead. The only sign of their humanity was the faint wisps of air pluming from their mouths in the night-cooled air.

  I almost fainted, for my breath was now rasping in my chest, shallow and halting. I tried to speak but my spastic throat would not form a word. My knees gave way, and I would have fallen but for the three pairs of male hands that immediately grasped my arms and held me up.

  Through my tears and the lurching sway of my sight I could see Mordecai back away, his hands held pleadingly in front of his face. He was no longer in control of his faculties.

  “No! No!” came all the pathetic plea he could muster.

  The men pulled me farther into their midst, their grip so strong that keeping my feet was no longer necessary. They started to carry me uphill.

  “The East Gate!” Mordecai began to shout, tearing at his hair, his eyes wild with grief. “Meet me at the East Gate when you can—I’ll be there!”

  I wanted to acknowledge his instruction, but all I could manage was a single word.

  “Mordecai!” I screamed.

  “Keep the commandments!” he shouted after me, his voice beginning to dim. “Remember! Keep the commandments!”

  The same houses I had passed on my quiet return home now flowed past like mournful reminders. The early risers I had seen a few days before were now staring wide-eyed at the commotion.

  “Come on, girl, it’s not so bad,” the King’s agent said from my left. “You’re not going to be executed. You’re going to spend the best twelve months of your life, get bedded by the King and even stand a decent chance of becoming Queen of Persia. There are girls lining up all over the kingdom to be considered for this.”

  And that, believe it or not, is the first time I heard a clear statement of my future.

  21

  The soldiers led me up the hill and through the Palace’s front portico. I thought of the euphoria with which I had entered only days before, seemingly safe in my pathetic disguise with my protector Mordecai by my side. The Palace had then seemed the most awesome and wondrous place I had ever imagined. Now, knowing what had happened to Jesse, the place loomed as a fate worse than death. A chamber of horrors and of unknown, unspeakable outcomes.

  The soldiers turned left just inside the portico and walked me beside the lovely reflecting pools I had once admired. We turned away from the great buildings I had visited for the banquet, that cataclysmic event that seemed to be changing everything, and walked for some distance toward a tree-shrouded enclosure of graceful, low-slung structures.

  Upon reaching the compound’s front doorstep, the soldiers paused. A heavy wooden door swung open and a well-clad, richly muscled man appeared.

  “Already?” he said. “The voluntary ones have not even started to come in.”

  The King’s agent laughed derisively. “We’ve heard rumors for years that the most beautiful girl in the Empire lived right under our noses, in the Hebrew quarter,” he replied. “And look at her. How could you see that and not see a Candidate for Queen?”

  “I understand,” said the man in the door in a low voice. “All right, you can go now. I’ll take her from here.”

  The hands that had gripped my arms for what seemed like forever now released me in less than a heartbeat. I almost fell to the ground, so accustomed I already had become to their painful grasp.

  But now I felt other hands bear me up—softer, gentler. I looked up into the eyes of the man from the door. He was older, probably in his fifth decade, and though his face bore the distant expression of a world-weary citizen, I saw also a warmth, almost indiscernible in its source, radiating from him. His skin and expression seemed oddly feminine. And then it struck me. Is he a . . . ? And then thoughts of Jesse and fears for him flooded my mind. I let out a small whimper and swayed a bit.

  “Here, little one,” the man said, steadying me with a firm grip. “It’s all right. I know the whole thing is very frightening. But I promise you’ll be fine.”

  He guided me inside to a dark and cool interior room, an antechamber of sorts, lined with thick velvet pillows. “Believe me,” he continued, “the method was not of my choosing. But this kind of edict puts everyone on edge, especially soldiers. Everyone is so anxious to advance. Here, you’re so shaken up, let’s take you straight to your room. What is your name, my dear?”

  “Ha—“ I started, intending to give my full name, but I then realized that its Jewishness might give me away. So instead I stammered, grasping for a name. The first thought that occupied the vacuum in my mind came with overwhelming emotions. “Star,” I said weakly, recalling the beloved necklace given to me as a child. “My name is Star.”

  “That is a lovely name,” he said in a soothing tone. “Star, my name is Hegai. I am His Majesty’s royal eunuch. The King’s Chamberlain, I am also called. And don’t you worry, little one. I will make sure you are pampered beyond your imagination.”

  Through a thick gauze of shock, I remember thinking that what he described sounded inviting. But I was incapable of response. All I knew was that I was being led down a marble hallway, then turned into a high-ceilinged bedroom f
loored with real stone and lit by a large window open to the courtyard.

  “Here. Now you rest,” the man invited.

  I lay down on a bed, a low platform softened with layers of sheep’s wool, pulled a thin blanket of surprisingly soft material over myself and quietly cried myself to sleep. I dozed fitfully as bizarre scenarios careened over each other in my mind. The fact that I was sleeping on the Palace grounds seemed like but one of my delirium’s fantastic inventions. I awoke a few times to the sound of movement in the hallway outside; twice I heard girls whimpering followed by the voice of our host, comforting them as he had me.

  I awoke, opened my eyes and almost rolled from my bed in combined shock and confusion. For nearly all of my life, I had slept and awakened in the very same bed in the very same room. Now, blinking open to the sight of a strange wall, a strange ceiling, a strange light, I bolted upward while my breath shuddered in gasps.

  Slowly, my panic subsided and the realization of where I was began to seep into my consciousness. I recalled traumatic snatches of my capture: the world reeling around me, the soldiers’ hands reaching for me, Mordecai’s pleading voice, the looming shape of the Palace gates as they swayed into sight.

  The room was filled with that half-light that is difficult to distinguish between evening and morning. I stood on the tips of my toes and craned my neck to see over the edge of the high window. The landscape before me shone in the sunlight. I had slept a few hours. The back of a flowering cherry tree partly obscured my view of the marble terrace, the pool at its far edge, and the hulking shapes of the Palace’s great halls crowding the horizon. I could sneak out came my first thought, until I pondered further and realized that every gate in the forbidding outer wall was under heavy guard. I ruefully considered how I had always thought of the Palace guard as keeping intruders out—not keeping terrified occupants in.