Esther (14 page)

—Book of Esther 2:11

My maids were loyal and agreeable after that. All but Opi, who never seemed to come all the way into the room. She would stop just inside the door, but I know her head and heart did not come even that far. It pained me to see her so unhappy. Nearly every day I ordered her to go to the harem where she could sit by the pool.

The other person I did not see as much as I would have liked was Ruti. On the second day that Ruti did not come to my chamber, I asked Bigthan if she was unwell. He told me she had been assigned to serve the virgins in the back of the harem. I tried to keep the panic from my voice. “Please tell Hegai that I would like an audience with him.”

“He may grant you an audience but he will not grant your request,” Bigthan said.

When I went in to Hegai's chamber I bowed my head, forced a little smile, and looked up at him.

“That is the smile the king will like,” Hegai said. “Save it for him.” I had never before seen him in such a dark mood. I thought that perhaps I should save my request for another day. But I missed Ruti too greatly.

“My gracious lord, thank you for granting me an audience.”

“A brief one. There are more important matters than whatever it is you have come to see me about. The king is ever concerned with attempts on his life and lately he has become more suspicious. I wish it were Halannah instead of Nabat that I could have sent to him last night. After he took Nabat and closed his eyes to sleep, he dreamed he was drowning. When he woke his face felt scratched. He gazed into his polished copper mirror and thought that his nose was angled to one side, as though a pillow had been pressed hard against his face. He looked back at his bed and noticed that Nabat was on his left side, instead of the right, where she had been the night before.” Hegai sighed. “He has given me the task of making her disappear and has instructed me to root out any in the harem with whom she kept company.”

“And will you do this, my lord?”

“I am here and not upon the gallows, so that is a foolish question. I will not bring forth any girls who Nabat was close to, but no words will save Nabat herself.”

My tongue felt heavy in my mouth and my palm throbbed as though it were being squeezed by a hand much stronger than my own.

“Do not stand there looking as though you are wetting yourself. Make your request.”

“If it please my lord, I would like Ruti to attend me in my chamber.”

“It does not please me. That one's mouth is twisted in bitterness and you must believe me—I have been here over twenty years—ugliness can spread from one woman to the next. It is why we keep the most beautiful together. Some girls think that by standing near a maiden who is not fair she herself will look fairer in comparison. She soon finds her own mouth has grown small and wrinkled from frowning.”

“Ple—”

“You are dismissed.”

“No, my l—”

“You are dismissed.”

I had not told my maidens why I went to see Hegai and none was bold enough to ask when I reentered my chambers. While the beaded curtain rustled behind me I took a moment to look at the crying girl. She loved listening to the musicians. Sometimes she even smiled. If she had smiled very wide when she first came to the harem she would not have been assigned to the front section with the most beautiful virgins. She was missing two teeth. Still, she was much pleasanter to look upon when she smiled.

“Mistress, may I comb your hair?” she asked.

“Yes, and talk to me, so that I might forget myself for a little while. Tell me why you cry.”

She gently ran an ivory comb through my hair then put it in tiny braids as she told me of her life as a henna artist. Her father was a quick-fisted man who had punished every mistake and rewarded any good she did with a blow.

She lost her teeth after one of the wives of an Egyptian dignitary did not wait for the henna on the backs of her hands to dry before putting her shawl on. The henna smudged and the woman screamed at her so loudly that her father was awakened from a drunken stupor. The dignitary's wife demanded her siglos back. The girl's father came out of the hut and said, “Here, this should give you as much satisfaction as your coins,” and punched his daughter in the face.

“I have been crying ever since one of his blows cost me two teeth,” she told me. “But I think I am done with sadness. You have given me a better life than I could have imagined.”

Her real name was Mena but everyone took to calling her Crier. Her happiness spread to my handmaidens. Except Utanah. She cringed at the clanking of bells every time she moved. She had become very still.

Despite the contagiousness of Crier's happiness, over the next few months I worried that with all the time the girls spent idly within my chambers they might grow bored and turn upon each other and me. Sometimes I sensed that they were forcing their courtesies. I kept reminding them that they had far greater privileges than the other virgins.

“Is there anything at all that you desire?” I often asked.

They requested things I could easily procure: instruments we had not heard before, delicacies from distant provinces, until one day Crier answered, “Mistress, I would love to see the sun again. And people walking past. And birds! I want to sit in the gardens we have heard so much about.”

If I asked Hegai for the privilege of sitting in the garden and he did not grant it, the fear I had instilled in them by sending Utanah to the forge might be lost. I took a long, slow drink from my goblet while I thought through all of the things I could tell them. I longed for Ruti.
How can I talk them out of their desire?
I wanted to ask her.

I pictured her speaking as she usually had, through her worried little frown.
You cannot. A better question to ask yourself is how you can flatter Hegai like he has never been flattered before. He is bored and his pride is great. Relieve his boredom and feed his pride and he will give you whatever you want.

I had come to understand that in the palace nothing was given freely. Debts and favors owed were as carefully accounted for as the king's coin. Mordecai would have drowned in ledgers if he had to keep track of the transactions of the harem.

Hegai liked the hands of virgins and concubines alike to massage the knots from his small shoulders and wash the sweat from his feet. Virgins who had been full of fear and bashful at taking their clothes off when they first entered the baths danced so seductively for Hegai that I wondered if they remembered that he had been cut. They filled him with a desire that climaxed in the gift of a trinket of bronze or silver or a privilege which would set a girl above the others in the harem.

But I knew that for a privilege as great as sitting in the garden, simple flattery would not be enough. I could not think of anything that would be worthy of such a reward.
I will allow my maids to choose the pathway to Hegai's favor, so that if our request is denied, I will not be to blame. Not completely.

“How shall we please Hegai, so he will grant us this privilege?” I asked.

The next day I instructed Bigthan to tell Hegai that I requested an audience with him.

“What is this?” Hegai asked when my maids and I entered his chambers.

“My lord.” I bowed and then raised my arms over my head, so that my sleeves fell away from them. Crier had painted Hegai's face on the undersides of my wrists and hands, including on the gold plate. When I kept my arm straight and tilted back my hand it looked as though he were talking. As I did this my maids began to sing.

“Bold and strong, big of heart and deft of hand, one man rules the harem with the grace of a god. Robe of royal purple, turban of the purest white, he is just and fair and the beloved of every maiden.”

I tried not to cringe as they sang, but only to tilt back my hands and smile. I knew that if Hegai was the one counseling me in this silly affair he would tell me it did not matter what I actually felt. It only mattered what I appeared to feel. I fought to keep Hegai's frown from pulling down upon the corners of my smile. After the last note left the maidens' mouths, we fell to our knees and bowed our heads to the floor. There was silence. I peeked up at Hegai. He was staring at us as though we had laid a pile of horse dung at his feet.

“Do you think I sing my own praises? Do you think I sing like a bunch of girls?” he asked me.

“No, my lord, but they are all I have. We have been practicing for many days.” It was exactly the sort of lie I knew he would have encouraged me to tell, had he been counseling me in how to sway someone above my station.

“I have not been honored so foolishly in all my years as keeper of the women.” He tilted his head slightly, examining me. “What reward do you wish for this strange display?”

“To sit in the court of the women's house.”

“I hope you do not think to escape, little flower. There is only one escape.”

“I do not wish to leave you, my lord. Not by any route.” It was true. I did not wish to die. I had discovered when I thwarted Halannah's attack that I would not give up without a fight.

“Those words from your lips are a welcome sound at least. I will do something foolish and grant your wish.”

We had to don veils and wear heavy robes when we sat in the court, because officials often walked past, and sometimes soldiers. “The king likes for other men to see what he keeps for himself,” Hegai had told me. “But he does not want them to see all of it.” I thought of Vashti and perhaps he did too. “Not usually.”

So we sat in the shade of cypress trees, looking out over the bright paradise before us. The courtyard was full of fruit trees and fountains, statues of beautiful women, and the singing of little birds emboldened by the prohibition against harming anything in the garden. A tiny yellow canary flew low overhead and perched on a jasmine branch not more than five cubits from me. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tulips, hyacinths, narcissuses, and crocuses swelled upon their stems. Bees buzzed around the bright flowers, and a peacock strutted tirelessly back and forth. It was almost unbearably lovely, but also, unbearably lonely, because I could not see my maidens' faces and their voices were muted by their veils. We were completely covered but for our eyes.

Bigthan and another eunuch, Teresh, stood watch on either side of us while servants fanned us and refilled our goblets after each sip we took. We watched people walking to and from the west gate. Sometimes we sang.

One day an envoy from Nubia walked through the courtyard with two lionesses. The beasts were chained and followed by two men with great glistening muscles who carried whips. One man's whip was short and the other man's was so long he wore it coiled around a metal sleeve. Hegai later told me the Nubian had brought the lionesses as a gift to Xerxes, to try to improve the uneasy peace between Nubia and the capital.

I recognized my cousin the instant I saw him walking alone across the court. The maids and I had eaten our last meal and the sun was lowering itself to the ground. Mordecai was leaving the palace. I knew it was him by the stoop of his shoulders, as though the ledgers he pored over were still in front of him.

I longed for the time when I had waited each day for him to come home and put his kind eyes on the floor I had swept, the pillows I had plumped, and the food I had prepared for him. I wanted to run and embrace him—something I regretted not doing when I'd had the chance.

Mordecai was so caught up in his thoughts that he walked by without noticing me.

The next night I brought two servants bearing platters of dates and honeyed almonds. I did not bring my maids with me and I did not recline on silk cushions. Instead I sat alone upon the marble tiles surrounding the courtyard. This was strange enough that surely Mordecai would look more carefully at me.

As Mordecai's stooped shoulders and bowed head came into view I beckoned both servants near. Abruptly I stood up, knocking over one of the platters. The plate of almonds clattered onto the tiles.