Esther (20 page)

Something was spilled down my chin and finally I heard Ruti telling me to drink. When I had finished the goblet of wine she held to my lips, she said, “I will get you a physician and some poppy tea, but first you must promise me you will not look at your hand.”

It was too late. The cut and the skin around it were red, brown, and yellow, and raised up as though something was being birthed from my palm. Something that smelled both sour and sickly sweet.

After what felt like many years Ruti returned with the tea and a physician. I drank the tea in two choking gulps while a salve was applied to my palm. It felt as though I had just pressed my hand into the center of the sun.

“The wine will cover your pain until the physician has drained it away.”

It was a poor cover. At that moment I did not care that I might lose my hand. If cutting it off would stop the pain, I would have welcomed the blade. I do not know if it was the wine or the tea or the pain that finally allowed me to pass into a deep sleep.

The physician came to look at my palm twice a day. He said it could not be kept under the golden plate all the time. And so I had a reason to send my handmaidens away. I needed to let the ugliest piece of myself breathe, unseen, in my chambers.

“You are lucky you did not lose your hand,” Ruti told me whenever I was about to complain of the pain. She had come to know my suffering too well. She kept refilling my goblet. “At least we are putting some flesh upon your bones.”

One morning, during the brief time I allowed my handmaidens to be with me in my chamber, Opi looked at me. Her eyes, which were usually cold, filled with pity. “Mistress, do not forget you promised me that when you are queen, I will be able to sit by the pool all day and no one will glare at me as though he wants to spit upon my feet. Not unless he wishes to be made into a kitchen servant.” When I did not respond, Opi tilted her head a little and said, “I have noticed that I am no longer the thirstiest among us.”

“Do not worry for me. I am merely tired. I have not paid attention to how many times my goblet has been refilled.” My palm itched and I wished to take off the golden plate. I gestured at the beaded curtain my handmaidens had recently come in through and told them, “You may return to the harem.”

No one moved. The girl whose body had looked more like a boy's than a woman's when she first became a handmaiden said, “Mistress, we would rather not return to the harem room. The concubines tell us terrible stories of what awaits us during our night with the king.”

Another girl, the one who'd had a broken lip when I made her a handmaiden, said, “It is true, mistress. They tell us of pain and humiliation. They say that any child conceived during such a night will be horribly deformed or even kill us as it is being birthed.”

I too feared lying with the king, and what might come afterward for me and my people. But I was tired of being a girl. No matter how painful my night with the king was, at least afterward I would no longer be categorized by a tiny length of unbroken flesh. I would be a woman, free of the fear which overtook me whenever I heard a sound in the night—the fear that Halannah had come to take what she had not been able to the first time. Free to think of things that were truly important.

“The concubines tell tales for their own amusement,” I said, grateful that I had managed not to run into Halannah for many months. “Do not listen. The king will not harm a girl of his own harem.”

“We have heard stories of him. How he cut off the heads of his own men because the bridge they built was smashed by a storm,” the girl continued.

“I have just told you not to listen to the concu—”

“It is eunuchs who have told us this,” Opi said. “They have also told us of a man whose five sons went on the campaign with Xerxes to Sardis. He asked Xerxes to release one of his sons from service to take care of him in his old age. To punish the man for asking, Xerxes took the man's oldest son, cut him in half, and put half on either side of the road so all his army could march between the man's most beloved son.”

I wished I could unhear this tale. I did not doubt that it was true. “Opi, do not speak to me without the proper form of address.”

“And,
mistress,
” Opi continued, “we have noticed that Nabat never returned from her last night with the king.”

“Perhaps the king was pleased with her and has given her chambers of her own.”

“If so, he has not given her any handmaidens to serve her. No one else is missing.”

“Not everyone can be as blessed as I am.”

“No, mistress,” Opi said, “they cannot.”

I forced a smile and I told them all would be well and that they were dismissed. “Except Utanah. You will stay here with me.”

When the other girls had left I asked Utanah about a mark I had seen between the clicking bells that hung from her neck. She looked as though she had just been sentenced to a slow death upon the gallows.

“It is nothing, mistress.”

“Your lies have become less heroic. I am surprised you do not say that Opi gave it to you while you were trying to defend me.”

Utanah pressed her lips together.

I looked to Ruti. She inclined her head toward the beaded curtain. “Very well, Utanah,” I said, “you may go.”

“I have seen her in the baths,” Ruti said after Utanah had left and the beads had stopped rustling. “It is not only her neck that is bruised.”

“Tomorrow I will take my bath when she takes hers.”

I woke the next morning to hands shaking my shoulders. “Mistress,” Ruti said, “it is time to observe your handmaiden.”

As Ruti and I entered the baths, I saw the girls stealing glances at each other. Their gazes scurried over each other's flesh like little mice looking to make off with something before they were caught. I was surprised at how plump they were. Over the past few moons I had only half-noticed them eating greater quantities of meat and sweets and drinking as much wine as they could without falling down or otherwise marring their bodies. Hegai had told us, “The king wishes to make the first mark upon each girl's body. Each of you should go in to him as fair and unscathed as you were the moment you were born. As if the midwife took you from your mother, washed you, and put you high upon a shelf so you would go untouched by the world until you are put before the king.” Though the agony in my palm had lessened, there would always be a scar. I tried not to think of what the king would do with me if he saw it.

Utanah did not glance openly at me but I knew she watched me. I too had perfected the palace skill of looking at something without seeming to, and so I could see that Utanah wore a cape of colorful bruises upon her back.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Ruti whispered in my ear as she ran a cloth over my shoulder. “It is like a painting. The artist is cruel, but the painting he has produced is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.”

“Who is the artist? Does no one care?”

“Who is there to care? Utanah has lost favor with Hegai, and even if she had not, his favor with the king is uncertain. Everyone is looking after their own interests. Few possess the courage to see someone else's suffering.”

“I hope I will never be so cowardly that I do not see a coat of bruises upon another woman's skin.”

“This is my hope for you too, though there is little you can do for anyone now. I only worry about the bruises upon Utanah because whoever put them there may wish to do even worse to you.”

When I was done with my bath I went to stand, dripping, over Utanah.

“It is not nothing,” I said.

She seemed to shrink inside her skin. “It is nothing I can speak of, mistress.”

“Come to my chambers when you are done bathing.”

When Utanah arrived, I told Ruti to wait in the hall. Ruti started to protest, “Mis—”

“Thank you, Ruti, for watching over me so diligently. But I am awake and not overfull with wine, so I will guard myself now.”

Ruti gave me a look before she left.
Do what you must to save yourself. Our people's survival depends upon it.
I was reclining on my mattress, surrounded by all the food Ruti was pushing upon me to “more fully bring forth the lush woman hiding behind the little girl.” My body had begun to feel like a weight too heavy to carry very far. My thighs rubbed against each other beneath my robe when I walked. The skin chafed, despite all the lotions and oils Ruti applied to my skin.

I picked up a platter of dates and set them on the floor. “Utanah,” I said as warmly as I could with the memory of her standing over me grasping a cushion tightly in her hands still fresh in my mind. I gestured to the place I had just cleared upon my own mattress. “Join me.”

Utanah sat uneasily beside me.

“Does it pain you?” I asked her.

“What, mistress?”

“Does it pain you to walk and to sit and to breathe with the injury someone has done you?”

She did not answer.

“Does it pain y—”

“No. I am in no pain, mistress.”

“Perhaps I would admire your easy ability to lie more if I were not the one being lied to.”

Utanah took a breath, as if to speak, but instead she pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Who has done this to you?”

“Please.”

“Do you not jingle enough as you walk? I am certain we could find more bells.”

I would not have known that she had heard me except for the lines that appeared in her forehead.

“The skin beneath your jewelry must be growing quite strange. I wonder what color it will be when the jewelry is removed the night you go in to see the king.” I lowered my head to peer more closely at her. Her lips were trembling. I placed my left hand on her shoulder. “I promise to help you.”

Now Utanah did look at me, without moving her head.

“I will do all I can,” I said.

“Mistress, there is nothing you can do.”

“Let me try.”

“It is you who needs help.”

I took my hand from Utanah's shoulder. “Very well.”

I called for Bigthan, then told Utanah, “I have heard of women's skin growing around their bracelets and necklaces, until the only way to remove the jewelry is to also remove the surrounding flesh.” Without pausing I turned to Bigthan, who had just come to stand in front of me.

“Take Utanah to the welder.”

Bigthan's eyes brightened. He was happy to get away from Ruti for a while.

Utanah did not move from my mattress.

“Come,” Bigthan said impatiently.

I turned away, so Utanah would not know how desperately I hoped I would not have to carry through with my threat.

The bells of her necklace and bracelets jangled as she dropped to her knees near my feet. “Mistress. There is no need. I will tell you all you wish to know.”

I hesitated, as though I were not sure I would give her another chance, then sighed. “Bigthan, I will likely call you back shortly, but for now you can return to standing guard outside the door.”

When the beads had stopped rustling after him, Utanah said, “I wish I had not taken up a cushion and held it above you, mistress. But I hope you will believe me that I could not bring myself to press it to your face.”

“You held it up over my head even after Opi's yelling woke me. Did you wish to be caught?”

“If I were not caught I would have suffered far worse than these”—she looked at her bracelets—“gifts.”

“At whose hands?”

She hesitated, and I turned toward the door as if I were going to call to Bigthan. “Haman.”

“How did he find his way into the harem to ask you?”

“He is the one who placed me and a couple of others in the harem. But I am the only one you chose to be a handmaiden.”

She told me she was from Shushan, and was the oldest of three sisters. Her parents owned half a league of land, two hundred sheep, and had no sons. Haman had promised them that if they gave two of their daughters to the king's harem, the remaining girl would marry one of his sons. Haman swore his son would not sell the land.