Esther (26 page)

“Speaking of your enemies, it is almost time for the banquet in your honor,” Hegai said.

“Let us celebrate first amongst ourselves.”

Hegai did not protest aloud when I invited Ruti to drink with me. It would have been cruel to expect me to drink alone on such a momentous occasion. But the look he gave me was not one of approval. Still, the mood turned festive again. Ruti and I went back to marveling at the vast luxury of my new chambers until there was a knock.

“A messenger from the king,” one of my personal escorts announced.

“Send him in.”

When the door opened I saw that the messenger had two guards of his own. He fell to his knees in front of me and bowed his head. “Your Majesty, I bring your crown.” He held it up to me on a cushion of purple silk.

I did not need to bite down upon it to know it was pure gold. It was decorated with jewels of purple, green, and red.

“Does not the king want to place it upon his new queen's head at the banquet?” Ruti asked. The messenger looked up, no doubt surprised to be questioned by a servant. I wondered too if he had noticed the second goblet in the room, the one Ruti had quickly set down when I invited the messenger in. It was not a secret that Hegai did not drink wine.

“He does not want his guests to see her as anything but a queen,” Hegai said.

Xerxes is afraid I will seem a peasant.

I did not want the messenger to see me crowned by a servant and the keeper of the women. As soon as Ruti carefully took the pillow from him, I said, “You may go.” I did not like how he looked about the room as he left. If the king were present, the messenger would have left quickly, his eyes upon the path he would take from the room and nothing else.

“It is fitting that you two who have helped me become queen should now put the crown upon my head.”

Hegai snatched the crown from the pillow Ruti held and raised it over my head. “From now on you must always carry yourself as though you have never coughed dust from beating a rug, stumbled beneath the weight of a jug of water carried home from the well, or bent your back to scrub a floor.”

I wondered how he knew the tasks of a peasant girl. But I did not wonder long. I bowed my head and closed my eyes as he lowered the crown down upon my head.

It seemed to me that I felt it when four knees hit the floor at my feet—a reverberation that traveled all the way up my spine. I took a long breath.
God, you have placed this crown upon my head. Now please help me bear its weight.

I raised my head up slowly. The crown was heavier than it looked. I would have to be careful not to make any sudden movements or I would send it crashing to the floor.

“Your Majesty,” Hegai said, “you are exquisite. When I look at you I see that Ahura Mazda himself has put this crown upon your head.”

“Thank you, I am very blessed. Will you be at the banquet?”

“No. You must keep your own counsel tonight, my queen.” I tried to look disappointed. But I also felt a little seed of happiness sprouting in my chest. I did not allow myself to smile until he was gone.

While Ruti helped me get dressed I stared at myself in a large slab of polished copper. The golden crown shone upon my thick dark hair as if it were meant for me.

“I am ready to be queen,” I said.

My heart drummed inside my chest as I approached the noise of the banquet hall. Despite my escort, my crown, and the gold and gems that weighed upon my neck, arms, and ankles, I could not help but feel small. The last time I was in the large banquet hall I had just been kidnapped and brought to the palace with numerous other girls, only one of whom would be queen. As I stood in front of it with a crown upon my head, the room seemed just as large as it had then.

My eyes were drawn up toward the ceiling, which was held by six rows of six columns, each higher than twenty men. Even with the deafening clamor of people laughing and yelling, and even through the haze my veil cast over everything, as I gazed up the room felt empty except for the rams' heads at the top of each column that seemed a warning to all those who dwelled within the palace walls: do not challenge the powers that reside here.

I did not want to seem as impressed as I was, so I quickly lowered my gaze from the ceiling while keeping my chin up. The hall was big enough to host ten thousand guests, not counting the many more who could sit in the balconies. It was filled with more color, shouting, and excitement than even the marketplace had been. Voices echoed, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Princes from all over the empire, along with their attendants, crowded around tables near the dais where the king sat waiting for me. Because Xerxes was Ahura Mazda's representative ruler on earth, he was kept away from the view of his subjects, except for formal audiences. He sat behind a screen through which nothing but his silhouette was visible—a giant figure elevated upon a stone platform, a huge goblet his only company as he waited for his new wife.
We are not so unalike, my king.
I felt the reassuring pressure of the Faravahar against my chest.
I too am hiding.

I stretched my spine as tall as possible and entered the banquet hall. The king stood and his subjects' voices died as they quickly did the same. In the silence that followed, the room seemed to grow larger. I kept my head high for the thousands of eyes that watched as I made the long journey to my new husband.

Before I reached the elevated platform I saw the table of Immortals. The king's favorites were celebrating like royal sons, drinking without armor on. They sat at one of the tables close to the king's screen. Parsha was among them, and also, Erez. He looked as though all but his body was elsewhere. His broad shoulders were hunched, and I could not help but wonder what he was thinking.

He turned and looked through my veil, right into my eyes. I was certain he saw me more clearly than anyone else in the room. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look away, back toward the stone dais. Servants hurried up on either side of me so that I would not trip on the three stone stairs I had to climb to stand with the king. Hegai had told me not to approach.
Bow and wait to be summoned to come behind the screen
. As soon as I was on the dais, though, Xerxes stepped out from behind the screen to meet me. “My queen has returned.”

“Your Majesty,” I said. In my haste to bow the crown slid from my head. He rushed forward to catch it. It looked small in his huge hand. He frowned down at me. “I see you have not chosen any of Vashti's former attendants. Your servants too must learn to fasten your crown so tightly to your head that nothing can move it.

Nothing but your own advisers. Or is not this the same crown they took from Vashti?

As he continued to stare at me his eyes softened again, and the corners of his mouth lifted. “My queen,” he murmured.

Besides the rings upon his hands he wore only a white tunic and his crown. His thick arms and legs were oiled so that they glistened like those of a man who has just come from the battlefield. When he leaned toward me and bowed, he was still taller than I was. But not so tall I could not discern the three-cornered hat of the man behind him. The man stood closer to the king than any of the king's own escort, and this is how I knew that he was Haman. I leaned slightly to the side so I could look at the father of my enemies and now, also, my own enemy.

Long hair, straightened and slick with olive oil, hung down past his shoulders. His narrow eyes were ringed with kohl. They gazed at me with contempt.

I thought I heard grumbling from the crowd as the king remained bowed to me for an unusually long time.

Finally he rose, taking my hand in his own and turning me toward the guests. He reached his other hand across his large chest, and there was a whoosh of air upon my face as he lifted up my veil. “
My queen
!” he shouted to the crowd.

I opened my eyes as wide as I could and smiled. Thousands of eyes fell upon my face. I wanted to touch the Faravahar, but I knew this would seem odd to the many onlookers and perhaps to Xerxes himself. Instead I concentrated on the feel of the chain weighing slightly upon the back of my neck, and the winged man resting against my chest.

“The most beautiful woman from India to Nubia,” Xerxes announced, his voice booming out into the banquet hall. “Bow down to the new queen.”

In a great mass they bowed. But even as they did, I could see that many did not bow so low that they had to take their eyes off me.

As I looked over the crowd, I saw my cousin gazing up at me with an expression I had never seen upon his face. He was smiling, and there was a light in his eyes that was visible even from far away.
He is proud of me.

As the mass rose up, someone called out, “From what line is she descended?”

The words seemed to hit Mordecai directly in the face. His smile fell away.

How I wished I could cry out,
King David, the greatest king who ever walked upon the earth.

Xerxes let go of my veil and it floated back down between the crowd and me, casting a haze over everything once again. I did not welcome the barrier. I wanted to see clearly enough to know who my enemies were. “I command the man who just spoke to come to the front of the room!” the king cried.

There was neither sound nor movement anywhere within the great hall. I looked to the back of the crowd, at a sea of faces whose features I could not discern.

“Send the traitor up before I decide to punish not only him but every one of you as well.”

“It was this man!” someone cried, and soon the crowd was pushing an Indian man toward the front of the room.

“Your Majesty,” the man said as he fell to his knees before the dais. “Those words were not mine.”

His voice was not that of the man who had demanded to know what line I was descended from. I looked to the king. From his furrowed brow it appeared he knew this too. Haman stepped forward. “Guards! Seize him!”

Two of Xerxes' own personal guards rushed from beside the throne to grab the man and yank him to his feet. Xerxes did nothing to stop them from dragging the man away.

“Your Majesty,” I said quietly, “this man does not speak in the same voice as the traitor.”

“Halt!” Xerxes commanded his guards so quickly it seemed he was trying to recover the time that had elapsed since Haman's command. “Did
I
order you to seize this man? Release him.”

One of the guards holding the man gave him a hard shove that sent him once again to his knees. But at least he was free. I looked back at Haman, and it was as though neither space nor my veil lay between us, and all our thoughts were visible. He would have been happy to wrap his heavily ringed fingers around my neck. I remembered what Hegai had said, about how I should be friends with my enemies. But the smile that came across my face could not possibly be free of the pleasure I felt at keeping Haman from killing an innocent man.

“Send up the true utterer of the vile words without haste or ten of you—Shushan and Nubian alike—will meet your fates upon the gallows,” Xerxes called.

Shoving broke out in the back of the hall. “Ungrateful Nubians!” a man cried out. “The lions you brought for the king are not even fine enough to make a peasant's rug and no tamer than the one that killed a hundred of His Majesty's palace soldiers. It is no surprise you seek to challenge him by criticizing his queen.”

The exaggeration of how many men Hegai's beast had killed made me wonder what sort of exaggerations about me people would spread. I imagined Hegai saying,
If there is a rumor you do not like, spread a better one.

Haman had sidled up to the king. He whispered, loudly enough for me to hear, “I hope this unrest over the queen's peasant roots will pass, Your Majesty, before it diminishes you in the eyes of the world and strengthens the Greeks' position against you so much that your subjects cannot be rallied to your cause.”

A Nubian man was sent up to the front of the crowd. The king did not wait to hear his voice. Before I could protest, the king ordered that he be taken away. “Now that we have done with that, let the feast begin!” he cried.

Cheering erupted in the hall.

I was standing on one side of Xerxes and Haman was on the other. Xerxes turned first toward Haman and then toward me. “My queen, meet the empire's first adviser and nobleman, Haman.”

I waited for Haman to bow to me. Instead he stood taller. He too seemed to be waiting. Finally he said, “But you may call me ‘my lord.' ”

I did not tilt my head up to look at him. “I am certain I will come up with something better.”

His jaw tightened but he kept a little smile on his face. Why did Xerxes not command him to bow to me? I tried to keep the fear from my voice as I addressed Haman again. “Do you not bow to your king's bride, at her own banquet”—suddenly I thought of what I would call him—“loyal
subject
?”

A tiny smile appeared on the king's face at my words.

Haman's bow was only a slight tilt of his head—a tilt no greater than a man would need to spit upon the floor.

But it satisfied Xerxes. He clapped his hands together and said, “Come, let us enjoy this feast!”

As I sat with the king at his low table on the dais, I fought to keep from glancing at Erez through the screen. He seemed interested in neither food nor drink. Lavish courses of ostrich and other exotic meats were accompanied by wines from every province. Erez let each of them pass before him untouched.

After the third course, musicians entered the banquet hall playing a slow, undulating melody which signaled that dancers were not far behind. When the girls did not immediately appear, the guests looked toward the hall's entrance. Xerxes finished the wine in his goblet and then he too looked. He had drunk at least two pitchers of wine. Abruptly he stood and knocked the screen from the dais. The guests at the table below screamed and jumped away.