Esther (36 page)

All too soon we arrived at the chamber doors. Before anyone had even raised a fist to knock, the king said, “Send in my bride.”

I did not allow myself to glance at Erez as I entered my husband's chambers.

The king, seeing how my hand shook, smiled. “My little bird has returned.”

Though we were only in his reception hall, as soon as someone pulled the doors closed behind me, he yanked my robe from my body and pushed me down onto the rug. I landed hard, feeling the roughness of the wool against my backside. With his foot, he moved one of my knees away from the other. Even my legs were trembling now.
Think only of the son that you will make,
I told myself.

He stepped back and lifted his tunic over his head. A shoulder rippled with muscle as he tossed it aside.

I could not summon an image of a son or anything else to ease my mind while Xerxes loomed over me. I squeezed my eyes shut as he came close. Nothing happened. I peeked up and saw him staring down at me, waiting.

A sudden rush of anger made me brave or perhaps foolish. I reached for the chain around my neck and held the eight-pointed star of Ishtar that he had given me up toward him. “Must I witness a king taking me—his
queen
—on the floor as though I were a common harem girl? Is that what you wish for your Ishtar, mother of your future sons?”

I scrambled back away from him and stood up. Though I was careful to look only at his face, still I could not help but see his arousal.

He was not so careful with his own gaze. He looked at my neck, then the highest part of my chest, and then his eyes moved lower.

I did not allow myself to step back as he came toward me again. He bent and carefully collected me in his arms before rising to his full height. I liked being raised so high in the air.

“You are not common at all,” he said as he brought me deeper into his chambers. He set me on his bed. “It is both what draws me to you and the reason I worry—I do not know what you will do next.” The gentleness fell away from his voice. “But I do not plan to worry tonight. Unpin your crown.”

With trembling hands I did as he commanded. He took the crown from me and placed it on the table beside the bed. Then he held his hand out for the pins. I hesitated. I did not want to hurt him. “I have stretched my hand wide so that the pins will not catch in my skin,” he said. “Look.” I did not really look. I was afraid of seeing his arousal again. I dropped the pins into his palm and he put them beside the crown.

He pushed me back. “I have never before wished that a girl would come to me without first being scrubbed in rosewater and covered in oil of myrrh. I want to know who you are beneath your robes and perfumes; I want to truly taste you.” His breath was humid on my skin. He kissed the inside of my knee, a kiss that began as only the press of his lips against my flesh and became something more.

My fear was falling away, being replaced by something else. He made his way up my body, his breathing becoming heavier and his hands tightening on my legs. An inarticulate insistence arose within me, causing me to press my hips up against him.

“Now, my queen, you are ready.”

This time was more pleasurable than the last. I heard moans that seemed as if they came from someone else—not a girl, but a woman. A queen.

I am queen. I am the wife of one ruler and will be the mother of another.

When we were done I did not stir from where I lay with my knees pulled into my chest. The king held a goblet of wine to my lips so that I would not have to move. With his other hand he lifted my head so I could drink. “Each time I see you I am more grateful to Ahura Mazda for delivering you to me.”

He drank what remained in the goblet, kissed both my lips and the star of Ishtar that lay in a pool of sweat upon my neck, and then rolled gently onto his back, being careful not to disturb me. After a while he began to snore. Still I did not move. I lay with my knees pulled into my chest until I fell asleep, wondering if Erez had heard me moaning, and begging God to give me a son.

In the morning I pulled my knees back into my chest and squeezed them tightly together. When the king opened his eyes he smiled and I felt a slight flush come over me, but I did not move. As he continued to look at me the smile fell from his face. His gaze became as intent as it had been the night before. I moved my legs to make way for him and we embraced as though we had been waiting a long time to touch.

Afterward he refilled our goblets. I did not want wine, and I did not want to leave the king's chambers until as many people as possible had seen me in the king's bed. “Might I have some water, Your Majesty?”

He looked alarmed. “Are you ill?”

“No, I have just developed a particular thirst for it.”

“Whatever you would like, my queen, it shall be granted you.”

The king placed his own purple and white robe over me and called the attendants into his chambers. As the Immortals, eunuchs, serving women, musicians, dancers, and the girl with a fan of date palm leaves entered, I shifted my legs slightly to draw their eyes to me. I hoped they would all recognize that the robe that covered me was the king's.

When the servants approached us with trays of different breads and all variety and textures of sheep and goat cheeses, I looked to Xerxes. Would he hold my head and bring the food to my lips as he had done with the wine? After the tasters had sampled the food, juices, and wine, the king beckoned to a servant girl. Without further command she brought a goblet of pomegranate juice to his lips, and then a goblet of wine. Between sips she fed him dates from her own fingers. No words were spoken. I could see that this was not the first time she had fed the king. Perhaps he sometimes did the same things to her that he had done to me. In fact, he could have done these things not just to her but to any other woman in this palace or his other three.

I straightened my legs as inconspicuously as I could and sat up slightly so I could eat. I tried to look as though I did not care that the king was being touched by another girl in front of me.

After the servant who bore the wine refilled the king's goblet, the king said, “My queen requires only water.”

The attendants looked around. There was only one source of water, the heated water that filled the golden basin. One of the servant women started to move toward it.

“Do you think my queen drinks bathwater?”

The woman turned to the king and bowed her head so low it was as though the apology she stammered was incredibly heavy and would not come loose from her mouth. I had wanted the king to dote on me in front of his attendants, but not at their expense.

“Majesty,” I whispered, squeezing my thighs together in an attempt not to lose the king's seed as I rose up to put my lips near his ear, “I would be honored to drink some of the very same water that will be used to cleanse your splendid flesh.”

Without looking at me, he said to the servant, “You are lucky for my queen's compassion.”

This time he did not ask me to bathe for him. He told me to return to my chambers and my servant's herbs. He kissed me goodbye and then pulled back to look at me. He was breathing rapidly. Abruptly he turned to the attendants and announced, “You are dismissed.” When a servant began to wheel the basin out the king said, “Leave everything you cannot quickly bring with you. Wait outside.”

We coupled once more. I knew I would be thinking of the king the next day, and perhaps for days to come. I would be thinking of him while over and over I begged God:
a son. Please. A son.

The king's kiss goodbye did not leave me wondering if it would be long before he called for me again. He did not want to take his lips from mine. I hoped he was going to send the attendants away again. Instead he took a deep breath and released me.

The last touch I received from him that morning was his hand upon my stomach. He could reach all the way across the front of my body, his thumb easily touching one hip bone and his little finger the other. I thought,
We will fill this space.

As I stepped from the king's chambers, I both prepared to see Erez and willed my body to pull the king's seed as deep as possible. So deep no one could ever again imply that I was not a true queen. Not without losing his life.

Erez's jaw was so tight that I was afraid he had heard me moaning. He turned away from me. Fearing that he might begin to walk before I gave the command, I quickly said, “My chambers.”

We moved through the greatest palace in the world as we would do many mornings in the coming months, without seeming to notice any of the treasures that surrounded us. Of all the things I pretended not to care about, Erez was the one that took the most effort. I knew I would walk behind him as often as the king called for me and as often as he sent me away. And yet I could not help studying him as intently as though I might never see him again.

Though he had not gone through a year of purification as I had, the palace had cleaned him just as thoroughly. More perhaps. He had been a true soldier, most comfortable with a cloak of desert dust. The bright saffron of his tunic was no longer dulled by a thin layer of grime, nor the bottoms of his legs by a thick layer. The muscles of his calves no longer looked like little boulders, as they had when I first saw him lashing the waterskin to the saddle of his horse.

Because of his honor, and because of me, he was trapped inside the massive walls of the palace for as long as the king desired. Perhaps he would not get to see any more of the world. I remembered what he had said on the march when I told him that it did not look like herding girls was all he did: “I have not trained to be an Immortal since I was seven for
this
.”

I am sorry that my life has suddenly become so much more valuable than yours. I am beginning a new life, and you will have to watch it getting bigger while your own shrinks.

When we arrived at my chambers and the two Immortals standing guard opened the doors, Erez moved to go first and inspect them.

“No,” I said.
I need you.
“Jangi, it is your duty from now on to inspect my chambers before I enter them.” If someone was to die inspecting my chambers, I was determined it would not be Erez.

Erez looked at me only briefly before averting his gaze when I looked back at him. I did not know what he was thinking. Perhaps that we should be careful, even with our eyes.

When Jangi came out and reported that it was safe for me to enter, Erez stepped aside to let me pass. I walked slowly, silently finishing my apology:
And I am most sorry I can never tell you I am sorry.

We fell into a rhythm. It began in my body. Men moved through the palace, taking me to the king, or stayed stationed around my chambers, because I did or did not bleed.

Ruti, my guard, and I—all of us—seemed in league, as though we were all trying to make a son.

The routine was the same each month: one, I stop bleeding. Two, I am bathed. Three, I receive perfume treatments. Four, cosmetics are applied to my face. Five, I order my escort to take me to the king. Six, I spend the night with the king. Seven, I order my escort to return me to my chambers. Eight, I do not want to bleed.

But I do.

“Do not count the days, Your Majesty. It will fill you with worry and you cannot conceive when you are already full. You must make room for something else inside yourself.”

“But we must know—”

“Do not count, let me.” Her voice was clear, even with the scarf she wore over most of her face. “Time moves faster as you get older, and I am so old that you will conceive in what seems only the blink of an eye to me.”

“Thank you,” I said. But I could not stop. Not while I was bathed, not while I ate, not while I read, not even while I slept.