Esther (37 page)

During the third cycle of the routine, a few days after I had stopped bleeding and had spent the night with the king, he said, “Sometimes, upon parting, you seem so full of anticipation that I wonder if you have taken another lover and are going to meet him.”

My heart began to race. If I often appeared more eager to leave than I should have, it was because I did not like seeing Xerxes eat fruit from the fingers of other women and because I wanted to see Erez. “Your Majesty, no woman could want for another man after being with you. I am only eager for the herbs Ruti gives me, which might hasten the gift I want to give you. A son who will be as big and powerful as his father, and as worshipful of him as I am.”

He looked carefully at me for a moment. Then he said, “Hathach, the servant I have assigned you, is my most faithful eunuch. There are few men I trust as much as a eunuch. My wise grandfather Cyrus understood their value and made great use of them during his reign.

“Cyrus died twelve years before I was born, but first he passed along his wisdom about eunuchs to my father, and my father passed it on to me. People are most vulnerable to attack when going about the simple tasks of daily life—eating, drinking, washing, sleeping—and this is why eunuchs are ideal servants. Who else do they have to be loyal to besides their masters? A man who has a wife and children will love them more than all others. A woman or girl, especially, is prone to love—love for a husband, for mothers and fathers, for children. But a eunuch is dependent upon and indebted to his masters, because most men—even a eunuch's own family—will consider him a shameful creature. A eunuch will be beaten, or worse, if caught alone. A eunuch needs protection and will pay his master with unwavering devotion.” Xerxes nonchalantly ran his hand over his rings. “He will not fall prey to a bribe. He will see to his king's safety and do anything his king asks of him.

“And this is not the only benefit. A eunuch thinks more clearly than a man, because a man may lust for women or a crown. A eunuch can have neither. He can have only his position, and therefore all his thoughts are upon the same goal: pleasing his master.”

I understood the king's warning. The eunuch had been assigned to watch me. Still, I said, “Thank you, my generous husband, for giving me your most trusted servant. I will make good use of him.”

I had assigned Hathach to stand outside the doors to the reception hall so he could announce visitors. When I returned to my chambers he bowed to me as I walked past him.
Does he truly have nothing else in all the world but his service to the king? And does aligning himself with the king mean he has aligned himself against me?
I would tell him nothing I did not also want the king to know.

Both my head and heart were heavy. I hoped Hegai and Ruti had chosen wisely in aligning themselves with me. It was not only for myself that I wished to conceive a son. It was for them, and also, strangely, for Erez. He had risked his life to kneel before me in the military court; he would rise or fall with me.

All of us continued carefully going through the routine determined by my body, as if the routine itself was our purpose. But really, we were waiting. Our destinies hung upon my womb.

The routine repeated itself four times. Then, one day, I woke up with Ruti staring down into my face. “It has been—”

“A whole month,” I said. I sat up as though the new life propelled me. The servant who bore the pitcher of water I requested each morning hurried toward me.

“Careful!” Ruti said, putting her hand on my shoulder and urging me to lay back. “You must be careful not to move too quickly.”

There was still water in my goblet from the night before, so I gently waved the servant away.

“Do not drink from anything that has not been tasted,” Ruti said.

“He tasted it last night, as did I.” As soon as the words left my mouth I realized how foolish it was to have waved the servant away. “But I have not watched it each moment since.” I called to him, “Servant!” I had been advised never to learn this eunuch's name and to look only closely enough at him to know if someone else was sent in his place. I watched as he poured some of the water into a goblet and drank it. Though I was thirsty, I had the eunuch stand at the other end of my chambers while Ruti and I talked. I would not drink until I was certain he would not be sick.

“From now on, you must be gentle and happy and move slowly,” Ruti said. “This is your only care, but do not let it be a care. Do not think on it too much.” She put her hand on my stomach. “And do not tell anyone but the king. You must tell him or he will continue trying to plant his seed, damaging the seed he has planted already.”

I remembered what Hegai had once told me: “Do not tell anyone what you plan to do, that way they cannot stop you.” I would guard my belly, my future, and my heir by guarding my tongue. I finally called for the eunuch to bring me a goblet of water and then I dismissed him. “I am going to have the king's child, Ruti. The king's, and ours.”

I often lay with my left hand upon my stomach, hoping the life inside me would reach up and move against my palm, reassure me that I was truly carrying a child. One day I asked Ruti, “Should I feel something?” I only saw the cruelty of my question after it had escaped my lips. She had never carried a child in her belly, or, if she had, she never mentioned it.

She came closer to where I lay upon my bed. I could not tell from her eyes whether I had hurt her. “I have heard that many women do not feel anything within their wombs until they get sick, Your Majesty.”

“I am sick with hope, Ruti. I want to feel this child inside me and I want to do all I can for him. I will not allow any harm to come to our child.”

“Do you know how to use your daggers?” I asked Ruti the next day.

She was bathing me and she did not look up or take the cloth from my leg. “Yes. Plunge them into anyone who tries to harm you. I am old, but not so old I cannot thrust a dagger all the way through a man's back, into his heart.”

I laughed. “I am glad you are a soldier in my army and not my enemy's. But me. Should not I also have a dagger?”

“Two. You should have as many daggers as you have hands. But also, you must be taught how to use them to defend yourself. When I defended you, I attacked someone who was rushing past me. Next time I will better know where to stab a man who, because he must go about his work in silence, is not wearing armor. My blade will enter his side and slide into his ribs. He will be dead before he even comes close to you.
You
though must know how to stab someone who is rushing toward you. That is different, and I cannot teach you how to do it.”

“There is someone here who could teach me.” Erez and I had not come close since we had stood together in my wardrobe months before. I was confident we would not give in to foolishness again. I had too much to lose.

She looked sharply at me. “We must make certain your training does not bring about something even more dangerous than that which you are training to defend against.”

When my cosmetics were like a mask upon my face and I was dressed in my most commanding crimson robe, I had Erez and Jangi called in from where they were posted outside the doors.

Erez entered my chambers stiffly, perhaps tired from standing for so long. As hard as it was for me to rest, it must have been as hard for him to spend his days and sometimes nights standing in one place when he had spent his life traveling the empire. I was happy to provide him a break from his routine.

I dismissed all but Erez, Jangi, and Ruti. Ruti was giving me such a foul look that I could hear it as clearly as though it were words:
Do not make it easier for people to spread lies about you. Especially the most dangerous lies—those with tiny pieces of truth inside them.

“I know that I have the best guard around me”—I moved my gaze over all three of them—“and I would like to be part of it.” I looked at Erez. “I must be trained in the use of a dagger.”

Color drained from his face so quickly that I suspected I was not the only one who had nightmares about the night he kidnapped me. What in particular haunted him? Being bitten, my cry, how he had ignored my pleas, how he had dragged me toward the other girls' cries—one of his arms around my ribs and elbows, the other around my neck?

“Jangi, you will remain at the door.” I could see by the slight rise of his cheeks that he was flattered I had addressed him by name. “With Ruti.”

I walked toward the screen behind which musicians sometimes played and Erez followed. “Have you already forgotten that using a dagger is not as easy as it looks, Your Majesty?” he asked quietly.

Do not use that night when I was still a girl against me.
I had not forgotten how I slipped the dagger from his belt and tried to plunge it up the inside of his tunic sleeve and how it had been no match for his flesh. I had not forgotten how it had flown from my hand as if he had knocked it away.

I did not answer. When we were safely behind the screen I turned to face him. His eyes looked dry and tired. This did not make him any less beautiful. He had been standing guard for me a long time, and unlike other guards, he never closed his eyes.

“You would be better off if your plan was to stay as far from any danger as possible,” he said.

My feelings for him did not dampen my anger. Rather, they seemed to increase it. “As
you
especially know, danger has always come to me.”

He winced. “Will you be forever angry? Angry because you wanted me to care for you before I had a chance to, while you were just a shape in the dark—a tiny part of a task I was carrying out for the king? Can you not see that it is too late to change that?”

“My anger comes and goes with my nightmares. But my concern is no longer only for myself. You must have noticed that we have not gone to the king's chambers in over a month.”

“Congratulations.” Was he thinking of those children he might have somewhere far away, and those that may have been flushed from their mothers' wombs with herbs or worse? Or was he thinking of me lying with the king?

The plate over my right palm had weakened my hand and made it difficult to reach into the leather pouch sewn inside my robe. I knew Erez was too good a soldier not to notice both the awkwardness of my movement and my slight fluster, but he did not comment upon them. “Is it better for men to know I carry this,” I asked, “or should I keep it in the pocket sewn into the sleeve of my robe?”

“If they want to kill you the sight of it will not stop them. It will only make them prepare more carefully.”

He stood as far from me as he could without leaving the area behind the screen. He seemed to enjoy our training even less than standing like a statue outside my doors. If he were not bound to do as I said, I was certain that he would exit my chambers as fast as his stiff legs could carry him.

“Your Highness, you will not help yourself this way.”

“Not until you help me will I be able to help myself. We both witnessed all I know of using a dagger.”

“Your teeth served you better.”

“They did not serve me well enough, or I would not be standing here. Do not argue with me any longer. I do not
ask
for your help, I
command
it.”

“Very well. Please sheathe the dagger, Your Majesty.”

I slid it back in. Before I could fully withdraw my hand from the sleeve of my gown, Erez said, “No, that is not necessary.”

I looked at him. Did he think telling me to sheathe the dagger would be the end of our lesson? “We are not done.”

“No, we are not,” he agreed. “Unsheathe it.”

I had not even tightened my grip on the dagger in order to pull it from my sleeve when a shadow fell upon me. Suddenly dust, horses, and the cries of a hundred girls surrounded me. Though it was hard to speak with the dust rising off the road, I could not stop the pleas from flooding out my mouth and onto my lips.
Please, please, ple—