Esther (40 page)

He sent for Haman, and told his guard, “You are about to be allowed the chance to prove yourselves.”

He looked to my guard. “Erez,” he cried, “come and let me look upon the face of my most skilled and loyal soldier.” I could not help thinking,
my most loyal soldier
. I did not like that the king had called for him by name and I did not like the sight of Erez kneeling before the king. As Xerxes looked at Erez he seemed to be contemplating something, and I did not doubt the something was his own safety. Would he take Erez from me?

Another woman might have been heartbroken when the king waved a hand to dismiss her. I was relieved. The king had left me Erez, at least for the time being. As Erez led my escort back to my chambers I could not take my eyes off him. I feared that if I did, he would no longer be there when I looked again.

A few days later, Mordecai came once more to my chambers to tell me what had transpired after I warned the king of the plot on his life. When the nobles came bearing gifts, an Indian magistrate had his servants present the king with red wine and a silk cushion upon which lay a golden goblet. The king insisted that the bearer of such a fine gift be the first to drink from it, and that this would make it an even more cherished possession once it was his. The Indian servants who bore the gifts approached the magistrate with them. Everyone watched, unmoving. The magistrate's hands began to shake. He dropped to his knees.

“I do not know what this is about, Your Majesty,” he had cried, “but I sense that something is not right with the goblet. Surely you cannot think I knew of any plot, or I would not have presented it to you, knowing I could not escape unpunished. I am your most loyal subject and will do all I can to help you find and punish anyone who wishes harm upon you.”

Without removing his eyes from the magistrate, the king had commanded the servants, “Fill the goblet the smallest amount possible.”

“I will drink from the goblet,” the man had cried. “But please, Your Majesty, if you are going to fill it at all, fill it all the way and do not make this go on any longer than it must.”

The magistrate did not seem to know it was the goblet and not the wine which was poisoned, or perhaps he was pretending,
Mordecai told me.
But the king does not use precision when cutting out an infection. He swings wildly with a great blade.

“Only when you have answered our questions will you be allowed the mercy of a quick death,” the king had told the magistrate. He had waved his hand and soldiers seized the magistrate and his servants and dragged them away.

It was recorded in the book of annals that Mordecai, the king's accountant, had bravely come forward to warn the king of the threat upon His Majesty's life. The executions of Bigthan and Teresh were also recorded. But not the sight of them. Everyone in the palace was made to go to the central courtyard and look upon them. Fifty people hung upon gallows. I had not even considered that the king would have so many gallows. Had they just been built for the occasion or were they transported from somewhere beyond the palace?

Are they kept on hand, always at the ready?

Hathach must have sensed my dismay. “His life is worth many more than these, Your Majesty.”

The traitors' heads hung like those of rag dolls. Their gray, terror-filled faces made it hard to look upon them. My heart ached when I noticed a narrow path through the grime on Bigthan's face, from his eye to the side of his chin, where a tear must have fallen. But I kept all emotion from my face. I knew I could show no pity.

I tried not to allow all of my emotion to show upon my face each time I looked at Erez.

Unlike the king, whom I rarely saw, I saw Erez every day, and I did not have to pretend anything when I was with him. Well, sometimes I had to pretend I was not overcome with the urge to be closer to him than I was. When he stood guard outside my chambers I wished he were inside. When he stood guard inside my chambers I wished he stood near me. When he stood near me, I wished he was nearer still.

I never knew what a fitful sleeper I was until Hegai finally returned with the plate that fastened over my palm. He apologized that it had taken so long to procure. “It was difficult to perfect it, and this is not something that can be any other way.” A little blade was welded between my second and middle finger, like a tiny sixth finger that reached just past the lower knuckle of the middle one. The hinge the welder had tried did not open quickly enough to satisfy Hegai, and so he had ordered it removed. The blade would always be poised to defend me, he said. Unfortunately, it did not match the gold plate, because gold is too soft to cut a man cleanly. Instead it was silver. There was no way to hide it.

“Thank you, Hegai. With Xerxes in Persepolis, leaving the palace in the hands of his chamberlains, including the one we like least, I need this more than I would like to.”

“Your Majesty, I am not without influence, and Haman is only one of many officials—he does not rule here. Not yet. But I had the blade sharpened nonetheless.”

It was small, too small to drive all the way through a man's heart. I would have to ask Erez how I should use it to defend myself during an attack. It looked harmless. But the morning after wearing it to bed I awoke tangled in shredded silk.

“Your Majesty, perhaps a blade is not a good nighttime companion,” Ruti said.

“I must wear the blade when I am most likely to need it. I wanted a weapon that someone who would come to kill me in the night would not think to look for, one he would not know of until it was too late.”

“Well if I cannot dissuade you from wearing it, perhaps I can advise you to have happier dreams, ones that do not toss you about so violently. What did you dream last night, Your Majesty?”

“I cannot remember.”

Sometimes I dreamed that instead of Erez breaking into the hut to kidnap me, the kidnapper was a shadow whose face I could not see. As it bent over me, something warm dripped onto my face and its bitter smell choked me. The drip became a stream. The shadow was gushing blood. “Your flinch is not enough, Hadassah,” it whispered. “You will flinch with your whole body when I tell everyone who you truly are. The king himself will wrench his seed from your womb.” And then I saw the shadow's eye. It was Parsha's, and it leered down at me with all the hatred I had seen in it as he was dragged from the throne room. I knew that this time, if I did not escape, I would not be taken to a palace, I would not drink wine. I would not see a kind face ever again. I knew I must make certain to die in the struggle. I knew also that Ruti had lied when she told me “Death is the only true harm.” It was preferable to whatever Parsha would do to me.

“You cannot remember at all?” Ruti asked. She lowered her voice. “Your sheets are ripped apart as though you have lain with a demon.”

I also dreamed of Erez. In one dream he was riding away from me on a horse. I tried to run after him but my legs were no better than they had been over a year and a half ago when I first heard the Immortals riding closer through the night.
Please do not run away from me, Erez. I cannot chase you.

I was not sure which of these dreams I'd had.

I could see by her eyes that she was frowning. “You are taking years off my life. That blade is doing little good—the only one it is hurting is me.” She looked at my stomach. “I fear one day it will also hurt you.”

The next morning I awoke to feel something warm and wet upon my arm. When I touched it my fingers came away bloody. I sat up and started screaming.

Erez rushed into my bedchambers. He took a cloth from the table near my bed and pressed it to my arm. I hit his hand away.

“Hurry!” I cried. “There is an intruder.”

“I stood guard all night. No one entered your chambers.”

Erez lifted my right hand and gently pulled torn pieces of silk from the blade. The tip was covered in fresh blood. He kept it cradled between us, as though there was something he wanted me to see. I was sitting up in the robe I wore to bed, my face naked of cosmetics. This did not make me feel ugly the way it would have with the king.

“How am I to guard you from yourself, my queen? You have cut your left shoulder.”

“The blade is so sharp I did not feel it.”

“It is a shallow wound. You are lucky.”

“If the wound I made is shallow, how will this blade protect me from my enemies?” I took my hand from his. “It was your idea for me to have a blade fixed to the plate. Did you want me to get a weapon that could not really hurt someone?”

“Something I have learned, Your Majesty: you cannot be dangerous to someone else without also being dangerous to yourself.” He stared pointedly at my shoulder. “Especially in the dark. Yours is not the least nor the most dangerous blade.”

“You do not think I can be trusted with a real weapon?”

For a moment I was so angry I could not even gather together the words with which to reprimand him. He gazed at the wound.

“I forbid you to look any more at my arm,” I cried. “I have not forgotten I cut myself, you do not need to remind me by continually looking at it. A man should not resort to arguing with his gaze the way women and eunuchs do.”

I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. They were not words I would have spoken, and yet I had. Where had they come from?

“Forgive me,” Erez said. “I will be more particular about how I tell you what you must know.”

“Do not mock me.”

“Darkness obscures everything a man puts between himself and his soul. It makes some men cowards, some men foolish, and others brave. But it makes all men more dangerous.”

“Then it is good I am not a man.”

“If you want to become truly willing to take a life, you will have to leave parts of yourself behind. I would not wish this upon anybody I care for. I watch over you so you do not have to become someone else.”

My anger wavered. I tried not to show it. I wanted to look deeper into his eyes to reassure myself that he really did not want me to be anyone other than who I was already.