Esther (5 page)

No man who is not my husband ought to touch me this way, and this man is not only a stranger but also a gentile. It should not feel good to be touched by him.

I stepped away, my heart stuttering in my chest. The Faravahar rested heavily upon my breast. Could this figurine of a false god keep me safer than the One God?
And what will the One God think if He sees this around my neck?

I turned to face him. “Thank you, Erez.” I reached back and undid my mother's rosette necklace. “Will you also take this, and give it to a man in Shushan? I want him to know I am well.”

Erez narrowed his eyes. “What man is this?”

“Mordecai. I live—I
used
to live—with him. When he heard that the king was gathering virgins he sent me from the heart of Shushan. He thought I would be safer outside the palace city.”

“Mordecai the Jew? The one who keeps the king's accounts?”

“He is my cousin. Before my father died, he asked Mordecai to watch over me.”

“I will make certain he gets it.” Erez dropped the necklace into his pocket. “And now we must return to the line.” He went to Cyra. Instead of swooping her up he knelt beside her. He put a hand beneath her nostrils and then put his head to her heart.

“Esther,” he said, turning to face me, “you must be strong. Though you did all you could to save her, your friend is gone.”

Erez took Cyra's head scarf and spread the blood upon it, turning it from blue to an uneven purple. “It is a girl in a blue head scarf who Dalphon said would not return to the line,” he said. “You will wear this one.”

He did not mention retying my wrists together and I did not remind him.

I tried not to cry as he put Cyra over the back of his horse. His words echoed in my head.
You must be strong, you must be strong, you must be strong
 . . .

“Ride with us,” he said.

“How will I do that?”

He repositioned his bow and arrows so they hung from his shoulder instead of across his back and held out his hand. I only hesitated for an instant before grasping it. His hand was steady and it felt good to hold it. “You will have to sit sidesaddle,” Erez said. “To maintain your . . . proof of virtue.”

There was not much room between him and where Cyra lay across the horse's flanks. He shifted forward so I could squeeze into the saddle behind him.

I had never ridden on a horse, and I had never been so close to a man. I pressed my side against him to steady myself, and at the horse's first unsteady step I put an arm around his waist. My heart was beating so hard I was afraid he might feel it through his armor. With the other hand I held on to Cyra.

I wanted to beg him to turn around and return Cyra and me to the village. But I knew it would do no good to beg. I was going to the palace, and Cyra was going to the dakhma.

Please God, do not place so much suffering before me again, unless You have given me the power to stop it.

I cannot go on
had been Cyra's refrain. When I slid down from Erez's horse and was tied again to the line, Cyra's words walked with me in her place. I finally knew how she felt. I wanted to be strong, but it takes strength to hold on to hope, and her death had left me little.
How could I have let her die?

Before we reached Shushan the sole of my left sandal ripped.
Perhaps this is how I will die, from a torn sandal.
My foot grew so hot that several times I almost dropped to my knees. When I heard the market not far ahead, I did not know whether to be overjoyed or to despair. We had entered Shushan
.
If I squinted up over the market square, I would see the king's huge palace looming just beyond it.

It would not be much farther.

Voices boomed in the market square. Mordecai had often said that no deal was made in fewer than two hundred words, and that the best merchants' voices could travel half a day's journey in front of them. If a merchant could not send his voice through a crowd he would not survive in the capital. His only hope would be to peddle his wares from village to village.

While I had always hated how my ears rung after going to the market, at that moment I would gladly welcome the ringing if only I could return home with it, and wait, as I had each day, for Mordecai to come back from the palace to eat the food I had prepared for him. Peeling pomegranates, chopping figs, kneading bread, milking the goat and cleaning his pen now seemed like great pleasures. I thought longingly of my almond honey cakes. Dipped in rosewater syrup they were Mordecai's favorite dessert. I envied the girl who had made a batch a few days before, as though she were someone other than me.

As the march got closer to the market, I kept my head down. I could hear merchants shouting the praises of their wares:

“Look here!” a man with a Nubian accent yelled. “Genuine ivory combs adorned with ostrich feathers! Priceless treasures, yet I will give them away for two sigloi each.”

“You will give them away if the price is right, eh?” a local merchant asked. “I have vases like those in the palace—handles decorated with winged ibex—for only a few more sigloi than those
genuine
ivory combs.”

“Who should spend his sigloi on vases when right here I have beaded curtains that will make every woman who enters a room beautiful?” a man with an Indian accent called out. “Men, string them from one wall to the other and turn your hut into a palace with many rooms. Women, hang them in your huts, and you will receive all of your husband's love, and gifts even more valuable than that.”

“I will sell you what no other vendor will,” another merchant yelled. “I offer you courage and long life. Look here! A saber engraved with a man hunting a giant tiger. The length will give you the reach of a god and valor beyond measure.”

I had been looking at a trail of blood in front of me, where one of the girls' feet was losing a battle against the ground. But when I heard the sound of cart wheels, I glanced up. Canopies of bright red, indigo, and gold streamed behind the merchants' wooden stalls as they made way for the march.
Will I never see any of this again?
I knew that the only women allowed out of the palace were the ones who became concubines to the king's army and traveled behind the soldiers.

If I could run, it would be a short journey to Mordecai's hut.

Can I run?
I had taken so much for granted. Only a few days ago, before Mordecai sent me out to the country, I had been in the market. I had sifted absently through pomegranates, wild plums, and cherries whose juices I had never yearned for as deeply as I did now.

Now I was returning as a captive.

Except that I had decided I could not allow the chance at freedom to pass me by, even if the chance was small and the price for failure steep. The only way I would know if I could run was to push off the ground and see what came of it.

The rope scratched my flesh as I forced it over my knuckles and down the length of my fingers. I draped it over my wrists.

Most of the soldiers had ridden to the front to clear the marketplace—I did not hear more than a few horses in back of the line. As soon as we got to the emptied market I would run. I would force my bloody feet to carry me through the merchants, past the modest mud huts beyond, and finally to the row of larger huts made of glazed bricks where I had lived with Mordecai. The Immortals' horses would be too large to follow.

I looked to the side of the road, let the rope drop, and pushed off the ground.

I had only taken a few steps when I stumbled and fell onto my hip. Even before I looked up I felt eyes piling on top of me. I pulled my head scarf down to hide as much of my face as possible and stood. My feet still burned and now my hip burned as well. Perhaps I could not run, but if I could quickly walk into the merchants and lose myself among them I might still find my way home.

A horse rode up next to me and my head scarf was yanked from my head. Parsha's huge honey-colored eyes stared down at me. “A mouse is small but runs quickly. An elephant moves slowly but is not easily brought down. I was hoping you would be like some combination of these, but that after much chase I would bring you down anyway.” He affected a sigh. “You are a great disappointment. You have left me bored and I will not forgive you for it. Now you will walk uncovered through this crowd, tied to the back of my horse.”

I could no longer keep the despair from my voice. “Why?” If I were not so parched I knew that tears would have streamed down my naked face.
“Why would you do such a thing to me?”

“Because I am Parshandatha, firstborn of the empire's foremost adviser and nobleman Haman, and I can.”

If I'd had a dagger in my hand, I would have summoned the strength to plunge it into his heart. I felt the power of my hatred. It gave me strength. “If you are firstborn, why is it
Dalphon
who is an officer?”

“Because he was quicker to take up the spear of a fallen officer than I. And this is as it should be. The officer is the man everyone's eyes are upon. But me, born only one moment sooner than Dalphon, I always do exactly as I please.” He turned the head scarf over in his palm and held it out to me. “And now it will please me to give this back to you.”

When I reached for it he ripped it in two and let it fall to the ground.

“My father did not rid the empire of Queen Vashti so that a peasant could be installed in her place. My cousin Halannah will be queen. If not, the girl who thwarts her will suffer more than anyone has ever suffered before.”

Queen Vashti has committed an offense not only against Your Majesty but also against all the officials and against all the peoples in all the provinces of King [Xerxes]. For the queen's behavior will make all wives despise their husbands.

—Book of Esther 1:16, 17

Only a few weeks before I was kidnapped by the soldiers, Mordecai had told me of the feast king Xerxes held in the third year of his reign—the one that led to Vashti's exile. He had been teaching me to read, and he had brought home a scroll of parchment from the palace. We each held one side open upon the high table where Mordecai usually pored over numbers late into the night.

In the middle of a sentence I was reading, a long number-filled sentence about taxes collected from the eastern provinces, Mordecai let go of the scroll. It coiled away from his hand like a snake that has been poked with a sharp stick.

“Hadassah,” he said quietly. He did something he had done only a few times before: he looked directly at me. He was a head taller than me, but because he stooped, his eyes were level with mine. They were shiny in the glow of the oil lamp that sat upon the table.

“There is a terrible story I must tell you. All the more terrible because it is true. It is more important for you to know than any palace record you will find upon a scroll.”

He was twenty-four, only ten years older than me, but people often assumed he was my father. Indeed this is how I thought of him. I assumed he thought of me as a daughter.

He had been the king's accountant from a young age, and possessed none of the fancifulness of youth. He had a close-cropped beard in the Persian fashion. His brown eyes were small and tired from looking all day at numbers. His lips were perpetually pursed in thought, thoughts he never shared.

Every once in a while, though, he did like to tell a good tale. But this one seemed to stick in his throat. “I do not like to burden you,” he said.

I gently pushed the scroll aside, out of Mordecai's reach, so he would not be able to resume our lesson. “If you do not continue I will be burdened by thoughts of what is too terrible for you to tell me.”

“A couple of years ago, Xerxes feasted all the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, for one hundred eighty days. I was amongst these men, but I was not one of them.”

“Because you are a Jew?”

Mordecai flinched. We did not speak of our religion, even when we were alone. I was not sure why, as it seemed everyone already knew he was a Jew. In fact, in the marketplace he was referred to as “Mordecai the Jew.”

He continued, “Because they were merrier and more drunk than those responsible for a kingdom should be. They drank wine out of golden vessels until they passed out upon beds of silver and gold. Each time they woke they resumed their drinking with even greater zeal than before.

“The banquet was a celebration of the king's abundant riches of food—meat from over twenty different animals, wines from every province. The men enjoyed all of it while girls from across the empire danced for them. Girls barely older than you, Hadassah.”

I flushed.

“After this banquet he held another one for seven days in the palace garden, and all the men of the palace, high and low alike, attended. Again girls danced for them. The girls' hips and the naked flesh of their stomachs helped build the men's appetites for the women the king provided them. But they could not quell the men's appetite for the sight of the queen. On the seventh day, a cry came from one of the gold couches, ‘Vashti!' Soon others joined their voices to the first man's, and their unified cry was so great that the alabaster columns seemed to shake with their desire.

“She was the most prized of all the king's possessions, and every man suddenly realized that it was, after all, her that he had come to see.”

I had heard of her legendary beauty. She was a Chaldean renowned for an abundance of womanly assets divided by a small waist. Her beauty was spoken of by men and women alike. Sometimes men who were caught trying to sneak into the palace confessed they had been attempting to catch a glimpse of her. Occasionally Xerxes allowed one of them to see her before hanging him upon the gallows.