Esther (7 page)

I thought of Mordecai's tale as I watched the son of the king's cruelest and most ambitious adviser place a rope around my wrists and tie it with a bowline knot. Parsha smelled like he had not taken a wet cloth to his neck and underarms in many days of journeying beneath the pounding sun. His nails scratched my already raw skin as he hooked his fingers over the rope and pulled me to stand. I was glad for my cousin's long hours in the palace, hours that did not allow him to be out in the road except very early and very late. I did not want him to see me at the mercy of a soldier. He might blame himself for not sending me farther from the city.

Parsha got back on his horse, and the rope tugged upon my wrists. I began to march.

I did not raise my eyes from the ground. I felt alone except for the Faravahar against my breast. I hoped that if God were watching, He would not look at the Faravahar, but at all of our suffering, and that He would bring it to an end. An end other than death.

Just when the humiliation seemed too great to bear, my feet went out from under me and my knees and elbows opened upon the road. Because I had torn off strips of my tunic to bandage Cyra, it was too short to shield my legs.

“You brought this upon yourself,” Parsha called down to me. “You are lucky this is your only punishment for trying to escape.”

After I managed to rise to my feet again, I felt a calloused hand gently squeeze my shoulder. I knew by the Nisaean horse that had ridden up beside me that it was Erez's hand. The kindness of his touch diminished my anger and brought me more pain than my burning knees or the rope around my wrists. I wanted only to be angry. If I allowed myself to feel sadness—for Cyra, my parents, my own future—I might not have the strength to go on.

I do not yet know how to run on bloodied feet, but I will learn. And then, one day, I will find a way to have Dalphon and Parsha killed. Them and the man who pulled me from my bed and forced me into this nightmare.

It filled me with shame that men I had bargained with only days before watched as I was marched behind Parsha's horse. Each day Mordecai had dropped silver coins into my palm and sent me to the market to choose lamb and goat meat, jars of honey and fresh goats' milk. I had freely haggled with men from all over the empire. Now I was conscious not only of the rope around my wrists but also of my sweat-soaked tunic. It was ragged at the bottom where I had ripped off strips to bandage Cyra's wounds, and my bloodied knees were as naked as my head. Humiliation kept my gaze lowered upon the hooves of Parsha's horse.

On the ground lay evidence of the haste with which the market had closed. I stepped over a broken pitcher but could not avoid some smashed dates that stuck to the bottom of my sandals and to my left foot where the sandal had worn through. I saw swathes of yellow and blue silk that only yesterday would have seemed like treasures too good to leave behind.

I also saw, out of the corner of my eye, that Erez had stopped to subdue a man who must have been the father of one of the virgins. The man was screaming, “She is only twelve!”

“Then she is the king's twelve-year-old.”

“She is betrothed!”

“And she will be fatherless if you do not turn around and quietly walk away.”

I remembered what Erez had said:
I regret almost everything I have done since drawing back the bow and killing the panther. Yet all that I did for Persia I would do again.

One of the merchants gathered along the side of the road waiting for the market to reopen said, “
These
are the prettiest virgins in the empire?”

I recognized the voice. It was Arshan the rug seller. He had sold me four crimson rugs and had his sons carry them to Mordecai's hut for me. The rugs now hung on the walls of what had been my home.

I did not let my shame keep me from turning to glare at him.
It has been a long walk, you soulless boar.
Arshan must have felt my eyes upon him, because he looked back at me, and whatever it was he saw silenced him. Did he recognize me? Would he talk about me with the other merchants, with neighbors, with Mordecai, who would now have to come to the market himself each day until he took on a servant?

Erez rode up beside me again and leaned down with a piece of purple silk. I did not have to ask him what to do with it. I lowered my head and clumsily tied the fabric over my hair with my bound hands, pulling it low on my brow as though it were possible to hide.

Ahead something was starting to block out the sun. I looked up just enough to see the girls ahead of me leaving the sunlight and moving into a shadow—the shadow of a giant stone arch.

In my haste to escape the merciless sun, I overtook Parsha. He pressed his foot against my back—not hard enough to push me over but just enough to let me know he could. He dropped the rope. “Watch this one!” I heard him call to another soldier.

I had seen Xerxes' palace many times. It was said that at least half the world's gold was housed inside, and it looked like no small amount was on the outside either. I would never again mistake the oddly colored sphinx, winged griffins, and bulls for decorations; they were a warning:
the gold and power of this palace are many thousand times greater than you
. Golden lions that had looked regal and graceful when I had gone to market each day now gazed upon me with scorn.

I gathered up the rope that hung from my wrists and pitched myself into the shadow of the arch as though the darkness had arms to catch me.

A hundred stairs loomed before me. By the tenth step I understood that the heat had penetrated my bones and the marrow inside them had caught fire and turned to ashes. What blood had not evaporated from my body seemed to have crusted in my veins.

And yet I continued to climb until finally I stood panting, with the others, in the colossal doorway to the king's gatehouse.

I was filled with a terrified awe. The hallway in front of me was wide enough for fifty men to walk through side by side. I knew that I was going to disappear down that hallway. Soon only the king's servants would see me, unless one day the king himself deigned to look at me. I would spend my days in the maze of rooms at the southern side of the palace, waiting for him to want me.

My fears came back to me like blades I had somehow managed to swallow but now felt tearing my stomach. The fear I'd had in the marketplace, that someone would see me, was replaced by the fear that no one outside of the palace would ever see me again. I wanted to turn around and scream at the merchants, even the one I had just glared at, “Look at me—at my eyes, my hair!” No husband would ever see them now.

I thought suddenly of Erez and how his eyes had widened when I'd yanked off my head scarf. He was still in the world, somewhere behind me. Maybe I had seen the last of him. But maybe I had not. Thinking of him gave me the strength to walk through the gatehouse without glancing at any of the rooms along each side of me. I put one foot in front of the other until I emerged into daylight again. I ignored the heat. I had decided I would ignore as many horrible things as possible. I would live if I could, I would fight if I had to, I would do whatever was necessary in order to hold on to my life no matter how much I would not like it.

We were herded around the northeast corner of the palace, through the doorway of a court larger than some villages. As I gazed around I had a wonderful realization:
Parsha and Dalphon could never raise a whip here
.
There are too many treasures.
Xerxes had not foregone the opportunity to display his victory over the Greeks. White stone men with no tunics on—spoils from Athens—stood all around. Beyond them, colorful statues of soldiers with spears were posted at even intervals along the perimeter of the room. I was startled when one of them coughed. Though the soldiers were as still as Greek statues, they were men, men who might cough at the dust we brought from the road or run after me should I try to escape. Despite the size of the room, I knew I was trapped.

I looked to the heavens, hoping for some sort of sign. Columns higher than twenty men held up a ceiling made of stone. I could not suppress a vision of it crashing down and crushing us the way the winemaker crushed grapes beneath his feet.

Dalphon's voice came from somewhere ahead of me, ordering the soldiers to untie the girls from the line. A soldier looked suspiciously at the rope I held in my hand. But he undid the bowline knot around my wrists and took it from me without a word.

“Come up here where we can see you,” Dalphon ordered us.

Parsha was suddenly beside me. “Did you not hear my little brother?”

My feet and legs were too tired from climbing up the stairs for me to shuffle any faster. I expected Parsha to prod me with his hand or foot as he had done before. I braced myself for the kick, but it did not come.

Instead he said, “Slowing your steps will not stop time.”

I smiled despite the aching in my body. “You cannot touch me here.”

“I told you I do what I want.” But he did not sound as confident as he had outside the palace.

I looked him full in the face, unafraid of him for the first time. My mother had once told me:
Be careful what you say, Hadassah. Being unkind drains the beauty from a person's eyes.
When I looked at Parsha's huge honey-colored eyes I could see that she had lied to me. “Farewell, Parsha,” I said.

“Maybe not. My cousin Halannah is the king's favorite, and she will skin you like a lamb being readied for a stew. We will see how the king likes you then. Perhaps you will end up in our barracks and we will come to know each other better.”

He laughed, and then
,
mercifully, fell back.

There were many more girls in the hall than there had been on the march. At least two hundred girls were ahead of me. There were girls from Ecbatana, Persepolis, Sardis, Nineveh, and Memphis, and a few other girls who must have naively visited Shushan at precisely the wrong time, or perhaps their families had heard of the royal decree and sent their girls here in the hopes they might be queen. The king would have his pick. It seemed many more girls were crying now than on the march. Perhaps they had not had the energy to cry then.

Little men walked amongst us. If they pointed at a girl, the soldiers separated her from the group. I looked at these girls, trying to figure out why they were being set apart. When I saw a girl with pale, desert-colored skin tuck her chin to her shoulder to hide a dark mole, I understood that I did not want any of the little men to point at me. The girl raised a hand to hide her face but it was too late. A little man pointed at her and a soldier directed her to another group of girls and a life that I would not have wished upon anyone.

One of the little men looked at me. When he walked on I took a deep breath. I could no longer tell what was greater—my fear, my anger, or my despair.
What sort of man would have so many girls torn from their homes for what little time he could spend with them?
I easily answered my question:
a king.
Already I hated him.

I desperately wanted to see a kind face. I turned back, hoping to see Erez. There were several soldiers, but none of them was him. Where had he gone? I reached my hand up and pressed the winged man Erez had given me hard against my chest. I was trying to make an imprint in case, like everything else, it was about to be taken from me.

We were herded south through the palace, and then down a long hall with no windows. I peeked over my shoulder at the slaves who followed us. They pushed towels over the floor with their backsides high in the air, wiping away the dust, sweat, and blood we left behind. We were led right and left and left and right and right and . . . I lost track.
I will never be able to find my way out.

I put my hand over my nose to keep out the stomach-churning blend of scents—roses, cloves, mimosa mixed with essence of musk, sandalwood, myrrh, and balsam. We had come to the door of the harem court.

The soldiers turned and started to walk back in the direction we had come, and the little men took their places. These men looked us over differently than the soldiers had—carefully, without seeming to want to get any closer. They wore robes of fine linen richly dyed with emerald green, deep blue, and crimson. Robes with perfectly groomed fringes. None had even the slightest hint of a mustache or beard, and no hair poked out from beneath their tall white turbans. They were bejeweled like the daughters of wealthy men. Chains and rings of silver and gold gleamed in the lamplight.

A small, chubby one in a crimson robe saw me staring. His head was too big for his body, and his belly pressed against his robe with the immovable hardness of a boulder. I was surprised when he came toward me, and even more surprised when he lifted his hand and I realized he was going to touch me. I did not know if I should let him.
Am I permitted to stop him?
Before I could decide he continued past.