Esther (9 page)

Hegai laughed, delighted. “You may mistake me for the king, but Halannah has spoken true. I cannot enjoy you as he will. Yet you will find I am far more demanding. You are wise to show me respect.” His gaze moved over the girls. “Almost all of you will spend one night with the king, and the rest of your days with women and eunuchs.”

The lioness yawned again, this time roaring loudly as she did so. A golden vase sitting along the edge of the room trembled slightly.

“Take off your clothes and follow the servants to the baths,” Hegai said. When we did not immediately do as he had commanded, he continued, “Do not flatter yourselves that you have anything worthy of even the slightest crumb of modesty. The king has many palaces and you are in the greatest of them—the greatest palace the world has ever known. You are filthy and underfed. You have lice or you had them once, perhaps ‘once' for your whole lives. You have stepped on floors covered in filth, dust, dung, and the footprints of diseased children who have since died. If the king saw you now he would ask the soldiers to gather another batch.”

Servants began prodding us and pulling at our clothes. The gray of the tiles was quickly covered by a sea of blue, purple, green, and yellow as scarves and tunics fell to the floor. The girls were now a mass of flesh, some of it sand colored, some of it the color of clay, and some the color of soft wet earth. They looked like one shifting, trembling throng.

I let everything I wore fall to the floor, except the necklace Erez had given me, which I hid in my mouth. I needed one thing in the world that was mine. It tasted of the road, something I thought I would never walk upon again.

Hegai ordered the servants to bring wine. “This will ease what is to come,” he said. “You are going to be in a beauty contest, one that will take a year of preparation and will determine your fate.”

Do I want to win? And if so, who will tell me how?
I did not know what kings were like. Other than what Mordecai had told me, all I knew of Xerxes were the exaggerations spread at the market square: He was the tallest man in the world, the most beautiful, the strongest. Few people ever actually saw him. He sat behind a screen whenever he dined with his officials, and he invited only a handful of people a year to come closer. To go in to see him without being invited was a crime punishable by death.

As we were prodded into different rooms containing tubs of washing water, I had to pass by the she-lion. If a girl quickened her pace or knocked into another girl in an attempt to leave a wide berth, the she-lion's tail began to lash back and forth. She was huge. Even her paws. “If you show fear she is more likely to attack you,” Hegai said. “Animals cannot tell the difference between fear and aggression.” I looked only at the goblet a servant handed me as I took slow, steady steps away from the beast.

Instead of sating my thirst, drinking seemed to increase it. I drank deeply, being careful to keep the Faravahar safely tucked into my cheek, and then I held my goblet out for the nearest servant woman to refill. The sweetness traveled down my throat, through my chest, and filled my belly.

A new lightness was flooding my head and somehow expanding even though already it seemed to fill my whole skull. Around this blissful glow, I saw the smoke rising up over the harem courtyard. A little part of me knew I should be sad, that something irrevocable and terrible was happening. Our clothes were being burned. Unless one of the other girls had hidden something as I had, none of them had anything left. As I entered the baths I moved my tongue against the Faravahar.
I must never lose this, or I will have nothing.

Perhaps to distract us from the smoke, a servant said, “These baths rival the late king Darius's at Persepolis. You will be as clean as polished marble soon.” She gently placed a hand upon my back and steered me toward a long line of bronze washing tubs. Before I could stop her, the woman took the goblet from my hand and helped me into the bathtub. “Just rest,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and pressing me back.

I tried to resist. I wanted my goblet. But I also wanted to conceal my private places, and so I did not move my hands from where they covered me.

“Even with all the wine you have drunk you feel the need to cover yourself? You must dispense with thinking of your body as your own.”

Without meaning to, I started to pray.

The servant pressed her hand over my mouth.
“Hush. Do not speak aloud of God. Just lie still.”
She knelt beside me and began scrubbing my neck with washing powder and a rough cloth.

After a moment she put down the cloth and pressed a calloused fingertip next to my eye.
“No tears.”
I had not realized I was crying. The servant gently lifted a lock of hair out of the way so she could clearly see my face. The wine had not caused me to forget that touch is the purest testimony of a person's feelings. Hers was gentle.

“There is no cause for tears, your cuts will heal in time. As for Halannah, it is true that she is the king's favorite, but she will never be queen. If Xerxes meant to make her queen he would have done so already. After learning that he was rounding up all the virgins and would take a queen from among them, Halannah drank up the harem wine and great quantities of opium tea. She did not eat for many days.

“She will spend the rest of her youth as a wine-soaked harem girl. When the king is done with her she will be a servant to the new, younger harem girls. She will clean the chamber pots just as I do now. One day she may even clean your chamber pot.”

It took me a moment to realize that the servant thought I was crying about my cuts or Halannah, and not all that I had lost. She had forgotten everything outside the palace walls.

“Until then, though, you will have to be careful. She does not like you. If you do not win Hegai's favor and secure his protection, it will not be safe for you to sleep.” She pressed the cloth so hard against my neck that my breath stopped. “Look at me.”

Her skin was wrinkled and thin. The bridge of her nose was slightly crooked, as though long ago it had been broken and no one had attended to it. Her eyes were hooded and sad.

“I did not please the eunuch in charge at the time I was brought here. He gave me to the soldiers, and beneath them I grew old. It took no more than a few years of that rough life to put bitterness in my heart and then it made its way onto my tongue. Not even the toughest soldier can withstand a woman who mocks him with laughter. Now I will spend the rest of my days as a servant.”

“I am sorry, mistress.”

“I am a slave. Do not call me mistress.”

“I do not know what to call you.”

“I was born Ruti, but now I am ‘woman' or ‘servant.' Do not seem too familiar with me.” She shoved my goblet into my hand so hard that wine splashed over the edge and onto my stomach. “And stop crying. It is not yet time to pity yourself. You still have a chance.”

I kept the Faravahar against my cheek as I drank. I thought of Erez's kind eyes, and the strength in his arms when he had helped me onto his horse.

“There is the little smile that will win Hegai's favor,” Ruti said as she gently patted my hand.

After she had scrubbed me from head to toe she told me to stand. She looked at me for a moment before she pressed a towel over my body. “The scratches upon your skin will heal. You are clean as a baby, and beautiful enough to be a queen.”

The floor seemed to undulate beneath me. Still I was strengthened by her faith in me. “Thank you.”

Next I was escorted to another room that held only a table with a large pillow on it.

“Think of palm trees, a soft breeze, the wine you have drunk and the wine you will drink soon,” Ruti whispered in my ear. She pushed me back onto the pillow. Wine sloshed down my arm, but when Ruti tried to take the goblet I tightened my fingers around it. If they were going to clean my teeth I would need a place to hide the winged man.

After hot wax was used to remove all the hair from my body, Hegai's own attendant eunuchs gathered around the table and Hegai himself came to stand near my feet. I sat up to look for his she-lion. I was relieved to see that Hegai had not brought her. Ruti took both of my hands in her own.

“Lean back and close your eyes.”

I did as she ordered and soon felt fingers upon my thighs. Ruti held my hands tighter and I pressed the Faravahar hard against the inside of my cheek. I pressed until I tasted blood, so I could focus only on the pain in my mouth.

Ruti yelled at one of the eunuchs, “Not so hard! You will ruin her for the king!”

I could no longer raise my head. Each part of me had become unaccountably heavy.

Finally Hegai announced, “She is untouched.” This seemed a strange thing to say, as I had never been touched so much in my life. “Bring her to the king's harem.”

“
Carry her,
you mean,” someone muttered. And then I could no longer keep hold of my goblet. I heard it clatter onto the marble floor, and then I heard nothing.

I woke in the dark. A lamp burned somewhere nearby, giving off just enough light for me to see a ceiling that was not the simple flat expanse of clay that had been above my straw mattress in Mordecai's hut. It was so high above me that I had to squint to see that it was made of polished blue and red stone. The walls were full of bulls, lions, and winged men.

The day before came back to me and my heart started to pound so hard that I could not get enough air. With my tongue I felt for the Faravahar. My cheek was full of cuts and nothing else. I groped in the darkness beside me, hoping the winged man had fallen onto the mattress.

My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. It was an uneven darkness. One piece was blacker than the rest. It sat beside me.

I screamed and it folded over me as if my voice had woken it. Hair, necklaces, and breasts swayed above me. Fingers lightly touched my thigh.

I slapped at the hands with all my strength as they yanked my tunic up.

“Hit me again, peasant, and I will not be so gentle.” It was Halannah's voice.

Had Halannah taken my Faravahar? I swallowed back the bile rising into my throat. “What do you want?”

“That is a foolish question. Does a man with only one jewel wonder why he is being robbed?”

I knew the Faravahar was not the jewel Halannah spoke of. I turned my head to the side and vomited.

“You do not make this pleasant,” Halannah said. Her fingers dug into my legs and she yanked one of them to the side.

I looked up in time to see another, smaller woman-shape of darkness come up behind Halannah. The shadow-woman brought something down upon Halannah's head and Halannah let out a startled cry and fell on top of me.

“Out,
demoness
!” Ruti cried, throwing the pitcher to the ground and knocking Halannah off me.

“What goes on here?” Bigthan asked as he rushed in.

“What kind of guard are you, who does not protect the girls Hegai has instructed you to watch over?” Ruti gazed at his wrists in the light of the oil lamp he held.
“One paid with a portion of the trinkets Halannah is given.”

Now I could see other girls and another eunuch hurrying toward us. I did not want anyone to know of Halannah's hand upon my thigh and also I was afraid for Ruti.

“Halannah came running toward me with a pitcher,” I said to Bigthan, “but she fell before she could hit me with it. You can see she has vomited here. Ruti came to clean up Halannah's mess.”

“Your tale was believable until you said Halannah vomited. Her body has not wished to rid itself of wine since shortly after she arrived here three years ago.”

“She owes you no explanation,” Ruti cried. “Take this demoness from here before I decide to tell Hegai of your corruption.”

Once we were alone Ruti knelt to clean the floor. The room was not whirling quite so violently as before so I tried to help. Ruti waved me away. “But it is my fault,” I said. “I drank too much wine.”

“You will get used to the wine. Or you will lose your treasure.”

“Please do not call it my treasure.”

“Halannah was trying to ruin you for the king and she will try again.”

I knew this, but hearing it aloud caused me to cringe.

“Stop that, or you will become wrinkled before meeting the king,” Ruti said. “You need every drop of beauty you possess for your night with him.”

I knew it was childish to pity myself, but still I said, “If my beauty is the reason I am here, it has done me little good.”

“Do not pretend you do not cherish your face. Like all foolish girls I am sure you dreamed of a good marriage. Whatever boy you might have desired in your village no longer exists. Nothing outside the palace walls does—not even this.” Ruti held up the Faravahar. I reached for it, but Ruti moved it out of reach.

“
God
does not exist?” I asked.

She did not respond.

“Please, it is important to me.”

“It should not be. Do not waste another moment thinking of this trinket. All your thoughts must go toward your survival.” She dropped the Faravahar into her tunic pocket. “Your beauty will not save itself.”

When my strength returned I would find a way to get it back.

“After I clean your face, I will pick and whiten your teeth, then give you a rinse that you should use whenever Hegai might enter the harem. You must win his favor. He can protect you better than I can.”

“How will I win his favor?”

“By making him feel like something he can never be again. A man.”

I waited for Ruti to explain, but instead she said, “You are too alone. I will not always be able to rush in and hit the drunken demoness on the head.”

“Why did you protect me? Halannah will surely take revenge upon you.”