Hadassah Covenant, The (47 page)

Then we were blamed for another threat—this time the most dangerous and unexpected as any in the empire’s history—the rebellion of Megabyzos and the King’s failure to foresee it. Megabyzos, the same general who had quelled the Egyptian rebellion by sweeping through a pacified Middle East, was one of the most celebrated noblemen and generals in the entire history of Persia, a veteran of Xerxes’ triumphant campaigns against the Greeks and even married to one of Xerxes’ daughters, the lovely Amytis. He had returned from his latest triumph in Egypt with several prisoners, including the chief rebel Inarus, who had begun his rebellion by helping kill the local satrap Achaemenes, one of Amestris’ other sons.

The Queen Mother, Xerxes’ previous wife Amestris, was enraged because Megabyzos had not punished the Greeks to her liking. After
all, they had been the collaborators of the man who had killed her boy. Initially, Artaxerxes did not allow her the revenge she sought, but after five years had permitted Amestris to crucify Inarus and kill several captive Athenians. Megabyzos, who had given his word that Inarus would not be killed, was unable to bear this humiliation and requested to be allowed to return from Artaxerxes’ court to Syria. This permission was granted. He returned to his satrapy and promptly, angrily, launched a full-scale rebellion against Artaxerxes and the Persian rule.

As soon as he did, matters instantly grew far worse for the Jews. The fact that Megabyzos was Satrap of the Province Beyond the River—home to Jerusalem—gave rise to the rumor that my countrymen’s malcontent had given the general’s rebellious yearnings solace, and inspiration was an egregious charge. That, in turn, gave the Samaritan enemies of the city another pretext to bombard Artaxerxes with dire warnings of an impending revolt.

It would have been a perfect time for another of our people to take the throne beside Artaxerxes. I have no doubt that you would have proven as popular and as able when crisis came as my daughter did.

But when it of course did not happen, I felt—or even more exactly, I
knew
—deep in my heart that G-d had another plan this time. In His immense creativity, He would use the lessons of before—only use them in a manner utterly new and fresh.

He did just that by turning us away from your unfortunate outcome to the person of an unlikely friend, one of our last allies left with any degree of influence over the King.

But let me start at the beginning.

While I was now resigned from the Persian Royal Palace, the office of the Exilarchy brought its own pressures. As the new leader of my exiled people, I felt close to despair over my inability to champion their cause more directly. When I had been an official in the palace, addressing an issue had been as easy as whispering a few words into the King’s ear, or even taking matters into my own hands and simply ordering that things be put aright.

Now in my new position, I had to carefully leverage my own waning
influence and maneuver, rather than order, matters into their proper state.

It had been that way with the City of our Fathers. Behind the scenes, I worked feverishly to help champion the scribe’s petition to the King. Then, when the expedition seemed imminent, I arranged for my daughter to increase chances for her own safety, not to mention fulfilling a lifelong dream, by accompanying the caravan. And for a time, it seemed things had worked perfectly. The scribe and his lawbook revived the story of our ancient Scriptures and the godly fervor of the city’s citizens, new and longstanding alike. At the same time, Ezra was a reasonable man, an opponent of radical partisanship who favored working faithfully within the existing empire rather than rebelling and fomenting some long-simmering nationalist fantasy. I knew how mighty Persia was. In fact, I was one of her leading and most illustrious citizens. So I had neither the desire nor the folly to defy her wrath. The Babylonian scribe was my flawless solution.

Then my daughter returned from her four-year sojourn in the City of our Fathers. You may not realize this, my dear, but you and your precarious state were the true reason she came back. Or at least the spoken reason she and I gave ourselves. I secretly suspect that despite its towering place in her prayers, the Eternal City and the primitive conditions had begun to wear on her. She seemed only too happy to return when she heard the awful news of your rejection by the King.

But when she first came back to us, I felt quite at ease that matters in Jerusalem were well in hand. Instead, I concerned myself only with the welfare of my people here in Persepolis.

That state of affairs soon traced a precipitous turnaround. Now in a very short time, the Eternal City had reemerged as the axis of all the risk and danger in the modern Hebrew world.

Now without hearing my constant counsel against it, Artaxerxes capitulated to our enemies both here and our ancestral homeland, and issued a halfhearted order to halt all work on the city’s rebuilding.

To make matters worse, the emperor’s official disapproval served to embolden the city’s local enemies. The foes of my people and their regional allies promptly attacked the city again, killed many of her citizens, and reduced her re-emerging structure back into rubble once more. Oh, how glad I am that my daughter was no longer there to see
the new devastation or to fall victim to such brutality!

The news struck my daughter and me as yet another reassertion of life’s essentially bleak and ruthless nature. G-d, of course, being temporarily banished from the picture.

I remember our sitting together, watching the setting sun reduce the Atabana’s columns to huge silhouettes, and wondering why I had tried so long and so foolishly to resist life’s ultimate brutality. After all my efforts, my people’s plight was no better or worse than before, and your own prospects had been dashed alongside ours.

“G-d, would you have mercy on us and lift your judgment from us?” I remember praying. “Will you please restore us to the glow of your sight? Return us to your favor?”

I felt weary. I felt like a foolish old man who had wasted away his years in the pursuit of idle, airy fantasies. Who had allowed his hopes to rise and fall on the winds like a sparrow before a hurricane. Beside me, my beloved daughter could only stare in the distance like a hollow-eyed survivor of some war, holding my hand tightly.

I turned at the sound of someone approaching from behind us.

It was our friend the royal cupbearer. He prepared to sit down with us, his face pallid and drawn.

“I just thought I would come and confirm for you the very worst of what you have heard,” he began, his voice full of woe. “You see, my youngest brother just returned with several of his friends who had traveled to Jerusalem to deliver some construction supplies. He validated the most bloodcurdling of the descriptions you’ve heard. ‘Our beloved city has indeed been laid waste,’ he said in the voice of one with no hope. ‘Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of the city is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.’”

His voice broke and stopped altogether, replaced by the sound of gentle weeping. His was soon joined by our own, for it was an all-time low moment indeed for each of us. All the hopes, all the work, all the progress—apparently for naught.

I suppose this sounds pathetic, but we sat there for a time that stretched into seeming eternity. We neither spoke nor sang, nor even moved. Our harps were once again hung on the willow tree.

It was no symbolic gesture or even conscious decision. I will tell
you the truth: we sat still because we were spent, and we hadn’t the slightest idea what to try next.

After the pause had persisted through countless cycles of waiting with the length and finality of time itself, the cupbearer stood.

“I have no ideas. Merely duties at the palace,” he said flatly.

“Go and perform them as well as you can,” I responded, knowing the advice would likely fail to produce any difference. And then it came to me, like a dagger that flew midair and struck me somewhere right around my heart—

—If this man were my own cupbearer, the sorry state of his face would have screamed to me that something was wrong
.

For a few moments at least each day, the one face in the kingdom that every king stares at most closely is that of his cupbearer—during that crucial time between the tasting of the wine and the nodded whisper that “All is clear, Your Majesty.” During the next occurrence of those fleeting few seconds, our friend would have an opportunity to seize the King’s interest like no other citizen on earth. It could be our chance—our only chance—to plead the case of the City of our Fathers.

I turned to the cupbearer and placed my hand on his shoulder.

“My friend,” I said, “I am going to repeat some words I have not spoken for several decades, when I uttered them to my daughter at a similar moment of incredible risk and opportunity. My brother, perhaps G-d has brought you to the palace, to this place in your life, exactly for such a time as this. Perhaps history itself turns on what you, and you alone, do next.”

He turned to me with an expression tinged with incredulity and even a note of defiance. I believe that for a moment he truly thought I was toying with him. Then he saw my face, he saw my daughter’s reaction to hearing those words again, and he frowned more seriously.

“My life serves no purpose other than to intoxicate the King and his friends, and make sure they do not die in the process,” he answered. “I fail to see the historical importance of such a thing.”

Then I explained my idea to him, and he never spoke such nonsense again.

Chapter Fifty-one

And that is why the following New Year’s festival, at the dawning of springtime nearly six months later, featured a Banquet of Wine—the premier Persian celebration of fine wines from across the world—as had not been seen in the palace for many a year.

At the center of it all, shouldering the burden of keeping full the cups of not only the King but several dozen of his most influential, and feared, invited guests, was our friend the cupbearer.

As many of the attendees would later take note, several pronounced characteristics marked the royal cupbearer’s demeanor that night. One is that he carried out his duties with a swiftness and efficiency unmatched by any cupbearer in royal history. It was said the man was a veritable blur of motion across the vast dining chamber of the Persepolis palace, for he alone had the authority to pronounce a glass safe for imbibing. And given that Megabyzos’ rebellion was at its height and that over half of the men reclining drunkenly in that great room and gazing out at an unmatched Persian sunset were whispered to be in league with the rebel, plotting in some manner and to some degree against the rule of the King, no one was taking any chances.

The other notable aspect of the cupbearer’s state is that without speaking a word or consciously attempting to do so, he radiated an elegant sort of sadness so palpable and powerful that indeed it almost seemed as though he was about to burst into tears at any moment.

“Cheer up, my man!” shouted Otanes, one of the Princes of the Face. “After all, are you not drinking more wine than anyone tonight?”