Harvest of Rubies (18 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous. I am his lordship’s wife. I demand that you show me the accounts.”

He had the temerity to smirk at me. “Then perhaps you should write your husband and ask for his permission.”

If my hair were not so dark, it would have turned red with the rest of me. Shame lashed me like a physical force. I had never felt so belittled. It was clear that Teispes knew of the state of matters between my husband and me. And he believed himself safe from any form of reprisal no matter how he treated me. It occurred to me that I was utterly vulnerable to this man’s power. In Darius’s absence, he controlled everything. I could not even send a missive without his approval.

Anger replaced shame. He had abused his position by mistreating so many. What I did not know was if his master stood in agreement with his methods or if he was guilty only of trusting the wrong man. In either case, I resolved not to give in to Teispes’s intimidating manner. There were people who needed me now; I could not afford the luxury of fear.

I
woke up to the sound of low giggles. Pari stood at the end of my bed, a hand covering her laughter without success.

“You let him on your bed,” she said, pointing at the hairy creature lounging at my feet.

I yawned. “He insisted. Anyway, as long as he stays on top of my bed and doesn’t try to get in it.”

“That’s what you said about him getting
on
your bed.”

“He cries. What am I to do, ignore him?” I bent down to pet the massive fawn-colored back. He turned his black tinged face to lick my hand. “Phew! He reeks.”

“He’s a hunting dog. He spends his time chasing animals in the woods.”

“He used to be a hunting dog. He sleeps on my bed now, so perhaps we should bathe him.”

“I will make a fair exchange with you, my lady. I’ll bathe Caspian if you submit to a few beauty treatments.”

That girl should have worked for the king as a royal merchant;
her haggling skills were mind numbing. Within moments, she had me agreeing to her terms with benign good nature, as if I myself had come up with the idea.

Satisfied now that she had her way, Pari sat on the edge of my bed next to the dog and petted him with absentminded tenderness. “What are we to do with that awful Teispes? Perhaps the Lord will help you deal with him.”

Her odd non sequitur caught me off guard. “The
Lord?”
I leaned against an overstuffed pillow, astounded that she knew that name. “What do you know about the Lord?”

“When I was a little girl, a Jewish washerwoman lived in our neighborhood. She loved children and had none of her own. Sometimes, she would allow me to accompany her when my mother did not need me. She told me some of the stories of your people. My favorite was of the shepherd boy David who slew a giant with a slingshot.”

“Goliath,” I murmured.

“That’s the one. Perhaps you are David and Teispes, Goliath. He certainly has the jaw for it.”

I laughed. “I don’t think pelting him with stones will solve our problems.”

“No, but Teispes’s power is great, like Goliath. You are small in comparison to him. You don’t have riches or connections or the ear of your husband. The odds are not on our side, just as they weren’t on Israel’s. Yet sometimes the odds aren’t what matter.”

I was quite impressed by Pari’s sagacity. Nehemiah would like my servant, I decided.

A knock on our door reduced us to silence. I could not remember anyone seeking entry to my chamber since my coming to this palace weeks ago. Caspian raised his head, wrinkled his forehead, and then replaced his snout back on the
blanket without a single objection. So much for his protective hunting skills.

Pari rose, straightened her skirt, opened the door. Bardia waited outside, his hat twirling in crooked fingers.

I pulled on a robe and rushed outside. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, my lady. I came to give you this.” He bent down and retrieved a bowl filled with delicate jasmine. I buried my nose in the scented heap of flowers and breathed deep. You can almost forget your troubles when your nose is buried in a bowl of freshly picked jasmine.

“My mother used to pick jasmine for me in the mornings. She would put them on my pillow while I was still asleep, so that I would rise to the scent of them.” I picked a tiny blossom and twirled it. “It’s been long years since anyone brought me jasmine.”

“I brought them to thank you.”

“Thank me? Whatever for?” I had hoped that he would not guess I was behind the change in his habitation.

“You cleaned my home. I’m sorry I allowed it to fall apart like that.” He would not look up as he spoke.

“I don’t hold you responsible for this, Bardia. As it is, you work more hours than two of the king’s servants together.”

The white head remained bowed. “It’s that arrogant steward, Teispes,” I continued, trying to coax him out of feeling disgraced. “I cannot understand what he gains by running the estate in such deplorable manner. If only I could examine his accounts, I might find some answers. But that crafty fox keeps them under lock and key.”

“Aye, and keeps the key on a chain around his neck night and day. I even saw him wearing it in the bathhouse once.” Bardia pulled on his white beard.

I heaved a sigh. “How can we convince him to give up his precious key?”

“I know this: he would be easier to convince on the third day of the week.”

Pari chortled. “How can one day of the week be different from another with regard to a man’s temper?”

“Well, for one thing, he sleeps sounder on Mondays.”

Teispes took every Monday off, leaving before sunrise and arriving in the middle of the night somewhat the worse for wear. No one knew where he spent his time, but it was clear from the lingering odor as well as his less than steady gait that wherever he had been was well-stocked with wine. So we picked Monday as the ideal day to
borrow
Teispes’s keys.

Bardia insisted that he should attend to the actual retrieval of the key, as it would be inappropriate for a woman to enter a man’s chambers. I told my accomplices that either I would deal with Teispes myself or else the whole plan was cancelled. I figured that if I were caught, the steward could not have me thrown into the streets no matter how Darius felt about me. Servants would be more vulnerable to his power.

When midnight came, Bardia, Pari, and I waited for the steward’s return in a dark corridor near his chamber. I lingered in our hiding place a good hour after he returned to ensure the steward was sleeping soundly. I had no lamp for fear that I might wake him as I entered his room. Having waited in darkness for over an hour my eyes had adjusted and I could see enough by the light of the moon to make out the form sprawled across the mattress on the floor.

A cracked tile flipped noisily under my bare feet as I stepped into the room. I stopped dead as Teispes turned on his side with a restless motion. What was I doing here? I had
placed myself in a compromising position by being in a man’s room unaccompanied. Somehow, while planning this harebrained idea, such details had not seemed as important as they did at this particular moment.

If I were caught in the chamber of a strange man, I could be banished into some backwater part of Persia with an unpronounceable name and a winter that was longer than the river Nile. And that was if Darius were feeling generous. As if that weren’t bad enough, I had turned thief in my husband’s home. This venture marked a slippery slide in my character, I was sure; I had never stolen anything before that moment.

I considered turning around and walking away from this madness. Then I recalled the deplorable conditions of Bardia’s home and the cook’s empty cabinets and the lack of help for all of them, and forced my feet forward.

Too soon I stood over the steward. His face was turned away from me. One arm was flung across the bed, the other folded under his head. I knelt down and bent over him as quietly as I could. He reeked of sour wine. This close, I could see the glint of the chain around his neck. There would be no way, as long as he stayed in this posture, to remove the object from around his neck without waking him.

I could sit and wait, hoping that he would shift position. Or I could do something about it. Doing something seemed the lesser of two evils; at least it would end my torture more quickly. I lifted the hem of my skirt and held a small piece of the linen in my hand. Whispering a quick prayer in my mind, I tickled the end of Teispes’s nose with the fabric. His nose twitched like a rabbit’s and he raised a hand to swat my intrusion away. I managed to dodge his sleepy reach and tickled him again.

Teispes groaned and turned on his back. I froze, afraid to move a single muscle. He settled down and started to snore. His
movement had made the chain accessible. With painfully slow movements I grasped the key to prevent it from jingling and drew chain and key up in one motion. Soon the key was over his head, but the back of the chain still rested against his neck, which was pressed into the pillow. To remove it, I would have to pull hard alongside his neck and head. He would not sleep through that intrusion.

I squeezed my eyes shut and stood so for a moment to bolster up my courage. Then I blew in his ear. He lifted his hand with unexpected vigor to swat me away. I barely managed to remove myself from the path of his backhanded slap. Just as I thought I would have to resort to more drastic and dangerous measures, he turned his head away from me on the pillow, releasing the imprisoned chain.

With more speed than I knew I possessed, I grabbed that chain and key and tiptoed my way out.

Our hope was to keep Teispes in the dark about the loss of his key. I would have a better chance of opposing him if I could catch him by surprise. This gave me a handful of hours to examine the records and find clues to his behavior. I ran to the chamber that held the family’s records and left Pari behind to keep an eye on Teispes’s room, while Bardia stood guard in the darkness outside the records room, where I settled to spend the rest of the night.

I compared the records pertaining to different aspects of Darius’s estates from one year before Teispes arrived with the three years following his stewardship. There were too many details belonging to a variety of properties to allow me more than a cursory examination. I would need at least a month for a thorough job. But I had enough training under my belt to pick up a few curious irregularities in the short hours I had. Just when my search was growing interesting, Pari and Bardia
skidded into the records chamber.

“He’s coming! He’s coming!” they hissed in union.

I jumped to my feet, panicked for a moment. Then I grabbed two thick rolls of parchment, and placed the rest carefully on their shelves.

“Hurry mistress!” Pari hissed. “He’s coming this way.”

My heart pounded so hard in my chest, I could feel the blood roaring in my ears. “Get out! Get out right away,” I ordered. My accomplices rushed out and I followed suit, lingering long enough to lock the door.

From the opposite direction I saw Caspian bounding toward me. I had no idea how that dog had managed to loose himself from my room, where I had barricaded him hours ago for fear that he might give us away with an untimely noise. Seeing him now, I formed the germ of an idea. I had not time to think it through, for I could now hear Teispes’s heavy footsteps around the corner.

I bent down and offered the chain to the hound. “Take this to Teispes,” I said. “Teispes. Understand?”

He gazed at me with intelligent brown eyes and for a moment I was convinced that the dog spoke Persian as fluently as I. He took the chain obediently in his mouth, letting one long end dangle down his jaw with the key, and ran in the direction of Teispes’s footsteps while I ran in the opposite direction.

I stopped short of my own chamber and held my breath. In the darkness I heard the steward’s outraged voice. “You filthy beast. Where did you get that? You monster. Give it back tome.”

I heard the dog’s low growl and feared for the fate of Teispes’s fingers. For a moment I thought that I should go and rescue him. Then I heard Caspian’s whimper and knew the steward had hurt him in some way. I saw red. Shoving the
hard-won rolls of parchment into Pari’s hands I hissed, “Hide these,” and pointing to Bardia I said, “You help her.”