by Tessa Afshar
“She must have been an exceptional woman. I wish I had met her.”
“I wish you had, too. She would have liked you. You could have talked to each other about the Lord to your heart’s content.”
“That would have been … a blessing.”
“Sarah … I have not been fair to you. I’ve laid down an unspoken law, forbidding you to speak of the Lord. No doubt there have been many times when you’ve had to swallow what you wanted to say to me. I’m not promising that I will agree with your point of view, or even understand it. But I want you to be free to express what’s in your heart.
“I remember when we were trying to solve the mystery of the intrigue against the king, and you tried to comfort me by pointing out that the Lord had helped us discover the plot in the first place, and that He would be faithful through the rest of our inquiries. You were so careful with your words, trying to avoid offending me. Still, I reacted harshly. I will try not to repeat that mistake.”
Sarah sat stunned, her eyes glued to her husband, wondering where this change of heart came from. “I … don’t know what to say.”
“Finally rendered you speechless, have I?” His smile, slow and warm, settled on her like a cozy blanket. “I want you to be free. I want you to be yourself around me. I don’t want you to have to pick and choose every word with care before you speak. You should be at your ease when we are together.”
Sarah could not believe her ears. She felt like she was dreaming. Tears pricked her eyes and she lowered her lids to hide them.
“Don’t,” he whispered. Leaning forward, he lifted her chin. “You’re doing it again. Hiding from me.”
She stared into his beloved face, startled. The tears kept welling up. She could not stop them as they slid down her cheeks like fat rain drops. Darius wiped at them with his hand. Then he leaned over and kissed them away. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”
That word again. She wouldn’t chase after it like a hungry rabbit. She wouldn’t. She gulped and said, “Pardon. I don’t know what has come over me. I have no reason to cry.”
“Yes, you do.” He kissed her gently. “But not anymore. I promise you.”
Sarah nodded, unable to trust her voice. Part of her wanted to jump up and dance and hug Darius until his ribs hurt. Another part of her began to tremble with dread. If she revealed herself, he might reject her. He had admitted that he might neither fathom nor agree with her understanding of the world. If she revealed to him her deepest feelings—if she began to tell him about things like her struggle to find her worth in her achievements instead of in God, perhaps he in time would find her so incomprehensible that any glimmer of affection he had for her would cool and die. Her faith in God might push him away and destroy their marriage.
Later that afternoon, Darius accepted Nehemiah’s invitation to join him on his inspection round. “You seem to have recovered from your injuries,” Nehemiah said as greeting.
Darius curled his lip. “A mere bump. Hardly worse than a mosquito bite.”
Nehemiah gave a slight smile. “The mosquitoes in Persia must have grown more violent than I realized. I haven’t seen such an impressive bruise in years. I didn’t know that shade of purple existed. It brings out the green in your eyes.”
Darius threw the governor a quelling look. The man refused to be intimidated. “In any case, you seem to have made an impression on Benjamin’s parents. They have not stopped singing your praises since you protected their son from serious harm.”
“They exaggerate. I did nothing that a little girl couldn’t have managed.”
Nehemiah tapped his bearded chin with a thumb. “I think you underestimate your actions. Benjamin is a special boy. Many would have grieved if harm had come to him.”
“I enjoy his company. It would have been a sad day if he had been injured.”
“Do you know, he reminds me of you when you were a boy. Not his looks, but his spirit. You had a similar charm.”
“First you admire my eyes, and now you speak of my charm. Careful, my lord governor, or I might form the wrong conclusion,” Darius said.
Nehemiah laughed. “I have been remembering you as a child. I was very fond of you, you know. It came to me when I was visiting with Hanun and his family that you were the same age as Benjamin when you left home. So young!”
Nonplussed by Nehemiah’s odd comment, Darius frowned. “Pardon?”
“When your father sent you to the palace to start your training, you were Benjamin’s age. Just a little boy.”
“I suppose I was. You were close to my parents at the time, I believe.”
“We saw each other often. Your family had made Susa their primary residence, and so had I. As an official of the court, I understood your father’s world. As a Jew, I understood your mother’s. They had no one else in their lives that could relate to them both. We had much in common, which made our friendship a comfort and a joy.”
“Strange. I don’t remember meeting you as a child.”
“I’m not surprised. You were very young at the time. Soon after you moved to the palace school, the king assigned your father to a permanent post in Babylon. He was gone for three years. Your parents traveled to visit you as often as they could, but the distance made frequent visits prohibitive.”
“I had forgotten those years.” Like a hazy dream, Darius remembered his life at the palace, deprived of mother and father for months at a time, living in an emotional desert. His chest tightened just thinking about it. He became aware that Nehemiah was guiding them toward one of the gates. None of the doors had been hung yet, and the opening in the partially raised wall looked like the gapped tooth in an old man’s mouth.
“Where are we going?”
“I thought I would show you a new sight today,” Nehemiah said.
Darius’s brows knotted. “Outside the walls?”
“As far as possible, we planned the wall to follow the ancient foundations. But in places, we had to make the perimeter smaller. Beyond these gates is one such location. I thought you might find the old foundation interesting.”
Darius was too polite to point out that he did not find the sight of old holes in the ground particularly thrilling and followed the governor’s steps without comment. They did not have far to walk. Like a fat snake, the old foundation wound its way at the edge of the city’s hills. Nehemiah stopped in front of a portion that must have been excavated at some point, stretching in the earth like a long gash.
Darius bent over and looked down. The original architects had made the foundation deep to accommodate the height and weight of the wall they had intended to build. “Is that soot and ash down there, covering the stones?”
“I should have known you would notice that. Yes. Ash from the fires of war.”
“Babylon’s conquest, you mean? But that was almost two hundred years ago! Wouldn’t the wind and the rain of decades have cleaned this up?”
Nehemiah knelt a knee at the edge of the foundation and peered inside. “The passage of time alone cannot restore such vast damage. Unless men went down there and physically cleaned up the mess, the deterioration of war leaves its mark.” He turned his face away from the ravaged landscape to gaze at Darius. The intensity in the brown eyes made Darius shift in discomfort.
“I like to come here and sit by these ruins sometimes,” Nehemiah said, unfolding his knees to stand once more. “They are a good reminder.”
“Of your history?”
“Not just that. I have often thought how the heart of man is like that foundation. Under war. Attacked by forces that oppose and ruin it. And unable to repair itself. Time cannot heal wounds. Many of us walk around with gashes in our hearts, no different from this foundation, covered in the soot of life’s fires.”
Darius took a step away and grasped his wrist in a tight hold behind his back. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”
Nehemiah rose up, his movements deliberate. “Have you noticed how winsome Benjamin is? You were like that as a little boy,
only more so. Full of affection and an open intelligence that charmed the adults around you. You loved passionately and were never afraid to demonstrate how you felt.
“Your father sent you to the palace school because it was expected of you. You would not have been able to fulfill your position as a Persian aristocrat without the appropriate training. He meant it for your best. He had no idea that tearing you from your home when you were only seven would have grave consequences. He himself had left home much later and did not understand the significance of your extreme youth.”
“I’ve never blamed him for sending me.”
“You paid a heavy due for that decision, whether you did it willingly or not. When you came back, you were different. Gone was the affectionate boy. You were self-contained and distant. There was a wall around your heart as high as the moon.”
Darius kicked a pebble into the yawning hole of the foundation. It flew in the air before landing with a thud somewhere in the soot-covered depths. “Duty has a price. We all have to pay it with whatever currency is asked of us.”
Nehemiah took a step that brought him closer. “Would you expect your own son to fulfill his duty in the same way? Your child will be born in three months. You might have a boy. Would you send him away from you in seven years? Would you want him to live a life similar to yours at that age? Would you desire for him to be separated from you, from Sarah, for months at a time? To grow up with cold teachers and distant sages who will never once hug him or express any love toward him?”
Darius paled. “I don’t see how this is any of your concern.”
“Forgive me, my lord.” Nehemiah shoved a hand through his hair, making the red filaments stand on end. In the pale rays of the sun, they seemed to catch fire, surrounding his head like a halo of flames. “Having once held you in my arms as a wriggling baby, I find it hard to remember that you are a man now, and more than able to make your own decisions. I should clarify something. When I spoke of your son, it wasn’t because I doubted your ability to be a wonderful father. Like Lord Vivan, you already have the makings of the best of fathers.
“I only meant for you to remember your own experience—for your sake, not your child’s. Often, we bury the wounds of our past. It’s not until we consider someone we love going through the same hardship that we recognize how profound the damage to our soul really was. I wanted you to see …” He pointed a finger into the hole blanketed with ancient soot. “I wanted you to glimpse into your own heart and the ashes of an old war that came against you when you were very young. Perhaps it’s time you dealt with it.”
Without another word, Nehemiah began to walk away.
Darius felt rooted to the spot. His head had begun to pound and nausea roiled in his innards. Nehemiah had managed to summon the specter of a past he thought he had buried long ago.
Did he really have a wall around his heart that went as high as the moon? Nehemiah made him sound so cold and distant. Was he like that with Sarah?
He thought of the babe that would be born to him in a matter of months. Would he send him to the palace if he was a boy? Send him to be bullied and isolated, stripped of childish affection? Was the empire worth such a sacrifice?
The memories he had ignored for long years refused to be silenced anymore. They came upon him with such force that he stumbled, almost pitching into the gaping foundation. Like a man who had drunk too much wine, he took an unsteady step until his toe connected with a large piece of masonry. Shivering, he allowed his body to sink down until he half sat, half collapsed on the pale rock. He rested his head in his hands, taking deep breaths to steady his senses. The memories would not abate. They crashed over him with the fury of a gale, bringing with them the feelings he had forgotten.
THE FIRST YEAR OF KING ARTAXERXES’ REIGN*
PERSIA
(TWENTY YEARS EARLIER)
Long before his nurse came to fetch him, Darius sat up on his wide, gilt bed, heart thumping with excitement. It was his seventh birthday. He knew birthdays meant a full week of celebrations: presents; games; late nights with friends and family; an endless array of cakes and sweets. Even grown up Persians celebrated their birthdays with more festivities than the rest of the world could understand; but for him this was a magical time. A boy’s seventh birthday marked an important rite of passage. After the birthday celebrations concluded, he would no longer have need of a nursemaid. Instead, leaving behind childhood, he would be introduced to the world of men. He would begin to learn a man’s skills and acquire knowledge vital for an aristocrat.
Darius had already become an accomplished rider though he could not remember ever learning to ride. His father had told him that he had sat Darius astride a horse before he could walk. But now he would also be taught to use a bow and arrow as well as swords, daggers, spears, javelins, and would learn the enthralling secrets of the art of combat. He would study medicines and the mysteries of the forest and would train to survive in a desert. He would have to learn some boring things as well, like reading and writing, which his mother insisted upon, and the lengthy lessons of the magi about truth and justice. He thought he could put up with such annoyances so long as he could swap his dreaded nursemaid for sword-fighting and playing games all day long with other boys his age.
Too impatient to wait any longer, Darius slipped out of his warm bed and dressed himself quickly, donning his clothes from the day before. The garments were rumpled and carried the stains of a full day of fierce outdoor activity, which made them all the more comfortable in Darius’s view. They sat askew on his solid form, thanks to the speed with which he put them on. His nurse would have been horrified by the results. Darius was more interested in starting the day than in her opinion.
He ran out of his spacious chamber, down a long corridor, and slipped into his mother’s apartment. Her bedroom was still covered in darkness, an inconvenience he overcame by the simple expedience of pulling aside blue linen curtains.
Weak early sunlight found its sluggish way into the apartment, bringing to life the colorful mosaics that decorated the walls. Exotic birds seemed to take flight in a purple sky. Darius touched the royal blue and green image of a peacock and smiled. He loved this room. Turning, he saw that his mother slept on.
Tiptoeing with silent steps, he went toward his mother’s sleeping form, intent on tickling her awake. He had barely reached her side when long graceful hands captured him and dragged him into bed. He squealed, startled.
“I’ve been awake all along, my darling monster.” His mother’s manicured fingers thwarted his plans by tickling him instead.
Darius laughed until his belly ached. “Stop!”
She obeyed his plea immediately.
“Do you know why today is special?” he asked, a serious note creeping into his voice.
“Today? No. Why? I know! It’s father’s birthday.”
“No, it’s not,” Darius said, indignant. “It’s mine!”
“You don’t say? Come to think of it, you look more grown up. But how terrible! I forgot all about it. What shall I give you for your birthday present?” His mother gazed at him through thick curling lashes. “How about this robe?” She held out her morning wrap—a sheer confection made of pleated white silk with golden embroidery.
Darius made a horrified face.
“Oh well, I suppose not. What about my comb? You must admit it’s pretty.” She offered him the long-toothed comb that sat on a table next to her lavish bed. Carved from ivory and encrusted in some kind of red jewel whose name Darius didn’t know, it sparkled with feminine glitter.
He gave his mother an offended look and began to believe that she was not teasing him, after all. A terrible dread settled in the pit of his belly; had his mother truly forgotten his birthday?
She laughed. “What a face. I can see you don’t like my comb, either. Perhaps you might find something more to your liking in my silver chest.”
Darius’s face lit up with renewed hope. He scrambled off the bed and ran to the chest. The l
id, a carved affair inlaid with jewels and heavy obsidian, proved hefty. He pushed it up, using all his strength, his young muscles straining under the pressure, until it came to rest upright.
“Well done, little man. You are going to be very strong when you grow up.” His mother had wrapped herself in her white morning robe and come to stand next to him. Her hair reached below her waist in a profusion of dark curls; Darius had heard more than one woman in his father’s household sigh with envy over its beauty. At this moment, however, it presented a mere annoyance to him. He pushed the curls out of his way and focused on his task.
“I’m already strong,” he said while making a visual search of the silver chest. Shoved to one corner, he found a long package wrapped in a length of yellow fabric.
Snatching it up with enthusiasm, he turned to his mother. “Is this mine?”
“It might be.”
He grinned as he laid his bundle on top of the bed. Impatient fingers shoved the fabric wrapping aside. Darius gasped. A perfect bow with a leather quiver full of arrows appeared for his inspection. The limb of the bow was made of curved wood, its string fashioned out of sinew. He touched it with reverence and felt a thin layer of wax. Even as a boy he knew this was to protect the bow from moisture. He pulled out an arrow from the black-colored quiver and examined the bone tip with minute attention. It looked sharp and hard—not a child’s toy, but an adult’s hunting tool.
He tested the string with a tentative touch. It felt impossibly tight. For a moment his confidence wavered; perhaps he would not be strong enough to use it. With determined effort he pushed the doubt aside. No bow was going to defeat him. He resolved to beat all his friends with his perfect aim.
“Well,” his mother’s voice interrupted his musings. “Does the present meet with your approval, my lord?”
Instead of answering, Darius flung his arms around his mother’s waist with fierce enthusiasm. It occurred to him, in a faint jumble of disorganized thought, that turning seven would somehow mean not living in the women’s quarter of his father’s house anymore. And that meant not having easy access to his mother anytime he wished.