Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  My cry was so strange it did not seem that it could have come from me. It was loud enough to bring a torch so close that I felt as though the flame licked my cheek. I closed my eyes and watched the spots of blue that floated before me, wondering why the soldier holding the torch was silent. Was he considering whether to keep me for the king or let me go? I had nothing left to offer but what little pride remained to me. “Please let me go.”

  He hesitated, then so quietly I almost did not hear, said, “I cannot. If any soldier who has seen the beauty of your face catches you going back to your home he will do far worse than bring you to the king’s harem.”

  The voice belonged to Erez. If he would not help me, who would? As the torchlight moved on, all hope drained out of me.

  Spots of blue continued to float before my eyes. I watched them as I was pulled forward by the rope around my wrists, away from the sounds of the villagers’ wailing. Soldiers were yelling at people to stay back. A man ran up beside us, calling to one of the girls, “I will not leave you. I will be beside y—” I heard the crack of a whip and looked back. In the torchlight, I could see the man bent over upon the ground. Farther back I could see the villagers gathered behind us, and soldiers taking water from the village well. Farther still, I could see the outlines of the huts in which we had been sleeping not long before.

  Tears began to form in my eyes. I quickly turned back to the march. None of what was happening seemed like it could possibly be real.

  When the sun finally came up though, I could clearly see the rope around my wrists. I started to cry. I hated myself for it but I could not stop. I was one of a hundred girls being driven like oxen east across the scorching desert plain by Xerxes’ soldiers, straight into the rising sun.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  THE VIRGINS’ MARCH

  We were being marched single file along the Royal Road, a length of stones laid upon hard-packed earth that stretched from Shushan to the Aegean Sea. My lip throbbed where I had bitten it and my feet soon grew raw in my sandals, but I was careful to keep up my pace. The ropes around our wrists had all been tied to one long rope; if anyone slowed, the rope would yank upon her wrists, burning her skin.

  The soldiers were scattered beside us upon horses all the way up the line. The nearest one was at least fifteen cubits in front of me. From the clomping I heard a short distance behind me, I knew they were also at the back of the line.

  I wanted to know which one had stolen me from my bed.

  I looked for the wound I had inflicted, but the soldiers’ tunics covered their arms. There was no way of discovering which one had taken me unless he raised up his hand so I could see where I had bitten him. Still, I could not keep from looking. Though I hated all of the soldiers, I hated him most. The hatred helped me endure the heat and the throbbing of my lip.

  Hoofbeats suddenly sounded from the rear. A soldier rode up so close that I could hear the flies buzzing on his horse’s flanks and the swishing of the animal’s tail.

  “You in the red head scarf. Take it off,” he ordered me in a voice hoarse from giving commands. It was the soldier who looked like Parsha, but whose tone was crueler and more confident. He had been yelling at the girls to walk faster and following each order with threats of the lash. He had made it known that if a lash fell upon a girl she would no longer be fit for the king’s harem, and would instead be given to the soldiers.

  “Girl,” he said. The girl ahead of me panicked, stumbling in her attempt to move away. The soldier laughed and drew his horse back.

  Before she regained her balance and began to slowly plod forward again, I saw the high cheek and proud nose of her profile. She was Yvrit, the butcher’s daughter. I had lived in Babylon until my parents were killed, and Yvrit and I had been friends. We looked so similar that people sometimes confused us. Yvrit had admired me and always asked for my advice. She had even wanted to know how to walk and what to say. Though we both worshipped the One God, Yvrit had seemed to worship me most of all. She was moving so slowly that the rope was tugging at her wrists, jerking her forward. I kicked her heel.

  “Ow!” Yvrit said, raising her heel up as if it were the road that had kicked her.

  “I am sorry, but you must not slow down. There will be time to tend your wounds when we get to the palace.”

  “Hadassah, is that you?” Yvrit twisted her body to look back at me.

  “Hush. Turn around.”

  The soldier had shifted his attention to the girl behind me. He was yelling, “A drunken old man could walk a straighter line than you.” But still he could have heard my true name, and guessed my secret: I was Jewish. My mother had named me Hadassah, as if she had foreseen her own violent death or the march I would one day be forced to make. Hadassah meant “myrtle,” a plant that only gave off its sweet fragrance when crushed.

  “Now I am Esther, and you . . . Cyra.” Cyra was the word for “moon.” I was certain that Yvrit wished for the moon to replace the sun as soon as possible. Everyone knew that even scorpions died if they attempted to cross the road during the noonday heat. Though the sun had only risen halfway to the top of the sky, sweat poured down my neck, and my tunic stuck to my body.

  “Speak no more—only walk,” I said, “no matter if your feet blister or you wish to lie down in the road.”

  The soldier stopped yelling at the girl behind me. I felt his eyes upon me. “You wish to lie down in the road?”

  “No, sir.” I was careful to keep all feeling from my voice.

  “Then take off your head scarf.”

  His horse stepped so close that I felt the short, sharp hair of the animal’s large flank against my arm. But I would not show this soldier or any other that I was hot and tired and full of fear.

  “You can pretend not to hear my words but you will have a harder time pretending not to feel my whip,” he said. I glanced up to see if he was reaching for it. It sat untouched upon his hip. He leaned down to look at me. “The people of your village may have thought you beautiful,” he said, his eyes moving over me, “but you are no longer in your village.”

  More hooves pounded up from the rear, driving the soldier’s horse ahead of me. “The king wants these girls unharmed, Dalphon,” the second soldier said. It was Erez.

  “Though this one looks down, her back is too straight,” Dalphon replied. “She is too proud for a peasant girl going peacefully to the harem. I want to better see her eyes.”

  I could have told him I was descended from the great king David, the second king of Israel who had lived some five hundred years before, but then he would know I was a Jew. Besides, however royal my line may have been at one time, it was true that my parents had been closer to peasants than royalty.

  “The king does not concern himself with what you want, and neither do I.”

  I gazed from the corner of my eye. By the butt-spikes of the two men’s spears I could see that one was a soldier, one an officer. But not as I had hoped. Erez had only a silver butt-spike. Despite how he had spoken to Dalphon—an officer—he was just a soldier. Except that, unlike any of the other soldiers, he rode a horse so huge it could only be a Nisaean, one of the king’s most sacred mounts.

  “You are lucky the king likes you, Kitten Tamer, or I would take your tongue. But Xerxes is no less fickle with soldiers than he is with harem girls. When your valor at Thermopylae is forgotten, I will have you sent to the farthest reaches of the empire.”

  Erez rode closer to Dalphon. I was glad to see that the closer he came, the smaller Dalphon looked. “You are only an officer because your father is an adviser to the king. You are no more a rightful officer than I a king.”

  Dalphon’s voice no longer overflowed with confidence. “The men are behind me.”

  “They are behind looting and plundering. You matter little to them.”

  “I think I will not send you to the farthest reaches of the empire, but to the gallows.”

  Erez lowered his voice. “You assume your father will a
lways be powerful. But perhaps, Dalphon, it is he who will end up upon the gallows, and you will sway beside him.”

  I felt a pull upon my wrists. Cyra was stumbling. There was little I could do to help her, except to remain steady as she regained her balance.

  Suddenly Dalphon’s whip cracked so close beside my face that I felt the air move against my cheek. There was a terrible, wet sound—sharp leather against Cyra’s flesh. Cyra let out a scream that was as much surprise as pain, then began to wail.

  “Walk,” I said quietly, “do not think of your flesh but of the palace and the soft cushions and wine that await you.”

  “She will make a good concubine,” Dalphon said, “she will not lie silent beneath a man like some.”

  I suddenly had the thought that if Dalphon had been the one to storm my parents’ hut during the last revolt of Babylon, he would have slit their throats with as little hesitation as the soldier who did it while I watched. I hated him. “How much training did it take to perfect the whipping of defenseless girls?” I said before I could stop myself. “And are there not women who will have you without being forced?”

  Dalphon turned to stare at me. This time I did not avoid his eyes. I had been wrong to think that they were just like his twin’s. They too were beautiful, but they were not like drops of honey that had just begun to melt. They were big and almond colored, or would be if almonds could contain both sunlight and darkness at once. Why had God given such beauty to someone so cruel? His hand tightened on his whip. “I have clearly not trained enough if a prisoner dares talk back to me.”

  Erez hit his heels against his horse and hurried to cut Dalphon off. I saw that he carried no whip. He stopped just far enough from me that his horse did not knock me to the ground.

  He leaned down toward me, sending a winged figure on a chain around his neck swinging back and forth. “Quiet.” He had sharp cheekbones, and though most of the other men had beards of tight curls, he had only stubble along his jaw. “You are not a defenseless girl, or any other sort of girl. You are property of the king. Unless Dalphon makes you his property first.”

  He turned and delivered a couple of hard slaps to the flanks of Dalphon’s horse. Dalphon looked over his shoulder at me and spat upon the ground. I was afraid he would bring his horse around, but Erez reached out and grabbed the animal’s bridle.

  As they rode away, I looked beneath where Erez’s hair fell a short length from his saffron headband, watching the clasp of the chain he wore bounce lightly against his neck. Across his broad back he carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. Though he had spoken harshly to me, I knew he was the closest thing I had to a protector. But who would watch over him? If the other soldiers ever turned against him, his wicker shield would not be big enough to protect him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  SCREAMING

  The sun rose higher overhead and beat upon us without mercy. But the heat wafting up from the road was even more intense than the heat from above. It felt as though we were walking through a great fire that grew hotter as it fed upon our bodies. “I cannot go on,” Cyra kept muttering, “I cannot go on.”

  Her tunic was ripped where Dalphon’s whip had hit her. Blood came from the lash upon her neck and back and a blister formed on her right heel. She began to pant.

  “Cyra, Yvrit, listen to me. You can bear whatever burning you feel in your feet and the cut upon your back. Soon we will be in the palace and you can lie upon soft pillows and only rise when slaves lift you.”

  Cyra’s panting quieted but blood continued to flow from her wound. We marched until the sun reached the top of the sky. Then Cyra stopped in her tracks and started screaming.

  Dalphon galloped toward us, yelling at her to be silent. She screamed louder and fell to her knees.

  The column had come to a stop. Girls were turning back to see what was going on.

  “Silence or you will feel my foot upon your throat,” Dalphon said. “Get up.”

  Cyra swayed slightly where she knelt, then collapsed over her folded legs, her head falling hard upon the road. Her long brown hair spilled from her head scarf and lay around her, shining in the sunlight. Though she had fainted, it looked like she was kneeling before Dalphon.

  Dalphon jumped off his horse and untied the loop connecting the rope around Cyra’s wrists from the line.

  “I am her sister,” I said. “Let me tend to her.”

  “No, she will be put to better use lying across the back of my horse—covering him to keep the flies from his flanks.”

  “A true officer would not bring his king a girl riddled with fly bites,” Erez said. He pushed past the other soldiers who had gathered around and jumped off his horse. “You go on,” he said to Dalphon. “We will bandage this girl and return her to the line before we reach Shushan.”

  “Return to your place, soldier,” Dalphon said. “Even if you were a physician I would not let you waste time on a girl who is no longer fit for the king.”

  “I am the soldier the king calls his most trusted. I am going to tend to the damage you have done. If you try to stop me, I will tell the king of how you abused one of the most beautiful girls—one he would not like to be deprived of.” Erez quickly untied the rope around my wrists from the main line. He threw Cyra over his shoulder, took hold of his horse’s bridle with his free hand, and forced his way through the watching soldiers.

  Dalphon pointed at Cyra and yelled loudly enough for everyone to hear. “This one in the blue head scarf will not return to the line. She and any other girl who cannot be quiet and keep pace have fallen from Ahura Mazda’s favor and will suffer worse than this march.”

  I hurried after Erez.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  GODDESS OF BULLHEADEDNESS

  Erez led us to the shade of the nearest palm tree. He set Cyra gently on the ground and turned to me. The sun had pounded the strength from my limbs, and my feet burned in my sandals. But when Erez undid the rope around my wrists, I closed my eyes and let out a long breath. My arms fell limply to my sides.

  Erez laughed lightly and I realized that I had sighed aloud. I bowed my head so I would not have to meet his gaze, and then I opened my eyes. Where the sleeves of his tunic ended, his forearms were thick, the veins swollen from the strain and heat of the day. Forgetting my embarrassment, I said, “You do not look like herding girls is all you do.”

  “I have not trained to be an Immortal since I was seven for this.”

  Immortal. I hated that they called themselves Immortals, as though no one could hurt them and they did not need to heed any laws or perform any kindnesses. They were so proud of their lives and careless with the lives of others. The Immortal who had killed my parents had not even looked at their faces first.

  I gazed back to where the girls were being marched away, down the Royal Road to the king. “Perhaps if you had gotten off your horse and joined us you would not feel quite so immortal.”

  “I replaced a dead Immortal. It is the number ten thousand that is immortal, not any of us. As quick as a man dies he is replaced.”

  Xerxes’ forces had recently lost many men in their humiliating defeat to the Greeks at Salamis. Perhaps it was this defeat that made them so cruel. Yet this soldier seemed to have none of the others’ cruelty.

  “I spoke carelessly. Please forgive me.” Before he could respond with either anger or forgiveness, I asked, “Is there water to spare for Cyra?”

  The soldiers had been having the girls cup their hands for water, but instead Erez handed his waterskin to me. My tongue was swollen with thirst but I did not drink. As I knelt beside Cyra I drew in my breath at the sight of the blood on the side of her head. I pressed one hand over her wound and used the other to bring the waterskin to her lips. Her mouth filled with water, water which she did not swallow. It ran from the corners of her lips.

  “I will try again when she wakes.” I wanted, more than I had ever wanted anything, to feel water upon my tongue, but I hand
ed the waterskin back to Erez.

  He did not take it. “Have you already forgotten how to drink? Do you need me to hold it for you?”

  I hurried the huge waterskin to my lips before Erez could change his mind. The water stung my lip where my teeth had tried to open it, but still, it tasted better than any sweet wine ever had.

  While I drank, Erez took off his bow and quiver and set them on the ground. When his hands were free again, I gave the waterskin back to him. It was much lighter than when he had given it to me.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “I—”

  Before I could tell him I was parched, he interrupted, “You are right to quench your thirst while you can. Dalphon did not think to bring enough water for the march. Or did not care to.” Erez had only a small sip and then turned away to fasten the waterskin back to the saddle of his horse.

  It was not easy to hate him, except that from behind I could not see his face, only that he wore the same uniform as all the other Immortals, including the one who had killed my parents. His tunic was a shade of saffron so rich that not even a layer of grime could fully dull it, and his calves looked like small, dust-covered boulders. He turned around and saw me staring.

  My cheeks felt as though they had burst into flame.

  Erez fastened his eyes upon me and then did something surprising: he laughed. Not lightly like before, but fully, his body shaking with the force of his sudden happiness. Without the serious expression he usually wore, he looked no more than nineteen, five years older than me. I feared he was laughing at me.

  “There is no reason for happiness.”

  “You underestimate yourself,” he replied.

  I do not think that is possible. I could not forgive myself for standing back, sobbing uselessly, while my parents were killed. If I did not save Cyra now, I would have three deaths on my conscience. I looked down at her with even greater urgency. “I have to bandage Cyra before too much blood has spilled from her. She is parched and will not survive the loss of any more.”