Esther

by Rebecca Kanner

  I turned my head to the right and looked out over the crowd. My gaze fell upon a man whose sneer was replaced by fear as I lifted my veil. Do not think I will not have you put upon the gallows. I am no longer a little girl. Today I was made queen of the most powerful empire the world has ever known. The only reason I do not have you seized and punished is that the king did not hear your insult and I will not trouble him now.

  The man took one step back, then another, before turning and running. People jumped away from him as if from a venomous snake. The crowd had quieted, and there was fear in some of the eyes that stared back at me. It was not an unwelcome sight. I felt my strength growing with each pair of frightened eyes I looked into.

  I turned back in the direction I was going. I imagined that Ruti was near. At least, Ruti whispered, he did not call you Jew.

  Thank you, Ruti, I thought as the procession reached the entrance to the banquet hall. I was eager to leave the hall behind, along with the Faravahar. I am going to the bed of the most powerful man in the world, and this time I am going as his queen. Perhaps tomorrow I will carry the next king in my belly.

  I was not going to be a stupid girl anymore.

  I unclasped Erez’s chain from behind my neck and let it fall to the floor as I stepped from the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  IN THE KING’S CHAMBER

  As I went for the first time to my marriage bed, six guards surrounded me. Two in front, two in back, and one on either side. The guards were strangers to me, and I did not trust them to shield me from all the people who would try to snatch away the crown that had just been placed upon my head.

  They suddenly came to a halt. One of the soldiers of Xerxes’ escort came to speak to one of mine. “The king would like you to walk beside him,” the soldier said. I nodded and we continued away from the banquet hall until we were beside Xerxes.

  The king looked down from where he towered above me. “Little Ishtar,” he said, holding out his elbow.

  I had worn the crown less than a day, but already, it had changed me. My spine seemed to rise up to meet it. I was not without fear, but I now knew that even when I was afraid I could stand as tall as the proudest soldier. I had faced down the man who had cried “peasant” as I left the banquet hall, and the crowd had stared back at me with fear. My back felt so strong I knew that no one could bend it, no one but the king. Despite my fear of what was to come, my hand was steady as I placed it upon his arm. I knew a queen’s hand should always be steady, unless the king wished for it to tremble.

  His flesh was slippery from the oil upon it, but I managed to keep hold of him as we walked to his chambers. I noticed some of the red henna from my fingertips mixing with the oil upon his skin. He too looked at his arm, and then at me.

  The lust in his eyes, combined with his size, his mood swings, his drunkenness, and the thought of what was to come made my heart race. He was taller, broader, and more godlike than any man I had seen. There was more muscle in the arm I held than in the whole body of some men. He was so large that perhaps the One God would not see me lying beneath his huge, uncircumcised body.

  He smiled. “You will never again want for anything, however big or small.”

  I felt my heart open to him—not fully, but a tiny crack that perhaps time could enlarge.

  The procession came to an abrupt halt outside his chambers, and I nearly stumbled into the soldier in front of me. He quickly stepped aside. “Forgive me, Your Highness,” he said. I kept my eyes lowered as I entered Xerxes’ chambers for the second time. I had decided I must in turns appear timid and strong with the king. He was not yet certain who I was, and so long as that were true he would not grow tired of me.

  The king dismissed the guards and attendants, and before the door was fully closed behind the last servant he raised up my veil and kissed every surface of my face. When he pulled back to look at me, I began, “My king, there is something I must speak with you abou—”

  He pressed his lips to mine so quickly that he ate my last word and the breath I had used to speak it. I had never been kissed and I did not know what to do. Yet, seemingly of their own accord, my lips parted. The king held my head in his huge hands so he could kiss me more deeply. He kissed me until I gasped for air. Then he pulled my hair against his nose, inhaled, and said, “Your beauty is proof that Ahura Mazda watches over me still.” He walked me backward until I was against the wall.

  I no longer felt my emptiness. I felt only those parts of myself that the king was touching, and my back, which was tightly pressed against the wall. His sweat smelled of wine and salted meat, and unlike the previous night I did not wish to shield myself from it. Despite my robe and Xerxes’ tunic, I could feel the warm breath and blood moving through him.

  Without meaning to, I arched. Even as I pressed upward I felt as though I was falling backward. Something stronger than my fear was overtaking me.

  He continued to hold tightly to me with one hand while he moved the other between our bodies. He roughly touched me through my robe as he moved his mouth down to my neck, and then I felt the front of my robe being parted. Lips touched the bare skin of my chest. He ran one finger down the center of my stomach and all the blood in my body rushed after it.

  I knew I was supposed to talk to the king about Halannah, but I no longer wanted to mention her. I wanted nothing between Xerxes and me.

  The hand that was not pressing between my legs took hold of my robe and yanked it from my body.

  He abruptly released me and stepped back. His gaze was so intent upon my flesh that it felt as though he were trying to take something from it, and the longer he looked, the more he wanted to take. His eyes, usually a deep brown, had grown so dark I could not tell where his pupils ended and his irises began.

  When he came toward me my heart jumped in my chest. I felt more naked than I ever had before. More naked than when the other maidens and I had first arrived and been commanded to strip off everything, even our jewelry. More naked than when I was bathed by servants in front of the other girls and any eunuchs who cared to watch.

  Xerxes reached inside his tunic and pulled out a chain. For an instant I feared it was Erez’s necklace, the one I had just unhooked from my neck and dropped onto the marble tile of the banquet hall. Instead it was a chain with the eight-pointed star of Ishtar. The king opened it and held it in front of my neck. The star came toward me until it was so near it appeared there were two stars, then it disappeared beneath my chin and I felt it fall against my chest.

  I bowed my head so Xerxes could fasten the chain behind my neck, and my eyes fell upon his tunic where it covered his stomach. Lower yet, I could see his arousal. I wondered if Xerxes could feel the heat in my cheeks even without touching my face.

  His fingers brushing against my neck felt so good I wanted to press my cheek to his stomach, despite what loomed below. Before I could fall against him though, he took his hands from me and then nothing touched my flesh except the chain weighing lightly around the back of my neck and the crown upon my head.

  I would not be recklessly bold but also I would not be passive and silent like hundreds of girls who had been in his chambers before me. “How do you find me, husband?”

  He did not answer right away. Is he memorizing me as I am now because I will never be this fresh and beautiful again? I willed my legs not to shake. I imagined they were stone pillars like those in the banquet hall. If those pillars could hold a roof so heavy that the first time I had seen it I feared it would crash down upon me, surely my own legs could hold me.

  Finally, he said, “You are a perfect picture of how a queen should wear a crown.”

  He bent down and lifted me off my feet in one smooth motion that made me feel both small and great at the same time. He was more than twice as big as me, yet he had bowed to pick me up. As he carried me to his bed, he kept his eyes upon mine. Without looking at the scarves of purple, blue, red, green, and yellow that hung from the thick golden fr
ame above, he pushed them aside and set me down in front of him.

  Instead of calling in a servant to unpin my crown from my hair, Xerxes did it himself, as deftly as though he had done it many times before. He placed it carefully on a table beside the bed.

  “Lay back.” There was a strain, something different in his voice. He had been patient the night before, but now we were on a path from which there was no turning back. I opened my eyes and watched him peel his tunic over his head, then I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut again. My courage had fled at the strange sight of him. I knew he came to kneel between my knees by how the mattress sunk beneath his weight. My blood halted inside my veins. I wanted to press my legs tightly together. I wished I had drunk more wine. I wished I had lost consciousness.

  “Do not be afraid,” he said. He touched me again, until once more my blood rushed toward his hand. “Open your eyes, my little queen.” He raised his face up away from mine so we could look at each other. I had never looked at any man so close. His pupils were huge, his mouth seemed big enough to swallow me, his breath covered my whole face. And then he was done waiting.

  I did not yield easily, but Xerxes did not yield either. I remembered what Halannah had said: “The first time the king has you, you will pray for death to take you before he is done.” But then my body responded and we moved more easily together. Still, I was uncertain whether I was in agony or ecstasy for most of it, and then, all too soon and not soon enough, it was over.

  Xerxes rolled onto his back and called for wine. My heart beat wildly. I could still feel the heat where his body had pressed against my own. The king, my husband. I had been made a queen and a woman all in one day.

  I am no longer Hadassah, a girl who stood by in silence while her parents were killed.

  I hoped that neither the servants nor the king would glance at me until I had a chance to use the powder I had brought for my face and had taken a cloth to my damp flesh. I wanted to appear no less than a queen.

  Two servants entered with a pitcher that had a handle in the shape of a lion’s tail, as well as goblets and a tray of sugared pistachios. The king motioned for the servants to set the wine and nuts down and then he waved them from the room. Though I desired almost nothing more than the warmth of wine traveling down to my belly, I did not want him looking too closely at me when I was unkempt. Without waiting for permission, I reached to the floor for my robe and grabbed the powder Hegai had given me. “Your Majesty, please excuse me,” I said as I hurried behind the chamber pot screen to make myself presentable.

  When I returned to the king’s bed with the wine he did not look at me. “You have dropped our son into the chamber pot.”

  I felt as though the air had been knocked from my chest. Perhaps God did not want a gentile’s seed in my belly after all and that is why I had suddenly been overcome with the urge to get up. No, it was my own stupidity. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg forgiveness, but any sudden movement might further aggravate the king or cast out what was left of the child the king had tried to plant. “Please forgive me, Your Majesty.”

  Without responding he rolled away from me, onto his side, and fell into a fitful sleep. I watched his huge back, thinking of how he had exiled Vashti for refusing to appear naked before his banquet, and wondering if I too had just committed an offense that would cost me his favor.

  When he awoke he was not too unhappy to reach for me again. Afterward, I did not get up. I tried not to worry about how I might appear to him. There was only one thing that could bring us truly together. I pulled my knees into my chest and prayed. A son. Please send me a son.

  Until then I would make do with what I could. “My king,” I said, “I do not want to jostle your seed. Will you hand me my goblet?”

  He reached across my body to retrieve the goblet from the little table beside me, and placed it into my hand. His arms were so long that he easily grabbed his own without moving away from me. I raised my goblet.

  “To our son!” I said hopefully.

  “To our son,” he said, “and the future of the empire.”

  We drank and coupled until the king was too drunk to continue either one. Though I wanted a son I almost cried with relief when Xerxes had had his fill of me. My body ached so deeply that I was afraid it would ache forever.

  I fought the urge to rush behind the chamber screen with the powder and a damp cloth. I told myself that he was too overfull with wine to notice that I no longer looked like the goddess Ishtar. When I carry his son I will appear beautiful to him even when my cosmetics have worn off and I lie in a pool of his sweat.

  “My love,” I said, “there is something I must ask you.”

  “Do not pretend to seek my permission if you must ask.”

  I was uncertain if I should go on, but I did, because I had no way of knowing when he might call upon me again. Vashti was said to have sometimes gone over a month without seeing him. Xerxes had four palaces and hundreds of girls at each one.

  “There is a great evil that all virgins in your harem face, and many do not come away from it unscathed. Their maidens’ seal is broken by someone besides you, my king.”

  “Who would risk the wrath of Ahura Mazda to take what is rightfully mine?”

  I made sure to keep my voice steady as I said the name of his favorite concubine. “Halannah.” I watched his face. It showed nothing.

  “I will see to this,” he said, “but now I must rest.”

  I pulled my knees into my chest and lay that way—unmoving—all night, willing the king’s seed to take root in my womb. I did not run behind the screen to make myself presentable until morning. Afterward I waited for the king to awaken.

  “Thank you, my king,” I said as soon as he opened his eyes.

  He did not need time to rouse himself—he awoke alert, as finished with sleep as he must have been with each harem girl in the morning. He turned so that his huge chest rose up beside me like a wall. “And I thank Ahura Mazda, little Shushan. In giving me such a beautiful queen, he shows me that from this moment on he will give me only good things.” He traced his fingertips along the curves of my body, then spread his hand so that it stretched across my whole stomach. “The Greeks will wish they had already lost to me, compared to how they will lose now.”

  I hoped he would not be foolish enough to attack the Greeks again, but I would worry about that later. “And I hope the evil-doer in your harem will be equally as sorry as the Greeks.”

  He looked confused for an instant, but then his brow relaxed. “Yes. I will put a stop to this evil immediately.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. You are truly a great and benevolent king. I am even more proud to be your queen today than I was yesterday.”

  “There is much to enjoy, my queen,” he said, then yelled “enter!” Servants rushed in to prop us up in the king’s huge bed with thick cushions. All the attendants I had seen the morning before paraded into the king’s chamber once again: two Immortals from the king’s escort, four eunuchs with silk towels over their shoulders who wheeled in a basin made of gold, three more servants with platters of bread, fruit, and honey, another with a pitcher of sweet-smelling wine. After this came about twenty musicians, three girls with bells on their wrists and ankles, and another girl with a large fan of date palm leaves. Two of the servants fastened my crown to my hair.

  “My queen, I would have you bathed in my own basin of gold while I look upon your great beauty and give thanks to Ahura Mazda.”

  I did not wish for anyone to see my naked body and whatever marks or swelling might show upon my thighs, but also I could not plainly refuse the king’s wishes as Queen Vashti had done. “You are too gracious, my king. On this morning I thought to be bathed in the herbs my servant has been procuring in order to hasten your seed to my womb. But I will bathe for you instead. I want only to please you.”

  He regarded me carefully, and it seemed one eyebrow was on the verge of rising, but he did not risk the son he might have planted during the night.r />
  “Go now, to soak in your servant’s herbs. You will bathe for me another time.”

  He kissed me so sweetly, and for so long, that I could not tell whether he loved me or we were not going to see each other again for a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  RUTI AND HEGAI

  As I stepped from Xerxes’ chambers and saw the Immortals standing guard, I could not keep from thinking of Erez. “Hurry,” I said to my escort as they led me back to my chambers and the wine that awaited me there. I hoped it might ease the new ache in my body.

  As soon as I entered my chambers, Ruti said, “Tell me all, my queen.” She quickly added, “If it please you.”

  I would have been happy to see her but for my exhaustion and the many questions I knew she would ask. “While we are in the baths, Ruti.”

  The Queen’s Baths were as large as the women’s baths, but instead of a long line of bronze washing tubs, they contained only one large golden basin. When Ruti asked me how the evening had gone, I did not lie. “I think it went well, but I cannot be certain.”

  Ruti stopped moving the damp cloth along my arm. “How is it you do not know, my queen? Were you overfull with wine?”

  I placed a hand, the one that did not hold my goblet, onto my belly. “Time will tell whether something good has come of it.”

  The heaviness fell from Ruti’s face. The way her emotions swung wildly up and down at only a few words reminded me that everything I did now was important. The crown was much heavier than it looked.

  She put the hand that was not holding the cloth on top of mine. “He will be Jewish, whether anyone knows this or not.”

  Not even he will know. The thought filled me with sadness, but I knew I would do all I could to protect my son, even conceal his true identity from him. I did not want to burden him with a secret he might not be able to keep.