The Hadassah Covenant

by Tommy Tenney

  “No more than the fate of three palace discards like you, me and Jesse,” I said.

  “I suppose we had both better remember that. No matter what does come next.”

  It was his astute way of changing the subject. And it succeeded; we would not bring up this question again until the banks of the Ahava, years later, in the conversation I have already told you about.

  On that day, we both fell silent and spoke of it no more, for the faint, bristling shadow of Susa’s citadel had just come into sight upon the horizon, and something inside of me sank with a great foreboding. . . .

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  PRIME MINISTER’S RESIDENCE—THE NEXT MORNING

  Hadassah ben Yuda awoke with the motion of a strong hand shaking her about one shoulder. She opened her eyes and started at Jacob’s face looming large, leaning forward in concern as he crouched down.

  “Honey, what are you doing here?”

  She looked about her. Carpet and wall. An angle of the room she had never seen before. She had fallen asleep sitting with Esther’s memoir in her lap, leaning against her makeup table.

  “I don’t know, Jacob. I woke up last night with the most restless feeling, and the best distraction I could think of was a few pages from this. . . . ”

  She saw his eyes dart down to the cover page in her lap, register the title, and look back again without a reaction.

  “Queen Esther.” He said the name flatly. “She doesn’t seem to leave us alone, does she?”

  “Whether the document helps your crisis or not—her account is just fascinating. There’s something about her troubles that seems to . . .” She didn’t want to seem cloying or simplistic, so she did not finish her sentence. And then she realized what she’d said . . . Whether the document helps you or not. . . .

  “Honey, I don’t mean that I don’t care,” she hurried to explain. “I just mean that even beyond its usefulness to the crisis at hand, the memoir has a lot to say. A lot to offer.”

  He nodded slowly, and she knew he was assessing her words in light of the difficult times she was living through. The thought galled her somehow. She wanted her observations weighed on their own merit, not the demeaning standard of someone “not quite herself.”

  “Listen, sweetheart,” he said with a brush of her cheek, “I have to go. I’d be glad to stay this morning, but it’s another meeting with the Gaza folks.” Gaza folks was his usual, wry pseudonym for the revolving door of diplomats he saw from the Palestinian Authority. As much as he confessed to her his disdain for the petulant and self-important suits who filed through his door, he was obliged to give them his utmost attention. Especially now.

  “I’m sorry,” she found herself saying to him as he rose. Her hand clawed helplessly around the back of his neck in a vain attempt at affection.

  “Sorry for what, sweetheart?”

  “For . . . for bringing all this down on you. For being such a distraction just when you’re about to win the prize.”

  The prize, of course, meant the same thing to every Israeli politician or politician’s wife since the early days of 1948. It meant peace. A solution to the quagmire that had agitated their nation’s life from day one. More than any of his predecessors, Jacob had reached the brink of this seemingly impossible goal. Then she and her Byzantine family secrets had ruined everything.

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart,” he said, interrupting her gloom. “You are the prize. You’re more important to me than any of this.”

  She closed her eyes against the tears, for she could not bring herself to believe his kind words just then.

  When she felt bold enough to open them again, he was gone. And once more, the only thing that held any life for her was the document lying in her lap.

  Thank you, Esther, she whispered silently. Thank you for a few hours’ sleep.

  And for being a companion whose life seems to mirror everything I’m going through . . . .

  . . . Leah, the following day was the worst of my life.

  Following our return from the coronation, I spent the night on a pallet in a corner of Mordecai’s apartment. I cannot say that I slept there, for what I actually endured was a sort of prolonged good-bye, a restless floating in an ocean of loss and melancholy.

  Dawn mercifully rescued me, and at midmorning I allowed in a team of royal slaves to pack up everything I owned and place it on a litter. When they were ready, I glanced at the load, which they easily picked up with a team of four, and realized that despite the mind-numbing opulence in which I had lived for so long, remarkably little actually belonged to me. Most of what I cared to keep were small, highly valuable gifts from Xerxes himself and some other ornamental keepsakes of my life as Queen.

  The item I cherished most, however, was one I bore with me into my royal life. A treasure I wore upon my person: the beautiful Star of David I have already written about to you. The one which my parents gave me upon my seventh birthday, on the night of their deaths. I slipped it around my neck, took a deep breath, and inwardly said my good-byes.

  And then, accompanied by little more than a few crates of bundled trinkets, I walked out into the hallway of Susa’s Great Palace. As so many years before, I watched the great crowds that filled the marble floors fall silent and part to make way for me. I turned back to the great doors of Xerxes’ living quarters and remembered how desperately my heart had pounded on that day fifteen years before, when a young virginal member of the harem had arrived accompanied by Hegai and greeted furtively by Memucan at the front door. It seemed it had taken place in another lifetime, with a wholly different person—some pale and frightened young woman posing as myself.

  Then I also remembered how close G-d had felt to me then. I had spent the entire trip between the harem and palace in pitiful prayer, and at the moment of reaching these fateful doors I had felt Him as closely as I felt my own damp skin.

  The thought gave me a twinge of regret, for over the years I have not maintained the same closeness to Him as I did in those days. Perhaps, I wondered, this was the reason why I harkened back to those times as the highlights of my life, and my latter years as a sort of slow, dismal descent from their luminous perch.

  The difference? Maybe it had something to do with how fervently I had once sought Him, with a hunger and a passion borne maybe of youth, but maybe . . . maybe simply a purer heart.

  I turned back to my path through the hallway. And just ahead, where the dividing of courtiers ended and watchers still barred my path, the crowd ahead parted with a startling suddenness.

  One person stepped forward, her eyes firmly planted on me. This fierce, aging beauty wrapped in a breathtaking pearl-hued robe inlaid with gold threads and fine jewels. A woman with a carriage and manner that bespoke both anger and supreme control. It took my eyes a moment to recognize the new arrival at the palace.

  Vashti. Or should I say, Amestris.

  “I wondered if you might not grant me a few minutes of your time, Lady Hadassah,” she said with a calculating smile.

  “I would love the chance,” I answered, “but as you see the litter bearers have to come to bear me away to the harem.”

  “All the more reason,” she said. “I would have my words with you before your departure from our halls. Besides, the slaves will wait. Put down your load,” she proclaimed to no one in particular, unwilling to grace the men even with her eyes.

  With a solid thunk, the litter was lowered to the floor, and the slaves slowly raised themselves back to full height.

  Amestris had already turned and was leading the way to her own apartments. I dutifully followed, surprised at this interruption and apprehensive about its meaning. After several turns, we walked through a pair of open doors into the same quarters previously reserved for the once-prince Artaxerxes. Already, though, they were unrecognizable. Whereas her son had been contented with a basic abode in which to sleep and change clothes, Amestris had in less than a day re-covered every inch of the walls with velvet, gold damask, and rich lamé,
even replacing his modest bed with a gilded construction akin to a small sailing vessel.

  It doesn’t matter, I forced myself to say, for it did not. Who knows how much modest living she had endured in her days of shadow?

  She swept onto a low cushion with the grand confidence of one who had never left the palace, and bade me sit beside her with a wave of her fingers. It had not taken her long to reacclimate herself, I realized.

  “So, Hadassah,” she began. “I had never seen you until yesterday, although your name was a constant presence on my tongue during my time away.”

  “I am most pleased to see you return,” I replied, determined to maintain my approach of the previous day.

  “Yes, you were most gracious in expressing that to me the last time we spoke. I thought perhaps more time to talk in private might be called for. It seems I owe you my thanks.”

  “I hardly see for what cause.”

  “Oh, surely you do. I am thankful for your gracious welcome, but I speak of something far more dear to both of us. I speak of my son.”

  “Yes. He has been a blessing to my life from the very day he appeared.”

  “As you can imagine, nothing pained me more than giving him up. But I knew that if he were to have a future at court, I had to insert him into its everyday life as soon as possible.”

  “I understand. And he made that transition remarkably smoothly.”

  “In no small part to you, Hadassah. You treated him like your own child. Again, I owe you my thanks.”

  “You are most welcome. But if I may ask, starting at the beginning, how is it you survived those days? I had it on very good authority that you were killed in your bed, soon after leaving the palace. We all thought you were murdered, even your own son.”

  “And it is because of my son that I was not, my dear Hadassah,” she answered with a sly smile. “You see, I was great with child in those days. In fact, my impending delivery of a baby is the most important one of the reasons why I refused our husband’s order to appear before his accursed banquet. I was in no condition to parade my naked form before any man, let alone a leering group of drunken soldiers.”

  “And the baby was Artaxerxes?”

  “Yes. Artaxerxes’ arrival was the cause of my disposition, of which, to their eternal curse, his chamberlains did not see fit to inform the King. And on the night of which you spoke—yes, my bedroom was indeed attacked. In fact, you had no way of knowing this, but in the years that followed I did some prying of my own into their background. And it seems the killers were followers of one Haman the Agagite, a man who gave you and your people a bit of trouble at the palace, from what I heard.”

  “You mean—the riders bearing the twisted cross?”

  “The same. Twisted crosses were painted in blood across my sleeping chamber. In the blood of my youngest sister. For you see, that night I was occupied by the actual delivery of my son. Zoriana asked if she could use my bed that night, as several of my sisters were at our house for the occasion and sleeping space was scarce.”

  “So a beautiful woman was indeed murdered, but it wasn’t you.”

  “Exactly. And as Haman was at the height of his influence with the King during those days, I can only surmise that it was your dear Xerxes, our beloved King as you put it, who ordered me killed.”

  “I find such cruelty hard to imagine,” I murmured, casting about for something I could say in his defense.

  “Cruelty? Oh, you have no idea, my dear. You see, there was another reason why I refused my husband’s demeaning demand. One of which, I hear, you have remained blissfully unaware during your time on the throne. It also concerns our husband.”

  “I am still grieving his loss, my Queen Mother. Must I hear unsettling news?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Still closing your eyes to the truth, I see. So your reputation as a naïf was well earned. Well, I am sorry, but I will not spare you the whole picture of your husband’s depravity. Perhaps it will even ease your pain. Nothing like a little rage to lighten the load of grief. You see, your husband has spent the years of his life not only . . .”

  “Your Highness, I really do not wish to hear this,” I said, attempting to rise from my cushion on the floor.

  “I am not asking you, Queen Regent,” she said, fiercely twisting the last word to emphasize the subordinate status it conveyed and waving imperiously for me to remain seated. “You will listen, or you will die.”

  “I came within seconds of being murdered myself,” I replied, quivering with intensity and fear, “on the night of his death. And I have asked myself every minute since if I should have perished with him. So do not think I won’t avoid it now to keep my love for him alive.” I finished far more bravely than I felt.

  “You would die for a man who was unworthy of you? Who betrayed you at every turn?”

  I was now close to tears, for despite the evil in her eyes, I feared she might be telling the truth. “Please, Queen Mother, I beg you, I have never done anything to harm you. You have my full loyalty. So why are you trying to torture me like this?”

  “Because you had the audacity to proclaim such a precious, undying love with that very same man. You insulted the suffering of me and every woman he ever defiled with your pathetic fawning over him, your lovesick pretense of married bliss. As if he didn’t have hundreds of spare bedmates waiting for him only yards away! As if he wasn’t so twisted that he used sex as a way of establishing superiority over those around him, as if he was marking his territory!”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, navigating the conversation by sheer instinct.

  “What?” My willingness to defer to her had once again defied her credulity.

  “I’m so sorry that my husband treated you and so many other women so badly. I really am. I do not excuse his behavior, any more than I will dilute the wonderful reality of being married to him.”

  Upon hearing those words, Amestris fixed her eyes upon the floor and blew her breath out deeply, clearly in thought.

  “Fine. Well, do you know why I am going to let you live?”

  “Because I pose you no threat? Because I am utterly loyal both to you and to your son, the King?”

  “No, but it does have something to do with Artaxerxes. It’s because when I tore my own heart out and allowed my baby son to be taken from my breast and inserted into the royal nursery, I was told that the Queen of that day fell in love with him. And protected him from all harm. And showed him the love and caring that I could not, although I wanted to more than anything in the world—because I was deep in hiding and in fear of my life.”

  “It’s true. I often thought of Artaxerxes as the son I never had. And he probably thought of me as his mother.”

  “Yes. And although it pained me to have another woman occupy a role which I longed to play, I know that you were good to him. And he loves you dearly. As I am a loving mother, despite what you may have heard of me, I have accrued these actions toward my son to your credit. So I promise you this. As long as you and your fellow Jews do not threaten the throne or the empire in any way, you will have my goodwill and protection. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “But know this. If I ever have reason to suspect your allegiance or even tire of your presence on this earth, I will deal with you as I surely would have if you had not shown such kindness toward my son.”

  “And how is that?”

  “How is that?” She seemed amused by the question. “How is that? Well, let me tell you a story. There was a woman I will not name, who rebuffed Xerxes’ adulterous advances. Well, after he was crowned, he offered me a wedding present whose terms you might recognize. He said to me, ‘Darling, I will you give anything you ask of me, even if it is half the kingdom.’ So I thanked him and asked him for the custody of the woman in question, to do with as I wished. The color went out of his face, but he knew he could not refuse me, so he delivered the woman into my hands. And do you know what I did to her?”

  “I dare n
ot even begin—”

  “I didn’t think so. I watched the royal torturer cut off her breasts, her nose, her lips, her ears, and her tongue. Then I sent her home to her family, to live out her life.”

  She smiled as she said this, like someone remembering a cherished family trip.

  I thought I was about to vomit right into her lap. I had never heard a person speak like this in all my days.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, my voice trembling. “I thought she resisted him. She did nothing wrong.”

  “Wrong? I’ll tell you what she did wrong. She replaced me. For weeks people were saying, ‘Vashti is no longer the world’s most desirable woman. Xerxes wants another.’ So I replaced her back. Besides—she spurned him. Who was she to consider herself too good for him, when so many others, including me, were forced to become his victim? She did plenty wrong.” The venom in her voice turned my heart to ice.

  She turned toward me, smiling slyly.

  It was at that moment I realized the truly treacherous and bitter woman with whom I was dealing. She was not to be trusted—or even completely believed.

  “Although that wasn’t my supreme reason for doing it. I did it, most of all, to spite him. She was the one he’d really wanted. So I destroyed her because I was the Queen, and I could. I had the power, so I used it. Do we understand each other?”

  I nodded, struggling with every ounce of strength to keep my composure. I felt as though the life had just been sucked right out from my marrow. I felt so diminished, so drained, by the encounter that I honestly wondered if I could stand when it came time to leave. So I decided to risk one last entreaty.

  “As I said, Amestris, I love your son and I will devote myself to his fortunes as King. And I do not covet your position as Queen Mother. I am glad that Artaxerxes has regained the mother he thought he had lost.”

  She gave me the strangest smile then. It did not touch her eyes, which remained as cold as those of a corpse.