by Tessa Afshar
“You’ve been very gracious. I am beholden to you. Thank you also for getting me out of the hunt tomorrow. I can’t imagine sitting astride a horse come sunrise. Holding my eyes open at the moment is about all I can manage.”
Darius leaned over and picked up the bejeweled knife laid at our table, and with it cut a piece of the stuffed quince we had just been served and offered it to me. “I know you’re tired. It’s been an exhausting week for you. Unfortunately, though I am certain you wish nothing more than to retire, we will be one of the last to leave this evening. We shall feast the night away and show everyone that we are in accord, and that there is no substance to the empty gossip circulating about us.”
As he had foreseen, it was late by the time Darius and I retired to our diminutive apartment. As soon as we entered, I headed for the nook where one of the royal servants had delivered a bedroll upon my request. There was no way that I could go to sleep in my heirloom garments. I sat on the mattress and tried to think of a way to undress with Darius in plain view on the other side of the room.
“What are you doing?” he asked, coming toward me.
“Making ready for bed.”
“You’re not going to sleep here.” He tilted his head toward the large ornate bed in the corner of the room. “Get in there.”
I’m sure I must have turned scarlet.
He took a step back. “I didn’t mean … I meant I shall sleep on the floor and you will have the bed. I am not going to drag a woman halfway through the length of Persia and then make her sleep on the floor.”
“I am accustomed to sleeping on the ground.”
“I don’t care.”
I was too tired to argue. Without a word I rose and dragged myself to the bed. I sat down and once again tried to work out how to undress in the same room as my husband.
“Sarah? I forgot to tell you; I had word from the men I sent to find Teispes’s brother. They will come tomorrow and bring his accounts as well as Mandana’s receipts. We will need to go through them and get them in order. Can you help?”
My face fell. The Sabbath had begun hours before. The daylight hours belonged to the Lord. I had broken the Sabbath more than once, but I hadn’t fully surrendered my life to God then. I had promised myself that I would not give in to easy compromises anymore. “My lord, I … cannot.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Of course. I shouldn’t have expected that you’d wish to work as a scribe now that you are in an elevated position.”
“It isn’t that!” I stood up and took a step toward him. “It isn’t that at all!” I thought of the irony that prevented me from helping him when at long last I had an opportunity. I could not understand the timing of God. Why would He close this door when He knew it was my only chance at making my husband value me? “It is the Sabbath you see—the Jewish day of rest. The Lord demands that we keep the Sabbath holy. And I … want so much to honor Him better than I have done in the past.”
To my relief, the tight line of his mouth softened. “The Sabbath. I know what that is. My mother kept it.” He turned around. Over his shoulder he said, “It would harm none if we dealt with the accounts one day later, I suppose.”
I let my breath out with relief. “I will enjoy seeing what kind of accounts Teispes’s brother keeps. I wonder if they are as outrageous as his brother’s.”
Darius yawned. “The mere mention of accounts puts me to sleep, I own. I’m off to my bed.” He blew out the lamps and drenched the room in darkness, thereby solving my problem of how to prepare for bed in his presence.
In spite of my exhaustion, I found myself wakeful, my thoughts awhirl. Once again Darius had stood up for me. He had championed me before the whole court. I thought of his words, your account is with me. To be fair, they weren’t entirely accurate. My actions had hurt his father also. They had cast a bad reflection upon the queen, upon Nehemiah, upon my own father. I had harmed more than Darius on the eve of my wedding.
But it was the judgment of strangers that had weighed so heavily on me this night. In their eyes I was an outcast. I felt their sentence of rejection and believed it just. This was my problem: I agreed with them. On the strength of that agreement, I could not be freed from the condemnation I felt.
O Lord, help me! I felt so small and lonely. Darius, for all his help, had rejected me himself.
Your account is with Me. The words echoed in my mind like a whisper, but it wasn’t Darius’s voice that whispered them.
Your account is with Me. I sensed the words repeated once more in my heart, with more force this time.
“Lord?” As soon as I said His name, I began to remember the stories of our people. I thought of other men and women, outcast and hopeless, whom the Lord had accepted, watched over, loved: Jacob, Moses, Rahab, Ruth, David. These were imperfect men and women, each one an outsider in his or her own way, whom He had transformed, wanted, changed. Those who against all reason belonged to Him, not because they were free of faults, but because He had chosen them. This was the truth of God. This was His nature, His heart revealed.
I thought how much greater this reality weighed in the balance of my soul than the judgment of courtiers I barely knew. Your account is with Me. My sins and failures sat in the palm of God’s hand; they lay in the balance of His holiness. To Him, I owed my greatest accounting. Could I make my heart dwell only on the Lord’s opinion of me, and thereby, be able to ignore the judgments of others, be they good or bad? Could I exchange God’s reality for the one that awaited me in the halls of the king’s palace?
If my account was with God, then I had more repenting to do. I recalled how hard my heart had been toward Him on the eve of my wedding. How I had discounted God’s will and insisted on mine.
That night, my whole soul had been wrapped around my pain and fear. I hadn’t given a thought to how Darius felt or how my actions might affect our fathers. I had thought only of myself because I had thought so little of God. If I had trusted Him, I would have found the strength to think of the pain of others as well as my own. I would have avoided choices that caused so much damage.
My account with God was in a worse state than any other. But surely the One who had accepted David even after he had committed murder and adultery could find acceptance enough for me? In King David’s words I cried out to God:
Do not remember the rebellious sins of my youth.
Remember me in the light of Your unfailing love,
For You are merciful, O Lord.
I spent the rest of my wakeful hours asking the Lord’s forgiveness. The more I prayed, the greater the measure of His unfailing love seemed to grow, and the smaller the measure of my rebellion. It was as though bit by bit, His goodness swallowed up my sin. When I finally fell into sleep that night, my dreams were sweet.
The next evening Damaspia dismissed her attendants in order to meet with me alone. She bid me to sit on a golden stool near her and offered me fruit from a bowl overflowing with apples and pears and figs and mulberries and a few fruits I could not name. My new rank had earned me this honor; in the old days, I would have stood at attention in her presence. Without preamble she said, “You’ve had a hard summer.”
I thought she spoke of Teispes. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said. “Though it feels good to be rid of him.”
“Him, you got rid of. What about your heart?”
“My heart?” I asked faintly.
“I don’t suppose you enjoyed losing your post only to find yourself far from court and abandoned by your husband.”
I shifted on the golden stool; it creaked under my weight. In spite of its beauty, it wasn’t comfortable. How like Damaspia to set my behind on an incommodious chair while asking her disagreeably insightful questions. “At first, it was devastating. I felt very sorry for myself,” I said.
She smiled. “And then?”
I shrugged. “I made a few friends.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You must have been lonely.”
Even in my years of working at the court I h
ad been lonely. I had merely been too busy to notice, and too tired and afraid to care. At the court, I had had acquaintances, colleagues, superficial friendships. But I had had no one who knew my heart with any degree of intimacy, nor had I known how to reach deeply into the heart of another.
The early quiet days in my new home had made it impossible not to recognize how alone I felt. Without distractions, without the urgency of scribal expectations, for the first time in many years I had had no choice but to feel.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, and left it at that.
She folded her hands like an ivory fan and laid them on her lap. “It was my doing that no one tried to reach you all summer. I had good reason. Your husband walked about these walls like a wounded panther for weeks. I feared that if we tried to write you or visit you, he would misunderstand it for some kind of interfering plot and grow even angrier with you. So I stayed away from you, and told Nehemiah to do the same and to bid your father to keep his distance as well.
“After a few weeks, the king sent Darius on some mission to help him cool down a little. He was more himself when he returned. That’s when I asked him to fetch you.”
I remembered believing Teispes’s venomous declaration that the silence of family and friends meant no one cared for me. Now, it appeared the opposite was true. They had stayed away because they had cared. I had accepted Teispes’s version of events. At the time, it had rung true. But I had been wrong, and in my despair it had been easy to believe a lie.
I saw the queen expected a response and stirred myself. “His lordship has been most kind since his return.”
“Oh? Are you a real bride at last?”
I didn’t pretend not to understand. Doing my best to keep my expression neutral, I said, “No, Your Majesty.”
“Well, it’s early days yet. Tell me, how do you like your apartment here in Ecbatana?”
“Very … unusual arrangements.”
Damaspia laughed. “It took some maneuvering, I assure you. Even the king was scandalized that I would put husband and wife in one room. But with you looking so pretty and under his foot day and night, it won’t be long before that cousin of mine will sit up and take notice.”
I tried to squelch my annoyance at her interference. I knew she felt responsible, guilty even, for the outcome of this union. Her motives were good, but I couldn’t help wishing that she would take her fingers out of my life. “Hardly pretty, Your Majesty,” I said, my voice dripping skepticism.
“Do you still doubt it? With those lips, thick shining hair, and all those curves, you’d turn any man’s head. And now that you’re dressing like a lady instead of an orphaned peasant, you’re showing your beauty to advantage. Where did you get that sumptuous robe you wore to the feast last night? That wasn’t one of mine.”
“Lord Darius gave it to me. His mother set it aside for his wife.”
“He has been kind. I noticed how attentive he was at the feast last night.”
I jumped when she reached out to hold my hand, not as a queen, but as a friend. “Sarah, you were not born as one of us. You cannot imagine what it means to have privilege and influence from birth. You cannot imagine the way people clamor to be with you, only so they can use you. You cannot imagine what it’s like never being sure if someone cares for you, or only wants to avail himself of some benefit through you. Trust is not something we can give with ease, and once broken, it’s hard to restore.
“That’s one of the reasons I chose you for Darius. I knew you were trustworthy and loyal. I knew he would be safe in your hands. The trouble is that he doesn’t know that yet. It will take time to heal this damage. But I think it will heal, because the truth is that you aren’t who he thinks you are. When he comes to know the real you, he will forgive what you did.”
After my time with Damaspia, I stopped for a brief visit with my old colleagues. As usual, they were at work in an airless cubicle in the women’s quarters. For some moments I stood at the door unobserved. This would have been my life scant months ago. I felt strangely detached from it. I had thought that seeing them at work would revive my longing. But I felt like a stranger in that room. I no longer belonged there. The insight came as a shock, for I did not feel like I belonged to Darius’s household either. Where was my place now? My reverie was interrupted by one of the eunuchs, who, noticing me, jumped up, spilling his parchments on the floor.
I tried to help pick up the sheets, but they wouldn’t allow me. It was clear they felt I didn’t belong with them either. To them, I was now a lady of rank. They acted awkward with me, and no amount of verbal assurance could put them at ease. I left soon after, knowing I was an unwelcome interruption.
I had a solitary supper in my apartments that night. Of Darius there was no sign. Shortly after I had eaten, one of Darius’s men brought a message from him saying that the king had recommended a scribe to replace Teispes and Darius had left to follow up the lead. So much for my efforts to prove my worth to him by my service. Now that he was about to hire a new scribe, he would have no need of my help. I was back to being the nuisance with whom he was saddled. I slept in his bed and wore his mother’s bride clothes and gave nothing in return. The spark of hope Damaspia’s words had ignited in me began to dim.
Having slept so little the evening before, it was no hardship to slip into bed early. I don’t know where my husband spent the night, but it was not in our room.
Chapter Twenty-One
nehemiah sent Darius and me an invitation to visit him in the morning. He had been present at the feast of the equinox, but had not come to greet us. I suspected the rift between him and Darius remained unrepaired. This invitation was his way of extending a peace offering, no doubt.
For my part, I had long since forgiven Nehemiah for his role in arranging my marriage. He had meant me no harm. Indeed, he had paid me a profound compliment believing that a man like Darius would want me for his wife. The discovery that he had not ignored me for three months, but stayed away out of obedience to Damaspia removed any lingering barriers I might have felt toward him.
In Darius’s absence, I decided to accept Nehemiah’s invitation by myself, although I broke several social rules by doing so. As the wife of a nobleman, I no longer had the freedom of a commoner. To meet alone with a man, even one who was my cousin, was forbidden. But I doubted that Darius would care. I was a wife foisted on him. He seemed little concerned with my choices.
Besides, I found myself longing for Nehemiah’s company. I wished to share with him the joy of my newfound faith; more than anyone, he would understand what that meant to me. I decided not to wait for Darius, and flaunting etiquette, went in search of my cousin.
I caught Nehemiah in the midst of packing. For once, his offices were not in perfect order. No one announced my entrance and I walked in to find my cousin with his head buried in a leather chest. “Going somewhere?” I asked.
“Sarah!” I gulped when he enveloped me in a fatherly embrace. “I’m delighted to see you.”
I had not expected such welcome. Neither had he intended to give it, I think, since he stepped away from me with a stiff step. I found both his impromptu affection and subsequent self-consciousness endearing. “I’m going to Susa ahead of the court to prepare for the king,” he said, answering my initial question.
“Ah. I’d forgotten the court would soon be moving to Susa. A few months and I already feel out of step with the routines of the royal household.”
“Obviously, since you are here unaccompanied. Aren’t you asking for trouble?”
“Seeing you is worth it.”
Nehemiah gave me a stern glare. “You’d better leave. Come back later with an appropriate chaperone.”
“My husband will not care.”
He arched an eyebrow and invited me to sit on an overstuffed saffron-colored couch. “You’ve had quite a summer, I hear.”
I imagined by now he knew every detail of what I had shared with the king. “Yes, my lord,” I said. Technically, he wasn’t
my lord anymore since my rank was above his. But old habits died hard.
“It sounds like you have found faithful friends in your new home.”
“That I have.”
He nodded. “Good.” He looked away for a brief moment. “You’ve spent some time with your husband, at long last. How does he treat you?”
There were so many ways he could have asked that question. With simple curiosity. With meddlesome intent. With shades of criticism. Instead he asked it with honest concern, his gaze warm with compassion as well as strength. Nehemiah always managed to make me feel like he could handle my gravest problems.
So instead of the flippancy I had intended, the truth slipped out. “He is kind. Appreciative, even, since the Teispes business. But he’ll never love me. He won’t even touch me.”
“And you love him.” It wasn’t a question. I should have known he would unearth my deepest secret without effort. Since I’d been a child, the man had known how to burrow inside my mind and expose what I thought.
I buried my face in my hands for a moment. “How foolish can a woman be?”
“It’s not foolish to love your husband.”
“It is when he can’t bear the sight of you.”
“I think you are past that at least, judging by the way he looked at you on the eve of the equinox.”
“It was his way of shielding me from court gossip. I told you, he’s kind.”
Nehemiah drummed his well-groomed fingers on the alabaster-top table next to him. “He no longer despises you if he shows you kindness. You’ve come far in a handful of months.”
My smile was tinged with sadness. “I had hoped that I could win his favor by helping him as a scribe. He left his personal aid at his palace to help in Teispes’s absence. Until he hired a new scribe, I was supposed to assist him. I thought he would come to see that I was not a complete disappointment. But that’s not to be, it seems. The king has found him a man already.”