Harvest - 01 - Harvest of Rubies

by Tessa Afshar

  My mouth grew dry as the joy of the enchanted hours we had shared dimmed. It was easy in the privacy of this tiny chamber to think of him as my husband. But a day would come, and perhaps soon, when I would have to learn to share him with others. I would come and go to him at his whim, in a long line of other women.

  “What is it? You look sad, of a sudden.”

  I shook my head.

  “You promised not to keep secrets from me.”

  “This is no secret. It’s a private thought. You can’t expect me to share every thought that enters my head.”

  “I do expect it. And I won the right if you recall. Now tell me why my bride is sorrowful. You can leave my bed without my permission if it irks you so. Go as you please. I care not.”

  I attempted a smile. “That is generous of you.”

  “But?”

  How he pressed to have more of me. For years, I had been guilty, with alarming frequency, of opening my mouth and spilling my thoughts without proper consideration. Feelings were another matter. Those I guarded. Now here was the person whose opinion meant more to me than any other, and he was not satisfied with a pleasing shell. He wanted the revelation of my whole soul, be it clean and good, or weak and mired in imperfection. I could not bear to show him my insecure heart and have it rebuffed, have it ridiculed.

  Yet I knew what the Lord would want from me. He who wished for truth in my inmost being would want me to show myself as I was to my husband. I was to rest in His forgiveness and acceptance no matter what Darius thought of me.

  I opened my mouth, and closed it when no words came out. Clearing my throat, I forced my voice into obedience. “I was thinking of how life will change in time. You will marry again. I will have to learn to share you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Darius shrugged. “I am not set on marrying again. I was traumatized the first time.”

  I shoved him in the shoulder. He grasped my wrists and pulled me against him. “I am in earnest. I don’t intend to marry another.”

  I frowned. “Like Artaxerxes, you mean? Marry one woman, and have the rest as concubines?”

  He sighed and released me. His forehead grew knotted in thought.

  “I intended no complaint, my lord,” I said, anxious that I had displeased him. “These are just the ravings of my mind. You see how bothersome they are, and useless? Now perhaps you won’t insist on having a share of them.”

  He remained silent. I licked my lips. “I grew up with a father who could afford but one wife. There were no concubines in our home. I am not accustomed to such luxury. As it is, I am blessed—”

  Darius stopped the deluge of my words with a kiss so passionate I forgot what I was talking about. He kissed me until I forgot the whole world. He wove a net of desire about me so thick that I doubt I would have remembered my own name, except that he kept repeating it. There was a desperation in the way he made love to me that morning. He clung to me as one trying to stamp out the shadow of old monsters. I clung back; I had my own monsters to forget.

  We ate our morning meal in silence. Darius seemed preoccupied and I still smarted from having misspoken earlier.

  “Do you wish to go for a ride?” he asked after breakfast.

  “With you?”

  “I could arrange Meres to go with you, if you prefer.”

  “He is rather handsome. Can I think on it?”

  “No you little wretch, you can’t. It’s either me or no one.”

  “Then I suppose it had better be you.”

  We plodded past the walls of Ecbatana. The world grew quiet and fresh once we left the bustle of the city. It felt as though we were the only two occupants of Persia as we rode side by side.

  “My mother grew up in a home like yours,” Darius said. He had a disconcerting habit of bringing up topics connected to nothing.

  “A home like mine?”

  “One husband. One wife. That kind of home. Her father was a simple steward.”

  “I had heard.”

  This was no casual conversation, I could see from the determined set of his jaw. He meant to expound on something. I tried to tune my ears to his mood so that I wouldn’t miss the point he wished to make.

  “My parents’ marriage was a love match. They chose each other,” he said.

  I considered the luxury of loving someone and knowing yourself loved in return. My chest tightened with unmet longing. “They must have been very happy.”

  “In many ways they were. Still, my mother found it hard adjusting to life with a man who was bound to so many other women. Many a night I watched her hide tears in her eyes when my father sent for another instead of her. She understood when she consented to marry my father that a Persian aristocrat’s way of life meant sharing her husband with other women. She could have a part of him or none of him. She chose to have a part. Though she made her decision knowingly, she still paid a price. She suffered from his divided attention.”

  He wanted me to know that he understood my pain, I thought. That he did not judge me deficient in some way because of it. He wanted me to learn to bear with his way of life as his mother had learned to bear with his father’s. “I will try to be gracious like your mother,” I said.

  He grimaced. “When I was a child, I remember vowing never to do that to my wife. Never to cause her to suffer such pangs of loneliness.” He shifted on Samson. “Do you know whose life I wanted?”

  “Whose?”

  “The son of Bardia, Gobry’s father. He had one wife. His children were born to him of the same woman, and they all lived together piled up in one small cottage on our estate. But they were happy. United. I have three half brothers and two half sisters, and I hardly know them. My brothers resent me for being my father’s primary heir. My sisters seem to want favors, not affection.”

  I shook my head. “There are no perfect families, are there? I thought yours came close. I would have given the full length of my hair to experience the love you shared with your parents.”

  He leaned over and pulled on a fat, silky coil playfully. “Don’t go giving away your tresses with such generosity. I like them too well.”

  I swatted his hand away. “I bet Gobry would have swapped lives with you in a heartbeat.”

  “I know how privileged I am. I know I am more fortunate than most. But I had always hoped to give my children a better life still.

  “I had hoped to marry for love as my parents did. I knew it to be an unlikely dream for a man in my position. Still, I nursed those hopes. I struggled to think of ways that would spare my wife the pain my mother had suffered. When my father arranged my marriage to a woman I had never heard of, I thought that on this point, at least, I could have an easy conscience. Ours was no love match. You did not want me, nor I you. I imagined that would spare you, though I did what I could to welcome you into my home.”

  “What do you mean?” I recollected little of welcome when I came to him.

  “Before I married you, I had three concubines. All came to me of their own will; I would accept no war prize in the form of frightened women. When my father told me about our marriage, I settled each of my concubines into her own home with servants and enough income to live a comfortable life. They can marry if they choose, or remain independent. I made those arrangements so that my wife could enter my home as the only woman in it. It seemed a gracious way to start our life.”

  My fingers grasped Kidaris’s reins with convulsive strength. “You did this even though being wed to me meant an end to your dream for love?” I stared at the ground, blind now to the rich beauty of our surroundings. “You thought of my well-being while I thought only of myself and how to have my own way. I am shamed, my lord, more than ever, of doing you wrong.”

  He slashed the air with a gloved hand. “I did not say this to shame you. I said it because this morning I saw in your eyes a reflection of what I used to see in my mother’s. I suppose even a woman who doesn’t love her husband has no wish to share him. I want you to know that for now
at least, you do not need to worry over such concerns. Nor will I marry another as long as you keep faith with me and tell me no lies.”

  My heart brimmed over with pain. What I had promised never to tell him bubbled over onto my tongue. “But I do love you,” I cried. Horrified that I had spoken the words aloud, I kicked Kidaris in the side and took off at a gallop.

  Outriding a Persian cavalry officer is like trying to outshine the light of the sun. Within moments my reins were in Darius’s hands and we had both come to a dead stop.

  With one fluid motion, he leapt off his horse’s back while pulling me down with him. He drew us a distance away before stopping. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Forget I said it. It matters not.”

  “It matters to me,” he said, his eyes soft. “I would like to hear you say it.”

  I bowed my head. “I said I love you.”

  The problem with love, I reflected, was that nothing but equal or surpassing love could satisfy its longings. In two short days, I had made enough discoveries to turn my life on its head. I had found that my husband was not indifferent to me. He wanted my company and was unwilling to lose me. In his kindness, he had made a promise to marry no other. I received more honor from him than Damaspia from her king, for I shared my husband with no concubines.

  And yet strangely, I was not satisfied. I hungered for more. My husband wanted me, but he did not love me. Kindness, desire, thoughtfulness could not replace the absence of his love. Could not make up for the fact that when I confessed my love to him, he kissed me with passion, with possessive delight, but he made no declaration of his own.

  Nor could I put out of my mind the fact that when he had spoken of having no woman save me in his home, he had said for now at least, words that rang with ominous possibilities for the future. I knew that his father’s expectations as well as the weight of a culture’s vast heritage required that he fill his home with women and children. How long would his tender memories of a beloved mother resist the mountainous weight of such a demand? Without the shield of love, of faith, how could he stand fast against what every other aristocrat would deem his proper duty to family and nation?

  His promise to marry no other, though reassuring, came with conditions. As long as I kept faith and told him no lies, he had said. If I misstepped, if in his eyes I broke faith, then how fast would he hold to his intention of keeping me as his only wife?

  Though he had learned to like me, he had yet to learn to trust me. Every day he seemed to draw nearer to giving up his doubts about me, however. I wondered if a time would come when he would believe me without hesitation or question.

  I spent many hours during the dawning days of autumn in supplication before the Lord. I had many hours to spare, for Darius, as a courtier, had his responsibilities. His duties occupied his time. I had no like occupation. Hunting and sport, which were the delights of Damaspia’s ladies, interested me little. Nor could I while my hours away at skin and hair treatments, enhancing my charms. I did what I must with grudging impatience. But I could not build a life around such employments. My mind was accustomed to useful activity and what little activity it received in Ecbatana consisted of conversation with my husband and Pari, an occasional audience with the queen, and extended hours of torturous thought about loving a man who did not return the favor.

  The Lord used those painful days to weave my soul more tightly to Him. If I had been a beloved bride, I would have been tempted to make an idol of my husband. Loving Darius as I did, it would have been easy to fall into my old habit of seeking all my well-being from him. Instead, I turned more to my God and sought to find rest in His loving-kindness. He seemed the only sure ground in my life.

  One afternoon when I expected Darius to remain gone until late into the night, the door burst open and he strode in. I had not seen him since dawn, and looked up in surprise. His shuttered expression revealed nothing. I gave up my prayers and stood to face him, feeling unsure.

  “Is anything amiss?”

  He shook his head. “I interrupted your prayers.”

  “The Lord is likely relieved by the interruption. I pester Him often.”

  He was in full court regalia, having attended an official state affair. With impatient fingers he divested himself of his jewel-studded belt and leather sandals, and fell on the couch. His intense green eyes watched me with narrow concentration.

  I wriggled with discomfort under the sharp examination. “Why are you here? I thought the feast would go on till past midnight.”

  His smile was sideways and hard. “Yes, why am I here? I asked myself the same question with every step that took me away from my duty. I could say that I grew bored to death with the pontifications of various heads of state.”

  I sat next to him on the couch, unsure of his strange mood. “Did you?”

  “Oh yes. But that’s nothing unusual. I have participated in such events since before I had a beard.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  “I left, little wife, because I missed you.”

  Any joy I might have felt at such a declaration dimmed by the edge of angry accusation in his voice. “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  He pulled a hand through his hair and leaned away from me. “Why should I be unhappy? It’s no surprise that you are more entertaining than a bunch of whiny old lords set on asking new favors. Anyone would be.”

  I leaned just as far back from him. “What extraordinary talent you display,” I said with cold humor. “In the course of a few words you manage to insult the Persian aristocracy and its foreign heads of state, as well as me. You really ought to teach me how you do that.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “In the interest of self-preservation, I must refuse you, my lady. You have enough weapons at your disposal. It would be suicide to add to your arsenal.”

  As his temper cooled, my own temperature rose. “I know not of what weapons you speak, my lord.”

  I found myself in his arms. “Here is one,” he murmured against my mouth. “And here is another,” he said as he continued to kiss me.

  With the last of my strength I resisted him. “It’s not fair that you resent me because you miss me.”

  “I know.”

  I woke up to find Darius staring out through the lattice window. He had bunched the blue linen curtains to one side and the light of the moon poured into our chamber. Wrapping myself in a robe, I tiptoed to his side.

  Without turning to me he said, “The court moves to Susa soon, but I want to return to my estate in Persepolis, Sarah. I want to ensure that everything is in right order.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful! I’ll see Bardia and Shushan again.” I thought about Caspian whom I would not see and my chest contracted with pain.

  He turned to me. “You do not mind going back? You shall miss the feasts and pageantry of the court for most of the season.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I would rather be with my friends than stuck with lords and ladies I don’t know.”

  He frowned. “You’ve grown quite popular, from what I hear. Many ladies seek your company now. You’ll not long for that?”

  “Not so much popular as entertaining. I have no real friends in court, save perhaps the queen. I am grateful for the acceptance I have found amongst the ladies of rank for your sake if nothing else. As to their company, I can do very well without it.”

  He was silent for a time as he resumed his vigil of the garden through the window. When he spoke finally, his words were measured. “Since Teispes, I have become mindful of how vulnerable my estates are to harm. I am often away and haven’t the time, nor the nature, to examine every detail of the management of my lands. I used to think that I could leave such matters to my stewards and servants. Now I see that is not enough.”

  His breath trickled out like a deflated sigh. “I see how much damage one dishonest individual can cause. So I have a proposition for you, Sarah. I wan
t you to oversee the management of all my properties. That is what you did for the queen, is it not? You would have less to do in my household, as your job would be to manage my managers, so to speak. I know ladies of your station are not expected to work. I realize I am asking an unusual favor, and I want you to know yourself free to refuse me.” He kept his gaze trained away through this speech, as though wishing to give me complete freedom in the making of my decision.

  My stomach performed a neat summersault. Was he truly throwing what I had yearned for into my lap as if it were a favor to him?

  I took time to examine my heart before jumping to give an answer. How did I feel about returning to the work I knew and loved so well? If he had made me this offer when I first had wed him, how different my life would have been. Would I have learned to make friends? To place people and their needs above my achievements? If he had offered me this position when I began to recognize my feelings for him, would I have grasped on to it as a means of proving my worth? As the only way I knew to make him care for me, just a little? Would I not have become once again a slave to my own accomplishments?

  How great a temptation would his offer prove even now? God had given me a glimpse of His freedom, it was true. But was I ready to face my old obsession, my darling passion, my idol? Could I work without twisting my achievements into a means of winning acceptance and security?

  I pressed my eyes shut and asked for guidance. What was the will of the Lord, not my will, nor Darius’s, but the Lord’s will, in this? I would obey. Though it slay me, I would obey. As I made that absolute determination, a sudden and inexplicable relief flooded me. I had no angelic visitation. No one spoke to me with a voice like thunder. But I knew that the Lord was bidding me to grant my husband’s wish. He who had knit me together in my mother’s womb would guide me daily and shield me from idolatry. And when I failed, He would lift me up, lead me to repentance, wash me clean with the blood of His sacrifices, and set me on the right path again.