Game of Queens

by India Edghill

  “You,” Carcas whispered to Harbona. “You are the most senior of us all.” Clearly Harbona disliked hearing this, but not only had the king sent him here, but the queen had ordered him to speak.

  Harbona coughed, and began. “O Queen of Queens, fairer than the morning star, most honored wife to Ahasuerus, king over—”

  I held up my hand. “Yes, Harbona. I know who I am.” Elegant laughter from my guests. “Now tell me the king’s message.”

  “O queen—I beg of you, remember I only bear this command for the king. These are not my words.”

  “Yes, yes, the queen will remember. Now what does the king command?”

  Harbona drew in a deep breath. “O queen, Ahasuerus, King of Kings, Lord of Half the World, commands this: that Queen Vashti come before his guests in the great hall. That Queen Vashti is to wear the queen’s crown, and—and is to come before the king’s guests unveiled, that all may look upon the queen’s beauty and envy the king’s happiness in possessing it.”

  The words echoed in the hall. Silence surrounded me.

  Silence, and staring eyes. All the jeweled women waited to hear what I would say. To see what I would do.

  Would I rise up, and go unveiled out of the Queen’s Palace, into a courtyard filled with feasting men? The King of Kings himself had ordered me to do so—

  —and would remember all the rest of our days that I had displayed myself for every man’s eyes. “It is not meet or proper that the queen attend men’s banquets, or be seen by men”—Ahasuerus’s own words.

  He will blame you. A silent whisper, in a voice not my own. Words from a past not my own. Queen Ishvari’s voice, echoing down the years, refusing another king’s drunken summons: “My most precious jewels are my daughter and my honor, and I will not display either for the pleasure of drunken, impious fools.”

  Anger kindled; an anger that belonged to me alone. Had not Ahasuerus himself forbidden me ever again to show my face at a men’s banquet? How dare he ask this of me now? I was his wife; I was Queen of Queens. How dare Ahasuerus command me to come before all his wine-sodden guests? How dare he demean himself so, to cater shamelessly to men’s whims? Well, if the king would stoop so low, the queen would not. “Tell her she must behave like a queen.” Ahasuerus’s own command.…

  Slowly, I rose to my feet. And when I stood straight and tall, I looked at Harbona with calm, steady eyes. “My lord chamberlain, tell my husband, the King of Kings, the Ruler of the World…” I paused, waiting.

  “Yes, O queen? Tell the king—?” Harbona prompted, and I smiled, and struck.

  “Tell him that I will not come,” I said, and sat down upon my silken cushions once more.

  * * *

  I learned what had happened from others who saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears what passed in the king’s banquet hall. And what happened was disaster.

  Instead of returning to the king and whispering in his ear, Harbona stood and loudly proclaimed my words—just as Prince Shethar had paid well him to do. “The queen says this: tell the king I will not come.”

  After that public announcement of the insult to the king’s power, even the king could not salvage the situation. Not after three of the Seven Princes told him how unforgivable my defiance was. I had rebelled against my husband, and against my king. Both crimes carried a penalty.

  “You must repudiate her,” Prince Shethar told Ahasuerus.

  “Yes,” Carshena agreed. “Set Vashti aside.”

  And even Memucan, who disliked any change to the world’s order, said, “Yes, set her aside. She is not worthy of the crown you gave her.”

  All this spoken in the high, carrying voices used in the king’s court so that even men who stood far from the throne might hear. All spoken to ensure every wine-addled man in the banquet hall heard every poisonous word.

  So King Ahasuerus, drunk past sense, humiliated publicly by his insolent wife, and urged on by the Seven Princes, announced that Vashti was queen no longer.

  And lest, sober, he change his mind on the morrow, Prince Shethar sent immediately for scribes to write the king’s words into an imperial decree. Scribes came and wrote, and Ahasuerus sealed the words into law.

  From that moment, I was no longer Queen of Queens. I was no longer Ahasuerus’s wife.

  * * *

  I, too, had been feasting and drinking for seven nights. So, high-flown with honey wine, I laughed and preened, proud that I had not cravenly submitted to so mad a command. Then, in defiance of all law and custom, the Seven Princes walked into my banquet hall and my guests shrieked and squeaked and hastily veiled their faces. I did not scream, but I stared wide-eyed.

  “How dare you?” I could not believe the Seven had violated the sanctity of the Queen’s Palace, outraged the modesty of my high-born guests. “The king will—”

  “Rebellious woman, we come here at the king’s own command to tell you the king’s decree.” This from Prince Shethar, who spoke for them all whenever he could grab that privilege. “It is this: you are no longer queen. You are set aside and are to come no more before the king.”

  Cold words, sobering as winter water. “Set aside?” I said, unable to truly comprehend what I heard. “I don’t believe Ahasuerus would do such a thing.”

  “Speak of him as the King of Kings. Did you think you could flout the king’s summons? Laugh at him, make him a thing of mockery to all men?”

  Anger kindled deep beneath my heart. “A summons to come to him at a public feast? He must have been mad to order me to do such a thing.”

  “It is the king’s right to—” Prince Shethar began, and I cut off his words with my furious response.

  “To display his queen to drunken men as if she were a slave for sale to the highest bidder? Is that a command a wife should obey, if she honors her husband?”

  So cunning a trap. So impossible to escape.

  “You acted like a child,” Shethar told me. “A foolish, wayward child.” The scorn in his voice should have flayed me, brought tears to my eyes.

  But he was wrong. For the first time in my life, I had chosen.

  I smiled. “No, my lord prince. I acted like a woman.”

  And then, in my last act as Queen of Queens, I put my hands to the Star Crown and lifted it from my head. Odd; I had not realized its weight before.

  “Here is the queen’s crown,” I said. “Take it to the king.”

  I still sat upon purple cushions; Prince Shethar would have to bow low to take the crown from my hands, so he did not claim it from me. I smiled at the mortified anger in his eyes.

  After the Seven Princes left, I rose and, carrying the Star Crown, I left the queen’s feast and went through the Queen’s Palace until I reached my bedchamber. There I sat upon my silver bed and stared, unseeing, at the crown I still held in my jeweled hands.

  Set aside. No longer queen.

  I was twenty years old. I had been queen for half my life.

  No longer queen. What am I now?

  BOOK FOUR

  Star of Wisdom

  ESTHER

  I am quick-witted, I am clever, I can read and write Persian and Hebrew. I can speak Persian and Hebrew and half a dozen other tongues besides. I can tell to a daric how much a shipment of spices should cost. I can judge swiftly and fairly between two warring merchants.

  If I had been born a boy, I would be a master merchant.

  But I am a girl, and so none of my talents weighs so much as a swan’s feather in the scale against my shapely body and my shining hair. Is a woman never to claim her will as her own?

  It did not occur to anyone to ask if I wished to be paraded before the king like a prize mare. My cousin Mordecai never questioned that I would do my duty to him and to my people. In my cousin’s mind, I was a good Jewish girl, and so he assumed my obedience. Never once did it occur to him to do otherwise.

  Had he asked, I think I would have bowed my head and told him yes. Yes, I will do as you ask, for your reasons are sound and the b
enefit if I succeed will be great.

  But he did not ask. He could not imagine that any girl would be less than delighted to compete for the queen’s crown.

  * * *

  Until I was ten, I lived on a farm in the valley of the river Karoun, far beyond the walls of Shushan. My father Abihail raised horses—sturdy, sure-footed beasts that could carry burdens long distances. My mother died when I was born, and my father, untutored in how to raise a girl, simply acted as if I were a boy. I was not confined to the house and its small courtyard. I had the freedom of all the valley.

  I ran across the fields dressed in a boy’s short tunic and trousers. Naked, I swam in the shallow river. My father, lonely after my mother died, talked to me as if I were his friend, rather than his daughter and a child. He taught me how to judge horses, and to judge the men who came to buy them, or to sell.

  The men and boys who worked for my father treated me as he clearly wished me to be treated: as if I were his son, heir to all he owned. No one regarded me as the daughter of the house.

  Do not think my father let me run wild; my father expected me to work hard. I learned not only to ride his horses, but to help train them. I not only ran across the fields, but also learned to judge whether the grasses were good for grazing, or whether we needed to plant new seeds next season. I had a knack for numbers, and so I kept the records, and could tell my father how well we would do from a sale.

  No one spoke of my looks. I had no mirror except the river. I was praised for my ability to calm a frightened foal, not for my amber eyes; for my talent at reckoning the profit of a sale, not for my smooth skin. And if anyone spoke of the color of my hair, it was only to say that it must be true that fire-hair was a sure sign of cleverness.

  Not that there was much of my hair to admire, for it did not flow down my back as a maiden’s should. Nor was it even long enough to braid. My father had let me cut it off, so that it fell only to my shoulders, short as a boy’s.

  Yes, until I was ten, I was valued for myself. And I was truly happy.

  * * *

  My father’s horses, and his skill at judging them, were far-famed, and many horse-merchants traveled long distances to buy his stock. My father trained me never to grow too fond of a horse, to think one too special to have a value beyond what the beast could bring in coin or in trade. “It’s not wise to think any horse priceless. Remember that everything has its price.”

  This hard truth did not mean he cared nothing for the horses he bred and raised. It was known the length of the Royal Road that Abihail the horse-merchant treated his beasts better than many men did their sons, and that he would let his horses go only to men he trusted to care well for them. But my father did not want me breaking my heart over each horse sold; to love too greatly would bring me too much pain. And so while I might ride any of his horses, there was none of which I could say, “This horse is mine.”

  That changed the year before my father died. Just before the last snow melted, a caravan stopped near our house; a weary, road-worn group of men who had traveled through the winter. That in itself was odd, for no one risked the long passes in the winter. And the wares they offered were even odder: strange hides they swore came from dragons; beads of bone and cups of translucent stone, delicate as Egyptian glass.

  They offered horses, too. Most of their beasts were small creatures, with roached manes and short necks; nothing my father deigned to examine. But they also had with them a pale, high-bred yearling whose elegantly curved ears flicked constantly back and forth and whose neat hooves seemed to dance in the heavy mud. I don’t know how one of the Heavenly Horses of Nisea came to be with this caravan of oddities; my father said, later, that doubtless the men had stolen him.

  The yearling drew my eyes, and I could not resist going to set my hands upon him. At first he shied away from my touch, and I saw he was unused to kindness. Then he gentled, leaned his head against me as I stroked the graceful arch of his neck. He was beautiful; even so young, I could see what he would one day be. Now he was a dark gray, like tarnished silver. That dark coat would lighten as he grew. One day he would shine like moonlight, or like pearls.

  Like any decent man, my father granted the caravan hospitality, and its men set up round tents and rested on our land for a day. I took charge of the gray colt, for I could not bear to see him tied out by the tents with the rest of the weary beasts.

  I led him into one of the horse sheds. There I held a bucket of water for him to drink and brushed dirt from his winter-thick coat. I fed him sweet grain from my hand.

  I pretended he was mine.

  * * *

  That evening I asked my father if he would buy the gray, and my father shook his head. I began to protest, pointing out the colt’s virtues, until my father held up his hand. “Peace, Hadassah. I saw how he took your eye, and offered for him without success. Perhaps they hope to get a better price for him in Shushan. I am sorry, but now you see why I tell you never to set your heart upon a horse.”

  I spent that night in the horse shed, wrapped in a heavy blanket against the cold. The shed was as well made as a house, its walls trapping the heat of the yearling’s body, and so I was warm enough. My father let me stay there, although he set two of his men to guard the shed, lest the strangers decide to take me, as doubtless they had once taken the gray colt.

  When the caravan left the next day, the gray colt refused to be parted from me. None of the men could hold him, or force him to follow. At last they tied him to another horse. She stolidly dragged him along, no matter how much his temper flared. I knew I would never see him again.

  * * *

  Three dawns later, the silver yearling waited for me at the farmyard gate. Sweat had mingled with dust, muddying his coat, and his head sagged with weariness. But when he saw me, he lifted his head and whickered for me as if I were his mother. I longed to run to him, but knew better; horses do not like sudden movement.

  Outwardly calm, I walked up to the gate, opened it, and waited for him to come through into the farmyard. Once he had, I carefully closed the gate again. Only then did I allow myself to put my arms about his muddy neck and weep for sheer joy.

  My heart’s delight had returned to me.

  But although he had run long miles to come back to me, the yearling still did not belong here. As I led him to the stable, I thought of how and where I might conceal him. Even as I dreamed of keeping him hidden, of owning him in secret, I knew it was impossible. I must tell my father at once.

  My father did not at first believe me, but he came out to the stable—and stared long at the dirty, weary colt. “I have been a horse-master for half my life, and never have I known a horse to do such a thing. You have won his heart, Hadassah.” My father smiled at me, then shook his head. “But my dear child—”

  “I know.” I was proud of the steadiness of my voice. “He is not mine to keep. The men will come for him. But until they do, Father—may I pretend he is mine until then?”

  “Very well, Hadassah. The colt is yours until they return to claim him. Now you had best groom him and feed him, and then let me cast my eyes over him and see that all is well with him.”

  Before turning to those happy tasks, I squeaked my thanks and hugged my father hard. He kissed the top of my head. “Just remember, you must give him up when they come. I only hope they do not think you enchanted him when they passed through here!”

  I spent all that day grooming the colt’s thundercloud coat, combing out his mane and tail, and testing names. Cloud, Silver, Swift—none seemed quite right. Then, as I rubbed his fetlocks clean, a flash of white gleamed against the dark gray. He had a star upon his left front heel. A good luck mark—or at least I took it as such.

  I named him Star.

  “Star,” I said, and he arched his neck and nuzzled at my hair. “You are my Star.”

  The name was perfect.

  * * *

  The strange merchants never returned. Perhaps they thought their prize had run away and become
lost. Perhaps—anything. All that mattered to me was that no one came to claim the gray colt. Star was mine.

  And as months passed, I no longer worried that he would be taken from me.

  * * *

  Then my father died, and my happy life shattered as if it had been made of glass. I was my father’s heir, but I was not only a child of ten, I was a girl, and this suddenly became a matter of great import. But when I gave our overseer a letter to carry the sad news to my father’s family in Shushan, I did not know what I set in motion.

  I was still weeping for the loss of my father when my cousin Mordecai came to claim me.

  * * *

  Mordecai was far older than I—the son of the eldest son, as I was the daughter of the youngest. The middle sons had returned to Israel when Darius the Great granted the Jews permission to return to their homeland if they so chose. Of all our family, only Mordecai and my father Abihail remained in Persia. And just as my father loved the freedom of the countryside, Mordecai loved that of the city. He dwelt in Shushan, the oldest and greatest city in all the empire. I had never met him, but my father had spoken of him fondly, calling Mordecai the wisest and kindest man he knew.

  So when Mordecai stood at the courtyard gate and said, “Hadassah, I am your cousin Mordecai,” and held out his arms to me, I ran to him and wept upon his chest. He did not tell me not to weep, but let me cry until I had no more tears left. Then he wiped my face with the hem of the soft shawl he wore over his shoulders.

  “My poor little cousin, I grieve with you. Trust me when I tell you that one day the pain will pass, and you will remember only your father’s love.” Mordecai set me back and knelt before me, gazing intently into my eyes. “So you are my brother Abihail’s daughter! He must have been very proud of you, Hadassah.”

  “Yes.” My voice was still thick from weeping. “He was very proud of me.” It was the truth, so I knew no reason I should not say so.

  “Such a pretty girl—you are ten years old, are you not? I can see you will be a beauty soon!”

  I stared at him, puzzled. Clearly Mordecai thought I should be pleased at his words; to please him, I managed to smile a little.