Game of Queens

by India Edghill

  “Ah,” she said a breath later.

  “Well? What does Haman want of me?”

  Esther slanted her hawk’s eyes at me. “He wants you to grant him an audience, Vashti. Privately. I told you—an admirer.” She did not sound as if she thought Haman had suddenly discovered strong lust for me in his heart.

  “Privately?” That sounded odd, and unseemly. “Well, I will not see him, privately or no.”

  “Hmm. Actually, Vashti…” Esther folded the message back into the tight triangle, pressed the seal back down. She tossed the message back to me. “I think you should grant Haman’s request.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Oh, I am so tempted to say, ‘Because the Queen of Queens commands it’—but I won’t. It is because, my dearest Vashti, I very much want to know what it is that Haman wishes to say.”

  * * *

  That is how I, who had been a queen, became a queen’s spy. Once Esther had explained, I delightedly undertook my part in the affair. Excited, I wrote out an answer to Haman, copying down words Esther gave me. Haman was to meet me on the Great Staircase, on the western side of the third step down from the King’s Gate.

  “You may disguise yourself as my beloved brother again,” Esther said, as I folded my message. “No, don’t seal that. If it falls into anyone else’s hands, it will not bear your seal.”

  I nodded, delighted at this chance to act on Esther’s behalf. Odd—since I had lost my crown, I had done far more than I ever had while I had worn it. I had ruled the search for the new queen. I had chosen the new queen.

  And now I played the spy for the queen I had chosen. For a moment I understood why Amestris would not release the reins of power.

  Meddling was delightful.

  * * *

  To undertake Esther’s task, I was forced to take Hegai into my confidence, and then forced to listen to his extremely long list of reasons why I should not, could not, must not do this thing. At last I put my hands on his arm and said,

  “Dear Hegai, can you truly be saying I should disobey the queen’s command?”

  “The two of you,” Hegai snapped, “should have been soundly whipped as children. Perhaps you would not now be striving to drive your devoted servants mad.”

  But Hegai, too, had been charmed by Esther—and he knew she did not ask great favors lightly. She would not ask such a thing of me at all did she not think it urgent to know what Haman desired. So Hegai brought me the saffron-dyed tunic and blue-and-white trousers the king’s pages wore, helped me bind up my hair and hide it beneath a crimson turban. As a final touch, Hegai pinned a gold star set with a blood-red stone upon the turban and pronounced me ready.

  “And I will accompany you. Close your lips, Vashti, for either I go with you or I go to the king and lay the entire matter in his hands.”

  “But Hegai, everyone knows you!”

  He smiled. “Of course they do. Everyone knows me very well.”

  I sighed. “Too well. Now, how do we disguise you?”

  “We do not. Hegai the Chief Eunuch chooses to walk abroad to savor the last of the spring air, accompanied by a page. A pretty boy, with a look of She-Who-Is-No-Longer-Queen about him. By Varkha, in fact. But you would know nothing of that resemblance, of course.”

  Hegai always had been able to make me laugh—and I admitted it a clever scheme. It would seem far less odd that Hegai sent his page to speak to Haman on the Great Staircase than that Haman should stop to engage a pageboy in intent conversation.

  And that was how the Chief Eunuch of the Queen’s Palace came to be walking upon the Great Staircase, carrying a white horsehair flywhisk and followed by a tall, pale-faced king’s page.

  * * *

  Haman waited for me on the third step down from the King’s Gate, as he had promised. As we reached that step, Hegai stopped and beckoned me forward, then nodded toward Haman, who paced impatiently along the edge of the step. I bowed, and ran over to Haman.

  “Prince Haman. I am here.” I could not imagine what Haman had to say to me. “Speak quickly; I cannot remain here long.”

  “Of course not, O queen.” Haman managed to incline his head without, quite, bowing.

  Already his manner irritated me, but I kept my voice low and calm. “I’m not queen now.”

  “Now. But now is not forever. You can be Queen of Queens again.”

  So that was it: treachery aimed at Esther. Proud of my cool tone, I said, “Can I indeed? And how is that possible?”

  Haman smiled, and at that sight of the look of triumph in his eyes, my heart seemed to beat cold and slow. Whatever he would say was going to be bad indeed. But I could not guess how bad—who could, who was not as mad as my great-grandfather King Nebuchadnezzar?

  “It is possible because soon Queen Esther will not exist. For all the Jews in the empire are condemned. All,” he repeated, as if he relished the word. “All of them—no matter what their rank or riches. Since Queen Esther is a Jew, she, too, will die.” Haman smiled again. “I think I shall reserve the privilege of slaying her for myself. With Esther gone, the gate will be open for you to return to King Ahasuerus.”

  As I stared, unable to believe such evil words, Haman stepped closer. “You were set aside by one decree, but another can be written. I will write it myself and it shall be sealed into the Laws of the Medes and Persians that you shall again be queen. You see how good a friend I am to you? I know you will be grateful to so good a friend. Grateful, and generous, and kind.”

  I kept my eyes wide, gazing at Haman as if astounded—which I was—and admiring—which I was not. Even with the summer sun pouring its light upon me, ice seemed to press upon my skin. “Kill all the Jews?” I repeated. I hoped I sounded only slow-witted, and not horrified.

  Haman bowed his head. “Indeed.”

  “But—how?” How had Ahasuerus been persuaded or tricked into sealing this slaughter into law?

  “Ah, now that was not an easy task to achieve.” Haman puffed himself up, a man who has labored hard and virtuously for no reward but his own good opinion. I called upon every god and goddess I had ever heard mentioned, begging them all for aid, for I knew I must keep all my wits about me now. I opened my eyes even wider.

  “Surely it cannot have been! Will you tell me how you accomplished so great a labor?”

  Haman lunged at the bait—Haman loved to boast—and once he began to speak, I quickly feared he never would stop.

  “This evil race deals in treachery and witchcraft, but I have arranged to destroy them before they wreak disaster upon the King of Kings and all he possesses. I have worked long and hard, and now they will be destroyed utterly. A decree has been written, and sealed into the Law of the Medes and Persians with the king’s own seal. The law says that all of them shall be slain.”

  “All?” All the Jews in the empire? All, because he hates Esther? He is truly evil, or mad—or both.

  “Yes. All.” Haman savored the words.

  “I could warn the queen of this,” I said, and Haman smiled.

  “You could.” His tone clearly said he knew I would do no such thing.

  “Queen Esther is my friend.” I lowered my gaze, as if I could not meet his eyes.

  Haman laughed, the sound mocking, vicious—and I looked up and saw a smug certainty on his face. A certainty that Queen Esther was only a woman.

  Now I strove to be Haman’s image of me: a deposed queen longing to regain her royal title, a scorned princess striving to hide her angry envy of the current queen. A foolish, jealous woman—

  “Queen Esther thinks she is my friend,” I amended.

  “That I believe,” Haman said. “So long as she believes it until—”

  “Until when?” I marveled at how calm I sounded. I did not permit myself to think of how or why Ahasuerus could possibly have set his seal to such a decree.

  “The day is set and sealed. The thirteenth of Adar.”

  “Why then?”

  Haman smiled. “Because that is the day th
e pur decreed.” He opened his hand; within it lay a pur carved from bone. He held the gambling piece out to me.

  I pretended to hesitate. “When she learns of this decree, the queen will plead with Ahasuerus, and he will—”

  “He will do nothing.” Pleasure thickened Haman’s voice. “He will do nothing because he will not call for Esther to come to him. I have seen to that.”

  “How? Ahasuerus returns from Babylon tomorrow. We all know he is besotted with her, and cannot bear to be without her for long.”

  “But he must endure without her until the next new moon. Before the king left Shushan, we played at lots—I used this very pur, for luck—and the king lost. The stakes were a month without the woman dearest to our hearts. The king’s month begins on his return. Esther will await his summons in vain.” Haman gloated over his own cunning.

  One of the oldest decrees in the law tablets forbid anyone to come before the king except at the king’s command. Guards flanked the king’s golden throne, their sword blades honed to razor keenness. Even the queen could not approach the king’s throne unless summoned. Even the queen would be cut down by the guards.…

  “Princess?” Haman’s sharp voice jolted me back, reminded me of the role I played.

  I frowned, as if trying to think. “But my lord prince, surely the king will learn of this decree? Surely someone will show him the Adar Law?”

  “What if they do? I shall tell the king the law is a forgery, that no one will believe its order, still less carry out murder on its command. I shall tell him the proclamation has been removed wherever it was posted.” Haman smiled, showing too many teeth. “But who can know how many copies of the law were given out?”

  I frowned, as if thinking hard. “But suppose—suppose I told him?”

  Haman shook his head. “Ahasuerus cannot make you queen again. Only I can do that. And,” he added, “even if you are foolish enough to warn Ahasuerus, I am not fool enough to let him believe you.”

  I opened my eyes very wide. “Oh, no, I am not so foolish as that!”

  The pur still gleamed bone-white upon his hand. “Pretend to take this for the Chief Eunuch. Remember how a king’s page would act.”

  Haman’s assumption I could not retain my role without his prompting goaded me, but I proved him wrong to my own satisfaction by remaining smooth-faced, and bowing just as a king’s page would do. “As my lord prince Haman says.”

  I held out my hand. The bone lot slid from Haman’s hand into mine.

  “To remind the true queen of what awaits her,” Haman said. “A crown again—after Adar.”

  ESTHER

  When I was told that Mordecai knelt at the foot of the Great Staircase in sackcloth and ash, that he wept and moaned and tore his poor garments, I am ashamed to say that my first thought was Oh, what does he want of me now?

  And to prove no ill thought goes unrebuked by the Lord of All, no sooner had I thought those churlish words than Vashti came hastening into my room unannounced.

  “Oh, Esther, I have spoken to Haman. And I’ve never heard anything so wicked in my life. There could be nothing more evil under the sun and the moon.” She gasped her words, her breath catching as if she had run long and hard. Her hair had been pinned up in an untidy mass; as she spoke, it slid free, tumbling down her back. A voluminous robe swathed her, and as she reached out to me, the robe fell open. Beneath it Vashti wore the garb of a king’s page.

  This is going to be very bad. I knew in my bones that whatever Vashti had to tell me about Haman, it had something to do with Mordecai’s sackcloth and mourning. Nevertheless, I remained calm—at least outwardly.

  “Vashti, come and sit, and breathe slowly. I can hardly understand a word you say.” I put my hands on her shoulders and guided her to a pile of cushions, gently pushed her onto them. She sat and stared up at me, her moon-shadow eyes a swirl of pale colors. I saw a fearful excitement there, and a deep horror.

  “Hush,” I said, as she opened her mouth to speak again. “Wait.”

  With Vashti resting silent, I turned to my servants. “Leave us, every one of you save Hatach and Kylah.” Looking back down at Vashti, I asked, “Where is Hegai?”

  “He—he has gone to ask who knew of—oh, Esther, there is a decree, a decree sealed with the king’s seal, that the Jews are to be killed. All of them, all. On the thirteenth day of Adar—and Haman told me he will kill you himself and raise me up again as queen and expects me to be grateful to him! Grateful! And—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Vashti, this is madness.”

  “Yes, because Haman is mad. Mad and evil and—”

  “Have you seen this decree? Did Haman show it to you?”

  Vashti shook her head. “Hegai will bring a copy. I told him you must see it for yourself.”

  “And Haman said this evil decree is sealed into law? With the king’s seal?” I shook my head. “No. Never. Ahasuerus would not—” I stopped. No, Ahasuerus, kind and just, would never seal into law the slaughter of an entire people. So if Haman’s decree had indeed been sealed with the king’s seal …

  Then there is another seal.

  It was the only answer. And who would possess such a seal, and wield it, save the Queen Mother? Queen Mother Amestris, who had ruled in her son’s name since he was seven years old; who lived for power. I closed my eyes; swayed, dizzy. Ahasuerus’s mother—will he believe such evil of his own mother?

  I opened my eyes; the world remained. I am not dead yet. And now I knew why Mordecai had clothed himself in rags and ash. He mourned his death, and mine, and that of all our people.

  “No,” I said. “No. Ahasuerus will not permit this. When he learns—”

  “Haman will ensure that he doesn’t. And it’s sealed with the king’s seal, Esther!”

  I saw that Vashti was too distressed to think at all. “Go to your own rooms,” I told her, “and wait. I must send a message to my cousin Mordecai. When he has answered me, I will come to you. I want to speak to Hegai as well.”

  “Haman will not touch you. I will hide you in my rooms. We will take Star and Sunrise and ride away to the mountains.” Vashti’s fierce desire to protect me made her voice unsteady. “I will kill Haman myself! Esther—”

  “Vashti, stop.” I put my arms around her and held her close, her cheek pressed to mine; her body trembled and her skin was cold. “Be calm, or you will make yourself ill. Send your girls to find Hegai, and go to your own apartments and wait. Be patient. No one will kill me today. The thirteenth of Adar is still a month away.”

  VASHTI

  I sent Tandis and Ajashea to bring Hegai to me, and together we waited. With Hegai’s aid, I summoned patience, a hard thing for me. I did not pace, nor constantly ask Hegai when he thought Esther would bring news. Instead, I sat beside Hegai and held his hand.

  To pass the time, I talked to Hegai. I knew he would listen quietly to my words, however far my thoughts might wander. I spoke of journeys we might undertake; of far horizons we might seek. Hegai agreed it would be a wonder to travel and to see with our own eyes the glories the empire possessed. Mountain valleys rich with flowers. Burning deserts with heat rippling over endless sand. Ruined cities as old as time. Shining waters of the Western Sea.…

  “I want to see everything, Hegai. I want to ride the Royal Road from Shushan to Sardis. I want to see the land silk comes from. I want—”

  “You want to live, my princess. Palaces and precious gems are not enough to make you happy.”

  “And what do you want, Hegai? What would make you happy?” Never before had I thought to ask him such a thing.

  At first I thought he would not answer, for he neither moved nor spoke. Then he leaned to me and kissed my forehead; his lips warm against my skin. “It would make me happy to see you happy.”

  Once I would have thought he jested, and cajoled and teased him until he gave me a true answer. Today I looked into his eyes, and saw that he, too, feared the future Haman planned. So, weary from the day’s events, I leaned my
head upon his shoulder; I trusted Hegai as I did not even trust myself. For a moment I closed my eyes; savored the comfort of Hegai’s arm around me, strong and sure as a wall at my back.

  At last I heard sounds at my door. I darted toward the archway, only to be pulled back by Hegai’s hand on my arm.

  “Patience, Vashti. The Queen of Queens approaches. Remember that.”

  “No, today Esther approaches.” But I let Hegai put his hand on my shoulder, and I waited for Esther to come in to me. When I saw her, I was glad I had not run to her, for Esther stood very straight, and her face might have been an ivory mask.

  I waited, but she said nothing, so I spoke first. “Esther? What happened? Tell me!”

  “My cousin Mordecai sent me a message.” Esther’s lips closed again; set in a firm line, as if they never again would open.

  “Yes, yes, you heard from your cousin. What did he say?” I knew Mordecai, wise and good and just, would have found a way out of this trap.

  For too long a pause, Esther said nothing. Then, “That I need not think I shall escape, merely because I am queen. That I must go to the king and beg for the lives of my people. And he also said, ‘Who knows but that you were set upon the throne for such a time as this?’”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes. That was all.” Esther managed to smile at me. “Well, I’ll have a fine tale to spin for Ahasuerus—strange pillow-talk for a reunion of man and wife, but I think my husband will find it of some interest.”

  She expected Ahasuerus to call for her as soon as he returned. But I knew what Esther did not: that the king would not send for her again until it was too late. “Esther,” I said, “there is something else I must tell you. Haman has—has—” Tears burned my eyes; I found I could not find breath to finish.

  Esther sat down beside me and took my hands. “Softly, Vashti.” She bowed her head, staring down at our clasped hands. “I think I can guess what Haman has done. He has ensured that the king will not send for me. Am I right?”

  I nodded. “He must spend a month without the woman dearest to his heart. Haman said a wager at dice—”

  “The cause does not matter. All that matters is that Ahasuerus thinks he cannot, in honor, call for me, or come to me.” Esther sighed. “Well, then, I must go to him—no matter what he wagered with that venomous Haman.”