Game of Queens (30 page)

And as men laughed and drank, another voice—no one after could truly say whose—soared above the noise of praise and laughter.

“Show us Queen Vashti!”

The King of Kings stopped with his wine-cup to his lips and stared out over the courtyard, seeking the face of the man who had made that outrageous demand. And as the king remained silent, so men fell silent in their turn; silence rippled back from the king's high table, flowed over the men gazing upon the king.

Then Prince Shethar said, “The great king promised to show us anything that is his. Show us Queen Vashti, the most beautiful in all the world.”

The demand sobered Ahasuerus enough for him to realize what he had done. He remained drunk enough to be unable to free himself from the trap. Prince Memucan leaned close; spoke low and urgent. “It is forbidden for a woman to attend men's feasts. Would you bring your queen unveiled to the king's banquet hall?”

Prince Shethar laughed. “It's not as if she is a stranger to men's feasts.” He said openly what until that night had only been whispered.

“O king, you cannot do this,” Memucan said. “It is contrary to custom and to law.”

“So is a king failing to do what he has promised.” Shethar's words fell cold and heavy as stones.

The Seven Princes had Ahasuerus trapped. If he sent for me, he treated his queen like a dancing girl or a harlot. If he did not, he failed to keep the king's promise he had made.

The word of a king binds him. King Ahasuerus set down his golden goblet and sent his chamberlains to command Queen Vashti to come before him. And the chamberlains took the word of the king to Queen Vashti, where she sat feasting with the women, for Queen Vashti had given a feast also, vying with the king's glory.

“O queen,” said the chiefest of the chamberlains, “the King of Kings summons you to come before him. Rise and walk with us, for the great king wishes to display your beauty to his guests, that they may see with their own eyes that the King of Kings possesses the most beautiful woman in all the world.”

And when she heard this, Queen Vashti looked upon the chamberlain with scorn and said,

“Tell the King of Kings that the queen will not come.”

*   *   *

That is how the tale fled from the palace of the King of Kings: That Vashti scorned the king's command. That Vashti's arrogance and pride goaded her to insult the King of Kings.

That Vashti thought herself above the king and above the law.

Well, I did disobey my husband. That much is truth.

*   *   *

When the king's chamberlains entered my banqueting hall, I was laughing at some jest. I laughed as I held out my hand to the newcomers and said, “Why see—the King of Kings has sent more guests to me! Come and sit. I am quite sure my feast will amuse you better than his!”

A harmless enough remark, and since it was mine, all my guests laughed. The king's chamberlains did not. After I stopped laughing—for like my guests, I had drunk a bit too much honey wine—I looked more closely, and thought it odd that Ahasuerus should have sent all seven of his highest-ranked chamberlains to me. A surprise? A gift? Then why did the seven eunuchs look so—I groped for the right word to describe their expressions, and at last settled on
uncertain.

Uncertain, and embarrassed.

I set down my wine cup. “Well? What is it?”

Silence. The king's eunuch chamberlains looked at each other, and at the spangled silk panels draping the ceiling, and at the silent watching women, and at the Star Crown glittering in the lamplight. At everything in the banqueting hall, except at me.

“Tell me. The queen commands you.”

“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 benefit 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.