Game of Queens (32 page)

“What is that?” I asked, and my cousin smiled.

“That, Hadassah, is Princess Vashti of Babylon, come here to Shushan the Beautiful to marry the King of Kings. Be glad you are not a queen, Hadassah, for they are never truly free.”

*   *   *

Mordecai led me through an endless series of narrow streets until we reached an area of the city close-packed with buildings that had an indefinable air of kinship, as if they housed brothers. “Most of our people in Shushan live here, in the Western Quarter,” Mordecai told me. “Look, there is my house—your house, too, now.”

I looked, and saw a house indistinguishable from the rest. Solid, plain, serviceable. Comfortable. But squeezed together with all the others.

Mordecai took me in through the gate to his house. In the small courtyard a woman waited, plump as a partridge, and as bright-eyed. “Deborah, my wife, here is my little cousin Hadassah, who is to be our daughter now.”

Deborah stared at me; I saw her exchange a look with Mordecai. Then Deborah smiled and held out her arms. “My dear cousin Hadassah—come, be welcome!”

Mordecai shoved me gently toward her, and I found myself embraced by my cousin-by-marriage. I let myself be held close, relieved that I did not need to decide what expression to wear. Then Deborah stepped back, her hands on my shoulders.

“My poor Hadassah—you must be exhausted from such a journey.”

“No,” I said. “I am used to working on my father's farm. The journey didn't tire me at all.”

A moment's silence; another look passed over my head between Deborah and Mordecai. “Well then,” Deborah said, “even if you're not tired, you will still be glad of a bath, and of decent clothing.”

And that was the end of my last link with my father's farm. Deborah's servant took away the offending garments. I suppose she burned them—or sold them. Certainly they were not cleaned and kept.

When I got out of the bath, the clothing that awaited me was an under-tunic of linen and over that a long gown. Garments considered suitable for a girl. A blue sash tied around my waist for no reason I could see, save that Deborah liked its color against the gown.

“There is nothing to be done about your hair, my dear, until it grows long again. Which it will, never fear.” Deborah stroked my damp curls. “What a pity it had to be cut. Such a pretty color.”

Pretty.
I already suspected I would become very tired of that word. It seemed to sum up all I was expected to be now. Pretty. A pretty girl.

But one thing I had learned from my father was when it was wisest to keep silent during bargaining. My life in Mordecai's house would be one long bargain. The only price I would accept was my return to my father's farm—to my farm—in the Valley of Karoun. So I listened to Deborah mourn my shorn hair, and kept silent. Deborah thought me hungry and weary, so she combed out my hair, set bread and honey before me to eat, and then led me up the stairs to the housetop. A small room in the corner held a bed and an oil lamp.

“This is your room now, Hadassah. At night you can see the lights from the King's Palace. I know all this is strange to you, but we will try to make you happy here with us.” Deborah kissed my forehead, and left me alone.

Deborah was right; if I looked up, I could see the lights burning throughout the King's Palace.

And if I looked higher, into the night sky, I could still see the stars.

*   *   *

Deborah was a woman of great worth, like the woman in the Proverbs. She set herself the duty of molding me from a rough, boyish creature into a smooth sweet maiden. Firm yet gentle, she trained me to walk with short neat paces instead of striding, to speak meekly instead of frankly, to keep my eyes downcast and my demeanor modest. To hide myself behind my pretty face.

Deborah taught me to cook and to spin, to sew and to bake. Soon I seemed no different from any other well-born Jewish girl in Shushan.

I liked Deborah, who was kind and good, and knew far better than Mordecai how to ease my path into this new life. She listened to me talk of the farm, and my father, and of my beloved Star. She neither laughed nor contradicted me when I told her that as soon as I was grown, I would go home to live in the shadow of the far mountains.

I often asked to go to the farm, only for a visit, to see that all was well, but somehow it never became possible. But in dreams Star and I raced the wind up the valley; in Shushan's fiery summers I remembered snow.…

Until the day that poisoned my memories; after that I woke from those dreams with tears burning my eyes. If I returned home, I would not see my Star. He had been sold.

This I learned by chance. I had been reading upon the housetop, and set aside the scroll because I was thirsty. I had dwelt two years in Shushan, but I still moved quietly, like a creature of the high wild valleys; Mordecai and Deborah did not hear me on the stair. When I heard their voices—Deborah's sharp with distress, Mordecai's low and unhappy—I stopped. I had keen ears, too. That day, I wished I did not.

“Sold him? Oh, Mordecai, how could you? She cherishes that horse!”

“Wife, what could I do? Deny the king's men? Apparently,” Mordecai added, “that horse is a very fine stallion indeed. The king's agent paid a very high price; a fine addition to Hadassah's dowry.” A pause. “And perhaps she will not care as much as you fear. Do you know, Deborah, I have not heard Hadassah so much as mention the beast—”

“Star,” Deborah said. “She called him Star. Oh, what am I going to tell her?”

Another pause. “Nothing.” Mordecai said. “Nothing unless she asks.”

Slowly, I climbed back up the stairs. I did not weep. I could not. Pain beat within my heart; I pressed my hands to my breast, but the hurt only spread, until my whole body burned. Strange cold fire beneath my skin made me gasp for breath.

Star is gone. Home is gone. There is nothing for me now but this house, this city. This trap.

But I did not have to stand in front of my cousin and hear those words spoken. Unknowing, Mordecai had granted me that harsh mercy.

Nothing. Nothing unless she asks.
Mordecai's words echoed; the misery in his voice echoed.

So I never asked.

*   *   *

That summer fever burned through Shushan. Deborah fell ill; the fever tortured her for only a day before it killed her. I wept for her, and for Mordecai, and for myself. Now all I had was my cousin Mordecai. A good man, a kind man, but a man with no more experience of raising a girl into womanhood than my father had possessed.

With Deborah gone, Mordecai took charge of my education—and so long as I behaved with maiden modesty, he did not care that I was clever. I think he took credit for my cleverness, choosing to forget all I had learned before I came to live in his house. I already spoke not only Hebrew and Persian, but also the Trade-tongue used by merchants along the Silk Road from Tyre to Cathay. I could read Hebrew. But now I learned to read Persian, Elamite, and Sumerian; to speak and read Babylonian; to speak Median, Nabatean, and Greek
.

My skill at languages surprised Mordecai, who at first had thought only to teach me to read Persian. But I had been blessed with the gift for tongues, and it amused him to see how many I could learn. I eagerly studied all he would teach me. Learning, my father had always said, is never wasted. Who knew? Someday the ability to read Sumerian might prove useful.

I could compose poetry, too, in the styles of Egypt, Babylon, and Hind.

Sometimes I think my cousin Mordecai was either the wisest man I ever knew, or the greatest fool. For by the time I was fourteen, I was a better scholar than most men, and by the time I was sixteen, I knew it would be hard for Mordecai to find a husband for me. For I had grown not only learned, but—as Mordecai himself had predicted—beautiful. But beauty or not, my learning was too much for most men to willingly accept. Even my dowry could not persuade some men to overlook my extravagantly unsuitable education.

I should have been betrothed at fourteen and set to sewing garments for my marriage-chest, not sitting engrossed in annals of the law courts. At sixteen, I should have been speaking my wedding vows, not arguing with Mordecai over the correct pronunciation of some word in a language no one had truly spoken in a thousand years.

At least languages and literature were safe to argue with him. Mordecai loved me dearly in his own fashion, but he had small patience with what he called my “girlish follies.” Despite the manner in which my father had raised me up, Mordecai expected me to act as humbly as if I had been strictly nurtured by the most old-fashioned Jewish parents in Shushan.

More important, at least to me, was my talent for understanding numbers, and how they added up—or did not. I respectfully petitioned Mordecai to let me handle the household accounts. After careful consideration, and to my hidden delight, he agreed. That skill I knew would be important to me. I had once again determined to return to my father's farm—my farm.

I hated the invisible chains that bound me, just as I hated Shushan.

Why the King of Kings, who could do whatsoever he wished, command whatever pleased him to be done, should choose to live in Shushan baffled me. If I were king—well, if I were queen—of half the world, I would live in the valleys between the high hills. I would live where the air blew cool and clean down the mountains, carrying the scents of pine and of cedar.

Yes, I hated Shushan. But Mordecai never dreamed I was other than content. Our life in Shushan pleased him; why should it not please me? But Mordecai left his house and went each day to his work in the King's Gate. He went to visit friends, and to the marketplace, and to the synagogue. I went only places my cousin considered proper for a woman, and those places were few indeed. Mordecai was good and pious, but strict in his views on a woman's proper place. And a woman's proper place was in her father's house, until it was in her husband's.

That Mordecai permitted me to study shocked the pious Jews. That Mordecai did not permit me to walk abroad freely angered me. I lacked Deborah's submissive skill at gaining her own way while convincing Mordecai that only his wishes counted. And as I grew from girl into woman, my life became ever more circumscribed, until the day I surrendered to my cousin's demand that I veil myself when I set my foot over the doorstep into the street.

I had fought against wearing the all-covering veil, but Mordecai insisted it was what was proper. And at last he found the right words to persuade me—that Deborah would have wished me to behave modestly, and wear the veil. Remembering all the kindness Deborah had shown me, I yielded. When I left the house, I wore a veil that hid me from the crown of my head to my knees. Like all of the Jewish women, I wore a veil of rich golden yellow.

At least, when I left my cousin's house, I wore such a veil. Beneath that, I often carried another veil—brown or green or blue—and changed veils once I was out of sight of Mordecai's house.

While I still loathed the veil, I also valued its one virtue: anonymity. Beneath the all-covering veil, who could tell one woman from another? This was the true reason only respectable women were permitted to veil, while women for sale and for hire could be flogged for daring to cover themselves. Some women wore veils richly embroidered with brilliant thread, or ornamented with spangles of copper, silver, or gold. My veils were bland as bread. No one could point at me on the street and say, “That is Mordecai's ward Hadassah; I know her by her veil.”

So it came to pass that after four long years in Shushan it was womanly modesty that opened the city to me. After four years in Mordecai's house, even Shushan seemed a paradise.

Soon I knew Shushan—at least, those parts that were safe for a respectable girl to explore—as well as I had once known the Karoun Valley. The marketplaces, the gardens, the vast square at the foot of the Great Staircase; the constantly changing spectacle by the gates leading to the Royal Road.

Of all Shushan offered, I liked best to look out the northern gates opening on the Royal Road. That road stretched nearly two thousand miles across the empire, from Shushan to Sardis. I could stand by the gate and gaze upon the Royal Road, following its path with my eyes until the road disappeared into the horizon's haze. I rationed this bitter pleasure, for afterward I found it hard to walk back into the confines of Mordecai's house.

Once I even saw King Ahasuerus and Queen Vashti riding through the vast square at the foot of the Great Staircase. For the queen to ride out through the city was a shocking breach of court etiquette. A queen who wished to travel did so confined in a gilded litter. I was not too proud to stop and stare just as everyone else did. Queen Vashti was my age, too, she was just fifteen. She rode beside the king; I could not see King Ahasuerus's face, for he was turned away from me, his attention upon his laughing queen. I wondered what he had said, to amuse her so well. I wondered more that he indulged her so greatly.

True, a veil covered Queen Vashti's face, but the glittering fabric was so sheer I could see that her beauty was no mere courtly pretense. I had often doubted any woman could be as beautiful as Queen Vashti was reputed to be; now I saw I was wrong, for the queen truly was lovely as the stars. Her famously pale hair shone like snow on the high hills.

I watched as they rode away from me. My last thought of Queen Vashti was that she did not ride even half so well as she clearly thought she did.

She needs to balance her weight better. But I suppose the king does not notice, and no one else dares tell her—and that she would not listen if anyone dared.

*   *   *

The first time I saw the Lord Prince Haman, he was drowning a litter of puppies in the fountain by the Eastern Gate. He had tied the pup's mother, a beautiful sable-and-white gazehound, to his horse's reins; a groom held the restive horse as the bitch struggled frantically to free herself. She had no chance of saving her pups. Nor had anyone yet dared interfere with Lord Haman's deadly pastime—even though he polluted public water. Half a dozen small bodies already floated in the sullied fountain. Scowling, Haman dangled another squeaking pup by its neck and then shoved it underwater.