Hadassah Covenant, The (39 page)

She was no longer wearing an elegant wrap, but from the shining dark hair and lean figure I recognized the girl Jesse had pointed out to me. The one we had believed to be Jewish. And now from the bobbing torso, I knew it was true. The girl may have been weeping quietly, but it was also clear that she was at prayer. Stray syllables even revealed themselves as familiar strains of the
Midrash
Mordecai had taught me over the years.

A deep strain of emotion overtook me as I stood there, watching her from my hidden location. Clearly, I could identify with what had likely provoked those tears—homesickness, fear, resignation, resentment. But the sound struck me as something even more profound. As I stood there at a safe distance, you—for of course it was you, Leah—you seemed to embody the sadness and vulnerability of my lost people—along with the strange arms’-length relationship I had experienced with them for so many years.

Just then I was torn by two opposite compulsions. The first was to reach out and do my best to comfort you right away, in the very throes of your sorrow. And second, to respect the intimacy of your pain and spare you the embarrassment of being introduced to a strange, forbidding acquaintance at the moment of your anguish.

So I retreated, taking even more care to remain silent. I spent some quiet moments with G-d in an opposite corner of the orchards, praying for guidance and favor.

And then I began to take action.

I began by making myself known to you—whose name I soon learned was Leah, and who was most definitely Jewish—in the best way I knew possible: a letter. Or should I say, a missive. I intended for it to be a short introduction. But as you well know, I could not stop myself from writing. Perhaps I had nothing better to do, but, in any event, the words seem to gush out of me.

For the next weeks and months I threw myself into the writing of that long and impassioned document in which I described to you my life and my experience as a young concubine in the harem. In the most helpful words I could find, I took all I had learned from Mordecai, from Hegai, and most of all from G-d himself, about how best to win the favor of the King. I included the most intimate details of how I prepared my heart and soul to offer my whole being as a beautiful
gift—first to G-d, and then to the King. To love Xerxes as no other woman had even thought to do. More than anything, however, it was an instruction manual in how best to become prepared for your one night with the King.

I also felt compelled to detail for you the events that now compose the Feast of Purim—the attempted elimination of our people from the face of the earth. As you must have heard the story from childhood, I did not do so merely to repeat the facts but to make them come alive. And perhaps alert you to the fact that you, too, might someday find yourself in the position of doing something heroic and vital for your people.

And do you know something? I believe the process of telling my tale enriched my own life every bit as much as it did yours.

And then came the night we became friends—the shattering event that brought us together.

It started as I sat beside the pool, reading over my words and contemplating these thoughts, and something odd on the horizon caught my attention.

A thin trail of pale smoke wandered high into the blue sky from the royal palace’s highest point—the gleaming golden dome that housed the King’s own living quarters. I strained my memory to recall any reason why a celebratory bonfire or ceremonial pyre would have caused smoke to rise from that spot. I could think of none.

I stood straight and took a few absurd, awkward steps—as though being a few cubits closer would have made such a distant sight any clearer. My gaze stayed so riveted and my posture so frozen that before long the young concubines around me began to stare as well. I think you must have joined them around that time. Within a minute, the air was filled with gasps and exclamations. By then the thin trail had become a thick, dark column. A bright red flame shot into the air, wrenching a single cry from our assembled group. Clumps of soldiers and royal aides were now running toward the first of the enormous courtyard gates. From where I stood I could see the fear in their eyes.

I stumbled into an abortive run but immediately felt Jesse’s hands and torso block my way.

“Hadassah, you must stay here,” he commanded. “You would not get within a
stadium
of the palace, and even then you would succeed only in imperiling your own person.”

“But Mordecai is in there!” I cried. “I have to make certain he is safe!”

“I’ll have someone go to the palace and learn of him. But you must stay here or we will have two of you in mortal danger. Please. Stay and pray.”

He forcibly turned me around and faced me back toward the harem spectators. Reluctantly I walked back and took my place among them.

Strange—it felt as though my very life was going up in smoke. The familiar shape of those ramparts, those giant statues, those dizzying towers and mountainous columns, seemed to embody my whole adult existence. I found it even more ironic that while I had recently felt I was dying inside, now even the
outward
manifestations of my life were being wrenched away from me. Not to mention that they likely housed the person who meant so much to me, my Poppa,
Mordecai . . .

I hardly moved twenty cubits the entire night, for the very worst outcome imaginable came to pass. The entire royal palace burned. I alternately sat and stood with the group, and Jesse came by for a few moments at a time while he wasn’t ferrying refugees from the palace into spare harem quarters.

In spite of its inherent tragedy, and my growing panic over Mordecai’s fate, the fire proved the most spectacular display I have ever witnessed. Flames the size of houses tossed huge glowing tongues of yellow and red, cascading sparks into the darkness. In the later hours, collapsing palace walls added their own eruptions of coals and cinders while against their radiant afterglow, tiny silhouettes could be seen scurrying about, apparently dragging out bodies and piles of precious objects. At times it seemed a war was being waged, for column after column of wide-eyed soldiers seemed to pour across the terrace from Susa and parts beyond, to disappear into the inner courtyards. I could not tell if they were there to wage some form of battle, restore civil order, or simply to assist the helpers. . . .

Chapter Forty-three

In the long hours following the fire, rumor after rumor swept through our ranks of spectators. Had the King been overthrown? Had some form of judgment of the gods befallen the empire? One odd whisper had it that Artaxerxes had gathered all those he suspected of conspiring against him—the Princes of the Face, the highest palace echelons—into one great banquet hall, locked the doors, and set the place aflame. As you might imagine, that particular report multiplied my panic about my beloved Mordecai.

If that terrifying night held any solace for me, it was that it afforded my first opportunity to meet you. Without fanfare I slipped beside you in the line of spectators, smiled, and we exchanged some of the oft-repeated phrases about the appalling crisis. Before too long I had introduced myself, and in the process confirmed our suspicion about the Esther Edict. When I told you my name was Hadassah, I remember your eyes widening and your saying in an awestruck voice, “You mean Queen
Esther
?”

Your gaze quickly fell, and I am sure you realized you had just betrayed yourself in recognizing my Hebrew name.

“So it’s true—you’ve been placed under an edict. An edict named after me?” I encouraged you.

I’ll never forget how you looked deeply into my eyes, even as you nodded, then burst into tears.

“Please do not think me a coward, Your Highness . . .”

“Call me Hadassah, please, my dear. Just Hadassah. No one but fellow Jews know of my maiden name. And few outside the court know I retook it when His Majesty was killed.”

“Oh, Hadassah, you don’t know what a relief it is to speak freely with someone about who I really am! I have felt like such a prisoner. As if my life was over. The day those soldiers brought me through the Royal Gate, I felt something wither inside me. And I told G-d,
Just take my soul, for I am dead from this day onward. My life is over, even if my body continues to mimic the pretenses of life
.”

“You know, Leah,” I answered, “I have endured many days of emotions just like those. Some of them, as a Jewess, you already know about—the near extinction of our people at the hands of Haman, an enemy of our people who somehow acquired authority with my husband.”

“Of course, your High—I mean, Hadassah . . .” she responded.

“But I’ve suffered through other occasions to feel that my life was over,” I continued. “I know the emotion even now. The overwhelming certainty that everything is over for me. That the end has come. That things could not grow worse, and they will not recover. But do you know something?
It was never true and isn’t even now
. As much as my inner tendencies prod me to believe otherwise, no state of affairs ever turns out to be as permanent as it feels at the time. Every time I thought my life had ended, G-d intervened—and it turned out to be just a beginning.”

“Surely none of them rivaled the Haman crisis, which became a turning point in history,” you noted quietly.

“Oh yes, they did,” I answered. “For instance, did you know that my parents were murdered when I was just a child? It is the reason I was raised by my cousin Mordecai. And I thought my life had ended even then. Though I was too young to articulate it at the time, being adopted by an older cousin I hardly knew seemed to be just an aftermath—the beginning of my life’s slow decline. It hardly seemed like the start of anything meaningful. Yet it was.”

I remember that this recollection triggered another sad response in
you. You lowered your face into your arms and sobbed, whispering of your parents, “Perhaps my father is the reason I consider myself dead,” you confessed to me. “He tore his clothing and went into mourning when I was taken. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I ceased being a human being when I entered the harem to become a royal plaything.” You lowered your head, and I could barely hear your last words.

“You know, when I also was taken by force and removed to the palace harem,” I said, lifting your face to mine, “I knew beyond a doubt that my life was over. After all, I had been stolen away from everything I knew, just at the dawn of my womanhood, to a life of depravity and luxurious imprisonment. I would never leave those walls. I would never know real love or fulfillment. I would be forever a disgrace to my people.
And, how wrong I was!”

“Yes. It was the beginning of your journey to queenhood,” you replied, looking a bit dreamy, I thought.

“But even when I became Queen, I assumed
that
was the culmination, although hardly an unfortunate one. It still seemed like nothing more could happen to possibly top that wondrous event. After all, I was Queen of the largest, most powerful empire in the world! Even better, the King was truly, genuinely in love with me. What more could a woman ask for?”