A Reluctant Queen (11 page)

It was to the elegant, silk-hung reception room of this apartment that Hegai brought Mordecai the day after her acceptance by the king. Esther awaited her uncle with her emotions in a turmoil of contradictions. The room had several divans, but she stood squarely in the middle of the beautiful Persian rug—which made the rug in her old home look like a rag—as Mordecai was escorted in.

Hegai touched his arm to stop him at the door, and Mordecai’s eyes met Esther’s across the space between them. She thought he looked older than she remembered.

“Hegai,” she said crisply, already having rehearsed this statement, “you may stand outside in the corridor and leave the door open. That should satisfy the requirements, I think.”

Hegai started to protest, but Esther was determined to speak to her uncle in private. “If you don’t like it, complain to the king,” she said, her voice even crisper than before. “But it is what I wish you to do.”

There was a brief silence, then Hegai bowed his head and retreated. Esther realized she had won.

“Come in, Mordecai,” she said clearly so Hegai could hear. “I have called you here today to thank you for your good offices in bringing me to the attention of the king. Come, sit down and let me pour you some wine.”

She indicated the divan farthest from the doorway.

Mordecai advanced into the room and sat down, all the time staring at his niece as if he were seeing a stranger. “You look so different,” he said when he was seated.

“Yes, I imagine I do,” Esther replied. It was a struggle to keep her voice even. Part of her wanted to throw herself into her uncle’s arms and beg him to take her away, and part of her wanted to blame him for doing this to her.

Mordecai lowered his voice so Hegai could not hear. “How are you, my dear?”

“How do you expect me to be? I am to marry the Great King of Persia. Surely I should be dancing with joy.” Even to herself, her voice sounded cold.

Mordecai glanced at the door, then lowered his voice even more. “Chicken,” he said, “I am so sorry.”

At the use of her nickname, the tears came like a flood. He held out his arms and she threw herself into them, sobbing as if she would never stop. When finally her weeping began to subside, Mordecai said, “When I heard the announcement, I could scarcely believe it. I did not even know you were to see the king. Then Filius came running to tell me that the king had kept you with him for over an hour. And today the announcement was made official.”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Esther said into his tear-soaked shoulder.

“Yes, it was. But, in my heart, I don’t think I believed it would really happen. Now that it has, I am stunned.”

A flicker of hope flared in Esther’s heart. “Is it too late to get out of it?”

He put her away from him and gazed into her face. “Listen to me, my dear. This is God’s doing. There is no other reason for the king to have picked you out of all the well-connected Persian girls he has seen. It is the will of God. You must accept that, Esther, and do what you can to protect the Jews and our country from the dangers of that Edomite, Haman.”

Esther’s whole body stiffened. He was not going to help her. He wanted her to go through with it, to marry this man who did not care for her, would never care for her, would only want her body so she could bear him legitimate heirs. He had a whole harem full of concubines to occupy him when he got bored with her. This very apartment was situated next to the apartments of his two favorite concubines, concubines who had already borne him children. She did not doubt that he would continue to see these women after the marriage. The Persians saw nothing wrong in such things, but Esther did not know how she could bear it.

She did not say these things to her uncle, however. Nothing would change Mordecai’s belief that she had been chosen to be the savior of the Jews. Like a bird in a cage at one of the markets she used to frequent, she was well and truly caught.

After Mordecai left, she went into her bedroom, laid down on the soft bed—no sleeping mats in this apartment—and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Esther had thought her time in the harem was stressful, but nothing equaled the pressure of the month leading up to her wedding. Hegai and Muran talked to her about royal protocol until her head was spinning and she was convinced she was certain to commit an error that Ahasuerus would find mortally offensive. Then Hegai told her that her father’s father, the grandfather she had never seen, the grandfather who had rejected her and her mother after her father’s death, was going to be the one to escort her to her bridegroom on her wedding day.

She couldn’t protest. She knew it would be impossible for Mordecai to assume that task, that the only reason she had been accepted as a candidate was because of her father’s family. So it was with a divided heart that she awaited the arrival of Arses, her grandfather, who was coming to see her in the very same room where she’d had her only meeting with her uncle.

As with Mordecai, it was Hegai who escorted the visitor to her apartment. He knocked discreetly and, when she called for him to come, he opened the door and intoned, “My Lady Esther, may I present to you Arses, Retired Captain of the Immortals.”

A tall, gray-haired man walked into the room and halted when he was still a few feet away from her. “Granddaughter,” he said in a harsh voice, “how do you wish me to greet you?”

Esther looked into the splendid, carved features of her father’s father. She hesitated. Part of her wanted to punish him by making him bow to her, but her better self prevailed. “You may give me the kiss of kinship,” she replied.

The tall, old man, with his proud, Persian face, came forward to kiss her on the cheek. He stepped back and they regarded each other in silence.

“You were a pretty child,” he said at last, “but you have grown into a beautiful woman.”

Esther stiffened with shock at his words. “You have seen me before?”

His dark eyes were steady on her face. “I saw you when you were two years old. It was I who brought you and your mother from Sardis back to Susa after the Greek raid that killed my son.”

Esther was stunned. “I did not know that.”

The old man’s imperious black brows, so like Esther’s own, twitched, and he nodded imperceptibly toward the Head Eunuch, who was standing by the door.

Esther said immediately, “Thank you, Hegai. I would like to be alone with my grandfather.”

The relationship was close enough for Hegai to leave, and grandfather and granddaughter stood in silence until the door had closed behind him.

“I am not surprised that you knew nothing of me,” Arses said. “Mordecai made it perfectly clear that he did not want you to have any contact with your father’s family. We have respected his wishes, but I am happy to be meeting you now.”

A second shock, even more unsettling than the first, went through Esther. “I always thought it was you who did not want to have anything to do with me.”

Arses shook his head. “After my son’s death, I asked your mother to make her home with me, but she wanted to return to her own people and chose instead to live with her brother.”

Esther’s shock was turning into indignation. “Uncle Mordecai never told me this! He told me that it was you who did not want to see me.”

“That was not the case,” Arses said.

Esther was furious. All these years she could have known her father’s family, and Mordecai had not even given her the choice. “He lied to me,” she said. “He had no right to do that.”

Arses gave her a long silent look, then said, “I do not like Mordecai, but I will not say that he was wrong in this, Granddaughter. Once your mother made her choice, it was best that you not grow up with a divided allegiance. You could be either Persian or Jew—you could not be both.”

Esther’s hands closed together in a tight grip and she said in an unsteady voice, “But I must be both now, Grandfather.”

“You cannot be both,” Arses repeated. He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Mordecai came to see me the day after you were accepted into the harem, to ask me to vouch for your birth. I confess, at first I did not believe that he had brought you here. He was so outraged when his sister married a Persian! I could not imagine him allowing you to wed any man who was not a Jew—not even the Great King himself.” The deep-set dark eyes glinted with amused satisfaction. “He is the one who put you into this position, Esther, and now he must live with it. Once you marry the Great King, you will no longer be a Jew. You will be a Persian.”

He doesn’t understand
, Esther thought
. He doesn’t understand that you cannot just stop being a Jew. It’s impossible
. “Did Uncle Mordecai tell you why he wanted me to do this?”

Arses shrugged. “He told me some nonsense about a Jewish massacre and being afraid the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed again. It sounded absurd to me. Ahasuerus is a just man, an honorable king. He would never allow such a thing. And how Mordecai could think that
you
would be able to prevent it!” He shook his head. “I always thought he was a fanatic.”

“He is not a fanatic!” Esther instinctively rushed to her uncle’s defense. “He is simply a Jew who fears for the safety of his people and wants to protect them.”

“By using a
woman
?”

Arses’ contempt was scalding and, even though Esther had thought the same thing, her temper flared at the criticism of her uncle. She compressed her lips to keep from making an angry reply.
He is an old man and a Persian
, she told herself.
There is nothing to be gained by trying to change the way he thinks
.

So she looked at the low wine table set in front of the divan and asked in a determinedly pleasant voice, “Would you care for some wine, Grandfather?”

Arses smiled and accepted.

Esther served him wine and asked him questions. She learned that Arses had been a Captain of the Immortals, the famous ten-thousand-man cadre of Persian infantry, so called because their number never varied. “The men of our family fought with Cyrus in his campaigns against the Medes and the Babylonians,” he told her with pride. “We were always infantrymen until your father came along. He was horse-mad from the time he could first sit on a pony. When he was a boy he used to gallop up and down the mountains until I was certain he would kill himself. It had to be the cavalry for him; he would hear of nothing else.”

A shadow of sadness passed over the splendid old face at this memory of the son who had died too young. Esther felt tears sting behind her eyes and blinked to chase them away. She felt again the painful loss of never knowing her father.

Arses drained his second cup of wine. “Ahasuerus is a great horseman himself. When he was only a boy, just admitted to the cavalry, he won most of the great races at the Ecbatana racecourse. They had to stop him from entering after a while, because no one would bet against him.”

Esther murmured, “I did not know that.”

Arses shrugged, as if to say that nobody expected a woman to know such a thing.

“Let me give you some advice, Granddaughter,” he said, putting down his wineglass and turning to her.

Esther sighed. “Why should you be different from anyone else?”

Arses ignored the comment and narrowed his eyes. “Ahasuerus chose you for more than your beauty, my girl. He wants a wife from a family whose loyalty he can trust. He does not know that your mother was a Jew. He knows only that you are the daughter of a Persian house that has always been loyal to its king.” His deep-set eyes commanded her. “It is your Persian blood that has gotten you where you are, Granddaughter. It would be well if you remembered that.”

Esther lowered her lashes, shielding her eyes from that imperious stare. “I will try to, Grandfather,” she said.

The old man nodded emphatically. “Your son will be the next Great King. That is what is important now.”

Esther felt a shiver run all through her, but she kept her face serene and nodded that she understood.