Harvest of Rubies (42 page)

I found him in the company of his scribe. His face seemed rigid, his eyes strained. He lit up when he saw me.

“Sarah! Are you too tired to look at these figures?”

“No, my lord.”

“Excellent. Vidarna, my wife shall see to these details. She has ridden far today, so don’t drown her with all your reports at once. Show her what seems urgent, and save the rest for the coming week.”

Vidarna’s mouth went down on both sides as his eyebrows went up. He could not hide his dismay as I sat near him and invited him to begin. Within five minutes, I had him sitting straight, his forehead covered in sweat. Other than his initial skepticism toward me, I found no fault with his work, and gave him the guidance he needed for several minor decisions.

Darius stifled another yawn. “Can the rest wait, Vidarna?”

“Yes, lord.”

Darius nodded dismissal. Vidarna gathered the tools of his trade and walked out, followed by Pari and Darius’s man. I rose to follow them. Darius grabbed my arm and pulled me onto his lap where he lounged on a wide couch. “Not you. I didn’t say you could go.”

“I thought you were finished with the scribes.”

“The scribes can go to the moon. My wife, I want.”

I never made it to my room that night. When I awoke, still in his bed, it was late morning and there was no sign of Darius. I decided to go in search of Bardia as soon as I dressed.

An idyllic fall day greeted me with the merest hint of a chill in the air. I had fetched Pari to go with me and we ambled in lazy enjoyment. One of Bardia’s many new assistants told us we could find him in the vineyard.

The sun shone high and bright, sharing the sky with a few fat, white clouds. I found myself laughing for no reason, distracted by the beauty of the day. I was utterly unprepared for the sight that met me when we arrived at the entrance of the vineyard. Row after row of vine, so heavy with grapes that it required a sturdy pole tied to each plant to keep it upright, greeted my astonished gaze.

I gasped with delight. The last time I had stood here, Bardia had pruned the vine with such drastic energy that the place looked more like a stick garden than a vineyard. Now those same plants bloomed with health, bearing so much exquisite fruit, it took your breath away.

“Oh Bardia,” I marveled, when I saw him. “It’s glorious.”

“Try one, my lady. Go ahead.” I gave a small bunch to Pari and popped a few grapes into my own mouth. The juice exploded on my tongue with a mixture of sweet and tangy flavors so complex, I grinned from sheer gustatory joy. The aroma of grapes wrapped around my insides like perfume from Damascus.

“Delicious,” I mumbled. Before I had swallowed, I popped another handful in my mouth.

Bardia laughed. “Take it slow, my lady. Leave some for the king’s table.”

“Let the king come and fetch his own. This is my share.”

“Wait until you taste the wine. This has been a good year, I reckon.”

The sun burst from behind a white cloud at that moment and shone its dazzling light on the fruit before me. The grapes, red and plump, took on a translucent quality.

“Rubies!” I cried. “They look like rubies on the vine. You’ve grown a harvest of rubies, Bardia.”

He gave me a modest smile. “It wouldn’t have been much of a harvest if I had listened to you and stopped pruning.”

His teasing words stopped me short. With new intensity I examined the fruitful vine before me. I recalled standing near this very spot, clutching a severed branch.

How like the vine I had felt that day, stripped almost to the point of death, everything I held precious taken from me. How I had longed for my old life back. And yet, like Bardia, God had intended to do me good by dismantling my world.

I had thought that my work was the measure of my worth. I had made my accomplishments more important than friendships, more important than my heart, more important even than God.

The more I clutched at my achievements, the sicker my soul had grown. And God, in His mercy, in His uncompromising love, had torn the sickness out of my chest.

I remembered suddenly the words of the Lord as spoken through the prophet Hosea:

The Lord spoke these words to the kingdom of Israel during her season of intense faithlessness. But He might just as well have spoken them to me.

At a time when I had grown empty and faithless, He allured me away from the riches of court life where I had turned my success into the source of my well-being. Instead He brought me into a desert of hopelessness and loss. He did not bring me into this wilderness in order to destroy me; He brought me here to speak tenderly to me. To speak of
His
love, which healed the sorrows of my childhood. To restore to me my true self, which had become buried under the weight of my perverse appetites for human acceptance.

Looking back, I now realized I could never have tasted true happiness while I had remained so soul-sick. The compulsions of a hungry heart can forbear no denial. They can taste no joy unless they have what they want. And even having, they are not satisfied. The only way I had known to find a measure of happiness back then was to succeed, to win approval, to avoid failure. And yet all the success in the world could not truly satisfy me. It merely left me hungry for more.

I now knew that only my appetite for godly things could ever be truly satisfied.

In His mercy, knowing I was headed for more sorrow by having what I wanted, God had stripped me of the things that fed my soul-sickness. And that brought me to—the Valley of Achor—The Valley of
Trouble
. I saw with clarity, that my suffering had paved the way to my healing. My heart no longer grasped hungrily for my old idols. It still wanted them. I could not deny it. But it wanted God more.

Like Bardia’s vine, the soil of my early life had been poor. This world was a fallen place. I had battled loneliness and
rejection from an early age. But then, when I turned to Him, I knew that God would not allow these losses to annihilate me. He would use them for good, in the end, though the way to His goodness would sometimes lead straight through the desert and into the Valley of Trouble.

I knew He had directed my path there.

When the season came, the Bardia of my soul had grasped His pruning shears and cut into my already weak frame. He had cut into me to give me more abundant life.

Had I borne a harvest of rubies like Bardia’s grapevine as a result? I thought of the changes in my life. I knew how to be a friend now. How to accept help. How to open my heart. I knew how to live without being a mighty success, without being admired and accepted. I knew how to love my husband without being destroyed by the reality that he did not feel the same about me. I knew how to taste joy, even when life was not perfect. In the desert of my life, I had learned David’s lesson. I had learned to keep one foot on the road of peace while the other remained trapped in pain.

Most importantly, I knew how to cling to the Lord. I had learned how to be satisfied, learned how to trust Him. Well, most of the time. He still had many lessons to teach me. He still had to cover my gaps.

God had given me back my vineyards. He had taken a broken and sickly garden of sticks and turned them into a rich vineyard, bearing jewels. I had my own harvest of rubies.

“You’ve been eating Bardia’s grapes, I see,” a familiar voice whispered against my ear.

I swiveled to find my husband’s amused face, studying me. He reached a finger and wiped away the grape juice clinging to the side of my mouth. He held it up for me to see, a small droplet of scarlet on the tip of his finger, standing out like
blood. “Evidence of your thievery,” he said, before licking it clean.

I never would learn to eat without making a mess, I thought with a sigh. “It wasn’t really thievery. Bardia offered it. He was proving how wrong I was.”

Darius’s brows drew together. “About what?”

“Well, I had lectured him on pruning a few months back.”

The long green eyes crinkled in the corners. “You lectured my head gardener on pruning? I am sorry I missed that spectacle. What exactly did you lecture him about?”

“About his drastic measures. He was hacking away at the vine and I advised him to be gentler.”

“I take it he gave you a lecture of his own.”

I threw Darius a suspicious glance. “Did he give you the same one?”

“When I was about seventeen. You are a little slow.”

I laughed. For a moment I deliberated on whether to share with my Persian husband the lessons God had taught me in recent weeks. Could he even begin to understand the world from such a different perspective? I decided that more than anything, I wanted to share this part of my life with him. I wanted him to begin to comprehend my faith. I knew I had to start slow. I did not wish him to think I was pushing my beliefs on him.

“The Lord used Bardia’s words to show me a glimpse of His wisdom,” I said tentatively.

“T
he Lord?” Darius pulled gently on my hand and we began to walk toward a wooden arbor covered by a profusion of late-blooming white roses. “Bardia knows nothing about the Lord.”

“I know. It’s just that God sometimes refers to Himself as a gardener and to Israel as a vine. As Bardia taught me the mystery of the vine, I felt as though the God of Israel showed me how He could use the suffering in my life for my good.”

Darius settled us on the marble bench in the shaded privacy of the arbor. He raised my hand, palm up to his lips for a gentle kiss. “I caused you much pain. I am sorry for it.”

My mouth fell open at his unexpected apology. “You had every reason to be angry with me when we first met. I must have been a terrible disappointment to you.”

He gave a lopsided smile. “Anger and disappointment I knew what to do with. What confounded me was the change in my feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I returned to fetch you to Ecbatana, I was still brimming with dislike for you. Then, to my shock, I found a lovely, composed woman in place of the little monster I had come to expect.

“I found I resented you even more for your beauty; I didn’t want to admire any part of you. To my astonishment, the vile image I had built of you in my mind began to crumble with such rapidity that I could not keep up with the evidence before me. You were kind and gentle. My most trusted servants adored you. You had the valor of one of the king’s Immortals and the intelligence of one of his advisors. You were funny. I
liked
you.

“But the most disconcerting development was when I realized I
desired
you. That very first night. Tired as I was after my grueling ride from Ecbatana, and facing the appalling betrayal of a trusted servant, I found myself moved as you sat next to me in your midnight blue dress. You leaned over to show me your scroll. I remember I had to stand so quickly, I overturned you.”

“You jest!” My voice came out in a squeak. “You never wanted me then.”

“I did, I tell you. And it put me out of countenance. I wished to stay as far away from you as I could. Desiring you proved an inconvenience I had not counted on. I wanted nothing to do with you. I had no intention of forgiving you. And then I saw how you loved Caspian, and it broke through my resolve to ignore you.

“Things only grew worse on that interminable journey north. The first few days, I had to bear with sitting in the saddle with you nestled in my arms for hours at a time. Then as you grew strong in the saddle, I had to come to grips with the fact that you
weren’t
nestled in my arms. The whole state
of affairs made me cantankerous beyond forbearance. You must have noticed?”

I leaned against him. “I assumed it was your normal disposition.”

“I’m generally as affable as a lamb.”

“Of course you are,” I said. He laughed.

“You were very kind to me, that first evening in the palace,” I said.

“By then, the thought of you remaining a laughingstock in the court stuck in my throat. I did not want you, but I did not wish you to suffer, either. I had planned upon our arrival in Ecbatana to drop you in Damaspia’s keeping and be rid of you. I had committed myself to supporting you in public, but I had no intention of spending personal time with you. Then again, I hadn’t contended with the queen’s devious mind. Having to share a room with you was utter torture. You were witty and charming. I wanted to spend all my time with you, and yet could not bring myself to trust you. I avoided that room as much as I possibly could.”

“Ah. I wondered where you spent the nights.”

“As far away from you as I could devise. You almost had to die before I realized I could not walk away from you.”