After Abel and Other Stories (13 page)

“You seem quite sanguine about it.”

“What business is it of mine? He'll have enough to keep this harem standing. Enough for the next round of battles and celebrations. Enough to ransom the prettiest girls from lands far and near. Only he grows tired of them, and I am left to care for them as they grow restless and bitter when they realize that they will never leave or take my place.”

It was a distraction, this complaint of her sister's. They both knew why Zeresh was there, and it wasn't to talk about palace intrigue. Zeresh had stopped caring how many virgins her king took to his bed long ago.

“This time could be different,” Zeresh said.

“It could, I suppose.”

“Will you speak for us, if it is?”

Interest flashed in Vashti's eyes, so brief a stranger would have missed it, but the queen had finally heard what she had been waiting for. “Dear sister,” she said, the very tips of her lips lifting, “you are too focused on getting ahead. Why not be happy with your wealth, your children, your gardens? Surely, you wouldn't rather have all this.”

She gave a weak wave, taking in the deep couches
and lavish fabrics that, to an untrained eye, could hide the fact that there were no windows facing out into the palace grounds. All Vashti, the most powerful woman in Persia, could see were the king's many concubines bathing in the courtyard pool. “You have your freedom, Zeresh. Freedom and industry. You do not live at the whim of an intemperate man-child whose greatest talents are killing and drinking.”

“That's easy for someone with a crown on her head to say.”

Vashti considered this for a moment. It looked to Zeresh as if she was thinking about a detail that had never crossed her mind before. Finally, she said, “I see that nothing I say will make you understand. Very well. You will get what you want. The eunuchs have been attending the nightly feasts. They say he has spent more on wine than would feed the city of Tyre. They sprinkle opals from the east on their meat. He has hired troops of dusky women to dance naked before them, two to every man present.”

This was news to Zeresh, whose husband hadn't shared any of the details of the previous nights with her.

“Are they here, then,” she asked, “swelling your ranks?”

“Now, sister, you can't think he'd bring barbarian women in here. They are taken to the brothels at daybreak. Then he brings in new girls at night. Each morning,
the commoners of Susa line up to lie with women the king has touched. The Creator only knows how he will top it tonight.”

Here was more news to Zeresh. But Vashti was still talking.

“So you'll have your chance. Let him sleep off his excesses for a few days, then send your man, tell him to offer the moon. He is the king. He will take it.”

That was her dismissal. Vashti was finished with her. As she left, she saw her sister summoning a girl to bring wine and cheese. That new eunuch can only do so much, Zeresh thought, if my sister will look for solace in the bottom of a goblet.

When she woke the next morning, the house was quiet. Too quiet. She didn't hear her sons shouting as they exercised outside before starting their studies. The servants attended to her silently but wouldn't look her in the eye. They tried to guess what she'd want before she could even name it. Something must have happened. But she couldn't figure out what it could have been.

It took her hours to track down her husband. Even he had been afraid to face her, but he finally confessed to having seen it all happen.

“The king tired of the dancing girls, their flesh warm
in the firelight, heavy in his hands,” her husband reported. “He wanted to show us, all the nobles he'd gathered there, how strong his decree was. He was drunk. I've never seen a man take in so much wine in one night.”

Zeresh began to grow impatient. Her husband could go on when he got going, his language getting more flowery the closer he came to the heart of a matter. What she wanted was to get to the point.

He went on. “‘Bring in my wife,' he declared. We all froze. It was as if time stopped. ‘Prepare my wife for an audience and bring her in,' he said again. ‘You will all see what beauty accrues to a king.'”

Zeresh could imagine it; the masses of embarrassed and horrified men, each avoiding the eyes of his neighbor, as the king finally stepped over the bounds of decency.

“No one knew what to do,” he continued. “But we were all thinking the same thing. Even he couldn't ask a high-born woman—the queen!—to be exposed to such a scene. Spilled wine and a naked woman on each man's lap. But not mine,” he quickly added, “I would not touch them.”

“Oh, shut up and get on with it.” Zeresh had no patience for his simpering devotion. What man didn't take an occasional interest in some girl? That had nothing to do with marriage.

“But he's the king. He will have his way,” her husband said. “One of the ministers went to the harem, spoke to the chief eunuch, and quickly returned. We got back to eating and drinking, as if nothing had happened. It could be hours before she'd be ready. In the meantime, maybe the king would doze off, or take one of the young girls back to his rooms for the night, and we would all be spared the spectacle of the queen, your sister's humiliation.

“But it was not to be. Within minutes, the chief eunuch himself came into the room, his face as gray as the well of the firepit. ‘She will not come,' I heard him whisper to the chief minister.

“The king was incensed. For seven days, he had eaten and drunk and fucked as if he were not just a son of the Creator, but a god himself. When word got to him, he turned as if suddenly sober. His whole body stretched and reddened with rage. He stalked out of the hall, the ministers tripping over themselves to follow, like lapdogs beneath his heels.

“By daylight, she was gone. We were all sleeping off our drinks when they took her. No one knows where she's been sent. Somewhere in Susa, so far as I know. But that's all I know.”

Zeresh fell onto a couch. Her husband watched as anger and fear played across her face. It took a few moments, but anger won out.

“What has she done? Couldn't she have averted her eyes? It's a woman's lot to face embarrassment at her husband's hand. That's a truth all wives know. Even the king's. Especially the king's.”

“Surely, my dear, I do not shame you.” His feelings were really wounded, his peacock pride punctured that easily.

“You will not last a week as chief advisor if you take offense so easily,” she snapped.

She stood up, paced back and forth over the length of the carpet. Her sister's advice of the day before was no longer useful to her. One thing was clear. She couldn't give the king a few days to sleep off his hangover and come back to his senses. He'd discarded those along with her sister sometime during the night.

“You have to go him now. Today,” she told her husband. “Our whole family will be under a cloud of suspicion because of her little show of independence. We've been forced to wait this long. Now we can save ourselves and take what's due to us all at once.”

She looked her husband over, took a final accounting of his abilities. They would have to do. There were two possible outcomes of the day ahead of them: complete ruin or great power. He was their only hope.

“Offer him everything,” she said. “Tell him you'll refill the treasury up to twice what the last minister gave him. Tell him you'll personally bankroll his personal
guard for the next six months.”

He blanched. “That much? It will ruin us.”

She brushed off his concern. “I'll earn it back. This is the only way to save ourselves.”

“And your sister?”

“Don't say a word about her. I'll look into it. But I won't see the other side of the palace threshold again.”

“But I'll be vizier. You will go where you please.”

Zeresh finally felt like she understood Vashti, who knew the mind of the king better than anyone. “He won't forgive that easily. Our money will buy you inside the gates. My blood will keep me out. He's been king for years. Have you learned nothing of him yet?”

“Only that he's a fool in love with wine and war.”

“He may indeed love wine and war, but he's no fool. That's why you must go now. Immediately. There's no time to waste. His men may be marshalling to come round us all up at this moment.”

Zeresh didn't dare leave the grounds of her own home. All of Susa would have heard about her sister's fate by now. She would be jeered and hissed at by everyone, even those she had counted as her friends since childhood. No one could afford to be seen taking her side, even out of pity. Besides, she wouldn't give them the pleasure of
seeing her brought down.

Bitterness at her own lot kept her from showing it, but she worried for her sister. A queen cannot simply disappear as if she never existed. She must have left a trail. Why, though, couldn't she wait to show her stubbornness? She knew, Zeresh thought. She knew how important this week is for us, and yet she would make her stand now.

As had often happened since childhood, Zeresh felt herself struggling to lift off the shade that her sister had thrown onto her. Never out of malice. She was sure of that. Vashti just never had to think things through. The accident of beauty had given her the privilege to act first and consider the consequences later.

It had finally been her destruction, and for that Zeresh wept. Her beautiful, headstrong sister, trapped in a story written by their father and her husband, the king, so long ago, now banished who knows where because she had dared try to write one line.

Zeresh allowed herself another minute's sorrow and then set to work. She may not have been able to go to the palace, to walk through its immaculate gardens, watch the fish swim golden beneath the surface of the ponds as the sun set across them, but she could bring the palace to her home.

Hours later, Hegai, the harem's chief eunuch, was led into her private office, his face a closed mask of sly wit.

She offered him her finest date wine, almonds picked from her own trees, cakes bursting with pistachios and cinnamon. She knew his weaknesses. His manhood may have been taken from him. His hunger never was.

“The king is most gracious and magnanimous,” he answered, when she asked after his wellbeing.

“Because you're not dead or exiled, too, I suppose.”

“My king sees fit to keep me in service.”

“No one could have expected her to react that way. Not even so capable a head eunuch as you are. Surely our king, in his wisdom, has seen that.”

“So it would seem.”

“I am glad to see you, then, still in your proper place.”

They danced around each other. But they were old hands at this kind of thing: sweets for the belly and the ear, and only then the truth.

“And have you lost any workers of late?” she asked

“Only one. Artakama, poor boy, has been assigned to a new task and moved away from the palace to serve my lord, the king, elsewhere.”

They were getting to the meat of the issue.

“Has he had to travel far?”

“Happily for him, no. He gets the travel sickness, so it is his luck that he is to remain in Susa, although he is young and ambitious and will struggle at the restraints placed upon him.”