Esther : Royal Beauty (9781441269294) (9 page)

L
IKE
A
BEATEN
DOG
, my master chose to lick his wounds in a solitary den. He could have directed his court to join him at any of the royal capitals—Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Pasargadae, or Persepolis—but after the defeat at Salamis, the royal entourage traveled to Sardis, a quiet city conquered by Cyrus generations before. Vashti had not gone with us to Greece, but she traveled to Sardis with the rest of the concubines and children. I wondered if the king would relent and summon her to his chamber, but my master seemed determined to obey his own royal edict. Not only did he not summon Vashti, he did not allow her to appear at court. She spent her days in the harem with her children, and whether she enjoyed that duty, I cannot say.

As our sojourn beneath blue skies and sunny weather extended through weeks and months, I soon realized why my master did not seem to miss the woman who had once thoroughly occupied his
mind and heart. As part of the royal family and the king's army, the king's younger brother Masistes remained with us, accompanied by his beautiful wife, Parmys, and teenaged daughter, Artaynta.

With no queen to direct the court's social activities, Parmys blossomed in the light of the king's attention. My master frequently invented tasks for Masistes, sending him on journeys to visit the governor of one satrap or another. While his brother was away, the king privately entertained his sister-in-law and niece.

The first time he asked me to arrange a private dinner, I knew the king had decided to seek solace in a woman's love. Unfortunately, the woman he set his affections on was his brother's wife. He did his best to charm the lovely Parmys, offering her jewels and gowns and slaves, but she remained steadfast and faithful to her absent husband.

While the king offered himself and his kingdom to his sister-in-law, I watched from the shadows and clenched my hands, frustrated at my master's weakness. Why would a king with so many concubines pine for a woman he should not have?

The attempt to win Parmys's love might have continued for months, but the king's wounded spirit needed gratification. When the woman would not submit to him, I feared his mood might grow darker than it had been at Salamis, but then the king surprised everyone by arranging a marriage between ten-year-old Crown Prince Darius and Parmys's daughter, Artaynta.

As I witnessed the wedding ceremony, I wondered if I judged my royal master too harshly. Had his attentions toward Parmys been something other than seduction? Being a eunuch, I had no experience with such things. Perhaps I had misread his gestures and his words. Perhaps he had only intended to arrange a fruitful marriage between his son and her daughter.

Artaynta moved into the king's house to be near her child-husband, but those of us who padded through those marble hall
ways after dark stumbled over myriad secrets. We learned who sleeps where.

So I knew when and where the king managed to seduce his pretty daughter-in-law. And in the jolt of that realization I understood that he had not arranged his son's marriage out of loving concern for his son. He had married the prince to Parmys's pretty daughter so that he could seduce the girl and strike at the woman who had spurned his advances.

In that instant of comprehension, nausea rippled like a slippery eel through my gut.

Slaves are not supposed to exhibit feelings, and eunuchs are assumed to have none. But though my body has been mutilated and some natural desires suppressed, my heart still beat with feeling and my brain still reasoned. I spent more hours with my king than any living man, and I understood him better than he understood himself. I loved him—not with lustful feeling, nor with brotherly compassion. I loved him because I understood him, and because I have known him since childhood. I loved him because I saw the seeds of greatness in him.

I loved him because I hoped his greatness would overcome the weaknesses that caused him to stumble.

I did not understand his compulsion to seduce women—after all, at thirty-eight my master ought to have mastered his lustful impulses—and I wondered if the defeat at Salamis had created a hunger in him, a yearning to steal what he could not otherwise gain. An endeavor in which he might finally feel successful.

The king's foolish affair might have come to nothing but for three unexpected developments: first, Vashti, languishing in her isolation, took it upon herself to weave a varicolored cloak for the king. Whether she sought to reacquire her position or assure him of her love, I cannot say. But she used the finest threads and the most lustrous colors, creating a garment worthy of a royal conqueror.
Since she could not personally present it to him, she ordered one of the eunuchs to deliver it.

If she'd sent the cloak in the midst of the war preparations, I daresay the king would have thoughtlessly set it aside or given it to one of his vice-regents. But flush with the foolishness of a man caught up in a new infatuation, my master put on the garment and preened before a polished sheet of bronze, imagining how his new love would appreciate his fine appearance.

The gods frowned on us the day Artaynta awoke in the king's bed and saw her king shining in his new cloak like some sort of majestic bird. Later that morning, as the king held her and whispered renewed declarations of love, he asked her to divulge her heart's desire so he could fulfill it. Being a silly girl in mind and heart, Artaynta asked for the cloak she'd seen him wearing.

If I had been present at the time, I would have done my best to warn the girl about the taboo pertaining to the king's royal robes. A king's garment was more than mere clothing—the superstitious Persians believed that a royal robe possessed magical power, conferring royalty upon its wearers. He or she who asked to wear something the king had worn
could
be asking for the right to the throne . . . and the first thing a usurper would do was don the garment of the fallen king.

But foolish girls and unsteady kings did not think clearly. My master, having given his word, felt he had to give the cloak to Artaynta. Then the silly girl was unwise enough to wear it at court.

Vashti was not present, of course, but everyone who saw the girl realized that her relationship with the king had become far more intimate than father and daughter-in-law. Many quietly took offense for the cuckolded crown prince and for Masistes, who had been conveniently kept away from court. I don't know who told Vashti about the incident, but it could have been anyone who knew of her hard work on the beautiful garment.

Wings of shadowy foreboding brushed my spirit when the news of the king's affair became public, but days passed and nothing happened. I told myself nothing would come of the king's foolishness; after all, he had pushed Vashti away and perhaps she had learned her lesson. I even managed to convince myself that Artaynta was a blessing from the gods, for she had been able to dispel the brooding cloud that had engulfed the king since his defeat in Greece.

And then we commemorated the king's birthday. The event, one of the most important of the year, was traditionally celebrated with members from the noble families of Persia, and the king's court was open to any nobleman or noblewoman who wanted to attend. At the feast, any guest could approach the king and ask for a gift, knowing he would be honor-bound to grant the petitioner's request.

The day began happily enough. I woke with a smile and went to work on preparations for the feast. Finally the meal was ready, the pavilion decorated, the slaves at their stations.

The guests began to fill the great hall at Sardis, and then I saw Vashti.

I stood as if rooted to the floor. Our former queen had apparently been waiting for the birthday feast. She no longer wore a crown, but she would always be a daughter of a noble family, so the king would not send her away.

She sat with members of her family and said little while other guests went forward to ask for their gifts—a ham, a golden goblet, permission to plant a vineyard on royal property—and then she stood and approached the dais where the king reclined behind a gauze curtain.

The room stilled as the beautiful former queen moved forward with long, purposeful strides.

I found it hard to breathe as Vashti's painted eyes scanned the gathering, then fixed on her husband. “Life, health, and prosperity
to you, my king,” she said, her voice throaty and intimate. “I have only one request: to be able to do as I wish with your brother's wife.”

In the center of my back, a single drop of sweat traced the ladder of my spine. What was Vashti thinking? My thoughts raced, putting events of the past few weeks together, fitting one to the other, until I formed the picture that must have influenced this bizarre request. Vashti had learned about Artaynta wearing her cloak, and the former queen understood the full significance of symbolic actions. By allowing the girl to wear his cloak, my master had implied that he had given or would share the throne with Artaynta, further implying that he might place her children on the throne, passing over the princes he'd had with Vashti. . . .

Now Vashti was determined to create a symbol of her own.

The other servants and I watched, stunned, as a look of sick realization twisted the king's face. “What is this untoward thing you ask?” he said after a full minute of silence. He lowered his voice. “The lady is innocent of the matter.”

Standing in a hidden alcove, I closed my eyes. The king might be impulsive, but he was no fool, and his statement revealed that he fully understood Vashti's motivation. But the woman would not be deterred.

“You are compelled by the law,” she insisted, coming a half step closer. “It is impossible that anyone who makes a request before the king at a royal feast should not obtain it.”

The king sat up, rested his elbow on his bent knee, and looked around as if he would find an answer to his dilemma on his couch or dining tray. But all he saw was me.

He gestured me closer, and I obeyed.

“Eunuch.” He bent closer, so the lady could not hear our conversation. “Run at once to fetch my brother, and tell him this: ‘Masistes, you are my brother, and in addition you are a man of worth. So I say to you, live no longer with the wife you now live with, but I
will give you instead my daughter. Live with her as your wife, but the wife you now have, do not keep, for it does not seem good to me that you should keep her.'”

I blinked at the unusual message.

“Hurry!” the king commanded, and away I flew.

Masistes's royal apartment was not far from the great hall, and he willingly allowed me into his chamber. Upon hearing the king's message, however, he frowned. “Will you give the king my reply?”

I nodded.

“Tell him that I find his suggestion unprofitable. Why should I send away a wife who has given me sons, who have grown up to be fine young men? And daughters, one of whom you yourself took as a wife for your son. O king, I think it is a very great matter that I am judged worthy of your daughter, but nevertheless, I will neither take your daughter nor give up my wife. Do not force me to do such a thing, and for your daughter another husband will be found who is not at all inferior to me. I pray thee, let me still live with my own wife.”

I memorized Masistes's answer and ran back to the great hall.

I wish I could say that nothing had happened in my absence, but apparently Vashti had used the time to send the king's spearmen to fetch Parmys. That lady stood between the king on his dais and the former queen on the floor. The innocent woman's eyes were wide with confusion and fear, and they went wider still when a swordsman stepped forward to do Vashti's bidding.

I saw movement in my peripheral vision and turned to see a pale and shaking Artaynta fall to her knees before the king's couch, begging him through tears not to harm her mother.

But tradition and the immutable law of the Medes and the Persians had tied his hands.

The swordsman withdrew his blade as the entire court watched in horrified silence.

Words fail me. I cannot write the horrible details of what my eyes beheld, but I can testify that the beautiful Vashti took the sword and began to mutilate an innocent woman, choosing to strike at Artaynta through her precious mother.

When Masistes's wife had lost her breasts, ears, lips, nose, and tongue, Vashti calmly asked for a carriage to send the wounded woman home.

Parmys died a few hours later.

During the mutilation, my master lowered his gaze, unable to watch the carnage. In the furrows of that troubled brow I saw the old darkness approaching and knew nothing good could come of the day's events.

Within a few weeks, I was proved right. Masistes attempted to travel to Bactria to stir up a rebellion against the king, but my master had guessed what his younger brother would do. Before the wronged husband, his sons, and his supporters could depart for Bactria, my master arranged to have the entire caravan ambushed and murdered.

The brooding spirit settled over him again.