Game of Queens (2 page)

For readers who'd like still more about Queen Esther, there are plenty of sources to go to:

Novels about Queen Esther

Esther is understandably a hugely popular subject for novelists, so there are far too many to list here (and I'm pretty sure I've read most of them). Search for “Esther, Queen of Persia—Fiction” to track them down in your library system. I will, however, put in a shameless plug for one of my favorite books of all time:
Behold Your Queen!
by Gladys Malvern. This is the best novel about Esther ever written (I own two copies of the original 1958 edition) and it's at long, long last been reprinted and is once more available. Buy it and read it as soon as possible!

Movies about Queen Esther

Esther and the King
(1960) starring Joan Collins attempting to be a Simple Jewish Orphan. This is the movie in which Queen Vashti is divorced for doing a strip-tease in front of the king; she also has an affair with Haman. (Trivia note: The actor playing Xerxes in
Esther and the King
played Leonidas in
The 300 Spartans
.)

Esther
(1999) (a made-for-TV movie)

A Historia de Ester
(Brazilian miniseries; eight hours of colorful enjoyment)

One Night with the King
(lively, extravagant, and lots of fun to watch)

A Few of the Books I Read While Writing
Game of Queens

The Anchor Bible:
The Book of Daniel
by Louis F. Hartman & Alexander A. Di Lella

The Anchor Bible:
The Book of Esther
by Carey A. Moore

The Anchor Bible:
Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions
by Carey A. Moore

Beauty Secrets of the Bible
by Ginger Garrett

Biblical Women Unbound: Counter Tales
by Norma Rosen

Dictionary of Ancient Deities
by Patricia Turner & Charles Russell Coulter

The Holy Bible: King James Version

The Keeper of the Bed: The Story of the Eunuch
by Charles Humana

The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History

The Persian Empire
by J. M. Cook

The Persians
by Jim Hicks & Time-Life Books (The Emergence of Man Series)

Persians: Masters of Empire
by Time-Life Books (Lost Civilizations Series)

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Vashti's Victory: And Other Biblical Women Resisting Injustice
by LaVerne McCain Gill

Writing this book was a huge amount of fun. Not only did retelling Vashti's and Esther's stories give me the chance to wallow in research and to reread every Esther novel I could get my hands on (thank you, Adriance Memorial Library, Amazon, and
ABEbooks.com
),
Game of Queens
allowed me to fulfill a longtime dream: to write the kind of story in which the heroine has a pet wolf.

Happy reading!

India

www.indiaedghill.com

 

PROLOGUE

Stars

HEGAI

Where does this tale truly begin? Does it start in the jeweled garden of the harem of the King of Kings, master of half the world? Shall I begin it there?

Or shall I begin it at an extravagant banquet on the night that a woman defied the King of Kings before all the nobles of the empire?

Shall I begin when the Queen Mother and the Grand Vizier plotted slaughter and treason—or with the extraordinary contest arranged to choose a new queen for a humiliated king?

Or perhaps I should first tell you of a battle fought over five hundred years ago, when one king surrendered to another, only to be beheaded by an outraged prophet—an act that created a feud between the descendants of King Agag and those of King Saul. Yes, that is a place I could begin, with the eternal hatred of the Agagites for the Jews.

But although that long-ago murder played its part in what follows, even that is not the true beginning.

Oh, you know a part of it already, but you only know what all the world knows. You have heard how Vashti, Queen of Queens, the most beautiful woman in all the empire, defied the king her husband and so lost her crown. You have heard how Ahasuerus, King of Kings, commanded the most beautiful maidens in his lands sent to him that he might chose a new queen. You have heard how he set the queen's crown upon the head of the virtuous and beautiful Jewess, Esther.

And you have heard how Queen Esther herself defied both king and law to save her people from the fate the evil Prince Haman had prepared for them.

But beyond that, you do not know what truly happened, for you were not there. I was. I am Hegai, who once ruled the imperial harem. I was there. Oh, yes, I was there when this great and deadly game began. When a beautiful woman deceived her cruel husband, and he plotted his revenge—and so set in motion his own destruction.

For from that commonplace tragedy—a wife's unfaithfulness and its discovery by a furious husband—all the rest flowed, unstoppable as a river in full flood, relentless as time. Its force altered forever the lives of everyone trapped within its current.

But the game we all played began long before any of its players were born. It began in the decadent court of old Babylon. It began when a man I would not meet for many years saved the life of a woman I would never know.…

 

BOOK ONE

The Lion's Den

DANIEL

Somehow, Daniel was not surprised when Mordecai the Scribe came to his small courtyard asking advice and counsel. Having sent his cousin into the snake pit of the King's Palace to become queen or concubine—or nothing, Mordecai now tormented himself.

“You wish to know if you have acted rightly,” Daniel said, before Mordecai could speak more than a few words of petition.

Mordecai stared; behind him, Daniel heard a muffled laugh from Samamat. Mordecai's mouth thinned, but he said nothing. To ease Mordecai's mind, Daniel motioned to Samamat, who obligingly vanished into the house. Among the many things Mordecai the pious disliked was Daniel's Gentile wife.

“You are wise indeed,” Mordecai said when Samamat had left the two men alone, and Daniel smiled.

“It takes no wisdom to know that a man who's made a fateful decision is troubled in his mind.”

“Then tell me—did I act rightly? My cousin…” Mordecai hesitated, finally said, “She was not willing. I ordered her to put her name into the contest. We parted ill.”

“Did you beat her?” Daniel asked, and Mordecai stiffened, affronted.

“No, of course not.”

“Did you force her to drink wine until she no longer knew what she was doing?”

“No!”

“Did you yourself drop her name into the basket?”

“No. The rules—”

“The rules decree that each maiden place her own name in the basket with her own hand.” Daniel sighed. “Mordecai, you may have ordered Hadassah to do so—but she herself chose to let her name fall into that basket. I don't suppose you told her why you demanded she enter the contest for queen?”

Mordecai's cheeks burned a dull red; it didn't take any particular talent to interpret that sign. Daniel sighed, and said, with calm certainty, “Well perhaps that was wise. But telling a dream may change a future.” Of course, so could not telling a dream. But that was something Mordecai did not need to hear from him now. “Done is done,” Daniel added.

“Yes, done is done. But did I act rightly? Did I place too much faith in a dream, and not enough in the Lord our God?”

Daniel sighed. “Mordecai, I am a very old man, and one of the privileges of being very old is that I can afford to tell the truth. And the truth is that no matter what gods we worship, we all cling to dreams and omens and portents to give us hope. And who can say in what form God sends us messages? Are you going to rebuke the Lord for sending a dream, rather than a messenger with a proclamation written in the Lord's own hand?”

For a moment, Daniel thought Mordecai would melt in outrage. “That—that is—”

“Blasphemy? No, Mordecai, it is not. Or do you think the Lord so powerless He cannot chastise me if I displease Him?”

Daniel watched with interest as Mordecai struggled to remain calm. He didn't doubt Mordecai would triumph over his anger; he also doubted Mordecai would choose to truly listen. Daniel's views were too far removed from those of a conventionally pious man like Mordecai.

“You talk like a Persian,” Mordecai said at last. “You live like a Persian. And yet—you are right. If what you do is displeasing in the Lord's eyes, it is for Him to punish you, not I.”

“You don't approve,” Daniel said, and smiled. “Oh, I take no offense—sometimes I don't approve either.”

“Then why do you live as you do?”

“Because I can do nothing else and live with a happy heart. And the older I grow, the more I value happiness and kindness over the crueler virtues.”

Mordecai shook his head. “Happiness is not a virtue, Daniel.”

“No? Perhaps I lived too long in Babylon—or too long here in Shushan, where the gods love lovers.”

“That is no way for a good Jew to talk.”

“Perhaps I am no longer a good Jew, then. We dwell in Ishtar's city, Mordecai. Sometimes I do not think the Most High rules here.”

“Our Lord rules all the heavens and all the earth. How can you—you, who foretold His judgments, whom He saved from savage death—how can you, of all men living, speak so?”

Daniel stared into the dancing blue flames. At last he said, “As I have said, I can speak so because I am old now, and speak my own truth. No one else's—not even God's. If you do not like what I have to say, you are free to leave and seek counsel elsewhere.”

*   *   *

Daniel remained sitting by the brazier long after Mordecai left. He did not often let himself dream, for he dreamed now only of the long-dead past. The past, and those who had gone before him into whatever waited after a man finished with this world. Golden days, when he had been young, and been loved.…

Too well loved, sometimes. King Nebuchadnezzar's love had nearly killed him.

But that was not truly love. That was fear and despair and madness. It is hard for kings to love.

More fortunate than kings, Daniel had known true love and true friendship; cherished both beyond pearls.

Arioch. Arioch and Samamat …

So many years, yet even now the memory of Arioch's wry comments brought a smile to Daniel's lips. The famed night Daniel had spent imprisoned with the king's lions, fierce beasts that had slept peacefully beside Daniel all that long night, so that he had walked out of the cage whole and free at the next dawn.

“You see, Arioch? Faith kept me safe.”

“What kept you safe was me feeding those lions enough poppy syrup to keep a dragon snoring for a week. Do you have any idea how much that amount of poppy
cost
?”

“I had faith in you,” Daniel had answered, and Arioch smiled.…

Daniel never had been able to resist Arioch's smile. Always Arioch seemed to mock himself more than he did others.

It was hard, now, to remember why he had fought so hard against—not Arioch, but himself. What he felt for Arioch was forbidden twice over. Abomination; unclean; if his forefathers knew the pit Daniel had fallen into, they would stone him. Yes, that was the punishment.
In Israel, I would be damned for both my power and my love. Fortunately, I dwell in Persia.…

*   *   *

It had been the third and last year of King Jehoiakim's reign; the year Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had swept through Israel and its land and cities had fallen into his hands. Even Jerusalem the Bride had opened her wide bronze gates to King Nebuchadnezzar. The conqueror had returned in triumph to Babylon, taking Israel's treasure with him, including the best-born youths and maidens of the Twelve Tribes. Among that living treasure had been Daniel.

I was so young then. And so self-righteous!

Daniel had barely been fourteen when he had walked behind King Nebuchadnezzar's chariot down Babylon's Sacred Way, between sky-blue walls that led to the Ishtar Gate. Fourteen, and convinced of the utter righteousness of the way of the Lord, and of his own ability to follow the Lord's covenants. If he'd been less stiff-necked, he might not have fallen so hard when faced with temptation—oh, not the obvious lures of unclean food and pagan idolatry. Avoiding those had been easy, and his piety had impressed even the Babylonians.

The temptations of the heart … Those were invisible snares, catching him unaware.

At first life at Nebuchadnezzar's court dazzled him; a life rich and strange, redolent of sin and power. Daniel had been a beautiful boy, and had found instant favor in the sight of the prince over the eunuchs who had charge of training the new arrivals from Jerusalem in the behavior expected in the court of a great king. He had permitted Daniel and his equally stiff-necked friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to choose their own food, to say their own prayers. He had even permitted them to choose their own Babylonian names. The other three had searched long and hard to find names that would convey they were still good pious servants of the Most High God. Hananiah became Shadrach, under the “protection of the Lord.” Mishael decided on Meshach, “drawing with the Lord's power,” while Azariah now was Abednego, “servant of light.”

And Daniel had chosen Belteshazzar.

One who lays up treasures in secret.
Daniel kept secrets, both his own and those of others. Daniel had grown up at the Babylonian court; learned that a shy smile and a soft word about his duty to his own God won him approbation, where Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah's flat insistence on their own ways in everything but serving the king gained nothing. Since influence ruled in the Babylonian court, Daniel thought it better to garner goodwill.