Hadassah Covenant, The (30 page)

“Go away!” came a feeble shout from inside. It was that of Artaxerxes—tense and weak, but his.

I nearly fainted from relief at the mere sound of his voice, yet I persisted. “It’s me! Esther! You must open this door!”

A moment later the door swung open and the two of us swept into the room. Artaxerxes was fully dressed, alone in the light of a single candle. He had started walking back to his bed but suddenly turned, slumped against the entry wall and slid down to the ground. He looked so small and defenseless that it was only then I remembered the prince was merely sixteen years old. A strong, tall lad, but hardly a man—yet. Much older for one of his station than most; indeed, many of his forefathers had taken the throne at much younger ages. And yet, he was so young, and he looked so lost.

We closed the doors and huddled around him like conspirators of some sort.

“He did it!” Artaxerxes mumbled. “He was the one!”

“Who?” I asked.

“Darius. He killed our father because he was impatient to become King. Everyone knows how contemptuous he is of our father’s mistakes. And, of course, there’s—well, you know. He believed that Father seduced Princess Artaynte. His own wife; it was a terrible thing to believe, of course. Thank the gods, Artabanus and the rest of the palace guards came in to tell me and warn me of Darius’ plans to kill me next.”

“
Artabanus
told you that?” asked Mordecai.

“Yes, and I will be eternally grateful,” Artaxerxes replied.

“Do not be too hasty in that judgment. And what did you do on that information?”

“I bid Artabanus and his men to go stop Darius at once, detain him, and imprison him for trial.”

Then Artaxerxes saw our faces, and his own expression changed in an instant.

“What? What did he do?” I remember how he took Mordecai by the shoulders and shook him. He allowed Poppa’s whole upper body to sway in his hands, so loathe was Mordecai to tell him the truth. “What did he
do
?” Artaxerxes finally screamed.

“Darius is dead, and three palace guards beside him,” he said in a low, grim voice. “And, Artaxerxes, tell no one else what you just told us. At least for now. Just remember this, however. You were tricked. I would daresay that Artabanus was your father’s killer, not your brother. And in having enraged you within a fear of your life, he has arranged for you to look like the conspirator. Be very, very careful, Your Highness. Artabanus is your enemy. Never doubt it. He has made you the murderer of your brother, rather than the avenger of your father. You had better move fast against him.”

Artaxerxes’ face flattened into a mask of cold determination, and he stood to his full height.

“I will.”

So much happened during the ensuing forty-eight hours. Things grew maddeningly chaotic indeed. And young Artaxerxes definitely took things in hand for one so young.

Unwilling to return to the site of my husband’s murder, I spent the rest of the night in Mordecai’s quarters, not sleeping but pacing and listening for the various palace sounds around me. Sometime around dawn, more profoundly exhausted than perhaps ever before in my life, I fell asleep curled up on the floor next to the . . .

Chapter Thirty-three

J
ERUSALEM
, IDF C
OMMAND
C
ENTER
, M
INISTRY OF
D
EFENSE

H
adassah ben Yuda’s eyes
were still fixed on the last words of Hadassah’s night of horror when the voice of an Israeli army general broke the silence.

“Forget it, everybody. I just reached the end. What we’re looking for isn’t there.”

“How did you finish so quickly?” Hadassah demanded.

The tall, middle-aged officer smiled gamely. “Occupational hazard, ma’am. Years of military reports. Speed reading becomes a survival mechanism.”

“And reading that quickly, you’re sure of what you saw?”

He nodded. “There’s fascinating stuff in there about Persian history and the lives of the principals—I’m sure scholars will have a field day. It’s clearly weighted toward Hadassah’s initial response to a plea from this Leah person. But nothing regarding a Mordecai bloodline or even an indication that he ever fathered a child.”

“I find that hard to believe,” she said slowly. “Granted, I haven’t read as far as you have, but the previous documents had all this talk about Mordecai’s love for someone, and Hadassah urging him to find a mate—”

“Sorry, ma’am. I read those, too, yet this new fragment doesn’t come any closer to giving us the actual outcome. It may hold clues about where to find the next installment, as it were. But it’s almost as if someone knew what we were looking for and decided to play games with us.”

“Great,” she sighed. “We’re going to have to find more scrolls.”

“Or think of a more conventional resolution to the crisis,” the general noted, looking at her from under lowered brows.

Taking that as a personal rebuke, she glared at the general, gathered her papers, and strode out of the room, her exasperation clear to all.

P
RIME
M
INISTER’S
R
ESIDENCE—LATER THAT NIGHT

Hadassah bolted upright from her covers, her eyes wide and her heart pounding rhythmically in her chest. She glanced around wildly but saw only the room before her swimming in its usual midnight palette of shadow and gloom. Everything seemed normal. Her husband snored lightly on the far side of the bed. From opposing night-stands, their respective clock radios glowed 2:34 A.M. Light from Rehavia Street shone faintly through the shuttered window, then splintered into pale shards beyond the ceiling fan’s spinning blades.

Nevertheless, something was wrong. As she examined her senses, she understood it was not an external threat—some frightening noise or shift in light. Whatever had woken her lay
inside
her. As soon as she realized this, she knew it was far worse than an external enemy. This distress lay poised to engulf her. She could feel that it was powerful and complex but was about to tell nothing else. She found this ignorance even more terrifying.

She breathed in and found that the very act of inhaling filled her with a claustrophobic terror. Not only could she not catch her breath, but she could not shake the sensation that there would be no satisfying her lungs.

She felt drained of all meaning, purpose, direction. Not as she had described to her husband at their surprise conference at his
office, not in some abstract, intellectual sense, but in a loss more direct and gut-wrenching than anything she had ever experienced. As though hope and substance had been some sort of fluid, a liquid, and someone had drained it from her as cleanly and completely as the opening of a valve.

What is happening to me
? The question whirled unchecked through her frantic mind. Was this a cruel mutation of the depression she had struggled against in the time since her father’s death? A byproduct of her unspoken fear that she had unwittingly caused her husband’s political demise? That her very identity was providing fodder for not only Jacob’s downfall as Prime Minister but also the unraveling of a year’s worth of intricate negotiations with the Palestinian leadership? Or was it the fact that she was now alone in the world, that her once-rich collection of relatives and friends had either died off or dwindled away in the face of her new fame and notoriety? Or even more basic—a growing awareness that she was a pathetic reduction of her younger self, that celebrity and power had failed to compensate for the barren person she had become. She could feel the new burden of childlessness gnawing at the corners of her heart like a festering reproach.
You will never be a mother, and what else are you
?

The lack of an answer left her with a hopelessness more desperate than the wildest hunger.

She stepped out of bed, in the odd hope that the mere motion of her limbs on the hardness of the floor beneath her feet might jar the despair loose, or at least distract her for a moment.

It didn’t help, and the knowledge deepened her panic. What would she do now? She glanced around for stronger distractions. Should she quietly go to the living room bar for a stiff drink? She shook her head slowly, for she certainly knew that was no solution. She could turn on the television for distraction, but she did not want to wake her husband and doubted that the early-morning lineup, heavy on news recaps—which meant reports of her husband’s political travails—would do anything to ease her anxiety.

She glanced around her. In younger days she would have gone out for a midnight run of five miles or more. She had once been a highly conditioned athlete in the days before her marriage and its
attendant security precautions. She could feel her old muscles crying out for release, but tonight, on the spur of the moment, physical renewal would have to wait.

Something thick and shiny on her makeup table caught her eye. It was the cover of the Battaween Translations, the ancient documents unearthed, deciphered, and faxed to Jerusalem the day before. She still had only read the earliest pages—interrupted by the general’s sudden pronouncement that nothing further would be gained.

Of course. Esther. Maybe you have nothing to offer the generals, or even Jacob. But horrific as your account is, you might bring me through the next few minutes. . . . Even a distraction has appeal
.

She walked over, picked up the pages of the document, and took a seat against the wall. The glow from an outer window just behind proved barely enough to read by. She turned to the first new page, looked upward in a silent plea for relief, and began where she had left off.

Something spiritual began soothing her the minute she picked up the ancient words.

“
I remember awakening
. . .”

Chapter Thirty-four

S
USA—CIRCA
464
B.C
.

I remember awakening late from that blood-drenched night to the sounds of men shouting outside the window. I grimaced, for it was not the sound of mourning. Or of a funeral, though many were in the offing on that day. Fearing some sort of large-scale palace coup, I stole to the curtain and peered outside.