Chapter Thirty-Four
Hadassah

LAST NIGHT, FOR THE FIRST TIME since our marriage, the king did not send for me at sunset.

Though I had risked my life to tell him about the conspiracy that threatened his life, he chose to sleep alone . . . or with someone else. Why? Had I offended him? Had Bigtan and Teresh involved someone else in their plot, someone who might still be planning to murder the king while he slept? Hatakh had no answers, and I did not want to cause a stir by making inquiries.

I endured an evening of fitful sleep and woke with pains in my abdomen and a queasy stomach, which emptied itself as soon as I got out of bed. I sank to the floor and gratefully accepted the wet cloth my quick-thinking handmaid offered, then mopped my mouth and perspiring brow. I hoped this horrible feeling was not a sign that something had happened to the king.

One of the maids hurried to tell Hatakh that I had awakened; a few moments later the eunuch entered my bedchamber with a breakfast tray. I took one look at the fruit and bread, then shook my head and turned away. “I have no appetite,” I told him truthfully. “But let the maids eat their fill. I will not feel better until I know the king is safe.”

“But the king is safe,” Hatakh replied, straightening. “After you left him yesterday, the king and his officers conducted a trial. Bigtan and Teresh were confronted with the charges and they confessed to their treasonous plan. They have been sentenced for their crime.”

I turned bleary eyes toward the shuttered balcony, which overlooked the army’s training field. “What will happen now?”

The eunuch shrugged. “Given time, they will die. You can see them, if you like.”

Something warned me away from the sight, but desperation for the king’s safety drove me forward. I had to know that justice had been done.

As I approached the balcony, two of my handmaids rose to pull the sliding doors aside. I glanced over the royal gardens and stared at the brown plateau outside the city walls. In the center of the warriors’ encampment, I spotted two stick figures that looked like puppets. But they were seated on the ground and apparently tied to tall poles.

I glanced at Hatakh, then pointed toward the two men in the distance. “Are those the guilty ones?”

Hatakh looked out at the scene and nodded. “Yes, my queen.”

“But they’re simply sitting there.”

“No, my lady.” Hatakh’s face paled slightly. “They have been impaled upon a sharpened stick. They will sit beneath the sun until the gods take pity on them and snuff out their lives.”

For a moment his words hung in the air, making no sense, and then they clicked into place. My gorge rose, I vomited again, and the walls swirled around me.

I remember hearing my maids’ frightened cries, along with Hatakh’s high-pitched wail before the room went dark.

When I woke, the royal physician told me I had lost my baby.

Hatakh said he should never have mentioned the condemned guards; Harbonah said a pregnant woman who looked on death was asking for trouble. I didn’t care why I lost my baby; I only wanted to be comforted in my husband’s arms.

But the physicians told me to remain in my chamber for at least a few days, and while I recovered I waited for some word from the king. Surely he would send a message of condolence or caring . . . but he did not. So every morning my maids dressed me and did my hair, though I saw no one but my girls and Hatakh.

And while I convalesced, my husband plucked other girls from the harem to fill his bed.

I wish I could write that the knowledge didn’t twist in my heart like a knife. I knew the king did not limit himself to one woman; I knew that willing concubines crowded the harem, each of them eager to be called for an hour with the king.

But the realization that my husband was finding pleasure in others spawned a brooding sorrow that spread until it mingled with dozens of other sorrows—the loss of my child, of Mordecai’s companionship, of Miriam, even my home. I had lost so much since arriving at the palace, and what had I gained? For what possible reason had Adonai brought me to this miserable place?

My husband did send for me after I regained my health, but the bond between us had changed. I yearned for a word of understanding or compassion; I heard nothing. I might have dared to broach the subject of the baby, but I remembered what Hatakh had told me about Persian fathers: they did not want to be attached to a child younger than five, lest they be “afflicted by its loss.”

So I bore my grief silently, though my misery was often so overwhelming, so intrusive, it felt like another body in the bed, a dark and foreboding presence. My husband took me in his arms and I tried to respond, but grief had stolen the passion from my kiss.

I wasn’t surprised when he stopped sending for me.

And so began a new chapter of my life in the palace, a phase a wiser woman might have foreseen. I was no longer new and exciting, and though I believe the king remained fond of me, he did not call for me more than once or twice a week. I tried my best to be pleasant and charming when I was with him, but the grief of loss clung to me like the smell of smoke from a blistering fire.

Days passed, like leaves from a sycamore tree, one after the other, virtually indistinguishable.