CHAPTER
Ten

The room spun and that telltale sick feeling grew within Xerxes, despite the fact that he’d passed out and slept for hours. He was getting too old to consume so much wine. What was it about being around his men that caused him to lower himself to the ways of a common man? He drank from intricately carved golden goblets, each different from the next, and consumed the finest wines in all of Persia. In the entire known world, for that matter. Was he so weak that he could not hold a few goblets of wine and not feel ill the next day?

How else did a man feel merry if not for the consumption of fine food and drink? He forced his head from the pillow but slumped back and closed his eyes to still the whirling room. He must get hold of himself. Vashti would know how to help. He must call for her to come at once and work her skilled fingers along his temples and shoulders. She would ease the suffering simply by her presence.

He courted a smile at the thought, until a vivid memory assaulted him. Swift images moved through his mind. A summons. A refusal. A command against his eunuchs. Biztha? Harbona? His guards had marched them away, their heads covered.

He sat abruptly and leaned over the side of the bed, losing what remained in his stomach onto the rich carpet beneath his raised bed. Servants moved about like silent rodents, wiping his mouth, cleaning the mess, settling him among the cushions of the bed.

All the while his mind cried out to stop the memories. Was he dreaming?

“Vashti!” He heard his voice through cracked lips, a whisper barely audible. No one approached him.

“Vashti!” he called again, louder this time.

Footsteps drew close, slowly, cautiously.

“My lord? May I help you with something?” The voice sounded strange. Not one of his attending eunuchs.

He forced his eyes to open and focus on the man. “Send for Vashti. I want Vashti now!” Would he never be free of the incompetence surrounding him? What was so incredibly hard about sending for his wife? Everyone knew that he needed her when the wine overtook him.

The servant cleared his throat, and Xerxes searched his face. The man would not meet his gaze.

“Look at me,” he commanded despite his pounding head. “Tell me why no one in the palace seems capable of sending for my wife. Is this such a difficult task that I have to ask twice?”

The servant clasped his hands around his belt and twisted the fabric in nervous hands. “My lord king. May you live forever.”

Yes, yes, stop the pleasantries. A sense of foreboding filled him at the man’s downcast look.

“I fear the king has been ill and forgotten the events that transpired last evening.”

The sick feeling returned to his gut, and he feared he would embarrass himself once more. “Tell me everything.” Why couldn’t he remember? But a part of him sensed that he could if he would allow the memories to fully surface.

“Last evening,” the man said, his voice quavering, “the king celebrated the final night of the feast with his men. In the course of time, when the king’s heart grew merry with wine, he commanded Queen Vashti to appear before him, wearing the royal crown in order to display her beauty to the crowd. The king sent the seven eunuchs to bring Vashti to him, but the queen refused to come. This angered the king, and he ordered the execution of the eunuchs and banished the queen from ever entering his presence again. She was sent to Persepolis under cover of darkness until a suitable home could be built for her. The king then wrote a decree that cannot be revoked, commanding all men to rule their own households, and messengers were dispatched throughout the entire kingdom. My lord.” He stopped, his breath coming fast as though he feared his fate would be that of the eunuchs.

“I did this?”

“Yes, my lord. It is written in the laws of the Medes and Persians and cannot be revoked.” The man’s face paled as Xerxes stared at him.

Memories of Memucan’s suggestions and his willing compliance, his wrath that Vashti refused him, his rash decisions, suddenly came flooding back. Why had she refused to come? Yet deep down he knew that the fault lay with him. He should never have put her in such a compromising position. She was trying to protect his honor and keep him from humiliating them both. Vashti had always been his confidante and the wiser one. And he had sent her away, never to return.

What a fool you are, Xerxes! How could you do such a thing? A deep sense of grief and loss filled him, and he wondered if he had the strength to ever rise from his bed and rule his kingdom again. He was a complete and utter fool for sending her away, and worse, for banishing her forever.

The thought turned the spinning room into an inner sense of spiraling downward until he wondered if he would ever climb out of his sudden depression.

“I’ve lost her then,” he said, not wanting a response.

The man merely nodded and stepped back from the bed.

Xerxes turned on his side, gingerly so as not to awaken the sick feeling or deepen the pounding of his head. But it was no use. He would not sleep again, though sleep was all he longed to do. He had lost his life’s true love, and he had no one to blame but himself.

Weeks passed, and Xerxes made every attempt to push thoughts of Vashti from his mind. War loomed on the horizon, and he expected his fighting men to gather outside Susa by month’s end. The distraction was perfect, for his muddled thoughts could make no sense of his actions that day. He had tried desperately to recall each moment, to give himself a reason to point the blame at someone else. Surely the suggestion had not been his alone. Memucan stood behind this. Memucan and the other seven nobles. Perhaps some of his wives. Or his mother.

His constant frustration came to a head a week before he was to head to war.

“My lord, the soldiers have begun to arrive and are setting up camp outside of the city,” Memucan said. “Is there anything we can do to help you, my lord, to prepare for your personal needs?” He had seemed unduly subdued since Vashti’s loss, and Xerxes studied this advisor and relative of Amestris.

“You can tell me, Memucan, why I sent my favorite wife into exile and had my eunuchs executed for her actions. I am at a loss to understand why I, king of kings, would do something so utterly foolish when Vashti was not breaking any laws. In fact, it was I who would have humiliated both her and myself, but she stopped me from doing so.” He gripped his staff, his knuckles whitening, and his gaze swept the room, stopping to pierce each of his nobles with a withering look. “Perhaps one of my other nobles can tell me why such a thing as banishing her came from your mouth to my ear.” He glared at Memucan. The man’s idea to banish his queen was one thing he managed to recall quite clearly.

“My lord,” Memucan said, his voice lacking his normal confidence, “we had all been drinking wine for a week. I fear none of us were thinking through things as we should.”

“And yet it is only I who suffered loss. My queen and I. Tell me, Memucan, did my mother or one of my wives put you up to the suggestion?” He wouldn’t doubt for a moment if his mother or Amestris had plotted to remove Vashti from his presence. His mother had often made it clear that he deserved better than a foreigner for a wife.

“My lord, forgive me. The idea was something we thought of in our drunken stupor. We did not realize the consequences.” Memucan was clearly trembling now, and Xerxes pondered why. The man obviously feared the same fate he had given the eunuchs. With good reason, no doubt.

But he could not execute a relative of his wife. He could, however, depose the man from his authority. Yes, that was what he needed to do. To replace Memucan with someone worthier. Someone who did not grovel or whine or listen to the king’s wives at the expense of the king’s happiness.

“I have no doubt you are guilty of something, Memucan.” He lifted his gaze to take in the other nobles. “The whole lot of you are guilty of something, or I would not be sitting here today, heading to war, without my favorite wife to comfort me!” His shouted words rang in the silent hall. “Therefore, I decree this day that you, Memucan, will no longer sit with my advisors or enter my court without my summons. You and the other six nobles are dismissed from my service. I will find a better man to replace the entire worthless lot of you.” He clapped his hands on his final word, and his guards appeared and escorted the nobles from his audience chamber. The room stood silent.

Was there no one he could trust?

Doubt filled him as he descended the stairs from his throne and returned to his chambers. He would work with his new servants, the ones he had chosen to replace his seven eunuchs, and ready himself for war. Perhaps by the time he returned, he would have discovered a worthy man capable of advising him and have put Vashti from his mind. He would come home and her presence would no longer linger in the corners of every room.

On his last night at the palace, he told three of his servants, “Make sure the palace is cleaned, aired, and treated with whatever you must do to remove all memory of Vashti. When I return, I had better not find a single trace of her life here.” The next day, dressed in his military garb and surrounded by bodyguards, he mounted his horse and left for battle.

But as his horse passed through Susa’s gates, he wondered how he would ever remove her from his heart.