Chapter Six
Hadassah

QUEEN VASHTIS REFUSAL TO GO TO THE KING ignited a firestorm of gossip in Susa. Rumors drifted through the air like smoke, some saying Vashti would be executed, others that she would be exiled to India. Still others insisting that nothing would change, that Vashti would remain in the palace with her servants and her three sons. The youngest was still a baby, so who would be so heartless as to separate a baby from its mother?

No one mentioned what I later learned about life in the harem: few royal concubines actually nursed or cared for their babies, for the infants were handed over to wet nurses immediately after their births.

When I asked Mordecai about the queen’s fate, he simply shrugged. “Vashti will be queen no longer,” he said, “but women like her always seem to land on their feet.”

I gasped, amazed that he spoke of Vashti as if she were an ordinary person. “Surely someone so beautiful—”

“But the edict,” Miriam interrupted. “I understand the king issued an edict after the banquet.”

Mordecai smiled. “The king’s edict stated that a man is to be the ruler in his own home. So I ask you, wife—has anything changed? Women will continue to call their husbands ‘lord’ while making all his decisions for him.”

Miriam lifted her gaze to the ceiling, huffed softly beneath her breath, and went back to kneading her bread.

I didn’t know what had happened to the queen, but I enjoyed speculating with Parysatis. We would meet at the well or in the bazaar, and after I managed to slip away from Miriam, Parysatis and I would walk arm in arm and talk about the king, the queen, and who we wanted to marry when we were older.

Parysatis wanted to marry a man from one of the seven noble Persian families, because members of the nobility were always received at court. “Just think, one of my daughters might marry the king’s son,” she went on, her voice soft and dreamy. “I would be invited to travel with the royal household, summering in one palace, wintering in another.”

“You are a dreamer,” I teased, lightly pinching her arm. But I didn’t tell her that I had been dreaming too, yet not so much of kings and palaces. Lately I had been dreaming of Babar, Parysatis’s handsome brother. He frequently walked with us through the bazaar, and though he caught the eye of many a young woman, he seemed to smile most often at me.

Had my uneven appearance finally begun to look at least presentable? Could he possibly love me? Could he find the courage to approach Mordecai to ask about marrying me?

I dreamed of walking arm in arm with Babar, of breakfasting with him, and resting my head on his shoulder, but when I tried to imagine him approaching Mordecai, my daydreams came to an abrupt halt. As valiantly as I tried to imagine a situation where Mordecai might be indebted to Babar—if, for instance, the young man saved me from a runaway carriage on a busy street—I could not imagine a situation dire enough for Mordecai to agree that I should marry a non-Jew.

Those of us who worshipped Adonai, the one true God, were not allowed to marry anyone who did not believe. We could trade with Gentiles, laugh with them and talk with them, but we could not marry them. Some of our people had broken this law, Mordecai told me, and HaShem was not pleased. If we married people who followed false gods, we would undoubtedly pick up some of their detestable practices. We would find ourselves slipping away from the one true God, and the scattered nation of Israel would become polluted.

Yet when I dreamed of kissing Babar, religious purity was the furthest thing from my mind.

I knew I’d have to be married someday, but every day I avoided the marriage canopy was another day I was free to dream of Babar. Every older Jewish girl I knew had been betrothed as she approached maturity, so I couldn’t think of any acceptable objection when Mordecai and Miriam asked if I might consider Binyamin, son of Kidon, to be my future husband. Binyamin and I had known each other since childhood, but we rarely spoke. When our community gathered to worship on the Sabbath, I would glance across the space separating the men from the women and find him staring at me. He would look away quickly, a blush tinting his pale face, and I wondered what sort of man he would become. Would he become a merchant like his father? Or would he serve as an accountant like Mordecai? Would he be loud and rowdy like our rabbi? Or would he be like Miriam, gentle yet capable of shouting in a whisper?

I often caught Miriam watching me the way a cook watches a pot over the fire. When I began to bleed in a woman’s monthly cycles, she showed me how to care for myself during the time of uncleanness and taught me about the mikvah, the bath that would restore me once my bleeding had stopped.

“Soon—” she smiled at me through sentimental tears—“Binyamin’s father will send someone to negotiate the bride price and the dowry.” She sighed. “You will make a beautiful bride, Hadassah. Like the myrtle you were named for, you will prosper and flower in this land of exile.”

Beautiful? She exaggerated, but she loved me, and love made allowances for imperfections.

I smiled at her, but I remained in no hurry to marry. As the only child in Mordecai’s household, I had benefited from the attention of two doting adults who could not believe that Adonai had entrusted them with a baby. Aware of their delight, and grateful for it, as a girl I sat by Mordecai’s side and learned—an education that would have been denied me if Mordecai had sons to teach.

My cousin taught me Torah. He also taught me about the history of our people and about the sins that had caused us to be exiled from our beloved land. I learned about my royal heritage: Mordecai and I, descended from the tribe of Binyamin, could count King Saul among our forefathers. Because we had also descended from the tribe of Judah, we were part of the royal line of David, a line that would one day produce the promised Messiah. I enjoyed talking about David and his many exploits, but Mordecai’s thoughts seemed to center on Saul. He would often shake his head and murmur that Saul’s impatience and pride had brought about his downfall.

One afternoon, when I had lingered at the bazaar instead of going straight home as instructed, my cousin sat me down and illustrated my error with a story: “When Adonai told Saul to attack the people of Amalek and completely destroy everything, Saul promised to obey. But he did not keep his word. He destroyed the people, but spared Agag the king, as well as sheep and cattle and other goods. He destroyed what was worthless, but spared what was valuable, and thus incurred the wrath of Adonai.”

I blinked up at him, unable to understand what a long-dead ancestor had to do with my lingering in town.

“Samuel the prophet,” Mordecai went on, “reminded Saul that Adonai does not take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices, but in obedience. For rebellion is like the sin of sorcery, and stubbornness like the crime of idolatry. Because Saul rejected the word of Adonai, Adonai rejected Saul as king.”

Mordecai’s gaze drifted to some distant field of vision as he finished my lesson: “Adonai warned that if we did not drive out the inhabitants of the land He gave us, those we allowed to remain would become thorns in our eyes and stings in our sides—and He would do to us what He had intended to do to them. And that is exactly what He did.”

I sat still for a long moment, soberly reflecting on my lesson: do not disobey. I inscribed that law on my heart, for I hated disappointing Mordecai even more than I hated the idea of sinning against Adonai.

Though my cousin had a tendency to lecture, I loved spending time with him. As we walked together through the narrow streets of Susa, I realized that Mordecai was highly respected by Jews and Persians alike. Medes, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians greeted him with the honor due a learned man, while our fellow Jews greeted him with the respect due a tzaddik, a righteous man.

As a child, I often asked Mordecai what he did when he wasn’t at home with me and Miriam. He replied that he worked for the king. When I asked what he did for the king, Mordecai would smile and ruffle my hair, saying some things were too difficult for me to grasp.

But when I grew older, and my cousin saw that I yearned to understand the world outside our courtyard, he explained that he was one of many accountants who kept records for the king. Every item brought to the palace as tribute, and every allotment of grain, food, or materials dispensed to a citizen, had to be measured, valued, and recorded. And while an honest man did not grow wealthy working for the king, Mordecai said that one could always accumulate the wealth of a good reputation. “And that, Hadassah,” he’d say, patting my cheek, “is worth more than all the riches in the king’s treasury.”

I may never be certain, but I believe Mordecai purposely delayed telling Binyamin’s father that I had flowered into a woman. Perhaps he thought me too young for marriage; perhaps he and Miriam wanted to enjoy being parents for a few more months. Whatever the reason, as I entered my fourteenth year I remained in my childhood home, helping Miriam run the household even as I looked forward to evenings when I could sit and learn by Mordecai’s side.

By that time, however, I had stopped asking about the kings of Israel and had begun to ask about the kings of Persia. I learned that HaShem had judged Israel and sent our people into exile in Babylon, where many of our young men were castrated and forced to serve a pagan king. One of these youths, Daniel, rose to a position of leadership in the government by interpreting dreams by the power of Adonai. From reading the word of the Lord as revealed to the prophet Jeremiah, Daniel learned that Jerusalem would lie desolate for seventy years. He also learned that great Babylon was about to fall, and it did, the night Darius the Mede captured Belshazzar’s kingdom.

As the Persian Empire swallowed up Babylon, Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation allowing the children of Israel to return to Judea, just as the prophet Isaiah had predicted. Not all of us chose to go home, however. Mordecai’s people traveled to Susa, where they settled into homes and occupations that would benefit their families and the tolerant Persian Empire. They still kept the Law, but they did so quietly and kept to themselves as much as possible.

The great king Cyrus was followed by Cambyses II, then by Darius the Great, our present king’s father. These Persian rulers had accomplished so many magnificent feats and built such amazing palaces that I imagined them as super-humans. Though they did not worship Adonai, I thought their hearts must sincerely follow truth. Why else would Adonai have told Isaiah to call Cyrus His “anointed one”? And if Adonai could use Cyrus, perhaps He could work a miracle for me and use Babar. . . .

Whenever I spoke of the Persian kings in glowing terms, Mordecai cautioned me against becoming infatuated with people who did not worship HaShem. But King Xerxes’s royal banquet for all the citizens of Susa had left a deep impression on my young imagination, and even Vashti’s abrupt demotion had done little to dispel the romantic haze that enveloped my memory of the event.

Any nation that could produce Cyrus, I told myself, could produce any number of kings and noblemen who would do good and honor the people who honored Adonai.