16

I began working on my disguise with Rachel hours before sunset on the banquet’s last evening. Mordecai returned home for a quick bath, then waited for me and watched incredulously while my transformation took place. Shaking his head, he playfully threatened to change his mind if I came out looking too much like a boy. Then, as Rachel’s work progressed, he lamented my emerging as too pretty a boy. He threw up his hands in mock outrage at the thought of being considered a lover in the Greek fashion of which he had heard whispered.

Finally, sent on our way with several grudging Jewish blessings from Rachel, we left our gate and were immediately swept into the stream of revelers making their way toward the Palace.

I felt like I had been transported to heaven. The setting sun cast colors of fire against the horizon, and a pleasant hum rose from the crowd. Yet it seemed the volume and thickness of its composition rose with every passing step. By the time we reached the gryphon statues at the portico, the slow current had become a flood. Mordecai reached out and grasped my hand in a grip so tight I almost felt my knuckles were breaking. Unlike on my previous trip, there was no need to fight the tide to reach my destination. Today we were carried along whether we liked it or not. The massive arch I had admired on my previous adventure now swept past me like an afterthought. The swiftness of its passage did not keep me from looking up, admiring its soaring grandeur and imagining that I was all alone—some favored guest of Persia entering on a royal summons, clad in exotic robes and jewels.

My fixation did not last long. The Palace’s entrance was truly only the beginning of its wonders. I heard a curious sound beneath me and looked down to see that my feet were treading on marble of the most intricate gold-veined pattern. Looking beyond my own moving legs and feet, I saw a ground covered with this gorgeous stone. All about us lay thick, green foliage and parks ringed by flowers of violet, fuchsia, crimson and pink. The royal gardens, I remembered with a dizzy sensation. In a culture obsessed with cultivating the perfect household garden, those of the Royal Palace were legendary as the finest in all the land.

The crowd suddenly parted around a pool bluer and longer than any body of water I had ever beheld. Its surface seemed to reflect the azure blue of the desert sky as flawlessly as glass. At broad intervals along its sides stood marble benches lined with perfectly colored statues of beautiful young women. Real guards stood at attention between the benches, nearly as still as their stone counterparts.

“Royal concubines,” Mordecai whispered.

I frowned, startled, and realized what he’d meant—one second after, one of the female statues actually moved. The figures were real women, dressed in silk robes that shimmered in the sun. I blanched, feeling suddenly quite plain, awkward and poorly dressed even for a boy.

Then the whole scene lurched and stumbled, almost pitching me onto my face. I fought to regain my footing and looked up again, for the source of my predicament was Mordecai himself, yanking me forward with the impatience of someone dragging a toddler to his bath.

One moment later a mountainous stone arch crowded out the sun. We were inside the King’s Gate—if such an enormity could even be called “inside.” I was used to low ceilings and a sense of warm confinement. Here was a cool space as tall as a dozen rooms. Susa’s own Jewish synagogue now seemed a dim hulk compared to this immensity. I blinked and squinted, craned my neck and walked on. I wondered if I should even try to make a visual inventory of what I was seeing—the richness of detail was too much to absorb, at least at this brisk pace. My senses felt filled to overflowing.

I heard Mordecai’s voice whisper to me, low and conspiratorial. “Try not to seem too awestruck,” he said. “It makes you stand out.”

I winced at my own childishness and tried to relax my face into a mixture of nonchalance and faint amusement. I’m sure now, reflecting back, that my new expression was only slightly less ridiculous than the former; such is a youth’s sense of nuance. But I should be more charitable to my former self. After the years of confinement, this was an almost shocking immersion in the outside world, and I was trying my best.

Suddenly we were outside again, and the mass of walking humanity parted around a huge marble building. “The inner court,” Mordecai said, pointing. “That’s where the King’s throne is located. Where he transacts his business and meets with his advisers. Our destination”—and at that he pointed upward, for the third edifice stood as tall as a mountain—“is there. The Central Hall.”