On the afternoon of my second-to-last day in the candidates’ house, I had my final hidden meeting with Jesse. I remember that although it was the middle of winter, it was one of the warmest days in months, with one of those piercing desert blue skies sprawling overhead. We sat on a pile of hay in the back of the garden. Jesse turned to me with one of the most tender expressions he had ever given me, laid a hand on my shoulder and asked how I felt about what was going to happen. After all, his ordeal was now a year behind him, but mine was just ahead. And so for the first time, I proceeded to tell him. I informed him that I had resolved to face my first night with as much competence as I possessed, that I did not understand what had brought me to this place, but that I believed G-d was going before me and had prepared me in every way for this night. And then, slowly, haltingly, I informed Jesse how well that resolve was working, how I was even looking forward—
Jesse stood with a loud groan and stomped away toward the East Wall. I had naïvely imagined that he would respond as he had before when I’d delivered good news—unqualified support and encouragement.
“Jesse! Where are you going?” I called toward his retreating back. But I received only a raised hand in reply as he broke into a run.
I jumped to my feet and ran after him. It could not end this way. I wouldn’t let it. After all, should I fail to win the King’s favor, I might never see Jesse again. We could conceivably roam the vast spaces of the Palace for years without ever catching a glimpse of each other.
I ran like I hadn’t run since that fateful morning when I had learned of his capture and become prey myself. I found him leaning against the wall, his head pressed into the stone.
“What is the matter, Jesse? Did I say something to hurt you?” I gasped out, reaching my hand toward him. I met with the hardest part of his shoulder as my reception.
He finally turned and stared at me as if I had uttered the most foolish question in the history of humanity. “If you don’t understand, then I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And so we leave it at this?” I had to restrain myself from shouting. “After all these years, I go to face my greatest challenge without even a good-bye? Or an explanation?”
He blinked and glanced down at his feet. “You know, Hadassah, you are so intelligent, but sometimes you can be so . . .”
“Then enlighten me,” I encouraged when he couldn’t finish.
He continued to speak toward his feet. “How do you think I feel, hearing you talk about feeling desire for this man? Knowing your innocence is about to be taken by the same man who stole my life, stole my chance at ever enjoying something I had dreamed of one day sharing with you?”
My face suddenly felt like someone had poured hot water over it. How stupid, how self-centered could I be? I had grown so consumed with my quest for knowledge and victory that I had overlooked that early bond between Jesse and me. Yes, we had since become close friends—but now I saw that emasculation had not quenched his love for me. And I know now that I felt it, too; I had simply pushed those feelings from my mind out of sheer willpower.
I softly took his hand and squeezed it hard.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I was so thoughtless.”
He shook his head without ever facing me, his gaze still pointed down. “It’s all right, Hadassah. You know it is. Just don’t tell me any more details, all right?”
It was my turn to nod soundlessly and fight back tears.
“I’m doing this for us, Jesse, don’t you know?” I said with a voice rising beyond my control. “Not only Mordecai, your family or our people. You and I are the ones behind closed walls, just one mistake away from death. I’m doing this to win, and then I can have you placed on my personal bodyguard detail. We then can be together in some way, at least.”
“Yes, but you would do it as his wife.”
“Oh, Jesse,” I said and my eyes filled with tears. His wife, in Jesse’s sorrowful tone echoed over and over in my mind. Finally I was able to say, “You know the King and Queen do not spend all day together. I hear she joins him for an occasional dinner. The rest of the Queen’s time is spent in the company of personal staff.”
He turned to me with a swiftness that frightened me. “Do you still believe in G-d?” he asked with a bitter twist of his features.
“I didn’t a year ago. Not truly. But today I can tell you I couldn’t live a moment without Him. I feel His presence as strongly as I feel you right here and now.”
“I wish I could say that. I wish—”
“I know, Jesse. I don’t understand it, either. But I’m praying He does answer you. Both of us, for that matter. I don’t understand why I’m here. I only know that while I am in this place, He’s made himself more real than I’d ever dreamed He could. And that’s why I have the strength to do my best. I think He’s given you that same strength to do your best.”
Jesse suddenly smiled as though he knew that would be my answer, then moved to my side and took the risk of openly draping his arm around my shoulder. Had anyone seen it, the obvious affection between us would have caused an uproar—maybe costing me my candidacy and him his life. Yet we walked like that for several long minutes, not speaking, savoring the bittersweet tinge of each other’s company—sweethearts separated by less than a parasang of Palace grounds yet kept apart by the highest, most hopeless barriers our world could possibly erect between two human beings.
I saw Mordecai on the day before my appointment with the King. I had never seen him so adrift—his eyes unfocused in their sockets, his hair jutting in every direction, his skin the pallor of Pentateuch parchment. I knew he was only nearing middle age, but today he looked like a very old man. He stared off toward the Palace and spoke rapidly in a halting and uncertain voice.
“Hadassah? Are you—? I have done all I can. All I can for you. There is no more to be done but pray, no? Have you been praying, my dear? Have you steeped yourself in the presence of the Lord? Is the Shekinah with you, my little one?” He sounded more like a prophet than Poppa.
I could not speak to him for fear of collapsing in tears. I nodded fiercely, then breathed in and out several times. Finally I could respond.
“I have, Poppa. YHWH has drawn me especially close of late. I feel Him all around me. All the time.”
“That is good. That is all the good I can hope for now.”
“Come back for me, Poppa. I’ll find you here, even from the concubines’ house.”
“You never know, dearest. You never know what old trick he’ll conjure up to keep you right next to him.”
He looked away, squinting toward the Inner Court like he was its chief inspector. All to mask his tears.
We prayed for strength and guidance, and then he clasped me again. I could tell over his shoulder, from the silent heaving of his chest and torso, that he was weeping as hard as I was. So I kissed him on the cheek, whispered the most confident good-bye I could and began to walk swiftly back to the harem.
What I did not understand, my dear young maiden, is that even while I endured these poignant leave-takings, history-making events were taking shape in the halls only cubits away—developments centered on the man I would soon meet in his bedchamber.
A great war with Greece was now imminent, the battle to end all Greco-Persian battles. Xerxes had fought an earlier war only a few years before, one in which his father was killed and the army had failed to conquer Athens. Now obsessed with sacking the Greek capital, he was in the middle of planning with his generals to march on Greece with the largest army assembled in the history of mankind.
Today, you and I both know the outcome of that campaign, for we are living through its aftermath even as I write these words. Already, the events themselves have begun to acquire that peculiar tarnish of history past—that quaint aspect of an event whose danger, whose razor-sharp edge of catastrophic risk, is eroded by the passage of time. Yet its consequences now define every day of our lives.
Back then, none of this was known. Persia was still the undisputed ruler of much of the world. Xerxes, although not claiming to be divine, was as close to G-dlike as any mortal ever born.