The Hadassah Covenant Read online

  But when she first came back to us, I felt quite at ease that matters in Jerusalem were well in hand. Instead, I concerned myself only with the welfare of my people here in Persepolis.

  That state of affairs soon traced a precipitous turnaround. Now in a very short time, the Eternal City had reemerged as the axis of all the risk and danger in the modern Hebrew world.

  Now without hearing my constant counsel against it, Artaxerxes capitulated to our enemies both here and our ancestral homeland, and issued a halfhearted order to halt all work on the city’s rebuilding.

  To make matters worse, the emperor’s official disapproval served to embolden the city’s local enemies. The foes of my people and their regional allies promptly attacked the city again, killed many of her citizens, and reduced her re-emerging structure back into rubble once more. Oh, how glad I am that my daughter was no longer there to see the new devastation or to fall victim to such brutality!

  The news struck my daughter and me as yet another reassertion of life’s essentially bleak and ruthless nature. G-d, of course, being temporarily banished from the picture.

  I remember our sitting together, watching the setting sun reduce the Atabana’s columns to huge silhouettes, and wondering why I had tried so long and so foolishly to resist life’s ultimate brutality. After all my efforts, my people’s plight was no better or worse than before, and your own prospects had been dashed alongside ours.

  “G-d, would you have mercy on us and lift your judgment from us?” I remember praying. “Will you please restore us to the glow of your sight? Return us to your favor?”

  I felt weary. I felt like a foolish old man who had wasted away his years in the pursuit of idle, airy fantasies. Who had allowed his hopes to rise and fall on the winds like a sparrow before a hurricane. Beside me, my beloved daughter could only stare in the distance like a hollow-eyed survivor of some war, holding my hand tightly.

  I turned at the sound of someone approaching from behind us.

  It was our friend the royal cupbearer. He prepared to sit down with us, his face pallid and drawn.

  “I just thought I would come and confirm for you the very worst of what you have heard,” he began, his voice full of woe. “You see, my youngest brother just returned with several of his friends who had traveled to Jerusalem to deliver some construction supplies. He validated the most bloodcurdling of the descriptions you’ve heard. ‘Our beloved city has indeed been laid waste,’ he said in the voice of one with no hope. ‘Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of the city is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.’”

  His voice broke and stopped altogether, replaced by the sound of gentle weeping. His was soon joined by our own, for it was an all-time low moment indeed for each of us. All the hopes, all the work, all the progress—apparently for naught.

  I suppose this sounds pathetic, but we sat there for a time that stretched into seeming eternity. We neither spoke nor sang, nor even moved. Our harps were once again hung on the willow tree.

  It was no symbolic gesture or even conscious decision. I will tell you the truth: we sat still because we were spent, and we hadn’t the slightest idea what to try next.

  After the pause had persisted through countless cycles of waiting with the length and finality of time itself, the cupbearer stood.

  “I have no ideas. Merely duties at the palace,” he said flatly.

  “Go and perform them as well as you can,” I responded, knowing the advice would likely fail to produce any difference. And then it came to me, like a dagger that flew midair and struck me somewhere right around my heart—

  —If this man were my own cupbearer, the sorry state of his face would have screamed to me that something was wrong.

  For a few moments at least each day, the one face in the kingdom that every king stares at most closely is that of his cupbearer—during that crucial time between the tasting of the wine and the nodded whisper that “All is clear, Your Majesty.” During the next occurrence of those fleeting few seconds, our friend would have an opportunity to seize the King’s interest like no other citizen on earth. It could be our chance—our only chance—to plead the case of the City of our Fathers.

  I turned to the cupbearer and placed my hand on his shoulder.

  “My friend,” I said, “I am going to repeat some words I have not spoken for several decades, when I uttered them to my daughter at a similar moment of incredible risk and opportunity. My brother, perhaps G-d has brought you to the palace, to this place in your life, exactly for such a time as this. Perhaps history itself turns on what you, and you alone, do next.”

  He turned to me with an expression tinged with incredulity and even a note of defiance. I believe that for a moment he truly thought I was toying with him. Then he saw my face, he saw my daughter’s reaction to hearing those words again, and he frowned more seriously.

  “My life serves no purpose other than to intoxicate the King and his friends, and make sure they do not die in the process,” he answered. “I fail to see the historical importance of such a thing.”

  Then I explained my idea to him, and he never spoke such nonsense again.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  And that is why the following New Year’s festival, at the dawning of springtime nearly six months later, featured a Banquet of Wine—the premier Persian celebration of fine wines from across the world—as had not been seen in the palace for many a year.

  At the center of it all, shouldering the burden of keeping full the cups of not only the King but several dozen of his most influential, and feared, invited guests, was our friend the cupbearer.

  As many of the attendees would later take note, several pronounced characteristics marked the royal cupbearer’s demeanor that night. One is that he carried out his duties with a swiftness and efficiency unmatched by any cupbearer in royal history. It was said the man was a veritable blur of motion across the vast dining chamber of the Persepolis palace, for he alone had the authority to pronounce a glass safe for imbibing. And given that Megabyzos’ rebellion was at its height and that over half of the men reclining drunkenly in that great room and gazing out at an unmatched Persian sunset were whispered to be in league with the rebel, plotting in some manner and to some degree against the rule of the King, no one was taking any chances.

  The other notable aspect of the cupbearer’s state is that without speaking a word or consciously attempting to do so, he radiated an elegant sort of sadness so palpable and powerful that indeed it almost seemed as though he was about to burst into tears at any moment.

  “Cheer up, my man!” shouted Otanes, one of the Princes of the Face. “After all, are you not drinking more wine than anyone tonight?”

  “Yes, but no one is enjoying it less!” countered the King on his cupbearer’s behalf. “What if you expected to die with every quaff?”

  “I expect to die with every bite of my wife’s cooking!” shouted back the great soldier, who also happened to be the king’s grandfather. “It is why I stay afield in Your Majesty’s service as much as possible!”

  While a wave of masculine laughter swept across the room, the King rose up on one elbow, for he was reclining upon a bed of pillows, and summoned the cupbearer over to him with a delicate motion of his finger.

  “What indeed is the matter tonight, my friend?” he asked.

  The cupbearer was holding two flasks of fine Elamite wine for guests in the room’s far corner, but he quickly made his decision. He knelt, set the two flasks on the floor beside him, and gazed at the King with two of the most forlorn eyes the sovereign had ever seen.

  “Do you truly wish for me to tell you, my lord?” he asked.

  “Yes. I have hardly witnessed such sorrow upon the visage of one who should be enjoying himself more.”

  Nehemiah allowed his peripheral vision to quickly gauge the state of the room, and what he sensed alarmed him. The King had spoken these words more loudly than h
e had intended, and a lull in the room’s conversation had coincided with the speaking of them. As a result, many had heard the question, and he felt several dozen pairs of eyes trained intently upon him, anticipating his reply.

  Like so many of his compatriots in the palace, he had never told anyone of his race. But he knew that some of its fiercest enemies that very moment surrounded him.

  It quickly became clear to him that he had no choice. The evening was fluid, the King’s mood mercurial, and he would not be asked this question again. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, not only for him, but for his people. So he swallowed hard, fixed the king with his most powerful look, and said, “Your Majesty, how can I pretend to enjoy my being here when the City of my Fathers, the beloved capital of my forefathers, lies in ruins, its ramparts destroyed, its proud buildings lying tossed and left to the elements?”

  “What are you speaking of, my trusted friend?” the King replied.

  The cupbearer of Artaxerxes revealed himself to the King that night, and of course we all know the historic events that followed. Our friend’s incredible leadership was known to the rest of his people, and indeed to all of history, in the days after that, when the King allowed him to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls so essential to the future of the city and its people. Within months, the largest contingent of our people ever arrayed returned to their homeland, and a few short months after that, we began to receive reports of wonderful progress and overcoming of great odds.

  So, my dear, you ask—how does this bear on the story of my love for you?

  Because in the aftermath of this great concession on the part of the King, sentiment against our people, and fear of their influence, crested at a new and ever more virulent high. You likely remember how I looked when I came to you a few short days later with grave news, for your own face blanched merely at the sight of me. I had not tried to hide my deep distress. I had just been told that assassins had been dispatched that very night to murder you, my daughter, and me in our sleep. We three were thought to embody the pinnacle of Jewish influence in the palace, and therefore our doom was now deemed a priority by Megabyzos sympathizers, Greek allies, and other enemies of the King.

  That was the night when Jesse, our dear chamberlain and master of the harem, took his greatest risk ever on our behalf. In the dead of night he spirited you, Hadassah and I down a back hallway of the harem to a dead-end wall I had never been able to understand. Smiling faintly, he gazed around him for onlookers, reached out his hands and pushed hard against a raised molding that framed a large statue of Ahuramazda. The statue rolled slowly along stone wheels and opened to a dark and narrow staircase leading downward. Picking up his torch, he led the way into the unknown place. At the bottom, cunningly lit by a series of cleverly disguised light holes, lay a secret buried apartment far below the harem floors. Its heart was a large open room lined with the most opulent silk pillows, blankets, and rugs the harem had ever offered any guest.

  “This place is known to nobody but the King and myself,” he said into the near-darkness. “And certainly not to the Queen. It was built to hide and protect the King’s favored circle of concubines in a time of war. You will be safe here. Please remain quiet, for the holes allowing in sunlight open to oddly situated parts of the harem, from which an unusual noise could be overheard by a passerby.” He turned to a small alcove in the corner. “There is a water well, and in the far corner a privy. I will bring you each day’s food at midnight. It is quite comfortable, but I am sure you will tire of it quickly. Let us pray that the crisis passes soon.”

  Without further instructions he smiled wanly at us, gave us each a small embrace, and marched back up the stairs.

  This is when my last and deepest encounter with your true nature began. As I know you would agree, nothing reveals the contents of someone’s character more quickly, more deeply, or more accurately than being shut with them in a confined space, however comfortable it may be.

  You were quite fearful at first, anxious that no one hear our various coughs or sneezes through the grates or that the plotters would learn of Jesse’s harboring us and kill him outright. I on the other hand, found myself enveloped in a strange sense of calm certainty. Maybe it is my advanced age, my lack of a fear of death. Maybe it was the additional presence of my beloved daughter, or even the chance to catch up on sleep for the first time in many a year of feverish palace duty.

  But for whatever reason, I was soon in a position to calm your fears and converse with you at length about this stage of your life. For you were still in the throes of incredible disappointment over the outcome of your night with the King, convinced that unless he reversed his decision, you were doomed for a life of wasted opportunity. “Look, Mordecai,” I recall you whispering to me one night—for nighttime with less likelihood of being overheard was when we indulged in most of our conversations, “I am surrounded by historic and vastly influential contributors to the history of my people. You, Hadassah, Nehemiah. Yes, you are in this dark place with me, but you have the satisfaction that comes with knowing you have already had your time to count for something. Me—I had my night with the King, and it changed nothing.”

  “Or so you think, my dear.”

  “How could it be otherwise?”

  “With an infinitely creative G-d,” I answered, “I would never be reluctant to say, What if your contribution to history and the welfare of your people did not lie with the King?”

  You nearly laughed, so great was your surprise at the notion.

  “I can hardly see how, especially as a queen’s candidate, I would have an important fate outside of being chosen by the King,” you argued. “Surely, this close to the throne of Persia, becoming queen must be the only way I can triumph for my people.”

  I stopped speaking of it that night, for I was overwhelmed by a desire to take you in my arms and declare that your destiny lay with me. I hardly trusted myself. But I saw you fight with your misgivings and fears, and I witnessed your laying them down, gently it seemed, one by one.

  Day by day, as the three of us lounged around in the darkness and whispered to each other our confessions of fear, loneliness, anger, even anger toward G-d, I sensed an unlikely bond grow between us. A friendship, to be sure, but a certain and profound one. Hadassah and I already enjoyed a kinship deeper than words, and we often rested in each other’s arms, enjoying our closeness in a way we had not been allowed to for years. In fact, the confined nature of our hiding place reminded me of the home in which I had restricted her for so much of her childhood, fearful of her being caught by the murdering Agagites.

  Hadassah soon took notice of my growing interest—for the wondrous surprise of this time has been you.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Again, I am highly uncertain whether you will ever witness these words. But since my cowardice also grants me complete freedom, I will unburden myself even further.

  I want to marry you, Leah. Will you grant an old man’s folly? I know it seems laughable that you might share the depth of feeling I have toward you. No doubt you see me only as a trusted friend, a cherished confidant.

  Receiving Artaxerxes’ approval would be a fearsome matter, I know. Granting the marriage of a concubine is something no king has ever done, in my considerable memory. It would require spending not only the accumulated goodwill of a lifetime’s service, but receiving G-d’s warmest favor besides.

  I know to some people, at some times, the very notion would seem beyond contempt. I am an old man, with my years of outward attractiveness largely behind me. So rather than appeal to the lust of the eye or the ravishing of the flesh, let me ponder one more appeal that might sway you.

  You have told me that you are a granddaughter of Jehoiakim, of the very line of David. If you would only marry me, a child of our union would represent the juncture of the rabbinic and administrative Exilarch title with the royal pedigree of the Davidic bloodline.

  Is this sufficient cause? Is a consideration so practical, so
calculated, unworthy of earning a beautiful woman’s favor? I certainly hope so, for I would accept any pretext, embrace any goal, in order to have you at my side for the years remaining to me and to feel you in my arms once again, as I comforted you after Artaxerxes’ rejection.

  Dear G-d, if I cannot muster the courage to show these words to my love, I beg you to impress the ideas within it into her mind. Lead her, dear Lord. Prod her from her narrow grasp on the notion of a throne, of the trappings of power and outward glory, as your only means of working miracles. Let her fall in love with the humble, the familiar, the G-d-fearing.

  Would you bring her to me, my Father? I will love you even if you tell me no. In this part of my life, the lacking is far more familiar than the winning. . . .

  MASADA NATIONAL MONUMENT, ISRAEL—LATER THAT DAY

  The text message rolled across Hadassah ben Yuda’s cell phone display just as her husband began to speak on the windswept summit of Masada, majestically framed by thousand-foot drop-offs and the bleak vastness of Negev’s desert.

  “Tantalizingly close, but no cigar, my dear,” the scrawled words read. “The infrared array worked—I can read the document. Mordecai does indeed love her. But she remains infatuated with the King, for some reason. Need more. Will consult Baghdad rabbi. A.”

  Sitting behind Jacob on the dais, she winced, fought a crest of emotion fatigue, and hoped the assembled press would attribute it to blinding desert sun. Her husband was right, of course, although she relished the delicious irony of it—it was outrageous to have their fates determined by the outcome of an unrequited love affair so old that its participants had withered into dust over two thousand years ago.

  Maybe our actions do matter, she told herself wistfully.

  But until this crisis was over, she and her husband both faced a hostile, hellish existence. Right before her sat three times the usual press contingent, each just waiting eagerly for the speech’s end so they could mercilessly pepper the two of them about what was now being called “The Exilarch Scandal.”