She did not love him. But she touched his hand that was in her hair. “I want you to undo what you’ve done,” she said. “And I want to know things before the girls in the night station know them.”
The king said nothing. He took off her crown—sweet relief—and laid her down. The cushion was long enough to be a bed. It was a bed, she realized. He took her breasts out of her robes and sucked them, and Esther, despite herself, or to save herself, allowed herself to feel a jolt of pleasure. But mostly she made herself like the ground. She closed her eyes. She endured.
* * *
Robes are timeless, convenient, easily opened, easily closed. When the king was done Esther closed hers and, without asking, went closer to his table. The objects weren’t stones, she saw, but bones. Tiny bones.
“Birds,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
Behind her, on the cushion, the king lay atop his own robes, unclothed. She did not look at him.
“I know a woman—” Esther stopped. It struck her that these bones were those bones, that the reason the palace kept commissioning more necklaces from Nadav’s mother was not to adorn the wives’ necks—Esther had never seen any of them wearing one, now that she thought of it—but to supply the king.
“She’s very gifted,” the king said.
“Why have her go to the trouble of separating all the pieces and making necklaces, only for you to take them apart again?”
“It’s a puzzle. I like the puzzle.”
On the shelves, Esther saw, the bones had been put back together again to form birds, or skeletons of birds. Some were complete, others partial. Some bones that could not take a wire through them, foot bones for instance, the king had fashioned out of silver. Esther lifted one skeleton to see how it could stand and was impressed by the intricate joints and loops, the melding of wire and bone. The thing weighed so close to nothing she had an urge to crush it in her palm. She picked up another, larger one—not a bird.
“Fox,” the king said. “Be careful.”
She touched a few more, letting him worry, feeling the beast’s hardness climb up her back. Then she picked up the largest one and set it on the flat underside of her forearm, as if it were running toward her hand. “So how do you get the bones now?” she asked, without looking at him.
“What do you mean? Birds are always dying.”
“I mean with the edict. She’s a Hebrew. No buying, no selling …”
“I make an exception.”
Esther set the fox skeleton back on its shelf. Then she picked it up again, twisted off its front feet, and returned it to the shelf on its back. She let the feet drop to the floor.
“Esther!” The king heaved himself off the cushion, tying on his underrobe as he went. He gathered the foot bones in his palm and held them under a torch.
“I’m not done,” Esther said. “I want my people left alone. Send them into the desert if you want. But let them be.”
He placed the bones on his table, out of her reach. “They can go into the desert whenever they want.”
“But they won’t.”
He began putting on his other robes.
“Expel them,” Esther said.
He worked slowly, meticulously. Black, purple, blue, red. He tied the knot as if constructing one of his skeletons, and she thought of Vashti. How could this man have been able to bear killing her?
“It’s not up to you, is it,” she said. Lara’s words to her. “Expelling them, ending the cleanse. You’re not the one in control.”
The king did not react.
Esther picked up a bird skeleton. With her other hand she loosened her belt and formed a cradle of fabric in her robe, into which she tucked the bird. She moved slowly, in plain sight. But the king said nothing. He put on his crown, turned back to his table, and began to work.
* * *
That was the day the baby had been laid inside her. The following week, she found Baraz, to see if he would help her. He had been missing more often, others serving in his place. She had to search the palace twice before coming upon him in his room—lying on his long bed, eyes closed, as if asleep. She took off her robes. She was ready to let him rub his face all over her, to let him lick her and put his fingers inside her. It would not make her feel foul now, she thought. She was already fouled. It would be a mere transaction—this for that, her body in exchange for his body going to the camp. She laid out her terms. She assumed he would find the risk worth taking.
But Baraz, like the king, like Lara, said no. No, I would not defile you in such a way. I’m sorry.
That had been the worst. After Baraz, no one’s refusal surprised her. Not the cook’s or the chambermaid’s or the gardener’s. Yet she couldn’t stop asking. She wandered the palace, the passages, the kitchens, looking for someone, anyone, who might yield, offering not her body but whatever she thought a given individual might want. When her belly started to grow, the midwives tried pushing her back to bed. What’s your itch? they wanted to know. What’s your complaint?
She ignores them whenever she can. She continues to find new targets. A stable boy. A wet nurse. It is such a simple message she wants them to convey: Go now. Go far. But no one even hesitates. No, no, no, no. They profess pity. She sees them looking at the lines on her face. From any distance her scars are unnoticeable—if only she kept her distance, like most queens—but up close they look like golden creek beds running through brown sand and provoke a range of reactions. Maybe they are chronic tear stains—the king has caught a miserable for a queen! Or the queen is part divine, sent rays by the sun. Or maybe she is a warrior, from one of the tribes that stripes its young. Only a few, the shrewdest of the ones she presses about the camp, suspect she may be a Hebrew. The king and his minister have told no one this small and large fact.
No, no. Not a single one even asks what message she wants delivered. Yet Esther tries. Her trying is like a disease. Even now, with her feet going numb under this midwife’s rubbing, she is wondering what she might be able to say to entice the woman. Esther hasn’t noticed before how blue her eyes are, so light a blue they appear almost colorless. One doesn’t often see blue eyes in Susa in 462 BCE. Maybe it means she is weaker than the others, more apt to submit?
Then two other midwives walk in, slapping their hands together, putting an end to what has not begun. The blue-eyed midwife leaves silently.
“Time for a rest,” the thin one says, as if Esther has not been resting.
They are affable, the midwives. They smile and speak kindly and sometimes it seems that they actually like Esther—that they are not simply doing their job. She likes them, despite their pushiness. They move with purpose, their sleeves double-backed onto their shoulders to keep their forearms free, their hands always doing something, or more than one thing, washing while they fold, or stuffing pillows with feathers while they stir a poultice with a foot. Their efficacy is extreme, almost to the point of strangeness, as if—Esther sometimes thinks—they might be sorceresses in disguise. Even their skin color—there are perhaps a half-dozen of them, their skin running from clay-dark to tusk-white—seems designed for her, as if visual harmony will be of help. It is. They are a comfort.