Hadassah Covenant, The (50 page)

He could hardly gain a physical sense of the place, he was moving so fast, breathing so hard. Fingers gripping his arm pulled him over. Light beckoned him downward to a sarcophagus that already had been yanked open. An old coffin of splintered wood, nearly smothered in sheets of disintegrating parchment, shards of old jewelry, Stars of David in wood and plaster . . .

Swiftly, before they might dissolve in thin air, he ripped a large plastic baggie from his chest pocket and began grabbing each piece of parchment one by one. Every sheet. Every word—a mere sentence could save him right now.

He held one up for a quick glance. Ancient Hebrew to be sure, the paper remarkably well-preserved, yet old, surely old enough—the ink degradation consistent with—

“Time to go, sir. Let’s analyze on the helo.”

“Roger.”

Another quick glance to confirm the sarcophagus was empty; he nodded and followed the men out into the night.

A swift wind announced their Blackhawk’s return, this time for a hover evacuation. Things were safe. He gripped his baggie tightly and began to run for the deck, flexing his leg muscles for the leap.

And
jump
. . .

Twenty minutes later, he was back over Iraqi airspace and on the phone to Jerusalem, announcing that a promising scan was imminent. As he sat piecing the jigsaw puzzle of parchment together, he could not help but read a few lines . . .

Benjamin, my dear,

This letter is from your mother. Not the mother you know and
love and who takes care of you, but the one who brought you into this world, loved you dearly, and whose life was taken from her before you could form any memories of her.

My name was Leah.

I have written you this letter, which I trust you will find after I am gone, to unburden myself of something I have long held to my bosom. I wish to tell you the truth of someone whose love claimed my heart before yours did.

His name was Mordecai, and yes, he was the Mordecai of great renown across Persia and especially to our own people. The adoptive father of Queen Esther, rescuer of the Jewish race from destruction.

He was a man of justly deserved fame and adulation. But he was also a man capable of great depths of feeling and affection. In the days before I first looked into your eyes, I spent much time with this great man.

You see, in the long months of Megabyzos’ failed rebellion, before the general was unsuccessful in his attempt to overthrow the King and found himself pardoned and back at the palace, thanks to the Queen Mother’s unpredictable loyalties, I spent my days in hiding, deep in a secret apartment below the Persepolis harem. That is where this strange affection for an older man grew into a love I can hardly explain, I fail to understand, and I refuse to dismiss.

I knew that I loved him long before I realized the nature of my affection, for in the months and years previous I had grown to see him as a protector, a wise and loving palace father. However, during those weeks in hiding, those interminable hours with no one else but Hadassah to speak with, my emotions grew deeper still.

I wish I could tell you the countless small courtesies and signs of thoughtfulness Mordecai showed me during those times. As you can imagine, the conventions of personal privacy and hygiene quickly fall to the wayside in such an environment. Yet never once did he fail to suffer any privation or undergo any effort to spare my dignity.

But then, as anyone in a highly precarious confinement might, I began to grow irrational. One night something gave way inside of me. I entered a period of wild, reckless agitation—thrashing, muttering, threatening with increasing loudness to shout out until someone came to extricate us from that adequate but awful place.

In my irrational fury, I only caught the briefest flashes of how Mordecai did it, yet he somehow reached in and, with only the most fleeting display of his masculine power, caught me. How he did a thing like this with the utmost gentleness remains beyond me, but he did. His fingers closed over my mouth. His knees pressed behind mine and buckled them. I fell backward into his embracing grasp.

I surrendered at once.

Even today, I fail to adequately describe or understand the sensation, for his was such a bewildering blend of control and tenderness. I could hardly move a finger, yet I felt wrapped in a blanket. I felt wrapped in love. And just as quickly, the urge to scream and flail about left me.

How long we stayed like that, I cannot tell. I only remember that ever so gradually, my breathing slowed and my madness quenched itself against the firmness of his hold.

At one point I became aware that his arms around me were no longer necessary. And somehow, I also sensed that he knew this, too.

I pulled my right hand slowly, softly, from his. Then I used it to reach up and carefully peel his fingers from over my mouth.

Then I looked into his eyes.

Only then did I see the tears which had hovered there, trembling just above those he had already shed. I have never seen such a combination of empathy, grief, and overwhelming love in the face of another person. Not even Artaxerxes, for all his beguiling passion that long-ago night, had come even close.

I reached up and traced the closest tear, along its bright path from his eye.

“Was that for me?” I asked in a near-whisper.

“No,” he answered, smiling faintly at the twist of his reply. “No, it’s not. It’s for me.”

“Did I cause it?” I asked.

He nodded yes, and more tears came into view.

“I’m sorry for acting this way. I’m just not sure I can take any more. . . . ”

“Shhh,” he interrupted. “That’s not why. That’s not it—not at all.”

“Then how did I cause it?”

He closed his eyes briefly, delicately. He breathed in deeply, then out again.

“I weep because only in your pain can I hold you like this. And I would give my remaining days—”

He stopped. Then a look of determination came over his face, and he leaned over sideways. From the bedding beside us he retrieved a tightly rolled-up parchment. The one he often wrote upon over in a corner when he thought I was sleeping.

Then he began to read to me an astonishing document. It was a love letter, written with no thought of ever being delivered. A statement of affection like none I have ever heard before, or certainly since. A resigned but genuine overflow of love from someone who harbored only the faintest hope of ever seeing it come to life.

Listening to his words, savoring the strong and confident tones of his voice, scrutinizing every twitch of the male pride he was relinquishing to me at great sacrifice, I felt something burst into life within me. In some ways, it was like the birth of something warm and thriving out of nothing. But in other ways, it was merely a transition. A deep shift from one kind of love to another far more delicate and overwhelming.

Strangely, I don’t know where Hadassah went during this time. I suppose she made herself unobtrusive in a far corner of the room, forcing herself to feign sleep. Yet I completely forgot she was even there—or anyone else in all of Persia.

Yes, despite his being considerably older than myself, despite his one-time role as a father-figure of sorts toward me, I capitulated to the affection I had for so long denied. I fell in love with Mordecai, sometime between his starting to read and the end of that remarkable narrative.

I felt in awe of this emotion, dazzled by its preciousness and vulnerability. It felt to me like the tiniest of infants, barely hardy enough to survive even the light of day. Yet I cherished it more than life itself.

I peeled myself from his arms, for I wanted to reenter his hold on my own terms, on the terms of this love.

I crouched beside him and placed his hands, one at a time, about my shoulders and waist. Then I moved closer. He peered at me questioningly, almost fearfully.

I smiled and whispered, “Your love has healed me.”

I don’t know if he understood fully what I meant, but I was not about to explain. I could only pray that he knew how his written adoration, read to me in a trembling voice over the past hours had crept into my deepest heart, had invisibly healed every scar and crevice left by the King’s rejection and my own despair.

I allowed my reentry into his arms and the warmth of my kiss to elaborate for me, for I could respond no other way. And yet I believe he understood everything.

Five days later, the hole to our self-imposed prison opened and a rather frightened man descended. He removed his covering robe with a reassuring smile and revealed the garments of a rabbi.

And there, with only Hadassah as our witness, the Jewish wedding ceremony was performed in whispers and motions to mimic the ornaments we lacked. It was most humble, and yet I would venture possibly the most heartfelt and romantic that has ever taken place. We had no scarves, no canopies. But we framed them with our hands, and our smiles.

A dark, locked subterranean lair will strike few people as an idyllic place for a honeymoon, but I will assure you that it proved exactly that. As her dearest gift, Hadassah even left our hiding place with the rabbi, just before our honeymoon began. Where she stole off to, she never said. But she did not return until a week later, glowing with satisfaction.

But there is more than even disclosure of love and romance which drives this letter to you now, my dear Ben. One of them is my learning of a lesson that I wish I had more time to live out. For many months before surrendering to this great love, I struggled with everything within me to maintain my grasp on a highly stubborn notion which had overtaken me. You see, I was convinced, for what seemed like a lifetime, that only through the obvious route of becoming queen, with all its attendant power and privilege, would my life ever gain purpose and lasting impact. It seemed so obvious to me for so long that I could not even picture myself relinquishing the idea. How could any other outcome, I reasoned, offer me a place in history, other than the most powerful throne in the world?

Now I find that while the ultimate answers remain beyond my sight, a far more sure and subtle truth has emerged. That is, that sometimes one finds greater purpose by surrendering what the world values most than from grasping the obvious.

You see, I relinquished that dream when I married Mordecai. In fact, I have sometimes wondered if that was not part of the reason for my decision—to shake myself free, to wrest myself loose from the idea’s persistent hold. It was not that alone, I will tell you readily, for I truly loved the man. My man.

This decision turned out to carry a very high price tag, as I’m sure you now know. Not Mordecai’s death, although that did come hardly two months after we exchanged our vows. I awoke in his arms one morning to find him still and cold, a faint smile glowing in the light of a sunbeam pouring in from the subterranean apartment’s largest light grate.

I would probably frighten you if I tried to describe the wave of grief that fell upon me at that moment. I will only tell you that I felt as though my life had just leaked out of my body, as though everything good about life had just escaped forever. I wept and sobbed as freely, as loudly, as caution allowed.

But yet Mordecai’s passing would not prove to be the defining event of this story. It would, however, help bring it about. Mordecai’s body was smuggled out that very day in a highly dangerous and intricate rescue mission of sorts. But the word of his death, and its circumstances, began to circulate as a bizarre rumor through the empire’s Jewish communities. And this gossip reached the ears of our enemies in the palace.

Exactly one week after the death of my beloved, the locked door of our hiding place was shattered by the boot of an Immortal guard, and Hadassah and I were seized, marched up into the blinding light of midmorning, and paraded before hushed crowds into the royal prison. Esther and I were separated, each of us kept in cells which, despite being far above the norm, were still cruelly spartan compared to our former abode.

Three days after our capture, I heard the sound of many footsteps outside and the creak of the door being opened from outside.

I turned and saw King Artaxerxes standing there, frowning sadly.

“Hello, Leah,” he said.

“Your Majesty,” I replied and swiftly fell to one knee, like any good Persian. I truly did not know how to respond. I searched inwardly for any of the old emotions, but I could not discern anything of note.

“I came here to tell you,” he said in a soft, regretful tone, “that the sentence imposed on you was not my wish. My hands were tied by an item of strict Persian law. You see, a member of the harem, even though she is rejected as Queen, remains bound to the King’s palace until explicitly released by royal decree. You were not at liberty to marry Mordecai, I am sorry to say. Had you come to me and cast yourself on my mercy, I would have surely agreed to the request, however strange I might have found it.”

“Yes, but I would also have been killed by others within your palace.”

“Perhaps. However, the outcome is the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unfortunately, Leah, the stated penalty for violation of this law is death.”