Chapter 8

Life at the palace was not only endurable; it was pleasant and interesting. Esther’s relationships were quickly and comfortably defined. Lysias was disappointed but not disgruntled when she declined his special hospitality by explaining that it would make her unhappy if favours were extended to her which made the others envious. She also imputed to him a wealth of high-minded gallantry that was quite too nebulous for assessment; but made such a favourable impression that Lysias spent a whole afternoon conducting her through the palace; ordered the furniture unshrouded in the great banquet-hall, and invited her to sit in His Highness’s tall, gold-plated, throne-like chair, where she projected a brief, unspoken query to the King of Arabia: ‘Do you still think it’s impossible?’

Her appearance in the kitchen, ready to make friends but not over-eager to the point of condescension, instantly gave her top rating. Claudia stated the situation neatly when she declared, after Esther—having carried her own dishes—had returned to her work, ‘I like her! If she was only a little better than me, we would probably hate each other, no?…But she is so very much better than me that we don’t need to hate each other.’

Work on the Corinthian scrolls was fascinating; like a game to play. Esther was not wholly unfamiliar with the task. The old books that Zendi had picked up in Petra had required repairs. You carefully unrolled the long, narrow strip of papyrus, detached it—whole or in pieces—from the spools, weighted it down on the library floor; and, wherever it was broken, pasted it together. If the text had been damaged badly, you copied as much as was legible and inserted the patch, with an editor’s note explaining how much was missing. Then you sanded and scraped the mouldy old spools down to the bare wood and redecorated them in black and gold.

Sometimes the girls came up from the kitchen and helped hold the strips of papyrus in place for splicing. Lysias frequently drifted in to express approval.

On the morning of Esther’s third day at the palace, Claudia remarked, after the breakfast things had been cleared away, that she must now go out to the prison—’and feed my wild man.’

‘Wild man!’ echoed Esther. ‘Are you not afraid?’

‘No—no—no! That was what you call a joke! He is not wild: he just looks wild—with shaggy hair—and bony, like a starved cat. It is because he does not eat. And he is very sad. I fear he will die if he does not eat.’

‘Why is he in prison?’ inquired Esther.

‘Ah—I don’t know.’ Claudia waved a shapely armed salute to her own disinterest in the matter. ‘He talked too much, maybe—no?’

‘He is a prophet,’ assisted Anna, without conviction. ‘He says the world is coming to an end.’

‘And for that he is locked up?’ asked Esther, apparently unconcerned.

‘There was more to it than that,’ explained Murza. ‘He sees the rulers overthrown, and the Empire smashed, and the poor made rich, and—’

‘That’s right,’ put in Claudia. ‘That’s what he says. I’ve heard him! All hell’s going to break loose!…How would you like to take him his breakfast, Esther? Then you could hear him for yourself. And perhaps he will eat for you: you are so very pretty. You need not be afraid of him. He will not harm you.’