Harvest of Gold (37 page)

Sarah crossed her ankles and then uncrossed them. Darius had returned home from his half day of work in a strange mood. He had not strung more than five words together as they ate lunch. Every once in a while she caught him staring at her, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful. She checked her green linen robe for an embarrassing stain and was relieved to find none. It had been weeks since she had worn the elaborate garments suited for the court. Now she garbed herself in simple linen robes, cool and loose enough to accommodate her condition. Did Darius find her appearance a disappointment? Did he think her fat and unattractive? She drew a nervous hand over her flowing skirts.

“How is Benjamin?” she asked, a fifth foray into conversation that seemed to go nowhere.

“He wasn’t at the wall.”

Sarah waited for him to elaborate. No further revelation was forthcoming, however. She sighed and leaned back, her appetite gone. “Is it me? Have I offended you in some way?”

“What?”

“You keep staring at me.”

“Do I?”

Sarah let out a breath. “Shall I clear up our lunch? We seem to have both stopped eating.”

Darius pushed away a full bowl of bean and garlic stew. “You prayed for me. When I was sick. I saw you, before I fell asleep.”

Sarah’s mouth turned dry. She tried to swallow, but could not. “I did … I ask your pardon. I did not think you were awake.”

“I liked it. You may pray for me whenever you wish.”

Eyes rounded, Sarah leaned forward. “Truly? You don’t mind?”

“My mother used to do it. I had forgotten. When I was little, she would thank God for me every morning, and bless my day. In the months of her illness before she died, she would not allow a single day to go by without praying for me.”

“She must have been an exceptional woman. I wish I had met her.”

“I wish you had, too. She would have liked you. You could have talked to each other about the Lord to your heart’s content.”

“That would have been … a blessing.”

“Sarah … I have not been fair to you. I’ve laid down an unspoken law, forbidding you to speak of the Lord. No doubt there have been many times when you’ve had to swallow what you wanted to say to me. I’m not promising that I will agree with your point of view, or even understand it. But I want you to be free to express what’s in your heart.

“I remember when we were trying to solve the mystery of the intrigue against the king, and you tried to comfort me by pointing out that the Lord had helped us discover the plot in the first place, and that He would be faithful through the rest of our inquiries. You were so careful with your words, trying to avoid offending me. Still, I reacted harshly. I will try not to repeat that mistake.”

Sarah sat stunned, her eyes glued to her husband, wondering where this change of heart came from. “I … don’t know what to say.”

“Finally rendered you speechless, have I?” His smile, slow and warm, settled on her like a cozy blanket. “I want you to be free. I want you to be yourself around me. I don’t want you to have to pick and choose every word with care before you speak. You should be at your ease when we are together.”

Sarah could not believe her ears. She felt like she was dreaming. Tears pricked her eyes and she lowered her lids to hide them.

“Don’t,” he whispered. Leaning forward, he lifted her chin. “You’re doing it again. Hiding from me.”

She stared into his beloved face, startled. The tears kept welling up. She could not stop them as they slid down her cheeks like fat rain drops. Darius wiped at them with his hand. Then he leaned over and kissed them away. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

That word again. She wouldn’t chase after it like a hungry rabbit. She wouldn’t. She gulped and said, “Pardon. I don’t know what has come over me. I have no reason to cry.”

“Yes, you do.” He kissed her gently. “But not anymore. I promise you.”

Sarah nodded, unable to trust her voice. Part of her wanted to jump up and dance and hug Darius until his ribs hurt. Another part of her began to tremble with dread. If she revealed herself, he might reject her. He had admitted that he might neither fathom nor agree with her understanding of the world. If she revealed to him her deepest feelings—if she began to tell him about things like her struggle to find her worth in her achievements instead of in God, perhaps he in time would find her so incomprehensible that any glimmer of affection he had for her would cool and die. Her faith in God might push him away and destroy their marriage.

Later that afternoon, Darius accepted Nehemiah’s invitation to join him on his inspection round. “You seem to have recovered from your injuries,” Nehemiah said as greeting.

Darius curled his lip. “A mere bump. Hardly worse than a mosquito bite.”

Nehemiah gave a slight smile. “The mosquitoes in Persia must have grown more violent than I realized. I haven’t seen such an impressive bruise in years. I didn’t know that shade of purple existed. It brings out the green in your eyes.”

Darius threw the governor a quelling look. The man refused to be intimidated. “In any case, you seem to have made an impression on Benjamin’s parents. They have not stopped singing your praises since you protected their son from serious harm.”

“They exaggerate. I did nothing that a little girl couldn’t have managed.”

Nehemiah tapped his bearded chin with a thumb. “I think you underestimate your actions. Benjamin is a special boy. Many would have grieved if harm had come to him.”

“I enjoy his company. It would have been a sad day if he had been injured.”

“Do you know, he reminds me of you when you were a boy. Not his looks, but his spirit. You had a similar charm.”

“First you admire my eyes, and now you speak of my charm. Careful, my lord governor, or I might form the wrong conclusion,” Darius said.

Nehemiah laughed. “I have been remembering you as a child. I was very fond of you, you know. It came to me when I was visiting with Hanun and his family that you were the same age as Benjamin when you left home. So young!”

Nonplussed by Nehemiah’s odd comment, Darius frowned. “Pardon?”

“When your father sent you to the palace to start your training, you were Benjamin’s age. Just a little boy.”

“I suppose I was. You were close to my parents at the time, I believe.”

“We saw each other often. Your family had made Susa their primary residence, and so had I. As an official of the court, I understood your father’s world. As a Jew, I understood your mother’s. They had no one else in their lives that could relate to them both. We had much in common, which made our friendship a comfort and a joy.”

“Strange. I don’t remember meeting you as a child.”

“I’m not surprised. You were very young at the time. Soon after you moved to the palace school, the king assigned your father to a permanent post in Babylon. He was gone for three years. Your parents traveled to visit you as often as they could, but the distance made frequent visits prohibitive.”

“I had forgotten those years.” Like a hazy dream, Darius remembered his life at the palace, deprived of mother and father for months at a time, living in an emotional desert. His chest tightened just thinking about it. He became aware that Nehemiah was guiding them toward one of the gates. None of the doors had been hung yet, and the opening in the partially raised wall looked like the gapped tooth in an old man’s mouth.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought I would show you a new sight today,” Nehemiah said.

Darius’s brows knotted. “Outside the walls?”

“As far as possible, we planned the wall to follow the ancient foundations. But in places, we had to make the perimeter smaller. Beyond these gates is one such location. I thought you might find the old foundation interesting.”

Darius was too polite to point out that he did not find the sight of old holes in the ground particularly thrilling and followed the governor’s steps without comment. They did not have far to walk. Like a fat snake, the old foundation wound its way at the edge of the city’s hills. Nehemiah stopped in front of a portion that must have been excavated at some point, stretching in the earth like a long gash.

Darius bent over and looked down. The original architects had made the foundation deep to accommodate the height and weight of the wall they had intended to build. “Is that soot and ash down there, covering the stones?”

“I should have known you would notice that. Yes. Ash from the fires of war.”

“Babylon’s conquest, you mean? But that was almost two hundred years ago! Wouldn’t the wind and the rain of decades have cleaned this up?”

Nehemiah knelt a knee at the edge of the foundation and peered inside. “The passage of time alone cannot restore such vast damage. Unless men went down there and physically cleaned up the mess, the deterioration of war leaves its mark.” He turned his face away from the ravaged landscape to gaze at Darius. The intensity in the brown eyes made Darius shift in discomfort.

“I like to come here and sit by these ruins sometimes,” Nehemiah said, unfolding his knees to stand once more. “They are a good reminder.”

“Of your history?”

“Not just that. I have often thought how the heart of man is like that foundation. Under war. Attacked by forces that oppose and ruin it. And unable to repair itself. Time cannot heal wounds. Many of us walk around with gashes in our hearts, no different from this foundation, covered in the soot of life’s fires.”

Darius took a step away and grasped his wrist in a tight hold behind his back. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

Nehemiah rose up, his movements deliberate. “Have you noticed how winsome Benjamin is? You were like that as a little boy, only more so. Full of affection and an open intelligence that charmed the adults around you. You loved passionately and were never afraid to demonstrate how you felt.

“Your father sent you to the palace school because it was expected of you. You would not have been able to fulfill your position as a Persian aristocrat without the appropriate training. He meant it for your best. He had no idea that tearing you from your home when you were only seven would have grave consequences. He himself had left home much later and did not understand the significance of your extreme youth.”

“I’ve never blamed him for sending me.”

“You paid a heavy due for that decision, whether you did it willingly or not. When you came back, you were different. Gone was the affectionate boy. You were self-contained and distant. There was a wall around your heart as high as the moon.”

Darius kicked a pebble into the yawning hole of the foundation. It flew in the air before landing with a thud somewhere in the soot-covered depths. “Duty has a price. We all have to pay it with whatever currency is asked of us.”

Nehemiah took a step that brought him closer. “Would you expect your own son to fulfill his duty in the same way? Your child will be born in three months. You might have a boy. Would you send him away from you in seven years? Would you want him to live a life similar to yours at that age? Would you desire for him to be separated from you, from Sarah, for months at a time? To grow up with cold teachers and distant sages who will never once hug him or express any love toward him?”

Darius paled. “I don’t see how this is any of your concern.”

“Forgive me, my lord.” Nehemiah shoved a hand through his hair, making the red filaments stand on end. In the pale rays of the sun, they seemed to catch fire, surrounding his head like a halo of flames. “Having once held you in my arms as a wriggling baby, I find it hard to remember that you are a man now, and more than able to make your own decisions. I should clarify something. When I spoke of your son, it wasn’t because I doubted your ability to be a wonderful father. Like Lord Vivan, you already have the makings of the best of fathers.

“I only meant for you to remember your own experience—for your sake, not your child’s. Often, we bury the wounds of our past. It’s not until we consider someone we love going through the same hardship that we recognize how profound the damage to our soul really was. I wanted you to see …” He pointed a finger into the hole blanketed with ancient soot. “I wanted you to glimpse into your own heart and the ashes of an old war that came against you when you were very young. Perhaps it’s time you dealt with it.”