Esther by Norah Lofts

Author:Norah Lofts [Lofts, Norah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Historical, Biblical Studies, Royalty, Middle East
ISBN: 978-1905806584
Publisher: Tree of Life
Published: 2011-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

When Esther woke in the morning it was always to find a slave standing by her bedside with a silver tray. On the tray was a silver goblet dimmed by the contrast between the warm atmosphere of the room and the chill of the fruit juice which had been all night suspended down the well. For a little while it had seemed very strange and slightly wrong to lean back against the pillows and sip the cool juice while other slaves ran backward and forward preparing her bath and then, with exquisite timing bringing her breakfast; but the strangeness had worn off during the time when she had waited for her turn for Artaxerxes’ inspection, and now, except to think that it was very pleasant, she hardly noticed the morning’s routine. This morning, lying beside the mist-dimmed goblet was a piece of papyrus, folded and sealed. She recognized it at once, with a pang, with a smile. Papyrus was expensive and Mordecai was poor and one day he had come back from the market very pleased by a bargain he had picked up; thirty-six sheets of papyrus written over on one side and perfectly clean on the other, which had been thrown out from some merchant house and salvaged by a rag-picker. Mordecai and Esther had used the clean sides and ignored the others until one day he had said, “There must be some way of cleaning this stuff—it confuses me to turn a page and read about a bale of cloth being charged to someone’s account five years ago. What would clean it, Esther?”

She had thought futilely for a moment and then said, “Fuller's earth bleaches linen. It might work on papyrus.” And it had, to an extent; the old writing in some places remained stubborn and was not easy to write over but the cloth merchant’s transactions did fade out and it was just possible to use both sides of the sheets.

Now, in the palace of Shushan where clean new papyrus, smelling of Egypt, was to be had for the asking, Esther recognized the old, blotched piece and knew that Mordecai had written to her at last. His letters had been very rare of late.

She broke the seal and spread out the page and then gave a half-humorous, half-exasperated sigh. It was written in their own private cypher. Mordecai had invented it, long ago when she was a little girl, nine years old, and had come across the words “his private cypher” in a history book. She had asked Mordecai to explain and he had explained as he explained everything, with immense thoroughness. He had said, “Now suppose we invent our own private cypher,” and he had juggled with letters and scribbled for a time and then explained it to her; and for a day or two they had communicated by means of the cypher, a very simple one, once you knew the key. But that was six, no seven, years ago; and Mordecai, before sitting down

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