The Assyrian (75 page)

“It shall be as you wish. But next summer,
not this.”

Did I think perhaps Tabshar Sin would change
his mind? I do not know what I thought, but may the god forgive me
that ever I made such a promise—and that ever I kept it.

Thus did we spend our days, laboring at the
soldier’s trade, happy to weary our sword arms and cover our
sandals with dust, dreaming always of the nearness of glory and of
death. And thus did the hot months of that summer burn themselves
out, clearing the way for the approach of the winter rains and my
return to Nineveh.

There was a sense, of course, in which I had
never been allowed to leave.

The king, after the Lord Sinahiusur’s death,
had not chosen another turtanu and had tried as best he could to
rule alone. It was an experiment which could never have succeeded,
for the god’s empire was too vast and my father had grown old. Yet
he tried. I could gauge the concentration of his effort in the
letters which arrived almost daily at my headquarters in Amat.

“I have today received ambassadors from
Ashdod. In public audience they bring gifts from their king and
messages calling me a kind father to all their people, but in
private they tell me they tire of his rule and ask my permission to
overthrow him and set up the son in his father’s place. This boy,
who is the child of one of my own women, given to Sharru-ludari
when I established his lordship after the revolt of Zedekiah of
Ascalon and restored to him the throne of his ancestors, is a
wicked boy. . .

“There is pestilence reported in the city of
Dilbat, and the moon, we are told, has been seen to drip blood for
three nights in succession. The priests say I should fast and shave
my beard in token of contrition for my transgressions against Sin
and Nergal, but if I have transgressed, why do the gods visit their
wrath upon Dilbat, that accursed dog hole whose citizens, you will
remember, joined the Elamites and those sons of harlots the
Babylonians in a cruel rebellion which stole from me the life of my
eldest boy? I fail to see why I should be inconvenienced. . .

“It is early, I know, but I have had the
auspices taken on that new son Esharhamat has whelped for your
beloved brother, the Lord Donkey. I thought it a reasonable
precaution since, sadly, the little brat gives no sign that he will
oblige us by dying, like the last one. He proves as healthy as his
father, alas, but the gods, who are wise, have greatly diminished
the injury by declaring that this one, at least, will never sit
upon my throne. The goat’s liver, I was told, was already filled
with maggots, and its heart was as black as if it had been burned
with fire. . .”

Burned with fire. I remembered Esharhamat’s
dreams about a fiery death and wondered what it was which the Lords
of Decision had revealed to her.

As always, I was careful in my replies and
declined to offer advice even when the king my father sought it of
me. I would not be turtanu, neither in name nor in fact, neither in
Nineveh nor in Amat. Esarhaddon was to be king, and I saw no point
in attempting to forestall the inevitable.

So in the first day of Kislef, even while the
roads were yet muddy from the first winter rains, I set off for the
south with a bodyguard of a hundred men. Zabibe traveled with us in
a wagon, but she did not enjoy the journey and filled my ears with
complaints whenever I was unwary enough to venture near her, which
was not often. Even for the hours of rest I joined my soldiers and
pitched a tent on the ground, leaving her to the comforts of her
wagon. I did not go into her except once, when we stopped for the
night in a village near Elkosh and, having drunk more beer than was
wise, I pushed her down on a table to unburden myself of a week’s
abstinence. The next morning she reproached me bitterly, saying
that she was up until nearly dawn picking splinters out of her
breasts and belly.

“Hold your tongue, woman,” I told her, “or I
will sell you to a caravan driver who smells worse than his
camels.”

After ten days, when we approached lands
belonging to my estate, I told the rab kisir in charge of my escort
to take them and the wagon on to Nineveh. I wished to spend a few
tranquil days at Three Lions, and I still had enough shame to wish
that my mother might know nothing of Zabibe.

After an absence of many months, it is a fine
thing to return to one’s own place. Since becoming the Lord
Sinahiusur’s heir I was the master of many fine estates, most of
which I had never even seen, but Three Lions was my home. Here I
was not rab shaqe and shaknu, nor the king’s son, nor the rival of
great princes. Here I was merely a landowner and farmer. Here I ate
my own bread and drank my own beer. And here, under the floor of my
own house, I hoped one day to lay down my bones.

The last harvest of the year had been
gathered in, and the fields were empty and covered with withered
stubble. The mud along the canal banks looked like molten
granite—there was hardly water enough at the bottom to come up to
an ox’s belly. The skies were the color of lead and far away I
could hear the muffled booming of Adad’s thunder, but there would
be no rain this night. By the time I rode into the deserted
farmyard I could see flashes of lightning behind the eastern
mountains.

The house servants stood in a knot on the
porch of my house, murmuring among themselves and staring at me as
if they could not imagine how I had come there. A boy came from the
stable to take my horse.

“Well,” I said, grinning broadly and
wondering what was the trouble, “and will no one bring her master a
cup of beer? Where is my lady mother?”

“I am here, my son,” she said, stepping out
from the shadow of the doorway. “May the gods be blessed for having
spared you to return to me.”

I kissed her upon the lips and we went
inside, where I washed my face in a basin of heated water. All the
while my mother stood beside me, holding her hands clenched
together at her waist like a supplicant. I could only wonder what
new domestic catastrophe had befallen us—until Naiba came into the
room, silent as a cat, and stood penitently beside the hearth. Her
eyes were lowered; she seemed to be gazing down at her belly, which
had swollen beneath her tunic to the size of a summer melon.

I burst forth with laughter at the sight of
her, and she ran away, weeping loudly and hiding her face with her
arms.

“Perhaps we had best not tarry any longer
about the betrothal ritual,” I said at last, when I could control
my voice again. “Best marry the hot little bitch off quickly, or
young Qurdi will be a father before ever he is a husband.”

“Then you are not angry, Lathikadas?”

My mother stared into my face with an
expression that struck a nervous balance between gratitude and
astonishment, as if she were relieved to have detected me in some
weakness.

“No, Merope, I am not angry,” I answered,
putting my arm over her shoulders. “I have not gone into the girl
in almost a year, as you know, for she sleeps in your room and not
in mine, so I have no interest in the matter. If Qurdi is not
displeased, there is little enough reason why I should be.”

. . . . .

The next morning I received Tahu Ishtar and
his son into my presence. It was a visit of ceremony, so I met them
outside the door of my house. They bowed low and offered presents
of embroidered cloth, copper jewelry, bread, date wine, and honeyed
fruit. I accepted these in the name of my slave and thus gave my
consent to this betrothal. At last, Naiba came out into the
sunshine, escorted by my mother, and her future husband poured
scented oil over her hair. At first she flushed with pleasure and
then, almost at once, burst once more into tears and had to be
taken back inside, Merope clucking over her like a brooding
hen.

“My wife was much the same when she was with
child,” Tahu Ishtar said, after the women had gone. “Their livers
grow full of demons. To have been born a man is a great
blessing.”

The three of us then drank beer together, and
Tahu Ishtar and I agreed that, considering the circumstances, it
would be well if the marriage took place before I was obliged to
return to Nineveh. Qurdi stood silent as we talked and ground his
toes into the dust. He would have his wife before he was three days
older, but until then, it seemed, he was still only a boy.

The next day and the next there was rain from
noon to sunset, and a man could not even amuse himself with
hunting. I tried to stay out of my mother’s way, for there was much
to be done in preparation for Naiba’s marriage feast, and at last I
retreated to one of the barns to sit on sacks of millet and grow
drunk on beer. I felt out of place and wished I were still in
Amat.

But on the third day the sun was out again,
and at the third hour of the morning, when the farmyard was filled
with peasants from the surrounding villages, I led Naiba to the
house of Tahu Ishtar, her new father in law, and, as she sat on a
bench before the door, Qurdi covered her with a veil and declared
in a loud voice that she was now his wife. He looked very pleased
with himself and everyone cheered, for the boy was well liked—even
Naiba did not weep as much as I would have expected. At the end I
stepped forward and solemnly paid her dowry into Qurdi’s hands,
counting out the hundred shekels of silver so that all could see
that the overseer’s son was now a man of substance.

There were seven goats roasted to feed the
marriage guests, and we drank down many great jars of beer.
Everyone was merry, and at sundown Qurdi led his new wife into his
father’s house for the first time, although whether he was able to
go into her when she was so far gone with child I do not know. Yet
I think they were both very content with their bargain.

I went to my own bed soon after that, taking
with me for company a jar of strong date wine. I was pleased at the
day’s work, for I wished Qurdi well and was fond of Naiba, but I
cannot say that my pleasure was unmixed.

“I will never put the veil over any woman’s
head,” I thought. “And if I have sons they will be the children of
concubines.” I had only to close my eyes and I saw Esharamat’s
face—Esharhamat, whom I loved, who was my brother’s wife and the
mother of his son.

If a man drinks enough date wine he does not
dream. He snores like a pig and nothing troubles him. This is the
mercy of the great gods.

. . . . .

“My Lord Tiglath Ashur, the mighty rab shaqe,
does not care for wine? But, I am always forgetting, he drinks only
the fresh blood of Medes!”

This, followed by much laughter. It was a
banquet given by Nabu Pashir—the son of one of the king’s lesser
brothers, a man of no importance then but one who hoped for better
in the next reign. I cannot even remember why I went, since I must
have known that no one there would be quick to call himself my
friend.

But the joke went down very well. Esarhaddon,
among such, could afford to display his wit.

“In the spring my noble brother will fight a
great war,” he went on, perhaps encouraged by my silence. “He plans
to lead as many as twenty thousand men into the eastern
mountains—it will be a kind of horse catching expedition.”

There was more laughter, for the hour was
late and everyone was drunk, even the harlots. The flute players
sat in a corner, their knees drawn up to their chests, sleeping
contentedly. The table was covered with puddles of spilled
wine.

I waited, saying nothing. The men who sat on
either side of me faced away, watching my brother, trying as best
they could to ignore my existence. Everyone else—everyone out of
reach of my hands and feeling it thus safe to indulge a taste for
mockery—divided their attention between Esarhaddon and myself. It
was a game, and in this company no one harmed himself by becoming
my enemy.

He was the marsarru, I told myself. His
person was sacred and no man could insult him in public. If I
answered him at all, I would only end by making myself look
ridiculous.

Yet this was Esarhaddon, my friend from
childhood, my brother whom once I had loved. Now he wiped his
greasy fingers on his tunic, shot through with silver, and grinned
at me, hating the sight of me. How had it come to this?

“The great warlord—he sits up in that village
of mud huts he calls a garrison and plots cattle raids against
tribesmen who have never slept twice in the same place since the
day they were born. Oh, it is all very glorious!”

“Yes, and his mother is an Ionian tavern girl
whom even the king does not. . .”

I did not even know the dog’s name. He sat
only two or three places from Esarhaddon himself, staring at me
through wide, blinking witless eyes—perhaps he was fool enough to
have imagined himself within some magic circle of inviolability,
but he must have seen his error in my face for the words trailed
away to nothing.

The whole assembly fell silent as I rose to
my feet. Men scrambled to be out of my way as I kicked aside the
section of table that stood between us, for they knew that one
among them had signed his death warrant.

“No! NO—I. . .”

No one tried to interfere, and this one was
too drunk and frightened even to defend himself. I grabbed him by
the beard with my left hand and with my right drew the dagger from
my belt. One quick slash did the business, cutting his scrawny
throat so deeply that my blade scraped against bone.

Blood spurted forth, covering me, the table,
even the wall behind—he did not even cry out. I released his beard,
and he fell backward over the bench upon which he had been sitting,
as limp as water.

“I have repaid the insult,” I shouted,
glaring defiance. “If anyone wishes to claim satisfaction for the
deed, he will know where to find me.”

I turned on my heel and left. As I made my
way to the door, which seemed a journey of hours, I could hear
Esarhaddon’s voice at my back.