Day of the False King (13 page)

Apparently, the brokers held their auctions
on only two days of the week, and this was not one of them. The narrow
streets were therefore empty save for the occasional businessman, and
Semerket was able to traverse the town quickly to where the brokers
made their homes.

The brokers, it happened, were a tight
community of sharp professionals, each knowing his rivals’ business
intimately. Semerket had only to ask one of them to discover the
identity of that broker who held the monopoly on Egyptian slaves. The
man’s name was Lugal, and he was in the midst of his midafternoon’s
rest when Semerket appeared at his door. Despite the interruption, he
was glad to rise from his cushions, eager to do a little business. Like
most Babylonians of a certain age, he was broad-shouldered and
broad-bellied. He was not bearded, however, and, in fact, he had shaved
the entirety of his body. The slaves who came there from barbaric
countries were often crawling with lice, he explained. It was better to
remain bald and hairless, since in the course of his business day he
had to closely examine all the new arrivals. Semerket resisted an
almost instant impulse to scratch himself.

Lugal called loudly for some beer. A servant
brought a large bowl, with two flexible reeds, and he and Semerket sat
companionably together in the room’s center. The slave merchant’s
welcoming smile became a trifle fixed, however, when Semerket told him
he had no wish to purchase a pretty girl — or a boy, thank you — but
merely wanted to ask some questions regarding some of the merchant’s
old inventory.

“Of course, I’ll be glad to pay you for your
time,” added Semerket, “for you’re a man of business, and I would not
expect something for nothing.”

“Well, then,” said Lugal expansively,
patting his fat stomach as if it were a friendly dog, “you’re a
gentleman who commands my attention. How can I help you?”

Semerket explained how he sought his wife
and friend, relating to Lugal how Naia had been married to one of those
who conspired against Ramses III, while Rami was implicated in the
looting of royal tombs. Lugal listened wide-eyed, as he would to a
storyteller declaiming on the street corner, even applauding at the
conclusion of Semerket’s narrative.

“Stranger,” he said, “put away your gold.
Your tale is payment enough. Nothing in life is better than a good
story, and a true one at that.”

“Then you’ll help me find them?”

“If I can, of course,” said Lugal. “But our
records are not always as accurate as we’d like. Sometimes the slaves
come to us with the new names given them by their owners, and that’s
what we enter into our accounts. But take heart,” he added, seeing
Semerket’s suddenly crestfallen expression, “if your Naia is as
beautiful as you’ve described, I’m sure I’ll remember her — if she came
through here, that is.”

“Is Menef in the habit of renaming his
slaves?”

“Luckily he can’t be bothered — another
thing to be hopeful about. Come!”

Lugal led Semerket to a low building across
the courtyard. Baskets full of clay tablets lined its myriad shelves.
Lugal explained that he inventoried his sales by date, for taxation
purposes, and that a detailed description existed for each slave that
he sold.

Semerket gave him the approximate times that
Naia might have left Menef’s estate, and Lugal led him to those shelves
where they might find the appropriate clay records. Together they went
through each tablet, searching for a name or at least an indication of
nationality among the hundreds of slaves that Lugal had bought and sold
during that time.

As Semerket began to read, he saw that the
trader entered each slave’s name onto the clay, along with their age
and nationality or tribe. If the sale were being made on behalf of
another, with Lugal acting only as agent for the seller, that too was
noted.

Semerket exclaimed at the detail of the
documents.

“I have to do it, friend,” Lugal said.
“Slaves have the rights of law on their side, you know, and if they’re
clever they can easily win back their freedom. Some people actually
indenture themselves to us, if they can’t find work or have to flee
their creditors. There’s no shame in being a slave in Babylonia. Most
of the time it’s just a temporary condition — a bit of hard luck to
endure.”

Semerket was merely glad the reports were so
detailed, for it made sifting through them a quick chore. Semerket
discovered that, by far, the majority of Egyptians sent to Babylon were
male — which made sense, when he thought about it, since males were
more likely to become embroiled in the kinds of crimes that resulted in
banishment. The few records of female Egyptian slaves he found did not
correspond to Naia’s age or general description — which both upset and
relieved him. Quite a number of records were of Egyptian lads who might
have been Rami, though none bore his name. Lugal was able to tell him,
however, that none of the Egyptians he had sold had been sent to any
plantation northwest of Babylon.

They continued searching through the tablets
in silence, until Semerket heard Lugal give a victorious grunt. “Ah!”
said the trader, staring at a clay tablet he had withdrawn from a
basket. “This looks promising!”

Quickly Semerket went to his side. Lugal
read from the tablet aloud. “ ‘Egyptian female, twenty-three years of
age. Slim, comely. Answers to the name of Aneku.’ And it says here she
came from Egypt in the company of Menef, aboard his own ship.”

A sweat broke on Semerket’s brow. Very few
people knew that Naia’s father had called her Aneku when she lived in
his house. In Egyptian it meant, “She belongs to me.” He felt almost
nauseous, torn between both exhilaration and fear. “It could be her,”
he breathed, “for Aneku was her infant name. Who was she sold to?”

Lugal eyed the tablet. His expression
darkened. “Ah, well, it’s not the best of news — particularly for a
husband — but it could be worse, I suppose.”

Semerket did not like the anxious look on
Lugal’s face. “Who bought her?” he asked again.

Lugal coughed, pretending great interest in
the tablet, squinting at the marks inscribed on it. “The guardians of
the Temple of Ishtar, I’m afraid.”

Semerket let out a long breath. “You
frightened me,” he laughed. “From your look, I expected worse.”

“Well, then,” Lugal smiled in return,
relieved. “If you’re comfortable with it, so am I. Frankly, I thought
that you’d despise me for selling her to the Ishtar eunuchs, and take
your revenge somehow.”

Semerket’s sense of disquiet returned. “Why
d’you say that?”

The grim, anxious look again appeared on
Lugal’s face. “Do you not know of the Temple of Ishtar?” he asked.
“What it is…?”

“I assume that Naia — if that’s who she
really is — helps to serve the goddess in some way.”

“Aye,” Lugal said, “but do you know in what
way?”

Semerket shook his head, suddenly unable to
speak for fear of what the answer would be.

“Ishtar is first and foremost a goddess of
fertility…”

“Well?” Semerket asked.

“Aneku was bought to serve as a temple
prostitute.”

SEMERKET STOOD DAZEDLY outside
Lugal’s compound in the red afternoon sun. He wandered past a wagon
train of slaves, recently arrived from the northern mountains. The
strong scent of unwashed human flesh made him aware of where he was,
reviving him better than even spirits of juniper. He pushed his way
through the milling slaves, taking himself back to the stables where
the chariot waited.

“I want to return to Babylon now,” he
announced to the driver.

“But, lord, it’s getting dark. By the time
we reach the city, the Elamite’s curfew will have fallen.” The man
smiled encouragingly, hoping that Semerket might see reason. “Wouldn’t
it be better to stay here in Eshnunna tonight, and get a fresh start in
the morning? The desert night is full of demons…”

“Now!” snarled Semerket, seizing a coiled
whip from a peg and brandishing it dangerously.

The moon rose large and yellow over the
desert, and the boulders and scrub cast weird, tangled shadows across
the golden sands that stretched before them. Despite their eagerness to
run as swiftly as before, the charioteer kept his horses to a brisk
trot. For the first couple of leagues Semerket remained silent. He
focused his troubled eyes forward, always on the red glow in the
southwest that was Babylon.

The charioteer glanced covertly at him. The
moon’s rays picked out Semerket’s bitter profile. The charioteer
swallowed, musing on what the Egyptian must have discovered back in the
slave yards that had turned him so sour. When Semerket spoke again, his
words were not the ones the charioteer expected to hear. “What can you
tell me of the Temple of Ishtar?” Semerket asked quietly.

So that was it, the charioteer nodded to
himself. The man must be of an amorous nature that evening, and needed
to relieve his tension in the time-honored way. The charioteer had
noticed that eventually all foreigners wanted to go to the Lady’s
temple, to see for themselves if the stories were true. In fact, the
charioteer received lavish gratuities from Ishtar’s guardians to talk
up the temple’s allurements to the hostel’s boarders.

The man launched into a full-throated
description of the pleasures Semerket might find at the home of Ishtar.
“Ah, my lord! It is a wonder of the world —”

“Is it a brothel?” Semerket curtly
interrupted the charioteer’s patter.

“It’s a paradise come to earth, a city in
itself, dedicated to love, with gardens of such exquisite —”

“What of the women there?”

“The Ishtaritu, my lord?” The charioteer
blinked in confusion, trying to remember the order of his rehearsed
speech. After a false start, he was once again able to pick up the
thread of his words. “My lord, there are more than two thousand of
them. Every new ship brings fresh beauties from around the world to
serve there, each chosen to become a living manifestation of the
goddess herself. Why, there are women from over sixty different races
and countries, some with skin like polished ebony, others with eyes cut
obliquely —”

“Are Egyptians among their company?”

“I — I suppose so, my lord.” He hurried on
to the next part of his speech. “And if you’ve tired of female
companionship — as who among us has not? — there is no shortage of male
Ishtaritu to whom an offering —”

“And the cost for all this beauty?”

“Ah, my lord, the act of love is the only
offering the goddess requires.” The charioteer coughed discreetly. “Of
course, a present equal to the pleasure you receive is not turned away
by the priests, if that should be your wish.”

“Of course.”

Stillness fell between them. The charioteer
again looked sideways. The Egyptian certainly did not seem eager to
sample the glories of Ishtar’s temple. In fact, he seemed more morose
than ever.

Just as they came to the outskirts of
Babylon, however, Semerket cleared his throat to ask a final question
of the charioteer. “Where is it? What part of the city?”

“The Ishtar Temple, my lord? Why, near the
Ishtar Gate — where else?”

The moon had lost its skin of gold by the
time they reached the city walls, and was now almost directly overhead,
a flat pale disc of white. Contrary to the charioteer’s predictions,
the Elamite guards allowed them to enter Babylon, for Semerket demanded
— and received — a pass permitting them to be on the streets after
curfew.

The charioteer deposited him at the front
door of Bel-Marduk’s hostel. Semerket waited at the door in the light
of the hostel’s torches, watching as the charioteer drove the horses
around to the stable. When he knew he was alone and unobserved, he
slipped again into the street.

Since he had a pass allowing him to be
abroad after curfew, he was certainly not going to be stupid enough to
let it go to waste. He walked quickly down Processional Way, in the
direction of the Ishtar Gate. It would be ironic if he found Naia no
more than a furlong from where he had been staying all along…

Firmly, he forbade himself to sob.

DESPITE THE ELAMITES’
CURFEW, Ishtar’s temple was raucous with activity. Most
of those who gathered in the street around its tall gates were Elamite
soldiers on leave, drunk and loud, or foreigners with nighttime passes,
also drunk and loud. As he came nearer the gate, he took out a silver
piece to pay the temple guardians. Despite the chariot driver’s
reassurances, Semerket did not believe that Ishtar’s priests demanded
only an offering of love at her temple; if so, that in itself would
have been reason enough to call the temple a wonder of the world.

A silver piece was coincidentally the exact
price of admission required of him. Passing through a tunnel, he at
last entered the gardens. A thousand torches gleamed, making the
gardens blaze as brightly as if it had been noon. The temple grounds
comprised a series of low-slung terraces planted in flowers and groves,
rising to form an artificial hill. At their crest stood the temple
itself, looking very much as the charioteer had described it to him, a
paradise on earth. The scent of jasmine and honeysuckle wafted to him,
borne in the arms of the night breezes.

A long line of men snaked through the
gardens, climbing slowly through the terraces. Semerket crossed the
courtyard to join it, for the line appeared to be the only way into the
temple. There, he supposed, was where the sacred prostitutes were to be
found.

When he had gone a few steps, however, he
realized that the women concealed themselves in niches within the
terraces. Watching the other men closely, he learned that one chose a
woman by throwing yet another silver piece into her lap. The Ishtaritu
then led her suitor into the temple, where Semerket presumed the cribs
were located.