The Assyrian (40 page)

“Misfortune? Oh—you mean the alu. It happened
on the journey, almost before the city gates. A mongoose ran under
my chariot and was crushed by the wheels.”

“Yes? Is that all?”

“Is that all?” He grasped me by the shoulder
of my tunic as if he would shake me into my senses. “Do you not
know that to have a mongoose run between your legs is the worst
magic? Even now my mother’s ashipus are studying to see if perhaps
the alu comes only if a man is standing on the ground—I was above
the ground, in my chariot. Or, if not, then perhaps some ritual. .
.”

“You do not have to worry about this day’s
sun, brother, for your brains have already been baked hard. I never
heard any such nonsense about a mongoose.”

Esarhaddon drew himself up straight, as if to
assert his dignity.

“You have not read as widely as I in the
texts, brother. If you had . . .”

“Since when have you become such a scholar?”
I asked, in some astonishment. “As far as I am aware, you can
hardly read at all.”

“I have them read to me.”

“Where? In Sumer?”

“Yes, of course.” Esarhaddon blinked at me in
astonishment. “It is in Sumer that such learning has been brought
to its perfection.”

“Then perhaps the alu comes only if the
mongoose is Sumerian.”

“You think such might. . ?”

“By the great gods, brother! Come inside—this
instant! Or your alu will have little enough work left to do.”

With my arm across his shoulder, he went into
his own rooms, where his women bathed his head in cool water. At
last he slept and was able to forget about the evil magic of a dead
mongoose—at least, for a while.

And this is what his mother had made of him,
and in only half a year.

. . . . .

On the evening of the sixteenth day of Ab,
the god at last would speak. I spent the morning of that day in
Esharhamat’s arms, in the house on the Street of Nergal. We had to
leave the windows open, for that upper room was like a furnace, but
somehow Esharhamat’s body was always cool.

“This may be the last time for us,” I said,
and as I spoke the words my heart felt dead within me.

“And if it is not, what then? When you are
named marsarru, will you ask the king if we may be married?”

“Those will be the first words to come from
my mouth. You know that.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“But if I am not the marsarru?”

“You will be.”

“But if I am not?”

“Then promise me—one thing only.”

“If I can, I will.”

“That you will come back here tomorrow.” She
moved in my embrace, settling her check against my heart. “That in
the first hour after midday, you will be here. I could not live if
I did not see you once more.”

“I will be here,” I said. “I promise. If I
die for it.”

And thus we waited through that final
day.

Chapter 15

For two days after the auspices had declared
that Esarhaddon must succeed him, the king hesitated. There was no
announcement to the people, although they guessed—within hours
after the baru had announced that the ginu’s entrails had been
found to be clear of blemishes, a mob went to my brother’s palace
and pelted his door with garbage. For two days Esarhaddon was not
named marsarru and was not installed in the house of succession.
The nation waited uneasily while her king struggled with his own
heart.

There were reports that some among the king’s
younger sons were whispering rebellion within the ranks of the
army, although nothing ever came of this, and it is well known that
a certain beardless scribe was spreading reports that the priests
had somehow played a trick with the omens to put a false successor
next to the throne.

And for all this I fear I must bear the
blame. It was not my brother’s fault that so many voices were
raised against him, but mine, for I had been too thorough in
preparing the people to receive me as the Lord Sennacherib’s heir.
They had been led to expect it, to regard it as inevitable, as the
king’s choice and the god’s and therefore their own. Of course they
felt cheated—and of course they blamed my brother. This was the
fault of my presumption. It was my failure, not his.

But finally the king appeared in public with
Esarhaddon at his right hand and declared it to be the god’s will
that the son of Naq’ia, his only living wife, should be his heir.
There was no rejoicing, but the people accepted the king’s word and
there was peace. It was, however, noted that the next day, the
nineteenth day of Ab and the first in which the sun shone on my
brother as marsarru, was an unlucky day in which men dressed in
rags and ate no cooked food and did not bed with their wives. Thus
did Esarhaddon come into his inheritance and thus, for me, were the
words of the maxxu fulfilled: “Do not think that happiness and
glory await you here, Prince, for the god reserves you to another
way. Here all things will be bitter—love, power, friendship.”

I was not in the city when the king broke his
silence. I had already asked for and received a commission as
shaknu of Amat and the northern provinces, where a border war with
the mountain peoples of the east seethed continually like a cooking
pot over a low fire. I would be a soldier again, I told myself, and
perhaps I would die, if not a glorious then perhaps at least a
useful death, for I felt that life had scratched the last word on
my tablet—and all this when I was not yet even twenty years
old.

But before the king would consent to let me
go he had to be dissuaded from ordering Esarhaddon’s arrest, that
he could have him murdered in some dark cellar.

“I am still king,” he raged, pacing back and
forth, back and forth across the floor of his private apartments.
In the middle of the night he had summoned me, and he, I, and the
Lord Sinahiusur were alone together behind his locked door. “For
all of what Rimani Ashur may or may not have found in the entrails
of a dead goat, I am still king! Eh? Yes? You should have seen his
face, Tiglath; his teeth were chattering, in this heat, and his
skin was as gray as granite. That cursed priest was lying to me. He
and your donkey brother are in a conspiracy; and by the great gods
I’ll have them both hanging by their heels before first light. Eh?
How will they like that? The traitors—the traitors!”

Back and forth he paced, his sandaled feet
slapping against the tile floor. I had received his summons
expecting that it meant I had been chosen, and now I watched his
tireless, restless wrath with weary eyes, my mind numb. I would not
be marsarru. I would never have Esharhamat as my wife. My brain did
not seem to have space even for these two simple facts.

“There are no traitors, Dread Lord,” I said
finally—my voice sounded distant, or as if it belonged to someone
else. “You yourself have called Rimani Ashur an honest man. .
.”

“Yes, but he is a priest! Priests. . .” The
king my father pronounced the word as if it left a bad taste in his
mouth.

“A priest, but an honest man. And my brother
Esarhaddon is the last one who would dare to tamper with the god’s
mysteries. We—you must accept this as Ashur’s will.”

“I will kill Esarhaddon. With the knife in my
own hand I will open his belly so that his guts spill onto the
ground like a basketful of wet washing.”

“If you do, my father, then you must seek
another son than me to rule after you.”

His head snapped around to look at me and his
eyes blazed, but I was not afraid of his anger—it seemed to me that
probably in my whole life I would never be afraid of anything
again.

“If you kill Esarhaddon, if you do this
wickedness, this blasphemy, if you deny him his life and his rights
as your heir, then I will leave this land and never return. Dread
Lord, you will never look upon my face more.”

“Eh? What is the boy. . ?”

“The boy is wiser than you are, brother,”
said the Lord Sinahiusur, his voice sad and calm. “Would you invite
civil war?”

“We will have that in any case, eh? We will
have that in any case, once I am dead—do you imagine the army will
accept Esarhaddon, who would rebuild Babylon tomorrow if he could?
Do you think they will accept him? Do you? Eh? Do you?”

The king collapsed into a chair and stared
down at his feet as if he felt they too had somehow betrayed
him.

“They will accept him if you accept him. They
will accept him if Tiglath will accept him.” The turtanu raised his
eyes to me. “What say you, Tiglath? Will you accept the god’s will,
or will you divide the nation by making war upon the brother you
have said you love?”

“You know my answer to that. Lord—you have
heard it before.”

He nodded. He understood.

“I feel pity for you, nephew,” he said
finally. “This is what comes of men believing they can rule the
god, who must have his own will in the end, yet it is hard. You
feel this punishment most bitterly, although the sin is not
yours.”

“The sin will not be yours,” the maxxu had
said. I started at the echo, and the Lord Sinahiusur and I
exchanged a glance that made me wonder how much he could have known
of that matter.

Yet I had only to remember Arad Ninlil to
doubt that I was so without sin. Had I consented, along with
Esharhamat? If it was so, then the god had found a means of
punishing us.

“I will kill Esarhaddon—yes, I will have his
life.”

The king stared at me with dead eyes. He no
longer believed his own words and his anger was spent, leaving only
grief. I went to him and knelt by his chair, and he put his arms
about my neck and wept. As if his heart were broken, he wept.

“And what of you?” he asked finally, when the
tears were spent and he was calm again. “What of you, my son—eh?
Esarhaddon will never sit easy on his throne as long as you are
alive. You know that, don’t you?”

“I have nothing to fear from Esarhaddon, nor
he from me.”

“Yes—the love of brothers is a beautiful
thing.”

He said it with a certain distaste, as if
acknowledging a dangerous weakness. He sat silent, looking at
nothing, seeming to brood over the wickedness of love.

“And what of you—here, now?”

“I must leave the city for a time,” I
answered. “A long time, I think. There must be no focus for
dissatisfaction with the god’s will. Give Esarhaddon his chance,
and he will shine brightly enough.”

“Where will you go, my son?”

“Dread Lord, if you love me, send me where
you would have blood spilled. I would fight a war—long and hard and
terrible. I would have my heart rubbed smooth of all softness.”

The king my father looked up at the Lord
Sinahiusur, who nodded his agreement.

“I cannot yet say what I will do,” he
murmured, his eyes shifting nervously, as if he could bear to look
at nothing for more than an instant. “Nothing is settled—I will
send you word.”

I bowed and left his presence. He and his
turtanu—his brother, as Esarhaddon was mine—would speak together
into the small hours of the morning, but there could be only one
decision. The king would raise Esarhaddon until he stood next to
the throne, and I would have to find some way of bearing my life. I
could be happy without being king, but never to see her again. .
.

I went out into one of the palace’s many
gardens, where the black night sky covered me from men’s sight, and
I leaned against a pillar there in the darkness, trying to
understand why I seemed to feel nothing. A hand seemed to press
upon me that I might not breathe, but my heart was numb.

“This is what it is to be dead,” I thought.
“To be a soul fluttering on the night wind—bodiless, without
passions, without ties to life.”

There was a faint wind stirring, a hot, heavy
wind, thick as water. It blew about me as if I were a shadow.

“Esharhamat,” I whispered, and in that same
instant I felt the sting of hot tears in my eyes and knew I was
still a man to suffer over the loss of his beloved. “Esharhamat. .
.”

And there, in the darkness, where none might
see, the god gave me a time to let this sorrow crack my breast.

. . . . .

In the first hour after dawn a messenger was
shown into my presence bearing the king’s orders—it was to be Amat.
I would leave Nineveh that night, quietly, taking with me an escort
of only twenty men. I would travel with all haste; riders had
already been dispatched to the north and my arrival would be
expected. I would have full military powers, as if in time of war.
I had one last day before leaving behind everything which had been,
until that moment, my life.

Amat—how that would gall Esarhaddon! And
could the king have intended anything less?

I waited one hour, and then another. Still no
one came to tell me that Esarhaddon had been proclaimed marsarru—he
might not even have been told yet. I would have to see him before I
left. I would have to make my submission, that later there could
never be any question that he did not command his brother’s
loyalty.

Esarhaddon’s palace was on the other side of
the house of war, and I walked through the dusty barracks yards
past troops of soldiers who stared at me as if at a prodigy of
nature. Was I in disgrace and headed for death? Was I to be the
next king? They could not guess, and thus knew not if they should
raise their hands in salute or be still. Most only stared.

I went straight to my brother’s rooms. None
of his servants tried to stop me—they cowered away from me as if
they suspected I carried a dagger beneath my cloak.

It was Esarhaddon’s custom to breakfast late
and I found him still at table, in a plain linen tunic, his feet
bare, and surrounded by his women. I placed my clenched fist over
my heart and bowed to him.

One of the Babylonian twins started to
giggle.

“My Lord Tiglath is very formal this
morning,” she chirped—this witticism was greeted by a wave of
girlish laughter.