The Assyrian (58 page)

At a few minutes after noon, the force
commander, a rab abru from his uniform, broke away from the lead
column and at a half gallop came toward me up the road to fulfill
the protocol of presenting his compliments and reporting the
numbers and dispositions of the companies. He was mounted on a fine
black charger and rode as if he was perfectly aware of the glorious
spectacle they made together. He was almost upon me before I
recognized him for Arad Malik, my royal brother, whom I had not
seen since our encounter under the walls of Babylon.

He reined his horse in to an abrupt halt,
saluted, and handed over to me his commander’s baton. I could not
have missed the sly smile on his lips as I accepted it and our eyes
met.

“I bring the king’s greetings to the Lord
Shaknu, the Royal Prince, the Mighty Tiglath Ashur, the Scourge of
Ashur,” he said, saluting once again. “And may I be allowed to
include my own?”

“I thank you, Royal Prince,” I replied,
wondering who could have taught him such a speech. “And you are
welcome, for I have learned to see the past with a blind eye.”

He showed his teeth in a grin — he had
grasped my meaning—and we rode back together to greet the
troops.

“The Lady Merope and her women are in a wagon
just behind the first column of infantry, where the dirt of travel
is less of an inconvenience.”

I nodded — perhaps less of an expression of
gratitude than he expected, but I did not know why Arad Malik had
come and I wished not to commit myself.

The troops filed past, and I received and
returned their salute. For just a moment I saw my mother’s face
behind the curtains of her wagon; she smiled and waved, perhaps a
little tentatively, as if unsure of her welcome. I could not wave,
but I could smile and that seemed to be enough.

“Most of them are still raw,” Arad Malik said
suddenly. It was half moment before I decided that he must be
talking about the reinforcements. “But there is a good leavening of
veterans. Do you plan to take them on campaign this season?”

“Yes—unless the Medes send an envoy to kiss
my feet.”

He laughed at this, just a shade louder than
the joke had warranted and we lapsed back into silence as the
columns of soldiers passed by in review. I was conscious the whole
time that he was watching me in his sidewise fashion, but I was
careful not to meet his eye. Why, when we had detested each other
from childhood, was he suddenly so ingratiating? And where had he,
cloddish even by the standards of a soldier’s mess, learned these
new arts of pleasing? I could only assume that time and
circumstances would enlighten me.

When the last of the formalities were over
and the eight new companies had been dismissed to find their
barracks, I helped my mother down from her wagon and, with her
women trailing silently behind us, led her to my new palace.

It had been three seasons of the year since I
had last seen her and she seemed worn; that, however, might only
have been the fatigue of the journey. As we walked she kept her
hands clamped tight on my elbow, as if afraid of stumbling.

“I do not think you will find this place too
unpleasant,” I said, trying to smile as she looked up at me with
moist, anxious eyes—she had often looked at me just that way, even
when I was a child; it was the look of one who does not trust in
the permanence of any happiness. “It is colder in the winter but
less oppressive in the summer. I have found that the climate agrees
with me.”

She did not answer, but smiled and glanced
away, clutching my arm all the tighter.

“Have you eaten, Merope?”

She shook her head. “Not since yesterday
morning, my son—I could not. I know it was foolish of me, but I. .
.”

“Then you will eat now. We will feast
together now, for tonight I must attend a banquet for my officers
and those affairs tend to last until long after decent people have
found their beds. Still, we have some few hours yet.

“Are you content, Lathikadas? And at
peace?”

“Who in this wide world is at peace?” I
answered, laughing uncomfortably. “I have learned to live with
myself, which is no trifling thing, and I am occupied with work. I
am not unhappy. It will be better now that you are here.”

“And do you still think of her?”

It was not a question I cared to answer
directly I shrugged my shoulders and smiled again.

“I have a woman—a present from Kephalos, who
understands the way of these things. You will meet her when we
dine. I hope you will like her.”

“If she pleases my son, I will like her.”

We walked up the steps and across the stone
veranda, and the guards opened the doors for us. For a moment,
looking around her, my mother was lost in wonder.

“It is truly a palace,” she said at last. “As
if for a king.”

“I am a king here, Merope—or, at least, I
stand in the king’s place and must keep up his dignity. But I
promise not to lock you away in my house of women.”

She laughed softly, and for the first time
seemed able to be really happy. It was a beginning.

. . . . .

The walls of the banqueting hall were
innocent of carved panels to immortalize my victories in war and my
prowess in the hunt. This deficiency was much lamented by Kephalos,
who thought it reflected badly on the shaknu’s majesty, but
otherwise when my officers, new and old, appeared for the welcoming
feast, they found nothing lacking that contributed to their comfort
and pleasure. My good servant, ever mindful of the importance of
appearances, had made that evening’s food and entertainment his
special concern. For three days his cook and a vast army of helpers
had been busy preparing delicacies enough to sate many times the
number of my guests and, looking about me as I entered, I had not
realized that Amat could boast so many pretty harlots. There were
even musicians. Since my arrival I had not heard the warble of so
much as a single reed flute, but somewhere Kephalos had found
musicians for the harlots to dance to.

“I have had to buy up every drop of decent
wine to be found in this dog hole,” he told me nervously; catching
at my sleeve as I prepared to sit down. “I only pray, Lord, that it
may be enough, but after an hour or two when everyone is
sufficiently drunk, I shall begin substituting lesser
vintages.”

“I beg you not to be anxious, my friend—a
soldier drinks only to be riotous and happy. That a wine be potent
is the only requirement he knows how to make of it.”

Indeed, judging from the din of the cheering
that greeted me when I took my place at table, these men of Ashur
were already quite drunk enough for present purposes.

I was in a fair way of being drunk myself
before I noticed that there was one among my guests who was not a
soldier—nor ever could be. Sitting near a corner of the hollow
square made by the banqueting tables, sober, largely disregarded by
the men around him, sat my royal brother the scribe Nabusharusur,
looking much the same as he had the last time we had met, on the
eve of my first campaign, when we were both really still boys.

Sitting where he was, he might never have
attracted my attention at all if one of the harlots, with a woman’s
spite against one whom she could not charm, had not begun to tease
him, calling on her friends to notice his smooth eunuch’s face and
attempting to sit on his lap. Nabusharusur, as if accustomed to
this sort of raillery, merely pushed her away and, for the rest,
sat staring glumly at nothing.

I raised a hand to summon one of the
guards.

“Chase that naked bitch out,” I told him.
“And give her a good hard spanking with the flat of your sword
before you let her go, since she thinks it proper to annoy my
guests. See to it that her backside is too tender to put on any
man’s lap for the next half month.”

“It shall be as you would have it, Rab Shaqe”
he said, grinning. The order seemed very much to his taste.

“And ask the prince my brother the learned
scribe if he would consent to join me.”

When Nabusharusur came to my table I rose and
took his hand, and the officers around me made room for him.

“I did not see you among the passing troops
this afternoon,” I said, simply to be saying something—this silent,
unhappy figure was not an easy man to talk to.

“I do not sit a horse well,” he answered. “I
traveled in a wagon with your mother’s women.”

He smiled thinly, as if admitting to an
obvious infirmity. It was his way of indicating that he was not
grateful to me for my interference, that he had accepted his lot,
if not with perfect grace, and would thank me to keep my generous
impulses for the benefit of others. Somehow—I could not say how—his
attitude inspired a certain respect.

“You wonder at my presence here?” he asked,
smiling the same thin, unhappy smile. “At why I would undertake
such a journey? I am employed as a scribe by our brother Arad
Malik.”

“I would imagine he has need of one,” I said,
remembering the pretty speeches of this afternoon.

“Yes.” The smile grew just a shade broader,
as if to acknowledge the justice of my remark. “He is a dolt, but
he has just wit enough to know it and to depend on me. I find him
useful.”

“As what? As someone to carry a sword for
you?”

“As a counter against Esarhaddon.” He
shrugged his narrow, feminine shoulders, conscious that he was
taking a risk and seemingly indifferent to it. “He is a soldier, a
prince, and still a man. People respect him for these things, and
when I put words into his mouth they listen.”

“Playing at treason is a dangerous game,
brother. Esarhaddon has a memory for slights, and he will be king
one day.”

“Does he? Will he? Who can know? In these
matters the will of the god is all.”

“The god has made his will plain
already.”

Nabusharusur said nothing, answering only
with another shrug. I did not have the impression he was as
concerned with the god’s will as he suggested.

It was not a topic I had any strong interest
in pursuing, so I joined his silence with my own and turned my eyes
toward the performance taking place within the hollow square of
tables, where one of the harlots, stripped naked and gleaming with
oil, danced like a madwoman, shaking her breasts in time to the
frantic drumbeat and moaning in what seemed an ecstasy of lust. My
officers cheered her on and kept time by clapping their hands—one
might imagine that none of them had ever seen such a dance,
although it was like a hundred others I had witnessed on such
occasions. I began to suspect that perhaps I was not drunk
enough.

“I wonder that even a man untouched by the
gelding knife can find these entertainments amusing,” Nabusharusur
murmured, as if confiding the thought to himself alone. “This
woman, who would delight to sell herself to anyone for half a
silver shekel, for a moment now she holds the attention of all. It
is a strange thing, this power of the flesh. It is beyond the
comprehension of a poor eunuch like myself.”

“But I think, brother, that you understand
other kinds of power well enough, and they, too, live more in the
mind than in the loins.”

I had said perhaps more than I meant to. Our
eyes met, and Nabusharusur smiled.

“It is well to know that not all the Lord
Sennacherib’s sons were born fools. We must speak again, Tiglath
Ashur.”

And we did, more than once in the ten days
that my royal brothers stayed in Amat as guests of the garrison.
Nabusharusur, with his thin arms and smooth face, was still as
quick in his wits as when we were all boys together in Bag Teshub’s
schoolroom, and to this the years had added the cold cynicism of
one for whom life holds no promises. A lump of earth like Arad
Malik could be sufficiently brave in battle—judged simply as a
soldier he was well enough—but courage in such men is largely lack
of imagination. Nabusharusur was a different case entirely. He saw
the truth with nerveless clarity; he feared nothing because he
cared for nothing. For the working of mischief one Nabusharusur
would always be worth a hundred Arad Maliks. The marsarru did not
know it, but he had made a formidable enemy.

But it was Arad Malik who spent his time
stirring up resentment against Esarhaddon among my officers. When
whispers of it began to reach me, I sent not for the rab abru but
for his scribe.

It was a warm day. We drank wine under the
vine arbor in my garden. This was not a conversation I cared to
have in the presence of any third person.

“It must stop,” I told him. “I expect his
visit within the next three months, and Esarhaddon knows how to
make himself popular with soldiers. Arad Malik is putting himself
under the shadow of the executioner’s ax.”

“Is he? He is safe enough while the king
lives, who cares not what evil is whispered of his successor, and I
think you overestimate the marsarru’s powers of pleasing. Besides,
in the next reign, if Esarhaddon chances to be king, Arad Malik
knows that his life will not be worth an hour’s purchase.”

“How does he know that?”

“From me—I have told him so. And he is on
familiar enough terms with the hastiness of our good brother’s
temper to believe it.”

“And what of you?” I asked, suspecting I
already knew the answer. “Why have you made this alliance for
yourself? It can mean nothing to you who is the next king.”

“That is true—provided it is not Esarhaddon.
Tell me, brother, can you credit simple spitefulness as a
motive?”

Nabusharusur looked at me with an inquiring,
faintly contemptuous expression on his face, as if he pitied me my
lack of intellectual refinement.

“Do you not know, Tiglath Ashur, what is the
common gossip of Nineveh?” he went on finally. “Have you somehow
escaped the rumor that the baru Rimani Ashur hanged himself in
remorse for having broken faith with Shamash, Lord of Decision, in
the matter of Esarhaddon’s selection? Do you honestly believe that
the god somehow preferred that thickheaded ox, who is fit for
nothing except to sacrifice himself in battle, over yourself?”