The Assyrian (59 page)

There was a tree at the end of the garden in
which several blackbirds were contending among themselves for
roosting rights—for days the sky had been crisscrossed with their
returning numbers. I could see their wings flapping heavily among
the still bare branches, and their threatening, unmusical cries
were probably audible even within the palace walls. I did not think
of omens, but the sight of them made me wish for a stone with which
to send them all flying.

“Why would Rimani Ashur have done such a
thing?” I asked, hardly aware, until I heard the sound of my own
voice, of what I intended. “What had he to gain? The priests, I
know, wished to see Esarhaddon made heir, but what had the baru to
fear from them while the king protected him?”

“There were some things from which not even
the king could protect him.” Nabusharusur’s reply sounded as softly
as the dripping of water. “It was the king’s wrath which he had to
fear, or so men say. For Rimani Ashur was subject to a weakness—an
appetite, if you prefer—and this he fed at the king’s own
table.

“An appetite? What appetite?”

“One in which I can have no share. And which
you, Tiglath Ashur—if the stories one hears are to be believed—have
already sated.”

Chapter 22

I did not attempt to understand
Nabusharusur’s words—I did not wish to understand them. Even if
what he said was true, I could not undo the damage of the past.
Esarhaddon was accepted as the marsarru, and Esharhamat was his
wife. Nabusharusur might not shrink from civil war, but I did. To
quarrel with my brother’s claim would be to soak the Land of Ashur
in blood, and who could say that when we were finished the winner
would have strength enough to be more than an easy meal for the
nations that prowled at our borders like jackals around a wounded
lion?

But I could not shut my mind to memory. I
could not forget the look on Rimani Ashur’s face when he beheld
Shaditu’s naked flesh as she made sacrifice on the day of the Akitu
ceremony. I could not forget her words that last night in Nineveh:
“Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods, true king.” “Did you think I
would let that cold little bitch puppy have you?” I could not will
myself to be as witless as that.

Shaditu had seduced the baru. She must have
threatened him afterwards—“I will tell the king,” she must have
said. “He is old and loves me blindly. I will tell him you raped
me. He will give you such a death as no man would envy.” And,
Rimani Ashur, frightened of the king’s wrath, had declared the
omens in favor of my brother Esarhaddon.

The impiety of such an act was incredible, so
that I could hardly bring my mind to accept its possibility. How
would it have been possible for a man like Rimani Ashur to have
committed such a betrayal of the god he had served all his life?
Why? Merely to escape death? Such a deed was worse than death and,
in the end, he had killed himself anyway. I could scarcely believe
it. And yet I did believe it. I did not wish to, but I did.

I had less trouble crediting my sister
Shaditu with so unholy a crime. Nor did I have to consider long to
find the motive—had she not told me so herself? “Did you think I
would let that cold little bitch puppy have you?” If the woman I
loved was safely in Esarhaddon’s house of women, would I not then
turn to my loving sister? Was that not precisely what I had done? I
was not even flattered that she should have taken such risks for my
sake, for to Shaditu probably the whole affair had been no more
than a game—the sort of game she had been playing ever since she
was old enough to be aware of her own power. Men are but clay in
the hands of clever women.

But what had Rimani Ashur seen in the goat’s
entrails that he should have hanged himself in remorse? Perhaps
only that Esarhaddon was not the god’s choice. Perhaps only that.
It seemed unlikely that I would ever find out.

Or perhaps the baru had taken his life for
some other reason, something that had not occurred to anyone. It
hardly mattered, since my own case was not altered by it.
Esharhamat was my brother’s wife, destined to be mother of a line
of kings which would rule until the gods were dust, and I could not
be king without bringing the nation to its ruin.

Was the child she carried mine? Was that to
be Dread Ashur’s final joke on us all, that I, who could not be
king, was to be the father of kings? It was all a great muddle, and
it made my head ache to think of it.

I was not sorry, at the end of ten days’
time, to see my royal brothers returning to Nineveh. I stood on the
half finished fortress wall and watched the dust raised by their
escorts horses fade into nothing, hoping the two of them would
never return to plague me more. I was weary of their mischief; when
the time came, they would have to make their rebellion without
me.

“I remember them both as children,” my mother
said.

“They are not children now. When the time
comes for the king to die, they will make us all dance.”

“What did they want of you, my son?”

“Want?” I could only shake my head and laugh,
though the jest was bitter. “What do the likes of Nabusharusur
always want? To spread poison and call it nectar. To make the world
as empty as their own hearts. Nabusharusur hates Esarhaddon because
Esarhaddon was once unwise enough to laugh at him. He hates me
because as boys we were friends. But he hates himself most of all
because of what the gelder’s knife and his own self-disgust have
made of him. Of Arad Malik I say nothing, for he is nothing except
the vessel into which Nabusharusur pours a moment’s wrath—he will
hold no more than that.”

To all this my mother made no answer, for she
was wise and saw that I spoke as much of my own wrath as
another’s.

But if my mind grew dark when I considered
the evils which lay ahead—and my own sense of helplessness against
them—I was content enough with the present. I had the love of
Merope, the friendship of Kephalos, and the willing embraces of
Naiba. I had perhaps as much of domestic happiness as most men are
allowed and this unblemished, for my mother and my concubine
dwelled together in peace.

Indeed, it was more than peace, for Merope,
who knew all about slavery among foreigners, had taken this slave
girl of mine into her heart so that they became almost as mother
and daughter. Naiba always deferred to her as mistress, but I could
never quite discover which of them was in fact running my house for
they seemed to take every decision, even down to what it was fit I
should discover on my breakfast tray, in the course of long
consultations—I was always finding them huddled together somewhere,
talking in low, conspiratorial voices about the outrageous prices
charged for lamb in the market square. My servants, most of whom
had families of their own, understood all this very well, and among
them the word of one was taken as the word of both. If my mother
had some little grievance, or a favor to ask, I was always sure to
hear of it first from Naiba, and just as my head touched the
pillow. And Merope was her advocate in much the same way. I have
since learned enough from life to know that this is the way of
women, how they make alliance to achieve sovereignty over their men
folk.

Thus life went along smoothly enough—and I
had almost forgotten that there was a world beyond Amat—until the
month of Tammuz drew close and I began to expect the visit of my
brother Esarhaddon.

Once the floodwaters had regained their
banks, that spring was unusually hot and dry. The ground, baked
hard by Ashur’s pitiless sun, cracked and crumbled away, and winds
which scorched like fire swept the dust into great swirling clouds
that blinded man and beast and choked their watering places. The
crops burned and withered in the fields. It was a cruel season.

A man’s nerves fray like old bowstrings in
such weather. It is too hot to work and there is no escape save in
drunkenness and quarreling. I know not how many of my soldiers I
had to order flogged to keep even the appearance of good order. And
this was the time the marsarru had chosen to make his
“inspection.”

I had word of his coming many days before he
arrived. The Lord Esarhaddon traveled with an escort of two hundred
soldiers and thus, for convenience’s sake, followed the river
course. My outriders encountered his heralds near the point where
the Upper Zab makes a vast bend, like a man’s elbow, and changes
its course from east to west. They hastened home to tell me of the
great pomp of my brothers retinue. I gave orders that twenty picked
men were to be ready to ride by first light, and the next morning
set off with them to meet this mighty host.

A great prince who maintains his state makes
slow progress, for we made and broke three night camps before we
crested a hill and saw the travelers, stretched out and dragging
their great weight along the river road like an army of ants
climbing over fresh pitch.

Esarhaddon no longer sat a horse as in the
old days but journeyed by chariot, which was more befitting his
dignity as a marsarru on progress. If he had been marching to war I
have no doubt many things would have been different, but this was a
state visit to the provinces. Even from a distance I could see
him—or, rather, I could see the canopies raised over him to keep
off the sun. I rode to the front of the caravan, which had drawn to
a halt at the first sight of our company, and then dismounted and
walked back through their ranks, leaving my weapons behind me. When
I reached my brother, I placed my hand on the wheel of his chariot
and knelt in the dust, bowing my head as I would have before the
king. When I raised my eyes I saw him grinning at me.

He was a splendid figure in his robes of
silver and gold, with his oiled beard and his turban glittering
with jewels, but he was still Esarhaddon. With a loud laugh he
reached down his arm to me and, when I took it, hoisted me into the
chariot like a load of wood. A rude kick sent his driver tumbling
out onto the road.

“Here—you drive,” he said, thrusting the
reins into my hands. But he retained the whip, and suddenly the
horses were at full gallop as soldiers and courtiers scrambled to
the sides of the road to avoid being trampled to death, all the
time Esarhaddon laughing to watch them run and lashing out at them
with his whip.

It was a wild career as we thundered down the
road, our wheels bouncing over every rock, threatening each time to
break the axle and kill us both, the horses snorting like devils in
their almost panicked flight. We raised a cloud of dust that must
have been visible for half a day’s ride.

“This is a good place,” he shouted finally,
his voice nearly drowned in the pounding of hoofs and the rattle of
our undercarriage. “Stop here.”

When finally I was able to pull the horses to
a halt, Esarhaddon leaped from the car and started running like a
madman toward the river, tearing off his glorious robes as he went.
At last, stripped even of his loincloth, he jumped into the water,
disappearing beneath its muddy surface for a long time. When at
last he came up he was floating on his back, his hands clasped
behind his head, looking mightily pleased with himself as he kicked
against the current.

I dived in after him, and very quickly we
were splashing each other with silt laden water and laughing like
children.

“By the sixty great gods,” he said, after we
had climbed out and were sitting on the shore, our backs drying in
the sun, “I will tell you one disadvantage to being raised to
glory, Tiglath my brother. All that gold and silver they weave into
your tunic—you might as well dress up in a furnace. I thought I
would roast to death. Oh, the mercy of Ashur—I am glad to be out of
that rig for a while!”

He lay back on the stony bank for a moment
and closed his eyes, a contented half smile upon his lips.

“Welcome to the north, O Dread Prince,” I
said in a solemn voice, and in an instant we were both helpless
with laughter.

That evening, in Esarhaddon’s tent, we got
very drunk together, chased out all the scribes and staff officers,
and, for the particular edification of the five favorite concubines
my brother had brought with him from Calah, sang all the obscene
songs we could remember from our boyhood in the house of war.

We had a glorious time. All either of us
could remember was how wonderful it was to be together again—we
were more drunk with that than with wine.

It was to be the last such occasion for many
years, for in the morning Esarhaddon, grown sober, wary, and
perhaps a little frightened, remembered once more that he was the
marsarru, and that a marsarru may love and trust no man, least of
all a brother. As I rode beside his chariot along the road to Amat,
I did not have to inquire into the meaning of his silence.

“Perhaps you have not yet heard,” he said
finally. “My wife the Lady Esharhamat has presented me with a son.
Whether it is mine or yours she seems reluctant to guess. He is
called Siniddinapal, but I think we have wasted our breath in
naming him. He is a sickly child and will not last long.”

He did not look me in the face as he said
this but watched for my reaction out of the corner of his eye, all
the time smiling a faint, triumphant smile, as if he knew perfectly
well the child was mine and rejoiced that it was likely to die
soon.

“The little mother is well, however, and she
will bear me other sons—many other sons, I think.”

It was five more days before we reached the
garrison and with each day Esarhaddon’s mood seemed to darken. We
feasted together and drank wine, but there was none of the old
carelessness. After the third cup I said enough. It was only
Esarhaddon, with the sullen determination of one seeking oblivion,
who made himself drunk. There is truth in wine, and when my brother
was flushed with it and began to grow reckless he would look about
him, as if each man at the table were his secret enemy, and talk of
spies and usurpers. He never accused me directly, but the thread
was there to follow.