The Assyrian (7 page)

I nodded, without smiling. Kephalos, who I
sensed was less than happy about entrusting his fate to a child,
had rehearsed me with great care.

“It is my impression that the Lord Sinahiusur
wishes me to have opportunities for prac¬ticing the Ionian
language, that I may not lose what might be of practical value in
years to come. The Ionians are an ambitious people, Tabshar Sin,
and who knows but that one day. . .”

It required no more than an equivocal shrug
to crease the rab kisir’s brow with anxiety. I had little enough
idea what my own words meant, for Kephalos had stuffed them into my
head like straw into a cushion, but it seemed that Tabshar Sin’s
grasp of these matters was less certain even than mine. He was a
soldier with a soldier’s virtues. He was brave, he was good at his
craft, and he followed orders with blind fidelity. Questions of
state, as mysterious as necromancy, were the king’s province and
the god’s.

So if the turtanu, who spoke with the king’s
voice, wished that Tiglath Ashur should be possessed of a slave
from some unheard of corner of the world, that was enough for
Tabshar Sin.

“But mind, Prince, that this soft little
Ionian of yours does not make a nuisance of himself,” he said
finally, gesturing at me with his knife, the point of which was
almost dancing against my breast. “And see to it that he doesn’t
teach you any of his foreign laziness. None but a fool whom the
gods have forsaken would trust the tools of his trade to a slave,
so mind you keep your own sword bright and find other things with
which to occupy the rascal. Mind, Prince.”

His expression was so fierce, and the point
of his knife so close to my heart, that I ducked my head rapidly
and agreed to everything.

“The gods know,” I said quickly, “that I have
little enough need of a servant, but the fellow does seem to have
some knowledge of healing wounds, so. . .”

“Good, then. That’s settled.”

As abruptly as if the idea had just come to
him. Tabshar Sin stood up from the table and shuttled outside to
relieve himself against the barrack wall. It was late and he would
find his bed now, and in the morning it would be as if the slave
Kephalos had been his own inspiration from the first.

I never had the opportunity properly to thank
the Lord Sinahiusur for his gift, for I saw him little after that
day, and then only from a distance and in the awesome state of his
office, which did not allow for communications of a personal
nature. In truth, the king and his companions were as remote as
gods. For all that the Lord Sennacherib had placed his hands upon
me and called me ‘son,’ I beheld him only twice over the next two
years and heard his voice but once.

The first of these was at a military parade
held as the king set out upon campaign. I stood at attention with
the other boys from the royal barrack as he rode by in his chariot,
resplendent in his robes of gold and silver that shone in the
sunlight like dancing fire. He looked neither to the right nor to
the left as he passed—he might have been an idol of stone. But this
is the way of kings. It is how they demonstrate their majesty.

The second was on the occasion of his return
and, although it began well enough, will always endure in my memory
as among of the most painful nights of my life.

There was a great banquet to celebrate the
triumph of our arms over the hill tribes who gathered like locusts
east of the Tigris River. It was held in one of the palace’s great
halls, where the walls are covered with carved stone panels showing
how Ashur’s mighty sovereign subdued his enemies. Torches dipped in
wax burned in the wall sconces and there were the sounds of many
voices and of the musicians from the earth’s four quarters whom the
king had brought as spoil to Nineveh. Women in gold and fine linen
danced, their bodies swaying to the rhythm of cymbals and drums,
and the smells of spices hung heavy in the air.

I served as a page, for on such occasions the
Lord Sennacherib liked to have his sons about him that they might
behold his glory. I waited beside an entranceway, in the clean
uniform of a royal cadet but without my sword, since none might
carry a weapon into the king’s presence. I watched my father as he
sat at table with his two eldest sons, the Lord Sinahiusur, and
some dozen or so of his most eminent courtiers whose names I have
long since forgotten.

I felt invisible there—in such noise and
confusion these splendid nobles, as they concen¬trated on their own
pleasures, would never notice one such as me. It was to be my
education in the character of greatness, for these, I thought, were
the men who would rule in the land of Ashur for the length of my
life.

The king and the turtanu were blinding in
their majesty. The greatness of their power surrounded them like a
living aura and I felt as if the sight of them would burn my eyes
out. These were not flesh and blood like myself, but almost
gods.

The marsarru Ashurnadinshum, whom I had never
seen before, I found less impressive—and this in spite of the fact
that he was already by his father’s grace king of Babylonia. He was
up from the south for his wedding, I had heard, but the prospect
seemed to give him little enough joy. He had a thin, dissatisfied
face and appeared most unwilling to speak. He sat by the king’s
right hand, his fingers drumming against the sides of a golden wine
goblet, silent, almost absent.

And this, I thought to myself, this is the
man who will wed Esharhamat and take her from me forever—since I
knew by then that my brother Esarhaddon had spoken truly and that
this separation would he final—and in my jealous despair I cursed
Ashurnadinshum, for I was young and the sight of him tore at my
liver. I wished him misery and ruin. I asked the gods to strip him
of his life. If they listened, may his wandering ghost forgive
me.

But I was not suffered to stand there
invisible forever. At last the king glanced in my direction, and
then, when he was almost ready to look away, something about me
seemed to attract his attention. He turned to the turtanu, murmured
a word, and then nodded gravely at the answer.

The next instant he raised his hand and
beckoned me toward him. I came and knelt, clasping his knee in
token of submission, and with his own hand he raised me up.

“So this is what has become of the mighty
Tiglath Ashur, eh? ‘My father is Sennacherib, King of Kings,’ is
that not right? Yes? Hah. Hah, hah!”

I was not abashed, for I had heard that
laughter before and now it echoed from many throats. The king put
his hand upon my arm and brought me closer, as if he would look at
me.

“In a few years’ time this one will pile many
heads before my lord’s feet.”

I do not know who spoke, but in answer the
king laughed once more, and his laughter seemed to beat against me
like a fist. He struck me a joking blow with the backs of his
fingers and feigned astonishment that I could stand my ground. Once
more his laughter filled the great hall, for the lord Sennacherib
was pleased with both himself and me.

I brought my eyes up to see into his face,
for it seemed to me unworthy that the king’s son should stare
dumbly at the ground like any plowboy, and I was surprised to
behold that his gaze turned aside at once. He would not look at me
straight, so I found I had a moment—just a moment, for the great
are averse to being stared at—in which to study his face.

Yes. I had not been mistaken. I could read it
in his eyes, what I had sensed with a child’s quickness of insight
but could not have put into words. The Dread King, the Chosen One
of Ashur, the Lord of the Universe was afraid, weary and afraid.
Not of me, for who fears a boy?—but of life. He was but a man after
all, and his burden weighed upon him. And in my heart in pity I
called him “father”.

It was the thing of an instant. It was over
in the time it takes to draw a breath, and he was the king again.
He smiled at me and I felt the pressure of his hand upon my arm and
his dark, lined face resumed its majesty, but the impression stated
with me all my life.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “Who do
you imagine waits to see you tonight, boy? Eh? Yes?” He raised his
arm and pointed into the shadowy corner of the room. I tried, but I
could see nothing except a doorway standing half open. “Your
mother, boy! Eh? Yes, you are excused. Run to her!”

The great king, the Giver of Gifts, could not
more have won me to him had he cast half of Asia at my feet. In my
confusion of mind I did not even bow myself out of his holy
presence. The blood pounded in my veins and I flew to that shadowed
corner like a hawk falling upon its prey.

She was there, my beautiful bronze haired
mother, and she knelt in the murky light to open her arms to me and
crush my body against her. I could feel my heart pounding with a
joy that was almost like the agony of death as she dug her fingers
into my back. And she wept—she rocked me in her spasms of weeping
and I felt her tears upon my back. I had not known, until that
moment, how much I had longed for her. What was glory, what was the
favor of kings compared to the sweet embrace of my mother, whom
these things had stolen from me? Where else but here in her arms
could I feel any happiness? For a great time we did not speak. We
could not speak. Our tongues were frozen.

“My Lathikadas, my fine boy, you have grown,”
she said at last. She held me a little away from her that she might
see that it was true, and yes, I was her fine boy—I could see it in
her eyes, blue like my own. Her fine boy. Better that, I felt, than
rab shaqe. I straightened up and smiled and let her fill her sight
with me.

“You have grown, yes. You are almost a man
now.” She smiled back, but there was a misery in her smile, as if
she were measuring the distance that yawned between us. “Tell me,
tell me everything that has happened to you. Do you like being a
soldier? Is it all that you dreamed it would be in the house of
war?”

What was it that I read in her face in that
instant? Did she dread to hear me say that I loved my barrack and
my horses and all the cruel implements of battle? Did she fear that
that new idol might have replaced her in my heart? Or did she long
to know of my happiness there, that she might believe the sacrifice
of losing me had been worth all that she had to pay for it in
anguish and loneliness? I did not know. A child cannot know these
things, for he understands no happiness or misery but his own, and
yet I sensed in that moment that mine was not the power to ease her
sufferings but only, if I spoke the wrong word, to burden her with
more.

“Oh. Merope,” I said, holding her face
between my hands, “would that you could see the glory of it, that
you could see me there! You would not be ashamed to call me your
son.”

I told her everything, about Tabshar Sin, who
had but one hand, and my Greek slave, about my prowess with the
javelin, about Esarhaddon’s skill in wrestling, and the chariots
that threw up curtains of dust behind their burning wheels and the
sunlight flashing off the weapons during sword practice. I wearied
my tongue now. The words poured out of me like water at flood time,
and she was content to listen and admire and be still. It was not
wrong to speak of these things. It was of these that she seemed
most eager to hear, for she understood that she had not lost me to
them. That I was free set her free as well, for she was still in my
heart.

But when I asked after her and the house of
women, she was silent and evasive.

“Oh, my son—it is much the same.” Her eyes
turned aside from me. The fountain waters still laugh like naughty
children. Do you remember the fountain, Lathikadas? And the little
gazelle? He is grown now, and they took him away. . .”

“And what of Esharhamat, Mother? Is she still
so pretty? Does she ever ask about me?”

It was an innocent enough question, but my
mother covered my mouth with her hands as if I had uttered some
terrible curse that would come back to fall upon my head.

“You must never speak of her, my son. You
must forget her. You must forget that she exists.”

She held me to her again and, although she
did not weep, I knew she was wretched. Young as I was, I could not
guess why.

“Forget us both, and go on to be a great
man.”

“Now go,” she said suddenly, releasing me
with a push. “You are mine no longer, my Lathikadas. Go back to
your father—you are his now. You belong to him and his god. Forget
me and be happy.”

I did not think I could bear it. The moment
of parting was almost upon us, and this time I understood how
completely I was to lose her. The tears started in my eyes. I
thought my heart would crack within my breast.

“I will ransom you free from the house of
women, Mother,” I said, hardly able to speak. I held her arms as if
without them I might sink into the earth. “You will see. The king
is pleased with me. I will win you away from this. I will never
forget you.”

The door behind us opened a little wider, and
I saw the eunuch who was waiting to take my mother back to her
golden cage. The sobbing rose in my throat as if through its own
will.

But Merope was already on her feet, fading
into the shadows. I would have rushed to embrace her once more, but
she held out her hands to prevent me. I could see, even in that dim
light, the tears that wet her face.

“Goodbye, my Lathikadas, my son,” she
murmured. “I cannot help you with my love now. Forget me, my son.
Only remember that I love you more than life.”

And then she was gone. The door closed. I was
alone

Chapter 3

I do not know how I found my way back to the
royal barrack that night. I remember that I lay on my bed, that I
thought I would die of misery, that my tears choked me and made my
throat burn. I was but a boy and nothing cuts as deep as a boy’s
sorrow.