The Assyrian (92 page)

My overseer punctuated his answer with a low
bow, his hand over his heart. I wondered how much he might know but
decided that perhaps it would be better not to ask.

“Such I am no longer, for I have made over
the estate to my lady mother. I know you will serve her as
faithfully as you have served me, Tahu Ishtar.”

“I and my son both, Lord.”

“Good, then—that is settled.” I swung up on
the horse’s back and held out my hand. Tabu Ishtar took it in both
of his. “And may things prosper with you always, and may the child
in Naiba’s belly be another grandson to rejoice your heart.”

“Goodbye, Lord. May the god hold you in his
hand.”

He knew we would never meet again. It was in
his voice.

“Goodbye, Overseer.”

When he released my hand I let the gelding
have a taste of the spur and left behind this place which had been
my home.

. . . . .

I reached the marker stone of my own lands in
the first hour of morning and I did not expect to pass under the
Great Gate of Nineveh until about two hours after midday. With a
nimbler pace I could have been quicker in my journey, but I had had
a large breakfast and was inclined to be lazy and, in any case,
nothing so very pleasant awaited me in Nineveh.

The road ran always within sight of the
Tigris River, which at this season of the year lay within narrow
banks. Her cold black waters raced over her stone bed hissing like
an adder—she too was on her way to Nineveh.

I wondered what would happen there. Would I
be confronted with false witnesses, men paid to testify that I had
plotted with Arad Malik? Would Esarhaddon really stoop to that,
since he better than any would know my innocence?

Yet even as king he would not dare to charge
me with my true crimes, for how could he possibly admit to the
world that his son and heir, the child Ashurbanipal whom the gods
favored, was not his issue but my own? No, if he knew—and I rather
suspected that he did—he would keep silent.

So. What was left? An assassin—a hired dagger
hiding in the shadows? Probably. Everyone would know the truth, but
no one would utter it. A king can reign with many scandals behind
him, for men—if given a choice—will always believe what they
want.

Sinqi Adad had said that before the flesh was
burned from his bones. Was this the wisdom that comes to condemned
men?

The sun in my face was pleasant. Life was a
gift of heaven, even if it lasted but an hour.

Everything was clear on the road to
Nineveh.

I met few people on my journey until I had
passed the last marker before the city gates—the same spot where I
had spoken for the final time to the maxxu. There, where the wheel
ruts in the mud grew suddenly deeper, I passed a knot of farmers
with their wagons, three or four of them, pulled to the side of the
road, enjoying a jar of beer and a little conversation on their way
to market. One glanced at me as I passed, and the sudden surprise
that registered in his face showed that he recognized me. Five
minutes later the same wagons passed me at a brisk trot, but the
men looked away as they went by.

I stopped on the road and had my midday meal
at a spot where I could already see the walls of Nineveh.

How had it all happened? Every step of our
downward path was clear to me, and yet I still could not grasp how
Esarhaddon and I, friends and brothers, could now be such
unforgiving enemies. It seemed strange, and yet inevitable. My life
in ruins, his without contentment or ease of spirit—it was bitter.
This hatred between us, it was what I regretted most, even more
than the loss of Esharhamat, whose love at least I had retained. If
it was to be the assassin’s blade, striking from some concealed
place, I would not grieve to part from my life. Yet I grieved that
it would be Esarhaddon whose treasure paid that it might be
done.

Having finished my meal, I set out on the
last part of my journey. By the time I was within five hundred
paces of the Great Gate I could already see the crowds
gathering.

By the time I had crossed half that distance
they were lining the road, throwing flowers and gold coins in my
path, reaching to touch me, or even my horse, cheering.

“Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur is
King!” they chanted, their faces flushed, wild with joy. As I
passed beneath the Great Gate, the mud walls echoed the shouting.
The Street of Ninlil, which led to the king’s palace, was clogged
with people—foreigners and natives, children and men, women holding
out their babies that my shadow might fall across them. I could
hardly make my way for the pressure of the mob that surged to come
near.

And everywhere the cheering, the same cry
from so many thousand throats: “Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” It
was almost as if they were pleading with me or their god or
both.

“This,” I thought, my heart pounding within
my breast, “this is the finest hour of my life. Whatever comes now,
I will never know another like this.”

There is a saying in the east that the three
finest things in life are love, power, and revenge. The crowds who
came to welcome me home to Nineveh gave me all three, if only for
this brief moment. Whatever might come in the hours and days to
follow, I was having my revenge on Esarhaddon in advance.

Even on a market day, when the streets are
crowded, a man may walk from the Great Gate to the palace of the
king in forty-five minutes. That day, on horseback, it took me not
less than two hours. The people of Nineveh would not let me go. My
head rang with their cheering, and I was drunk with the wine of
their adoration. They, at least, had not forgotten me.

The steps of the king’s palace were crowded
as well. The nobles of my brother’s court, perhaps attracted by the
commotion had come in their grandeur and their robes of office to
witness what, no doubt, they had never expected and could hardly
understand. I saw many faces that were known to me and many that
were not. I saw perplexity, alarm, even fear. Yes, of course they
were afraid.

And at last even Esarhaddon himself appeared
on the palace steps—the king, in robes of gold, come once more to
subdue the people of this hated, rebellious city. He raised his
hand for silence, but the crowds paid him no heed. They kept up the
joyful sound of their cheering—”Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur
is King!”—as if I were their king and they followed me from my
crowning ceremony.

At last, at the foot of the Stairway, I drew
my frightened, nervous horse to a stop and dismounted. Esarhaddon
was at the top, before the great doors, which stood open on their
copper hinges, and I at the bottom, and we faced each other for the
first time.

I mounted the steps, one after the other,
slowly, the nobles of my brothers court breaking before me and the
crowd still cheering at my back. One step at a time—it seemed to
take forever.

At last I stood before him. A cold sneer was
on his face, as if he had expected this treachery all along. And
still they cheered.

I knelt at Esarhaddon’s feet.

The crowd went silent. On my knees I held out
my hands to him, my king and lord, in token of submission. And then
I pressed my brow against the ground in front of him. It was a
gesture no one could have misunderstood.

The world seemed to hold its breath. I raised
my head and saw hatred in my brother’s eyes—yes, for this he hated
me more than ever. I regained my legs.

Esarhaddon said nothing. He simply turned and
walked back inside through the open doorway.

. . . . .

I was informed it was the king’s will that I
not dwell in my own residence, the palace I had inherited from the
Lord Sinahiusur, but should abide within the royal palace itself. I
was in fact being kept under informal arrest—I had freedom of
movement within the palace and the house of war, now garrisoned
with troops from the south loyal to Esarhaddon, but the city was
forbidden to me.

They feared the mobs, of course. They feared
that somehow, even after my public submission to the king, I might
snatch the crown from his head—although whether I still had the
power was difficult to know.

The mob, I think, was disappointed in me.
They had expected that the Prince Tiglath Ashur would be their
liberator, their champion. They had hoped for a miracle. As always,
I was praised and honored because I was not my brother. And now I
had declared myself his servant.

But what it had cost Esarhaddon to be seen
receiving this public pledge of my loyalty! One cannot command what
is freely given, and how it must have galled him to see me with my
face to the ground, honoring him as king because it was my will.
The victory had been mine—not his, but mine. I had paid him back
for everything in that moment. His pride would never recover. He
would remember all his life how I had shamed him. A man may
triumph, even on his knees.

And now, again, I waited for his sentence,
although now it hardly seemed to matter.

I was alone. Slaves brought me food and
tended to my other requirements with silent efficiency but never
spoke. For three days my solitude was unbroken.

But on the third night I received a visitor.
As I sat before a brazier in what would have been my audience
chamber, a door opened, a shadow fell across the floor, and I saw
my sister, the Lady Shaditu—at least, I remember thinking, she
wasn’t an assassin.

Suddenly the slaves were gone. They had
simply disappeared.

“I had thought by now you would have chosen
your alliances,” I said, grateful, in spite of myself, for even
such of human warmth as she could provide.

“I have. But our brother does not take his
women seriously enough to care where they go or whom they see.”

“You are his woman now then?”

“Yes—you were expecting Esarhaddon to be as
dainty as yourself?”

She smiled at me and sat down beside me on
the couch. It was only a smile, nothing more. “A crow steals scraps
where it can. Esarhaddon knows my bed, as do other men. I wonder
sometimes if he would still recognize me out of it. What happened
to the slave girl?”

“The Arab? Zabibe? I gave her to a metalsmith
with one eye. If his arm is strong enough—and his stomach—perhaps
she is even happy with him.”

This made Shaditu laugh. She threw back her
head and laughed like a jackal. And then she put her arms about my
neck and covered my mouth with her own. I could feel her tongue
sliding between my lips. My hands covered her breasts.

“Go ahead,” she whispered. “There is nothing
to stop you.”

Nor was there. Shaditu sighed with passion
the moment I went into her.

When it was over, it might never have
happened. She smoothed her hair back with her hands and smiled
again.

“You perhaps wonder why I came? No—not for
that. At least, not only.”

“Then what else?”

“To tell you of your danger.”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

“My danger. . ?” I was still almost choking
with laughter. “My. . . Shaditu—my sister—do you imagine I do not
understand my danger?”

“Esarhaddon is filled with wrath,” she said,
ignoring this unseemly display of mirth. “When he entered the city,
his captives chained to his chariot, an army at his back with which
he had won a great victory, the people stood silent. There was no
sound but the drums. And then you. . .”

She made a gesture with her hand, as if
letting it float in the air.

“That is what you made of his
triumph—nothing. Less than nothing. ‘He thinks I am king through
his grace?’ he asks, and men are ashamed to answer him. He will
kill you if he dares.”

“And does he?”

“You know him. It lies with his dreams and
his soothsayers—and his mother.”

“If it lies with her, I am already dead.”

She did not answer but rose, walking back
through the shadowed room to the door, which still stood open.

“Goodbye, Tiglath Ashur,” she said. “It is a
weakness in me to love you, yet I do. I wonder if we shall ever see
one another again.”

And she was gone.

I stayed up until dawn and then went to my
sleeping mat. A sword lay beside me for company.

The next morning, when a slave brought me my
breakfast, there was a bowl of dates on the tray. I had not eaten
more than two or three when I found a piece of leather, no larger
than the palm of my hand, rolled up and lying among them. The
writing on the inside was Greek.

“I, who have been one, understand the art of
corrupting slaves. If you have need of me, whisper my name into the
ear of the dog who brought this.”

Yes, who else but Kephalos could have found
his way to me through the walls of my brother’s palace? Who else
would have tried? But I would have no need of him now.

I had already received my summons to attend
upon the king in the third hour after midday.

Esarhaddon was lying down, surrounded by his
concubines, his feet dangling over the end of the couch while a
black woman, with heavy gold wire woven into her hair but otherwise
naked, washed them in a silver basin. I put my right hand over my
heart and started to bow.

“Do not dare to do that to me again,
Tiglath!” he shouted, kicking the black woman aside and jumping up.
“I will not be made mock of twice.”

“My Lord. . .”

“Stop it!”

He raised his arm, pointing it at me, and
then glared savagely about him. “Get out of here—all of you. Can’t
you see I have business? Get out!”

For a moment the only sound was the quick
patter of bare feet against the floor. It was only when we were
alone that Esarhaddon seemed able to relax.

“They can be a nuisance,” he said, almost as
if to apologize, and then looked at me in a curious, pleading way.
Suddenly it was as if nothing had ever changed between us.