Twilight in Babylon (39 page)

“Twelve,” Nimrod said. “Thank you.”

“Twelve,” Gilgamesh said. “Because you’re my brother.”

*      *     *

“What exactly did the Crone of Ninhursag mean by ‘God’s Mercy’? Chloe mumbled, mostly asleep. Cheftu cradled her body with his. Neither of them had an ounce of energy left to raise a finger; most of Ur felt the same way, for no sounds issued from the streets. Exhaustion had overtaken the people. That, and sorrow.

Sorrow was the antithesis of Chloe’s feelings. Though exhaustion counted. They had both eaten like kings, then burned off every calorie and more. The time with Cheftu blurred together like some delicious erotic dream. Conversation had been limited: hot, but concise.

“Who is she?” he muttered.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Chloe said. “But… how did I get here?”

Cheftu snored.

She prodded him with her elbow. She must be tired; that was the first time she’d touched his stomach and not been drowned in pure, animal lust. “How did I come to be here?”

“Do you remember anything?” he asked. His voice sounded far more awake than she felt. “About Jerusalem?”

“A little. Did I hit my head?”

His hand moved over her scalp, found the ridge of the healing cut. “You did.”

“The marsh girl must have, too. That’s when we… merged. I guess.”

“Hmmm…” Cheftu said.

“What do you remember? Why are we here? How did we get here? Why were you so late, or have you been here the whole time? Did I forget—”

“I’d forgotten how you chattered once your belly was full and your tensions were eased,” he said.

She waited a minute. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Cheftu kissed the top of her head. He didn’t say anything.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He was quiet so long that she almost fell asleep. “There was a fire,” he said. “It happened on the spring equinox, which coincided with a lunar eclipse. You were dying. I—” He pressed his lips to her temple. “I begged God to take you anywhere so that you could live, be happy, be fulfilled. You weren’t, in Jerusalem. Not happy or fulfilled.”

Chloe was very still, listening.

“I waited, I don’t know, for hours, listening to you breathe. Then, finally, you slipped away. All I could do was hope.”

“How did you get here?”

His chuckle wasn’t all that amused. “That was rather a trick. You appeared to have vanished. Witnesses saw me enter the house and not return. No bodies were found. I lived in the catacombs, got what I could for food, prayed a lot. And waited. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the astrology of our birth dates was involved with the eclipse.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know. I haunted the place until there was a blood moon in late spring. I pleaded with God.”

She turned then and wrapped herself around him. “You saved my life,” she said. “You…”

“Ssshh,
chérie.
You are my beloved. There is no meaning for me without you.”

“To them, in Jerusalem, we both just vanished?”

He nodded. “To them, we did.”

She was falling asleep again, this time for real. “I want to stay here,” she said. “I like this place.”

“We’re leaving the commonwealth,” he said. “We have to. You are quite publicly dead.”

She nodded. “But I want to stay with these people, the people who think like this. They’re the true originals, Cheftu. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Renaissance, no one created anything that these people didn’t think of first. Probably not even nuclear fission.”

“Nook clear what?” he said.

“Nothing, it’s just… I want to be here. These minds could put us on the moon in the thirteenth century. There’s no need for Dark Ages.”

He patted her head. “Remind me, I want you to tell me about space someday. What happens with the fire and gas during an eclipse.”

“Someday,” she murmured as she fell to sleep.

Then she woke up, sharp and alert. “Cheftu, how are we going to get you out of here?”

He sighed. “I have to become quite publicly dead, too.”

*      *     *

“Your hair is the most important thing,” Chloe said, as they plotted later. “It’s beautiful and so identifiable.”

Shama nodded. Then he ran into another room. When he came back it was with a wig.

“A wig,” Cheftu said. “Agreed. My hair won’t be enough to convince them, however.”

Shama patted his chest, coughed, then spoke in a voice as raspy as a camel’s. “Leave to me. I will do it. Tonight, you go to the temple and be seen. A sign of disfavor will be shown to you. Tomorrow, you will be dead. I myself will attend the body, struck down by the gods. Those viewing will see a healthy man, with hair and beard, already consumed with maggots.”

“Tomorrow? Is that enough time?” Chloe asked. She reached out and touched Cheftu’s long, golden braids.

Shama nodded.

“I cannot believe you are worried for my hair,
chérie,
” Cheftu said.

“You’re just so damn sexy,” she muttered. “Pure selfishness.”

Shama went to his bag and withdrew a long, wicked, metal blade. “Scalp,” he said.

“The scalp!”

“No blood.” He smiled.

“What about the temple tonight?” Chloe asked him.

Shama smiled and pointed to Chloe, then he waved the wig. “I think I’ve been nominated to build your wig,” she said to Cheftu.

Shama nodded.

She smiled. “Show me how.”

*      *     *

The priesthood gathered in the courtyard, a few stragglers from the populace stood outside the tenemos walls. Rudi and Asa, tall in their star-struck robes, watched from the roof of the stepped temple. A silent lamb was led to the
en.
He placed a hand on its head and bent over it to pray. Lamplight flickered over the gold that covered him from the diadem on his head, to the thousands of beads that tipped his long, braided hair and were woven into his beard, down the sweating strength of his chest to his sword belt, with empty scabbard.

He looked powerful.

While petting the ewe with one hand, he slit its throat with the other. Blood shone on his gold, and the sheep sagged to the ground. “Why does he read the omens?” Rudi asked Asa, as the youngest, least qualified of the augury priests stepped forward. He crouched beside the animal, then slit it from throat to tail. He reached in and removed the liver.

The priestesses sang.

The priest mopped the blood off the liver and moved to stand by a burning lamp. He stared at the organ, then glanced over to his mentor, who stood in the shadows.

Rudi held her breath; the boy’s face was white.

“One more,” the priest whispered in words that echoed through the courtyard like a shout. “The gods will choose a final sacrifice.”

*      *     *

Chloe and Cheftu were in the marketplace, bartering for goods the next morning, when the cry rang out: “The
en
is dead!
En
Kidu is dead!”

Like everyone else, they exclaimed in shock and horror. The best place to hide, Chloe had suggested, was in full view. They joined the throng that raced to the tenemos walls.

So they stood—Cheftu shaven-faced and bare-scalped, with dyed eyebrows and lashes, and Chloe, painted fair, a cloak drawn over shoulder and bracelets around her bicep, like a Harrapan woman. Carefully, she balanced their belongings on her head—a useful ancient talent. Cheftu’s arm was strong around her waist, though he slumped in order to blend in better.

From within the temple, the cacophony of weeping and wailing washed out to the clients of Ur.

“They must be killing a ewe,” one of the nearby Sumerians said. “They’ll want to read its liver.”

“Who needs to read the liver? The gods weren’t pleased with him, so they took him,” another said.

“I bet Puabi missed him, so she had the gods call him,” a woman said to the men. “What wasn’t there to be pleased about?”

“Indeed,” Chloe whispered beneath her breath. Cheftu squeezed her waist.

“His job was to keep the populace—”

“The
en
is dead,” a priest announced. “The gods sought another sacrifice and have taken his life, willingly, I’m sure. The
en
was a vessel for their powers, and in his death he bows to their wills again.”

“You’re going to be a saint,” Chloe whispered.

Cheftu’s look was designed to shut her up. But she didn’t see any need for fear; they’d obviously bought the story, completely.

They were home free.

*      *     *

“I don’t believe you,” Gilgamesh said. “The
en,
who was perfectly healthy, and you tell me, already with a female, didn’t awaken this morning?”

The acolyte, who had stumbled on the corpse, nodded.

“When did you last see him?”

“With everyone else, sir. At twilight.”

“Who else attends him?”

“Shama, sir.”

“Puabi’s old chamber keeper?”

The acolyte nodded.

“Why wasn’t he put to death with her?” Gilgamesh asked.

The acolyte shook his head. “I know not, sir. Perhaps he was a gift to the
en
from the
ensi
Puabi, upon her death.”

Gilgamesh turned to Rudi. “The
en
is dead?”

“The gods proclaimed they needed a final sacrifice,” she repeated. “We are their servants, sir.”

The new
lugal
muttered, “As though I could forget,” beneath his breath, and turned to the
en’s
chamber door. “Open it,” he told the acolyte.

“Shama… he, he prepares the body,” the acolyte said. “I daren’t disturb him.”

Gilgamesh set his own hand on the door and pushed it open. Rudi felt ill at the smell—a body well on its way to dissolution.

Gilgamesh covered his nose and mouth, and stepped inside.

Flies swarmed.

Shama was hunched on the ground, his back black with flies, rocking to and fro and moaning. The stench grew stronger as they moved toward the
en’s
rooms.

Gilgamesh gently raised the old man to his feet, and had two soldiers escort him from the room.

They looked into the
en’s
bedchamber.

The former lover, the toast and envy of Ur, was laid in his robes on a stretcher, ready to be taken to his eternal resting spot. His golden braids were carefully tied into a knot, and the diadem that denoted his authority was seated on his brow. His eyes, once vivid with light, were murky. Rudi didn’t look closely at the swelling and squirming of his once-perfect body.

Gilgamesh stared. “It’s not possible,” he said. “Kidu cannot also be dead.”

“The gods took their final sacrifice,” Rudi said.

Gilgamesh dragged her closer. “Death is a horror to see,” he said. “I should avoid it at all costs.”

Rudi tried to look everywhere except the
en’s
body. Gilgamesh shook his head as he looked at the wild man. “His corpse is rotting quickly,” Gilgamesh said. “Was he this corrupt?”

A worm crawled out of the
en’s
nose.

Rudi ran from the room.

She heard the doors close behind her, and Gilgamesh’s words: “Prepare his tomb immediately. We’ll bury him in a double hour.”

*      *     *

Ningal listened to Gilgamesh’s tale, while the few remaining members of the council shook their heads. Now it would be safe for family members to return, for commerce to begin again, for Ur to rebuild.

Ningal wondered if Chloe and Kidu fled the city already. If they were embracing as they walked along the river’s edge, dizzy with relief to be together, to be free? For not a moment had the justice believed the word of the
en’s
death. Of course, Kidu had to create that illusion so that he could leave with Chloe. It was the only way for the two of them to be together. Though what the
en
would do for a livelihood, Ningal couldn’t guess.

Had she thought of him at all? Why should she? He was an old man who had loved her as best he could. He had to believe, though he hadn’t seen, that she had survived the nepenthe, escaped from the death pit, and abandoned Ur.

The real Puabi would return soon. She would select another
en.
The world would continue its forward motion, but Ningal wondered if he would ever feel real excitement and joy again.

“Justice,” a woman said, and touched his elbow. “How fares the boy this day?”

He turned to the beautiful, tired face of Shem’s widow. Ningal smiled at the light in her eyes. “Ezzi asked for you,” he said. “To thank you.”

I can’t believe we have to walk when there is a perfectly good river, right there,” Chloe said. “I was a lady too long. My feet are killing me.” She looked up at her flock. “Hey you, back over here!”

Cheftu didn’t even glance at her. “That river goes one direction. South. Do you know where we’re headed?”

“North,” she said crossly, glaring at the recalcitrant Dadi sheep. He always led the flock astray. And they’d only been walking for two days. “I’m getting in the mood for mutton,” she said to him. He ignored her words, but rejoined the group.

“The current is too strong to try and fight,” Cheftu said.

Chloe paused and watched a
guf
filled with onagers and parcels, piloted by two men, go sailing by. “It looks like a Six Flags ride,” she said. They swirled and bobbed on the racing current.

“Do you want to rest?” Cheftu said, halting a few steps away.

She looked behind them at the twisting and haphazard column that followed. “No, we can walk on.” The sheep moseyed along, and Chloe herded them. Another skill she had picked up along the way.

The sun was blistering hot, at least 110 degrees in the shade of the palms, but Chloe knew Cheftu wanted to get as much distance between them and the temple as he could before nightfall. It was a precaution, should Gilgamesh or the newly instated Puabi decide to act on any suspicions they might have about the
en’s
sudden, mysterious death. Chloe swatted away flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. Trees and water made the heat that much more unendurable—by adding 80 percent humidity.

Even the sheep looked bedraggled.

They trudged on. Cropped fields, interlaced with canals, ditches, and channels carpeted both sides of the river. Palm trees and orchards filled in the narrow islands, the only spaces where emmer, cucumbers, onions, lentils, peas, and barley weren’t planted. Even then, on the outskirts of the fields, the soil looked like it was frosted.