I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  Her hands, a short time later in the quarters said to be the innkeeper’s finest and priced like it, were cold as she ran them over me.

  “And where did you get this?” she said of a long pale scar on my side.

  “Samuha.”

  “And this?”

  “My arm? Also in the Upper Country, saving a man named Mammali who died later in the mountains south of here.”

  “And this?”

  “At my accession.”

  “And this?”

  “Fighting my Hayasaean allies, when they were not so friendly.”

  “Turn over.”

  I growled, but did so. Her nail traced a long forgotten gouge. I had to think for a moment, then said: “A Gasgaean axe made that one.”

  Down further she went, and her voice was almost inaudible.

  “And that?”

  “That?” I rolled over, thinking that if she went over me limb by limb we would still be at it in the dawn light. “That my uncle the prince gave me when I was too young to object and too foolish to run and hide.”

  “And did you give him back in kind?”

  “He died, later. Not by my hand. By the Oath Gods’. Khinti?”

  She lay her head on my arm and her tears rolled down it. “And what of this, my lord king and husband?”

  “Now that one, some say, is the mark of the Storm God’s favor, and surely not worth a single tear.”

  “You are going out on that Ishuwa campaign, aren’t you?” I pulled her up to me, and held her close. “What other way can I keep peace?”

  “From Hattusas, that’s how. Suppiluliumas, stay with me. I thought – I cannot live a year wondering if you will find space for another scar or die out there. I know no one in Hattusas. How shall I survive?”

  “You will not only survive, but rule. You will have more than enough to do to occupy you. Let me tell you a truth: the season passes in an instant. No sooner will you have seen us off than we will be riding triumphant through Sphinx Gate with our sheep and cattle and deportees. I will bring you wonders from the edges of the plateau. Ssh, now, little one…”

  All my fine words were wasted, and she wept like she was widowed already.

  Now, weeping women I have seen aplenty. But a king cannot treat his Queen like a soldier treats a namra, and I had been mostly with women I held of low account and was wanting to be more gentle and more understanding with her than I had been with girls in the past: my one attempt to bring a Queen to heel had not been successful, and more than anything I wanted success with her.

  And that may have been my problem. I was dazed with her, distracted from all else at a moment when affairs great and small crowded upon my attention. The chronicling of my nicks and cuts had obtruded uncomfortably into that moment memories of all the years spent acquiring them: years in Samuha, years fighting under the Tuthaliyas’ impotent banner, the bloody matters of my accession and the initial struggles of my kingship were large in my mind.

  I could not find anything to say to her, only waited thinking thoughts of my chancery and the warming of the season and what communications might await me piled on Hattu-ziti’s floor from left to right in order of their origins’ distance from Hatti.

  So when she had consoled herself and came tear-streaked and crawled into my lap I began to question her of her relatives on the island Alashiya as if nothing had happened.

  She stiffened as if slapped, and answered: “Ask me of your own blood there, why don’t you? I am back but forty days. Your mother –”

  “She is not my mother.”

  “So I have heard, my lord. And how is that?”

  “Khinti, how it is, I do not know. Some say that I am not even a concubine’s child, but a son of the field… a bastard. Is that better than being the get of two siblings?” I heard my voice grow rough and quiet, and yet could not help it, nor even leave off. “The woman who had my care used to tell me, when I would come home black as an Ethiopian from brawling, that the Storm-God sired me. Upon whom, not even she would venture to say. It is widely rumored that a Great King who was in Hattusas then was asked by my father to get Asmunikal with child. I asked her that, when she was yet my mother in name and obligation, and she slapped me and had the Meshedi put me in the pit.”

  “Her own son? In the pit?”

  “Whether or not I ever was her son by blood, she has repudiated me. As for the pit – it was one day only. It scared me but I survived it. Now answer my question.”

  “You are not highly held in Alashiya. Your mother and her brothers have seen to that.”

  CHAPTER 16

  We made it back to Hattusas well before the New Year festivals were slated to begin. In time, in fact, to order for Khinti a marvelous festival of her own. But the gaiety of the folk and the relief of the palace officials and the peals of laughter riding up the night wind on ladders of melody were mere echoes of the rejoicing that was in my heart.

  Khinti would clap her hands, her panther’s eyes shining, and run to the window to see the celebrants dance, and nothing has ever been so fine in Hatti as were those days of our first conjugal spring.

  She was so much more than I had dared hope that I had ceased remarking upon it lest I seem slow-witted.

  All that I was lacking she seemed able to provide: she heard the gods and most especially the Sun Goddess, her Lady, and was expert at divination in all its forms. She seduced the clergy and the palace women and even my relatives had no ill words to speak of her. My sons looked her over, and each in his own way accepted the mother I had chosen them: Arnuwandas hunted her a twelve-point stag; Piyassilis ‘found’ the iron scepter with its knob of inlaid gold that had been missing since my first wife’s death and gave it unto her; Telipinus… Telipinus was in love. My youngest demanded sight of Khinti upon arising each morning and before retiring at night. Many were those evenings on which the King paced hot-blooded or sat among stuffed stags made of leather and Great Bulls fashioned from painted clay and listened while Khinti’s soft voice related to an untiring Telipinus the story of his namesake, The Missing God.

  When she would get to the part where the Storm God sends out the Bee to search for Telipinus the Missing God, the children, even my dour and manly nine year old Arnuwandas, would add their voices to hers and all together they would recite the legend.

  By the time the Missing God Telipinus “came home to his house and cared again for his land” that particular evening, I was short on patience.

  Spoke Khinti and the children together: “The mist let go of the windows, the smoke let go of the house. The altars were set right for the gods, the hearth let go of the log. Telipinus let the sheep go forth, he let the cattle go to the pen. The mother tended her child, the ewe tended her lamb, the cow tended her calf. Also Telipinus tended the king and queen and provided them with –”

  “Time enough to spend together. Khinti, finish the story tomorrow.”

  Up from my brood came a howl like unto the wailing that comes from a fortified town when an army puts it under siege.

  But that evening I was unmoving as the warrior carved into the stone arch of King’s Gate.

  My eldest snarled a foul curse which earned him a gasp from Khinti and a promise from myself that when the sun rose in the morning he would pay tribute. I almost laid hand on him then but my young wife hung on my arm and pleaded his case and for her sake I left off, drawing her out into the halls and commending my demons to the night-nurse who slept with them and the Meshedi who doubtless slept with the night-nurse when my boys had driven off to battle in their dreams.

  “I am having a meeting in the chancery.”

  “Pikku came and told where you were. A quick embrace, then, and let me go back to the children.”

  “Khinti, perhaps I have not made myself clear. I require your presence at council. It is time Hattu-ziti and the rest became acquainted with you, and you with the business at hand. There is more to queenship than prancing around the temples and telling bedtime stories. Tomorrow is the
Festival of the Earth and the whole cycle of the Missing God will be retold. Take a hand in it – take the children – take the Sun Goddess on your shoulders for all I care. But tonight –”

  “Sire!” She made a sign before her face that I would speak so of her lady, but I only took her by the elbow and propelled her down the hall.

  By the time we had reached my secretary’s chambers in the chancery I had recovered my patience and instructed my new queen as to duties and honors of the men with whom we would meet: of Hattu-ziti, most private confidant, secretary, chamberlain and my second in command; of Hannutti, florid Master of Horses and Marshal; of Himuili, field commander; of Takkuri, brother-in-law, chief of 1,000; and of Kuwatna-ziti, the Great Shepherd, Man of the Storm God, General in Chief of all the armies. Of Zida, my brother, Chief of the Gal Meshedi; and of Hugganas and his warlord son Mariyas, she had her own knowledge, and needed no cautions from me.

  Hattu-ziti has never gotten over those winters drawing in the dirt when he was a commander of fortifications and I a fledgling officer with the Shepherd’s flock: every council of import over which he has ever presided has been held upon the floor. Eventually, in exasperation, I had maps drawn in colors in the chancery sanctum, and a benched railing built round them, so that when the king of Hatti sat cross-legged hour after hour and knee to knee with his Great Ones none of us would have to feel undignified. In those days, we sniffed out this and that without thought to aching buttocks and stiffened knees, and none of us felt so dignified as to make a differentiation between the stone of the palace’s second floor and the dirt of a field council.

  But Khinti giggled to see kings and heroes strewn about like the cups and rhytons and pillows and piles of varicolored clay tablets among which they sat or lay, and she teased them. At which all struggled up to give her greeting and settled back down silent, all but Hugganas, who with a hand to the small of his back strode over and embraced her like a sister, and drew her down at his side with queries after her father’s health and the quality of peace that obtained on the Arzawaean border and in the newly liberated Hittite towns.

  Thusly by Hugganas’ example did the men soften to her, and stiff postures eased. The handsome Himuili – who I had sent into a certain defeat in Arzawa and who had brought back therefrom a crushed knee (and, some said, a shaken valor) – limped over to her with wine, and she smiled, saying:

  “Ah, Himuili, I have heard so much about you from the palace ladies I feel us well acquainted. And I see why the girls weep in the temples; and while it confounded me before, I now understand their tears.”

  Zida, who had spent an evening with Khinti, caught my eye and shook his head with a knowing grin.

  In less time than it takes to gird on a sword belt she had placed each and every grizzled veteran of my confidence under tribute and brought them into the empire ruled by her smile.

  All, that is, but Kuwatna-ziti, whose obsidian hair was shot with silver at the temples, making him look even more the wolf, and whose approval was so obviously held in abeyance that his answers to her courtesy fell only a hair’s breadth short of impudence. This too, along with Hugganas’ over-warm greeting, I held apart in my mind for later investigation.

  After she had spoken with each in turn she rose up from Hugganas’ side and stepped carefully among the rubble of our hours to kneel before the deployed tablets. One, of yellow clay found far south on the sea’s shore, she picked up and scanned, then sat back on her heels, carefully spreading her robe down, demure, serious.

  “Hattu-ziti, my husband tells me you have all been here since morning, but of the matters under discussion, he has not spoken, leaving it for you to say…”

  Hattu-ziti heaved up his ever-more-portly bulk and leaned over the pile of tablets, saying: “These letters refer to events Up Country, these to the Lower Lands. From here downward are communications from countries on the plains, and here at the bottom is Egypt and those lands with which you are familiar: Alashiya and Ahhiyawa.” He paused, with outstretched hand, and looked inquiringly at my wife.

  “My lord, I am new to Hatti. I stare openmouthed at walls thicker than four tall men laid end to end. I gawk in the Great Temple and the Southern Citadel takes my breath away. If you would be so kind as to summarize these events and what your aspirations are in regard to them, then perhaps I might know better where I could be of help.”

  Mariyas hooted, more than drunk, but his father quieted him and I ignored it, only waiting, not taking a hand.

  “My lady,” sighed Hattu-ziti, scratching his thinning pate, “matters are complex.” He shot a pleading look at me but I stared back adamant. “Ah, then, let us proceed…” He stamped over to a vacant space of floor and widened it, and then collected goblets from the men. “There, give me that. You’ll have it back in a moment. Here, Shepherd, yours too, and your dirk, if you please.

  “Now, then, gentle Queen, here is Hatti, the inner: Hattusas and her environs.” He placed a ram-chased goblet in the upper center of his space. “And here,” he dipped his finger in the wine and made an oval round the goblet, “are the boundaries of Hatti as they now exist. Here is Hayasa.” A second goblet, in the extreme upper right of the cleared space, marked it “Below Hayasa, Ishuwa.” He thumped that cup down so that it slopped over. “And below and to the west of Ishuwa, the country of Kizzuwadna commands the plain at the end of the plateau. Lady, if I offend you by telling things you already know, give me a moment. Hugganas here has been negotiating on our behalf with the King of Kizzuwadna. This king is so much the Hurri king Tushratta’s servant that Tushratta even calls him such to his face. But not so much that he would be afraid to switch his loyalty to an overlord more fraternal who would succor and protect him.”

  Hugganas laughed. “That is the truth: servant he is. And the King of Kizzuwadna does not much like it. If Hatti does him a favor and crushes these Ishuwans who have been a problem to everyone who shares a border with them –”

  “If we move against Ishuwa,” interrupted the Shepherd, “we will do it because they have forgotten their place as regards the Hatti lands. It is the desecration of Hittite temples and the burning of Hattian fields with which we are concerned; the people of Armatana and the people of Ishuwa will rebuild in fetters all that they have destroyed, and they will make those very fetters themselves, from the arms they raised against us, and even clap them on one another’s ankles.”

  The Shepherd rose and strode into the middle of Hattu-ziti’s improvised map, the secretary giving back in an ungainly scuffle of hands and knees before him.

  The enemies from Gasga, my lady,” Kuwatna-ziti swept up a third goblet and thunked it down to the left and rear of Hayasa’s, “are at peace. The enemy from Hayasa is enlisted to our cause. The enemies from Armatana and from Ishuwa will this season fall before our circumspection, our well-informedness, and the onslaught of our battle. The King of Kizzuwadna seeks our embrace like a new bride; unwilling on the surface but fleeing a greater evil. Then, noble Tawananna, we will be looking king Tushratta of Mitanni straight in the eye. Your husband’s aim, if he has not already so informed you, is to set himself up as a Great King of Empire as Hattian kings were in former times. To that end he has subdued the western lands, whence you come, as a mere formality, a precursor to battle on the southern plains. And where he will die, any king has the right to choose.”

  He cast a challenging glance at me, whereupon I smiled a long slow smile and spread my hands wide, giving him leave to continue, and then stretched out on my side and sipped my wine.

  “My dear lord Shepherd, your love for the Hatti lands needs no affirmation,” said my queen softly.

  “You mistake me, lady from Arzawa. It is your love for the Hatti lands which must be affirmed in our eyes.”

  The moment stretched, and stretched, and stretched unbroken into eternity.

  Takkuri stroked his beard, heavy-lidded eyes half closed, unrevealed.

  Hugganas, his face that ruddy brown of a man whose wind-burn is darkened by
the flush of anger ran his forefinger round his goblet’s silver rim.

  My queen stood up and walked silently to stand before Kuwatna-ziti, who glowered openly down on her.

  “My lord, I have heard that you were my husband’s earliest mentor; your love for him is known throughout the lands. So I will excuse you all you have said for you are rightly concerned that I be fit, that I be honorable and free from deceit. But I am more than those things with which you are hesitant to credit me: I bring gifts more lasting than gold and more suitable than horses. Alashiya I can deliver back into friendly relationship with Hatti; and the fair-haired Ahhiyawans will follow my lead. My father’s avenues of intelligence are streets my husband longs to call his own. So tread with care, Great Shepherd, else in your zealousness you lose the very advantages you seek to secure.”

  Mariyas, chortling, whistled and beat his hands together. My brother briefly joined in, so that I hand-silenced them, struggling to keep my countenance from the smile that had conquered Hugganas’ better judgment and Himuili’s, also.

  “Noble Queen, tell us of these benefits. It will be the first I have heard of them,” spat Kuwatna-ziti and strode toward the seat he had made of cushion upon the floor. As he passed me he snarled: “Tasmi, you have a talent for immersing yourself in distractions when you can least afford it.”

  Alone, in the midst of us, she seemed to quail. Her eyes re-met the men one at a time where they lounged about her, and came at last to rest on me. As clear as spoken words that glance said: “If you do not help me, I will tell them.”

  So I did not help her and she told them of her father’s trade in men and arms and information and where he was accustomed to sit at table and with whom; and though at first the Shepherd snorted as if she were a defendant at judgment, when she revealed that all of her sire’s information-gathering organization and the whole of his singular “diplomatic” force would be turned to our use, Zida quietly mentioned just how formidable the loan of those skills to Arzawa had made the Arzawaean enemy.