I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  “It will be well in the temples, father. It will be well with the Hurrian king; it will be ill in Hattusas this winter. We will all lose something.”

  Piyassilis groaned and it looked as if he kicked at young Telipinus under the table, for Arnuwandas, between them, cuffed them both in turn. What then developed was the need for the rest of us to separate them before they did each other damage.

  Lupakki and Tarkhunta-zalma, together, dragged Piyassilis out of it, while Takkuri and the Shepherd and I restrained the Crown Prince. Telipinus, who had not a scratch on him, was dusting himself off with Hattu-ziti’s help, and Hannutti was grumbling that it was about time Arnuwandas stopped fighting Telipinus’ battles for him, after all.

  The two Meshedi, whose affair it should have been to avert such matters, stood horrified, staring at their brothers.

  “You, both of you: Zidanza! Kantuzilis! What good are you to me if you are afraid to lift a hand to a brawler if he outranks you? Both of you are assigned to the armies, henceforth. If Zida cannot train you, maybe the Hurrians will.” As I was saying that I was shaking Arnuwandas by the hair. I pushed him away, and spat my disgust at his feet. “Go on, go to a physician and see if you can manage to appear in the morning’s procession without evidence of violence upon your person. You, too, Piyassilis, my lord prince. And while you are at it, spend the night meditating on what it means to be sons of the Sun. Tomorrow we will discuss it, and I do not wish to be disappointed in your answers to whatever questions I may choose to ask. Go on, get out. You too my ladies of the Meshedi. I am sure we elders of the sword can get along without your protection.”

  When the door had closed, I cajoled my aching fingers from their grip on the table’s edge and spat to the Shepherd: “Snakes. That is what I have raised: a basket of snakes!” and then realized that Telipinus, innocent, wide eyed and dreamy, remained.

  “You! You started this, why are you not gone with them? Get out.”

  “But, my lord –”

  “Get out. The gods’ meal is served early; be not bleary when you eat it for the first time in Kumanni.” So out he went, and whatever he was going to say went with him.

  Those were the early days, when I was too uncomfortable with Telipinus’ gift to think to make use of it. “Great Ones, now that the children have retired, let us consider the situation in the south.”

  So Hattu-ziti began to detail the strides made regarding our partisan Sarrupsi of Nuhassi and the suborning of his country, and spoke of the letters of Ribaddi of Byblos which Duttu had forwarded from the City of the Horizon, which protested, in Ribaddi’s own words, that he was “shut up like a bird in a cage in Byblos, and requested wood wherewith to warm himself and water to drink, and soldiers of Pharaoh, his lord, to relieve the Amurrite Abdi-asirta’s siege.

  And I was not really listening, but thinking sourly that this quiet, broad-backed youth Tarkhunta-zalma was no older than Arnuwandas, and yet immeasurably more self-contained. But then, a crown prince secure in his position, tuhkanti since he was a babe of five, has different troubles than any other boy might have: if Arnuwandas was quick with his fists, then so had I been at his age, and younger. Next to me, all of mine were model children; but I wanted so much more from them. And now that each had come of age and differentiated themselves the one from the other, if I did not like the people they had become, then though I might not like them as much as I wanted to like them, I had had my moment for recourse: the years during which I might have molded them and remade what I did not like had passed. I had not done it. My queen Daduhepa, my lesser wife Takkuri’s sister, my second queen Khinti had not done it, or had done it but not to my satisfaction.

  That was the first time I admitted it: I was dissatisfied with my sons. It was not an easy thing to admit. And it was not a pleasant thing upon which to dwell, the night before the youngest of my first batch of fledgelings took wing; tomorrow, tender-cheeked but old enough by law at least, Telipinus the Priest would assume his rule in the holy city of Kumanni. I should have been proud. I was uneasy. It had been Khinti’s idea. She was not compromised by the gods looking out of Telipinus eyes; I suppose she had some of the same inside her.

  While I labored developing the strategies for the spring’s campaign which had to be finished and implemented before the first snow fell in Hattusas, Khinti was setting the town of Kumanni right with the gods for tomorrow’s festival. She and Himuili had been at work on it for nearly a month. It had never bothered me before; now, upon the very eve of the event, I was troubled unto speech.

  “What think you my lord?” asked Takkuri.

  “What? I did not hear: my mind wanders to the morrow. Can any of you think of a reason why it should bother me, asudden, that Telipinus will be installed here? Shepherd, have the omens turned? Have the gods farted in my face again?”

  “Tasmi! No, I can see nothing wrong with it; the royal family spends a good deal of time here, of late. And he is astute enough; just not willing to fist-fight with Piyassilis, who is four years older; and certain enough of Arnuwandas’ love to know that he does not have to.”

  “Still, I want the Priest out in the field, at least by the middle of next season. What if harm should befall the family and he was all there was left of my sons? He cannot even protect himself. I want no son who cannot be a king, and to be a king a man must know life and death, and where else can he learn but on the battlefield? How can he minister to the disparate peoples of Empire if he moves not among them?”

  “I will tell Himuili, my lord. We will see to it.”

  “Hattu-ziti, you see to it yourself. And do it before you take that spreading bottom of yours back to the Citadel.”

  Later that same night, Arnuwandas came to me, though I had instructed him not to, and asked me:

  “Father, I have a question about judgment.”

  “So?”

  “If a man has a woman, and cannot see to her, and if in his absence a friend whom he dearly loves secretly sees to her, and if then the husband finds out about it, what should he do?”

  I had been trying one more time to extract information from between the lines of words on some Syrian intelligence tablets. “Torchlight is a poor substitute for the sun,” I said rubbing my eyes, and set the whole clattering mass of them aside. “Sit, and… what did you say? Surely you are not having woman troubles?”

  “Abuya, this is serious.” He pulled the pillowed stool under him, and smiled wanly, and looked about. “Where is Khinti?”

  “Out making ready for tomorrow. As you should be. I told you to have that eye looked at, and get some sleep.”

  “It does not matter. This other thing matters.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I cannot tell, I am under Oath. And that is part of my second question, for after you have answered the first. So answer the first and I will ask the second.”

  “Say it again then.” I stretched in my chair, and gestured that he pour us wine.

  As he was pouring, he said “If a woman sleeps with a friend of her husband, who is much away, and the man finds out about his friend and his wife, both of whom he dearly loves, what should he do?”

  “You can start standing in for me in the morning judgments in Hattusas, if this sort of thing intrigues you. Any of these, he may do: he may kill them both upon the spot; he may bring them to the gate of the palace and declare: ‘My wife shall not be killed!’ and spare her life, but then he shall also spare the life of the adulterer and mark his head. Or, if he is squeamish he may call at the palace gate and demand that they both be killed. Or he may bring it for judgment to the court of the king. Then the king may order them killed; the king may spare their lives. Whatever the king’s judgment, all must accept it.”

  “In most cases you have judged, you have not decreed that adulterers be killed.”

  “No, I have not. It seems a foolish waste of life to me. Banishment is better for all concerned. Women are fickle creatures at best, and easily persuaded to one thing or another. Men, when
their need is on them, will stoop to whatever is necessary. Nature knoweth no rightful father but he who arriveth first. The only security in a marriage is what a man can oversee. All considered, we make too much of it, if women stray.”

  “But the humiliation and the pain make it hard to think. When I think of my friend, I am suffused with rage. And yet, the hurt is greater than the pain. There is my second question: If the man does not know, should a friend tell him or will it be worse?”

  “Is this what all the long faces and secretive looks have been about recently? Because if it is, I think it is time we put a stop to it. Whoever this friend of you princes is, leave off and stay clear of his business. No one wants to be told something like that. He will find out about it, or he will not. It is not a princely concern.”

  “Even if we are sworn to each other’s betterment?”

  “Most especially then. You would acquire the taint of it forever, he would always wonder if you, too, had not been at her. No, keep far away from the whole matter of another man’s woman. Do not concern yourself.”

  “And if he finds out and asks me what to do?”

  “If he should, which I cannot weigh without knowing this person’s name, then you must give a kingly answer. Always counsel a course less final than death; it allows no room for error. Once a man is gone to the netherworld, you cannot call him back and say, ‘I am sorry I was so harsh, the moment caught me.’ Leave those sentiments most terrible to war, where they belong.”

  “Thank you. And… Abuya?”

  “So?”

  “Please tell no one, not any person at all, whoever it may be, about this.”

  “You have my word. But if it is Piyassilis, and it sounds most like him, then do not worry. That one is solid as the walls of the Citadel.”

  “I wish it were. By the Storm God of the Armies, I wish it were.

  “Go get some sleep; you are required the whole of tomorrow. And do not forget to bring your seal. You will need it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  So it was that upon Telipinus’ assumption of his priestly duties in Kumanni that the royal family and Khinti’s pale-haired Ahhiyawan relatives and the officials of the palace and of the army who had come down from Hattusas for the festival went back there; and I, accompanied by the young general Tarkhunta-zalma and the thirty he had chosen, went up through the refractory lands of Tegarama and Ishuwa, and into Hayasa and across her to meet the king of Hurri at the headwaters of the Mala river.

  Now I was not merely interested, I was slavering. Tushratta of Mitanni’s brother, called by many the rightful heir, was going to sit down with me and plead his case. I would hear him, brother to brother. It was said that the affair was between them and the Gods of the Oath. When the oath gods call, a man has to listen. We had written back and forth about it, true, but there is no substitute for physical presence in the matter of delicate treaties.

  Khinti had been pleased, by the look of her, but too absorbed by her relatives’ visit and the need to be exceedingly gracious and exceedingly queenly before them, so that I took her aside and spoke to her about her disinterest.

  “You say this to me?” she had whispered, mocking me with her disbelief. “And where go you tomorrow, husband? Are you coming home, now that the season for war is ended? No, you are going out even again, though all but the few soldiers you drag with you into peril are settled down with their wives and their children for the winter. Even at the border stations, things are peaceful. And yet you always find a way, do you not, to avoid the service of the gods? Do you want the twins to grow up like your first queen’s brood, only introduced to their sire when they are full grown and ready for use?”

  “Khinti! There are folk here!” We were behind the great statue of the Storm God straddling the sacred bulls Serris and Hurris that is in Kumanni’s temple. “What is this with you? All is exceedingly well with us, better than it has ever been.”

  “So it may be for you, husband; who craves wars never-ending. You go to start one, do you not?”

  “Is that it? Do not fear, this time I am ready.”

  And she had spun on her heels and run from me down into the temple, her hands pressed to her head, forgetful of the queenly dignity she so highly prized.

  I had thought long on the matter of her behavior, and vowed that I would spend more time with her this winter than I had been accustomed to spending, and put it from my mind. That is a thing that is not easy, but which must be learned: with many affairs constantly vying for attention, those whose solution is not imminent must be subordinated to that one which may be solved.

  I was concerned with resolving my differences with this Artatama, King of Hurri. If the gods, my lords, would aid me, and I had a feeling they would, a formal declaration of my adherence to the Hurrian’s cause would be a slap in the face to Tushratta the sound of which would reverberate in the mud-brick streets of the City of the Horizon, and in the tiled halls of Babylon, and throughout all the other lands.

  I was ready to move southward in spring. By then, it was in my heart that Tushratta of Mitanni be enraged into confrontation, for if this man of Hurri; Artatama, gave me even the slightest chance, I would back him in his machinations to regain the throne publicly, and declare to all the peoples of all the lands that, in my eyes, Tushratta was an usurper and even stood in violation of the strictures of the Gods of the Oath.

  And that, it turned out, was almost exactly what this Great King of Hurri wanted me to do.

  We were instructed to wait on the Hayasaean side of the river: we waited.

  I had heard that this Artatama was an older man, and for the occasion I had let my beard grow. I had near a month’s growth of it and it itched and caught dust, but the cold of the heights made it bearable, and kept away the summer parasites, and I was scratching it and leaning on my chariot talking to Tarkhunta-zalma and watching the men water the horses.

  We were discussing women, and I had just said that at this point in my life, “a country had become like a teat to me, a range of mountains like a spread of thighs…”

  And he had looked at me askance and praised the great queen and my offspring and said that if he could find a woman so fine as the meanest of the Sun’s concubines, then his troubles would be over and he could rest content.

  I was just telling him that women like Khinti were hard to find, and that the others I had were merely obligations, when the first chariot appeared atop the eastern hill, and a second, and a third, and my camp became full of shouts and hustling men harnessing horses as down the Hurrian hills to the east bank of the river rolled a column of chariotry, fifty in all, with a gold and ivory bedecked car drawn by matched sorrels in the lead.

  Around this kingly chariot were standard bearers and princes and also his nobles, if my eyes did not deceive me.

  Even while Tarkhunta-zalma secured the last trace and vaulted into my chariot and took up its reins, the single Hurrian car and its gold-crowned driver broke away from the mass of his halted troops and headed toward the water.

  “Alone, then?” queried my sand-haired driver, whose general’s helm clattered around his feet.

  “It seems so.”

  And we proceeded through our troops to the river bank, and stopped with our horses’ forefeet in the river.

  “Hail, Great King, King of Hatti, Suppiluliumas, my brother!” said the purple-robed king of Hurri, and doffed his helmet. Then I saw the grizzled mane, the bushy brows under which black eyes darted, the squat jutting features of Tushratta’s brother, whose girth at the waist was twice my own, but whose shoulders were curved like a Hattian bow.

  “Greetings, Artatama, King of Hurri. So that we need not shout across the river, I invite you into the Hatti land, and your chariotry with you.”

  “He ought to accept that, with nearly twice as many chariots as we have,” muttered Tarkhunta-zalma, his loose hair whipping his face.

  “But not twice as many men; he carries but two to the car,” I murmured absently, awaiting the other’s
rejoinder. When he still kept silent, I wondered if I should have been more effusive in my greeting, but then he bellowed his acceptance and urged his team into the ford.

  “Meet him,” I ordered, and we met him in mid-river, and chariot to chariot we touched hands in greeting, and drove back across the river into Hatti with all his personal troops following.

  “Young you seem, Suppiluliumas, my brother, to have acquired so formidable a reputation.”

  We were sitting to a meal in the open, where all our watching men could see that neither of us instigated violence upon the other’s person, but far enough from the stiff-necked, uneasy troops that they could not hear us. The only ones we had with us were a pair of army scribes, who served us food and drink and awaited something worth putting to clay.

  “I have heard that Tushratta is not much older.”

  “That scorpion!” He spat out his wine. “The Oath Gods will yet have him, for the death of our father’s heir.”

  “I am interested in being the Oath Gods’ instrument in that matter. Let us get to this business at hand; tell me what is in your heart, and why you have not accepted my first offer.”

  “And then tell you the secrets of the city of Washuganni, Tushratta’s capital, eh? Never fear, young Great King. I know them. I know my brother, better than any. I have everything you need, but for it all, the payment you have offered is insufficient.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want my rightful seat of kingship. I want you to help me obtain it.”

  “How could it serve me to do that, to exchange one opponent for another?”

  “How could it serve me to become your vassal? I cannot do that. I am hereditary ruler of the Hurri lands, including Mitanni. I will sign a neutrality pact with you. I can do no better.”