I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  I went straight to the courtyard where the horses and chariots awaited, thinking how fortunate it was that Telipinus would be out at the taking of the country of Arahti while I was accustoming the Babylonian princess to her queenship: the single look he had thrown me when the Amurrite messenger-son of Aziru’s had made mention of her, the cold disdain with which he volunteered for the campaign which would take him elsewhere, had been clear as words on a bronze tablet: yet did Khinti’s shadow stand between me and my third son.

  And yet did her soft and yielding form haunt the Sun. She was beside me in the chariot all through the dark hours, so real I could almost have taken her into the shelter of my arm; and her soft, accepting eyes distressed me without even a hint of reproach.

  So preoccupied was I with the bitter wine of my recollections, of my conjectures, of my fears, that the sun was rising before I gave the men and horses a needed rest.

  I spent that time lying on a hillock watching the sun rise, Tarkhunta-zalma like a silent, protective shadow at my rear.

  At length, brushing off my kilt desultorily, I bade them drive on, that we make the check-point before the steaming heat of midday came upon the land. It was not only I who was grimy: all of us, greasy-faced and stubbly from lack of sleep, in dusty mantles and kilts, necks and wrists and fingers and waists bejeweled with plunder, were looking more like a Hapiru robber band than a kingly escort. But often I have driven men the night through, turning them round the following day and marching them another way to trap an enemy.

  When we reached the check-point the Babylonian entourage had not yet arrived, but the close scrutiny my own officers gave the chariots streaming toward them divested of standards or gilded harness or even plumes upon the horses, gave me an inclination of how we might look.

  With my helmet on the chariot’s deck, stripped down to kilt and weapons and sandals in the merciless sun, I had to prove my identity before an officer of the border guard whose perplexity turned to consternation that ran out of his mouth like the water-disease from a man’s anus, until I assured him that I was pleased that his circumspection was such that even a man claiming to be a king was questioned. And, in an expansive mood, my eyes roaming the horizon whence I had come and over which l now ruled, I gave the border commander the gold wrist-guards I was wearing. Moved nearly to tears, the man followed me around thereafter like a puppy, showing me this and showing me that, while his men walked our horses out and refilled our water-skins and queried my thirty of affairs in Alalakh and the winning of the Syrian war.

  So it was that when the dust heralded the caravan’s arrival out of the south, a scruffy band of charioteers were there to escort them into Hittite territory.

  Upon the sighting of the dust trail, a yell from Tarkhunta-zalma had my men running toward their cars. And when he drove mine up and I mounted, we proceeded out to meet them.

  As the horses closed, I could see the Amurrites’ flat helms, the bare heads of the Hapiru spearmen, the Babylonians, spangled and plumed, with their circle. The end of this winding column had just come into view when I pulled mine to a halt and awaited their advance.

  Two chariots – one Babylonian with a scoop forward of the wheels drawn by little, fine-boned steeds whose heads bore bunches of blue plumes; one Amurrite, crude but serviceably sleek, with the larger, rangy plains horses in unadorned harness – broke away from the train.

  Even as the spike-helmed Babylonian raised a hand and the two charioteers stopped their horses nose to nose with ours, I saw the wagons, their latticed enclosures gay with streamers, and the white horses with gilded hooves who drew them.

  “Bow down to the king of Hatti!” intoned Tarkhunta-zalma. The Babylonian stroked his oiled, curled beard and looked me over. The man was prepared for anything: a shield rode his arm, with lions of Babylonian gold thereon: gilt spears stuck up from the chariot’s innards on his right and on his left. He turned his head to the Amurrite to exchange a look, and his hooked nose bobbled as he spoke. “What think you, friend Amurrite: is this the king of Hatti? And if it is –”

  The Amurrite silenced his companion with a shake of his head, removed his helmet, and performed what obeisance is possible from a chariot. His hair was held by a fillet, but over his shoulders its black mass fanned out. He was stripped down to kilt and weapons, and his dark skin gleamed in the hot sun.

  When the Amurrite was raised, he offered his master’s greetings and begged, with my permission, to depart. By then the Babylonian was hidden behind his chariot’s raised fore, so deeply was he bowing.

  I allowed the Amurrite his wish, advising him to take all his Hapiru with him.

  “My lord, Great King, may I have your indulgence and ask a question?”

  “Ask.”

  “Our messenger, did he reach you safely?” There was an obvious attempt in his manner to hide concern.

  “He is off to Tunib with a safe-passage and some fresh horses. Tell Aziru for me that as sons go, that one is above the average.”

  Then the Babylonian offered his apologies, and I accepted them, though if he were mine he would have lost his tongue, and we all together drove toward the train of chariots, wagons, and their Amurrite guard, who were departing on the moment at a shout from their leader, leaving the halted Babylonian train surrounded with my Hittites.

  There were twenty Babylonian chariots, as many footmen, and five wagons, behind each of which came a pair of gift-horses in white halters.

  “What is your will, lord?” said the Babylonian nervously, for I did not order the troops to proceed toward the border check-point, but instead ordered Tarkhunta-zalma to dismount, take another chariot and in it await me.

  “My will,” I said to him over my shoulder as I urged the horses by him, “is to see what it is I am buying before the merchant has departed. You did not think you were coming to Alalakh, did you? You and yours go no farther than the ground on which you are standing.”

  “Ah, I do not know – I was told to see Her Majesty safely to Hatti.”

  “Look over there. Do you see those men at the checkpoint? They are standing in Hatti. Borders of mine, and no one else’s, are you approaching. One more word, and your men will have to get along without you. Ha!” And I slapped the horses’ rumps with the reins. Snorting, they lunged down the line.

  Of the four preceding wagons, I took no inventory. In which one rode the royal princess, I had no doubt. Up to the side of it I drove while from each wagon I passed I heard high, excited whispers and saw eyes peering out through the progressively more intricate lattices and around the curtains of cerise and cinnabar.

  When I reached the wagon, I leaned over and jerked open its door, Within I heard screams and scrabblings, but the interior was speckled with latticed light and shadow of which nothing could be made.

  Still holding the horses’ reins, I levered myself up and in. Three women cowered together in a corner, silent at the command of a fourth who sat alone, stiffbacked, among her cushions. Her hand was beneath one, and I had no doubt that the pillow concealed something.

  “I am come for the daughter of Burnaburiash,” I said in her tongue, while without I heard a noise. Momentarily, I looked back over my shoulder, to verify that it was Tarkhunta-zalma whose chariot had come alongside, and to throw him my horses’ reins.

  The sound of movement warned me, even as I was turning back and the air whooshed near my cheek and the nasty little throwing dagger shivered in the doorframe.

  I pulled it out and said, “A chancy throw, with so little space. Come out where I can see you, girl, or I will pick you up and carry you.”

  And I made a move toward her with my hand, still crouched in the entry, not going after her at all. That brought her out of the speckled shadow-lattice: hers was a cat’s stalk, in that low enclosure, and prefaced by a low cautionary assurance to the other three girls.

  “Get you out of my way, Hittite, and I will meet you outside this enclosure you presume to profane, and when your master hears of this, I will make
a tasty dish of your scrotum and feed it to you,” she said in good Hittite.

  I am sure I shook my head. Hittites and Babylonians have blood in common from former times when my ancestors conquered there, but in many ways the two lands were ignorant of one another.

  As I lowered myself down into the chariot, Tarkhunta-zalma hissed at me, but I held up a hand to him and waited, to see what the woman would do.

  And I did not have to wait long. Out she came as graceful as a fawn, pausing only a moment in the entry to sweep her glance around the Hittite chariots and the wagons and the Babylonians with their hands in their kilts, and then I reached up and lifted her by the waist down into my car.

  She looked me up and down, even as I scrutinized her. Around me my men were stock-still, for the girl wore what I later learned was the latest fashion out of Egypt: a garment not merely baring her left shoulder, but sweeping down to close below her left breast which was rouged and raised, itself appraising – baring not only breast, but belly and whatever the wind dictated, for this translucence was open, slitted from navel to toes. Her hair was straight and squared above her eyes, black as mine but more massive, and it was twirled with gold pins and jangling with gold chains depending from a circlet which glittered at her brow. Her skin was very pale, pale as an Ahhiyawan’s, and her cheeks were pink with the rage that reddened her full lips. As a concubine, she would have been incomparable. As a Queen, however, I was not sure she would suit.

  I stared at her quite a while longer than she found comfortable, and all the time I was turning her gaudy sticker. I stared further while she demanded what it was I thought I was doing, and who indeed I thought I was. I kept looking her over while she told me what her new husband would do about me, until she broke off and her gaze wavered to my men, lounging and watching in utter silence from their chariots. And her own commander she spied, standing by Tarkhunta-zalma’s horses on his feet in the dirt.

  Then it was that I raised my eyes from her body to her face, and saw the brown eyes widen, and the full lips almost exclaim, and pout, and submit to the bite of white teeth

  I leaned back against the chariot’s side and just held her eyes, waiting.

  When she squeezed them shut and her fingers sought her beaded throat, I said, “Turn around, I would see the rest of you.

  And when she had done that, she bowed her head and said: “I am Malnigal, favorite of Istar, daughter of Burnaburiash, Great King, King of Babylon, come to thee as was established between the Sun, my lord, and my father.”

  I thought then that perhaps she would be acceptable, though it was more her body that spoke to me than her words.

  I raised up her chin and kissed her firmly, drawing her against me and holding her until I felt her resistance ease and a quiet trembling begin.

  Then I let her go and handed her her sticker, saying: “Queens do not throw knives in Hatti.”

  She exhaled deeply, so that her long nostrils flared, and said: “As you will, my lord. I am sure if you had come to me announced and less trailworn no such thing would have occurred. It has been a long and hazardous journey. There is no peace anywhere between here and Babylon. And when the Amurrites came to ‘escort’ us and would not be deprived of the privilege, we had no way of knowing whether we were not on our way to Amurru, no better than politely imprisoned.”

  “If I had been home and sent a man to fetch you, I would have had that man make sure that he was fetching a queen, not anything else which might travel in a covered wagon. But enough of this. If you have decent clothes, put them on. If you have not, borrow some. You and I are driving to Alalakh ahead of your entourage. I have a queenly duty for you to perform.”

  When I had spoken of her attire, she had raised her head high, tossed it, and half that curtain of hair came forward to dress her breast. A retort had been on her lips, but she swallowed it, murmured that she would be but a moment, and before I could aid her pulled herself up into her wagon.

  I could feel my troops’ eyes boring into my back, but I did not turn to meet them. Rather I thought that for a twenty-year old girl facing a man twice her age, she had not done badly.

  When she reappeared, in haste, she was covered at the breast, and had a shawl about her, and the circlet was gone to be replaced by a golden dragon imprisoning her hair at the base of her neck. She was fair beyond speaking, scrubbed of face, her almond eyes flashing with excitement. On her arms she had copper wrist guards, and barely had I approved her more modest tunic than she asked me if she might drive the team.

  So I bade Tarkhunta-zalma ride where he was for awhile, and gave orders to the Babylonians to leave the wagons and gifts at the check-point, and Malnigai put her feet into the braces and wound the reins around her delicate hands and set a pace out of that traffic that I would never have sanctioned in a prince.

  But I allowed it, until we reached the check-point, and with my finger dried the little beads of perspiration that had appeared on her upper lip, and took back my team.

  Leaning against the car, her clubbed hair blowing in the breeze, she said “You are not anything like I expected… they say you have grown sons, many of them and –”

  “I know what they say about me. I have not eaten a baby all season; I reformed in honor of your arrival –”

  “I do not know what to do…” she wailed while I was saying that, and then took hold of the rail and looked away, out at the country.

  “It is easier than you imagine. All you must do is be yourself, and attend your instructors, and all will be well between us, between our great houses and between our children and your father’s children.”

  “Children –” it came back to me on the wind, as one of the horses shied, knocking the other off balance. And I had but a moment in which I must lift the faltering horse up bodily by the reins. Then I was leaning to the opposite side and pulling the girl with me, lest the horses and chariot and ourselves all overturn.

  So, when it was over, I had her tight against me, and she seemed content to stay. “Children,” she repeated. “Children grown. What will they think?”

  “What I tell them.”

  “And this thing of queenship I am to do – what is it?”

  “Affix your attention to some documents. I have sealed them in your name, but I want you to attest them, for they are matters of kingship: treaties I have made with vassals.” I could feel her shiver. “Does the war confound you so? All kings war.”

  “Not as do you, Suppiluliumas,” she said my name for the first time.

  “I think you will find this a better apprenticeship into your queenship than if I had met you in Hattusas – but if you like, I will send you home and you can await me.”

  “How long?”

  “Exactly. I know not how long I will be warring in these lands. I lost a queen once because I was always out campaigning and she succumbed to her loneliness and took a lover. In Hatti, that is not right, and from it she was exiled, losing all: her position, her inheritance, her children, even her freedom to travel beyond the borders wherein she is contained. Do you understand?”

  “My lord, I am young, but I was taught at my father’s knee. However, there is a custom in my country that a princess who is priestess of Istar of Nineveh –”

  “I know you are not a virgin. Let us not speak about what you used to do, but of what you will do in the future.”

  “But I would explain –”

  “I explained to your father my requirements in a woman and he explained to me your qualifications, and your sisters’, and between us we have chosen you.”

  “For which I thank my Lady, the –”

  “Your Lady, the Sun Goddess of Arinna,” I interrupted her firmly.

  “My lady, the Sun Goddess of Arinna,” she said faintly, eyes closed, “I understand the necessity for me to take up the state cult, my Lord. But I have brought a shrine of my lady, Istar, and beg your permission to worship at it when I have met the needs of the Thousand Gods of Hatti.”

  “I am not a go
d-ridden man, as you will soon find out. If you fulfill your duties, you may serve your goddess. But of any like affairs which are not customary in Hatti, always inform me before you act.”

  And so, by the time we had reached Alalakh, Malnigal and I had formed the beginnings of an understanding in that most difficult of circumstances in which we found ourselves: that noon we were royal strangers; in the evening, she must come willingly to my bed, a royal wife.

  Upon our arrival in Alalakh I took her straightaway to the room I had been using for a chancery, roused Pikku, called Takuwa, the reaffirmed king of Ni’i, and Niqmad, king of Ugarit into our presence and all documents were formally attested by the kings, myself, and by the woman, Malnigal, Tawananna, whose dignities were already inscribed in the inner ring of the Haitian state seal.

  When we had done that, I ushered her into the king’s chambers, wanting most of all to avoid having to introduce her to my sons until I had introduced her to myself.

  I called her Tawananna, and told her of the title’s meaning, how it had been the name of a Great Queen of Hatti in former times, and suggested to her that she might choose a Hittite name.

  “You do not like my name? Or… it is not that, is it –? As you will, my lord: I choose the name Tawananna. I will be at least as great a queen as was she.”

  You do not understand, girl. The title has come to mean almost the same as Great Queen; it is a dignity, not a name: do you want people calling you ‘Queen Queen’?”

  “It is a name, and if I must take a Hittite name, that is the one I choose. Malnigal is my name to those who are in my confidence; others, I am content to keep at a distance. That should do it, or at least set the tone.”

  “Then,” I growled, “do as you please in that matter. In other matters, I will not be so lenient. Disrobe, I would see what they teach in those infamous Babylonian temples in which you are so proud of having dwelt.”

  And she did, and came to me with a confident smile on her lips, and I found her distinguished above all other women I had had in the matter of giving pleasure. Her narrowness proved a boon to us. Her languorous ease was like a spark to kindling. Only when she performed artful games which involved the fetching of honey, did I begin to wonder if perhaps she was not too concerned with the mechanics of sensuality. Still, when she had those things for which she had cajoled me into sending, from the hands of a scandalized Alalakhan palace woman, I forgot my doubts and my questions as to how she had become such a mistress of passion, for she was all of that and more.