I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  I explored her exotic expertise until the room darkened around us, and in the semi-dark we slept, and when I roused again it was to her subtle enticement: I was committed before I was truly waked.

  Upon me she was like some all-devouring incarnation of her goddess; her legs were long and thighs muscled, and inside her was a tautness which she seemed to control at will. I pulled back from her when all she had created at last overcame her, and she gasped into the pillows while I used her from behind, to see what might be seen. There are few women who can make pleasure out of that, and none who can feign it, and when her depths clenched around me, I knew I had something very special in the way of woman writhing with balled fists beneath me.

  But having finished with her, lying back with my chest rising and falling and my limbs feeling like lead, I wondered if I was getting old, for I was drained as if I had been in a battle rather than a woman.

  Now, that is Malnigal’s way: she absorbs all opposition, and makes it small, a mere part of herself. But I could not know that, or what it was I had there licking around my loins. Exhausted, I pulled her roughly up by the hair and settled her firmly against me, my arm crooked around her neck.

  And I remember her suppressed laughter, and my abstracted curiosity about her not-very-well explained relationship with her goddess, and what her father had said to me: that she had withdrawn from the temple, and his assurances to me that this in no way denigrated her. No more than making her eligible for marriage and shipment away from Babylon at the soonest opportunity, I thought then, sourly, and queried her:

  “How does a princess become so educated in these matters?”

  “I have been with my goddess; my mystery forbids any further answer.” She sat up, pulling out from under my arm, and stared down on me. “It was said to me by the Sun, my lord, that what was past was past, that we would not speak of it. Now, hear you this – no mortal man has ever touched me. You are the first.”

  And I could not help but chuckle, and my humor she found offensive, but I held her by the ankle, and soon she subsided, and remarked that she was famished from her labors, and I agreed to feed her, saying to her as she dressed that I had well-liked her bearing in the presence of my vassals, and letting her know that I was more impressed by gracious queenship than any number of spectacular orgasms.

  And she, fastening links of gold at her waist, looked up at me in a studied fashion that brought her luminous eyes into play, and said that the Adad of Heaven, which was the same as the Storm God, and the Adad of Hatti would witness that in matters of queenship she, Malnigal, would certainly excel.

  Such poise and spirit in a woman I had not experienced since the days of my mother. One thinks of such qualities emerging out of travail surmounted: And there was over all her person a wistful sadness tempered by worldly pride which she wore like a splendid diadem up until that moment, when I saw it slip, stabilize askew, then fall from her. Then something cold and dark as the eyes of the Dragon looked out at me, calculated, and remarked:

  “Niqmad of Ugarit is pale as a ghost, and not from foreign blood, either. Have we our sandal to his throat so securely?”

  “Now we do.” It was a ‘we’ which both pleased and perplexed me.

  “And did we put it there in the same fashion I saw in practice in the streets of Alalath? Does it always take three Hattian soldiers to rape a girl in a gutter? Are starving children who beg food cuffed away as a matter of Hittite policy?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Only, my lord, that I am unfamiliar with you, with your country, with your horses and chariots, with your soldiers and your children. And what I have seen is fearsome. You are fearsome in the sense that kings in my country who rule from their palaces, their loins girded in gold, are not. And you do not seem –”

  “This is one of my palaces. Would that I could have had it cleaned up for you, but circumstances did not allow it. And furthermore, I am not much for posturing. I find satisfaction in iron and bronze: they are not so soft as gold, nor so coveted. If you have a weak stomach, my queenship is no place for you. Say now, and we will not consummate the matter before the gods. I will annul it, if you are not pregnant, and send you back to your father.”

  “Oh, no, my Sun, I meant no offense.” And she came and clutched my hand, and almost I was fed up with her then, but I took a deep breath and suggested she watch her tongue until she had determined what might be offensive, and warned her that my temper was at best short, and that when pressed I often took physical recourse, and I did not want her to experience my wrath.

  “Tell me, then, of affairs of your kingship; of this campaign and what you desire in your heart that you are warring; and of what I may do to facilitate your success.” As she spoke thusly, she was putting up a blind, that I not see how suddenly timid and awkward she was feeling. I have seen that many times in women after a first encounter: when their triumph leaves them, they are full of doubts: will you again wish their use is the kernel of it. I had not noticed any girlish fears in her before the fact, or during. And yet, of all the persons with whom she had presented me in that short time of our acquaintance, this coltish one was the most surprising. She was striving to conceal all behind her facade of questions, and even knew she was not having success. But I liked her better in that instance than I had liked her at all until then.

  “Come here,” I said, and wrapped her in an easy embrace. “You do not have to be all things at all times. I am not expecting miracles. I would prefer honesty. As for your position, do not seek so desperately to convince me you are worthy of it: my mind and heart are satisfied. I will help you, and we will make a Tawananna for Hatti the like of which has not been seen since former times.”

  Up tipped her head, and she smiled wanly, and slipping her arms around me, squeezed as tightly as she could, saying: “I have been afraid. I would not fail my father, nor yourself, Great King, nor myself, for if I cannot make a life with you, then wherever will I find a place? I thought I was suited for temple life, and I was not, and could not make myself so. I am like a servant on trial for his life: no other chance will there be for me… so, if I am anxious, forgive me. And if I am not quite myself, but more whomsoever I have determined you might want me to be, then when I know what you do wish in a wife and a Queen, you will be pleased at what now is not pleasing…”

  And I could do nothing else than hold her at arm’s length and shake my head at her, and grin in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion, and escort her to my board.

  On the way I tried to explain to her that what I had in my heart was the destruction of the kingdom of Mitanni, and that in my mind I had just about done it: all that remained was to secure the half of Nuhasse that still defied me so that I could leave the land in the care of the servant of slain Sarrupsi who I was installing as my vassal in his master’s place; the punishment of the country of Arahti for harboring a fugitive from Hattian justice; and the sweeping away of a few tiny city-states whose princes still called themselves kings and who had not enough sense to come whining up to my gates and beg their way into Hittite collars.

  “As did the king of Ugarit?”

  “Exactly the same. But a certain sheepdog of Amurru helped drive the ewe of Ugarit into my pasture; him and the desperation of the kings around Ugarit’s borders.”

  “All those little kings, have you destroyed them?”

  “Not all. Not yet. And I am not so bloodthirsty as you may have heard: in the case of the murder of my vassal, Sarrupsi, I waxed wroth, but even then I did not sentence his family, traitors all, to death; only took them prisoner. I will install another in his place, who had been his servant. In fact, momentarily I will be able to say that I have done it.”

  “But you still fight in Nuhasse?”

  “In half of it. But the country buckles, it is on its knees. Soon it will be prone under our battle, and my displeasure will be felt in the land.”

  And I was not wrong in my prognostications:

  Before many da
ys passed, Telipinus and Hannutti and Teshub-zalma and Zidanza, my adopted son, came triumphant back from Arahti, having captured the loathsome usurper of Ni’i, my vassal king Takuwa’s brother and rival claimant for that much-bloodied throne, and all his nobles, and also bearing with them in fetters the king of the country Arahti, one Akiya, who had been so stupid as to give asylum to a person hostile to the Sun. So, having conquered Arahti before I could even join them to support the matter, my jubilant Telipinus and the commanders of his army, and my other sons and all my greats of the army – but Lupakki who still battled in Nuhasse – convened to draw up the Qatna campaign.

  This was the time I chose to introduce Malnigal to my sons, so that at least formally they would recognize her because all of my field officers would do so.

  It had not been easy keeping Arnuwandas and Piyassilis from sniffing her out; I had put a special guard on her and kept her in the king’s chambers, specifically to arouse my princes’ curiosity and allay their hostility. They knew there was a new queen in my chambers, and I wanted them to accept the fact before they met with her. Because of her foreignness, and not the easily-wounded child within the woman, I did this, so I told myself.

  By doing it, I wounded Piyassilis – and Arnuwandas, my successor, most of all.

  The morning of the meeting, before which I summoned them privately to take a meal, they could talk of nothing else.

  “And do you know she has brought her gods with her! Tiamat, Lady of Chaos; Marduk, his Austerity; Enlil –”

  “How do you know this, Arnuwandas?”

  “How?” scathed my handsome son. “I went down and oversaw the reception of the betrothal gifts, that is how. Our Great King was otherwise engaged. I –”

  “Tell him about the women,” broke in Piyassilis. “Then I will tell him: Abuya, she has brought –”

  “Silence, both of you.” I looked from Arnuwandas, whose handsome princely countenance was suffused with rage, to Piyassilis, less pretty, whose height had taught him early the slouch he employed even while sitting to table in the little private garden, the only place in the Alalakhan palace not marred by our struggle to acquire the country. “As for the women my queen, your step-mother has brought –”

  “So it is that sure? I had hoped she might not suit –”

  “Arnuwandas, only kings interrupt other kings. You are not yet a king. Be quiet and listen, and you may live to become one. Firstly, the matter of the Babylonian women: two of those girls are for each of you, gifts from Malnigal’s father.” They were not: the girls were gifts to myself. But I was implementing my plan; two concubines were a small price to pay for a lessening of hostilities. Arnuwandas snorted, unremitting. Piyassilis looked slightly mollified, and peered about him for a palace servant.

  “In the second matter, the matter of my new queen’s faith, I am gravely disappointed in you both. You mention this to me, when all know that I have given every god of every village freedom to be worshipped by those who love him. Is this Egypt, that I hear prejudice spoken like reason? Has Arnuwandas, the successor to the Sun, caught Naphuria Akhenaten’s disease? What next? Will you raise your tutelary god over the Thousand Gods, and cast all others out from the land? Will you tread upon the people’s spirit, defile their faith, as the king of Egypt has seen fit to do? War between men and men is one thing; war between men and gods is something else entirely: a man who turns against the gods and slanders them courts disaster, whatsoever sort of man he may be. Princes are not exempt from this law of nature. The Gods of Hatti and the gods of all other countries have lived in harmony from the day the world slipped from creation’s womb. How else could it be? When a king goes to battle, he calls on all the gods to aid him. It has been so forever, since the beginning of eternity. As many tongues has man, so many are the names of the gods, but the gods themselves are numbered. Men who call themselves kings perform the will of the gods; they call upon the gods to keep them straight with earth and heaven. Think upon Egypt, when you talk of debasing this god or that: even the gods make war in Egypt: the priests of the land have turned upon each other; a king has set one God above all the rest. Beware the jealous Gods. The destruction of Mitanni will seem like a child’s game before the chaos that will come from the war between the Egyptian gods. Should this continue, should the matter not be contained within Egypt’s borders, what will become of us? How can men live together in peace if the gods cannot?”

  Arnuwandas regarded me, eyes hooded, and with his mother’s high-chinned air answered me: “How? As man has always lived together in peace: by the efforts of a strong leader. But it is not her religion, not that at all… you have had no time for the war; no time for anything, these last days, but your new entertainment. Why do you hide her? Is she like those servants she brought, immodest and bejeweled from ear to toe? Is she so much more enticing than affairs of kingship to you? We have heard strange tales of what went on –” He broke away from my glare, muttered something, began again: “Our brother Telipinus has prognosticated all our ruins from this taking up of a Babylonian. Her father is a slippery ally. He sleeps with Assyrians, bedawin, whomsoever can serve him. The petty nature of this woman is clear from all the trifles she has hauled up with her. No twenty-year old temple whore is going to hear me call her mother. Or queen.”

  “He is jealous, Abuya. And he is newly a father, we have just heard, of a man-child. When word came down, you were otherwise engaged –”

  Arnuwandas leapt upon Piyassilis, both went down in clatter of inlaid stools and table bitumen, and I was hard pressed to separate them.

  When I had done it, we were all three sprawled on the well-tended lawn like some farm boys squabbling over a slave-girl.

  “Princes, it remains for me either to talk some sense into you both, or beat it into you. I am inclined toward the latter. If you, Arnuwandas, have become a father and still have no understanding of fatherly responsibilities, I pity your get. I have two eight-year old children in Hattusas, in need of a mother. When you lost your mother, I got you Khinti to replace her. Neither of you complained at that time, nor did you hesitate to accept her. You are both sons – grown, so you protest – act like it. Malnigal will be a mother to my twins and the queen of Hatti, and you will harbor no petty jealousies against her –”

  “If something should happen to the Sun,” snarled Arnuwandas, “I will have to share my rule with this… person, this Malnigal. This is no concubine you are taking, but a woman who will wield power second only to the Great King’s, and whose stamp will soon be imprinted on the land. You adjure me to take thought to my station – I am taking it! I should have had a hand in this deciding! I have a right to see her! Else, I tell you, I will not accept her; in no way will I look kindly upon her. I have seen what foulness she has brought up from Babylon: texts and implements of foreign magic are among them. I was not so young when my mother died that I do not remember how and why: no sorceress is going to curse my house! As your successor, you owe me consideration in these matters, that is, if you expect me to show her any respect and tolerance whatsoever.’

  I looked at Arnuwandas, but I saw instead Titai, lying dead by her own hand in the dungeon. And I recollected the threat Asmunikal had posed to me, and what I did to eliminate that threat.

  “Come, then, the both of you, and you will see this formidable, mysterious woman you have set your hearts against.”

  As we made our way toward the king’s rooms, Piyassilis made some attempt to excuse himself from my presence, for reasons I did not then understand. And I said grimly to him that he, too, must familiarize himself with how much of a threat this Malnigal might be, that he overcome his fears about who would be showing respect to whom in Hattusas thereafter.

  Now, in Hatti, if a father and son share the same free woman, there is nothing wrong in that. In this case, I was sure it was the only method by which harmony might be restored between the Sun and my princes. And I was right, it did restore it. When they saw for themselves how easily Malnigal was submitted to the
ir majesty, they no longer feared her. When they felt for themselves what I had felt in her embrace, they were no longer suspicious as to my actions concerning her. When they saw her terror and her tears over what was not customary in her land, and her valiant attempt to rise to the occasion, when they experienced the deference of which she was capable and surmounted her each in their way and were made sure that in no fashion could this girl, younger than both, usurp them in my hearts, all became well between my princes and myself once more.

  But I did not realize what price the affair would exact from my new wife until it was accomplished.

  When I left her to calm herself and make ready to meet my commanders, her eyes showed white like a terrified horse’s, and her fingers trembled, and at the door she clutched at me and asked if the manner of her acquaintance with my generals and commanders would be the same as it had been with my sons. I suggested to her that she study Hittite morality more closely, and left her to figure out the truth for herself.

  In that meeting, all was like quiet water. Piyassilis rose and escorted Malnigal to her position, and through the introductions his arm supported her. The only mark upon the proceedings was her lack of understanding as to the nobility of the greats of the army. They did not notice it, for they had not seen her with my vassals. But afterward, I explained to her that the warrior caste in Haiti was elevated above all but the priestly, and that these before her, and those who served me similarly all through the Hatti land, were the bones upon which empire was growing, and in a much diminished voice she replied that she understood.