The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  So we drank to that, and to the glory of Ashur and the confusion of the Elamites, and then to Ishtar, Courtesan of the Gods and Lady of Battles, and then. . . And by then, of course, I had forgotten all my doubts about the king, who was my father and my friend and whom I loved.

  “The god has cursed me in my sons—except for you, lad.” He reached across the table to throw his arm over my shoulders. “I blame myself for the death of Ashurnadinshum. I should never have sent him into that dark land—Babylon, may Ashur curse it! And as for Arad Ninlil. . . Well, you have seen him.

  “But have you seen my daughter Shaditu?” His eyes glistened. “Is she not a lovely creature—she speaks of you often, so I am glad you are her brother, eh? Hah, hah, hah! She is such a lovely creature and such a comfort, I could not bear to part with her. No, she shall not marry while I live. Is that very selfish of me, Tiglath, eh?”

  He did not wait for me to answer, for which I was thankful, but spoke of other things, of his old campaigns, and his women, and the Lady Naq’ia, and his age.

  “What will happen when I die, eh, lad? What will happen, I wonder.

  “But this new tactic of yours—we shall have to try it in the next campaign. And if it works. . . You are a good lad. You are a good soldier too, and that’s all that really matters. I said once I would make you great, but I think, in the end, you will do that for yourself. So all this is left for me is to make you rich. There is a royal estate not two hours’ gallop up the river—it is yours, my son. And there will be more in time, much, much more. Is there anything else you would like now, lad? Eh? Speak, and if it lies within my power it is yours.”

  Since my childhood I had dreamed of this moment. Why else had I sought to cover myself in glory except that I might seek the king’s favor for this one thing? And yet the only name that would form itself in my mind was that of Esharhamat. And I might not ask her of the king, lest his eyes darken with anger, for she was the one thing not in his power to give.

  And yet the king loved me, and had drunk too much wine. . . He might, even yet—but no. I could not ask it of him. I was the king’s servant, loyal to him in all things, and I could not trick him into betraying the god’s will.

  So while my heart whispered “Esharhamat,” I trained my frozen lips to speak another name.

  “Dread Lord. . .”

  “Yes, my son—speak! Name the thing and it is yours.”

  “My mother, Lord—that she might be with me again . . .”

  In the silence that followed I was truly shamed, first that I had asked such a thing of the king’s majesty and second that even in thought, in my secret wishes, I had sacrificed my mother to Esharhamat, whom I was forbidden to love but must love while there was breath in my body.

  The king peered into my face, his arm still across my shoulders.

  “So small a thing, lad? That is all—just your mother? Then so be it! Eh, lad? Hah, hah, hah!”

  And the great king my father, who was perhaps not so drunk as I had thought, was as good as his word, for the next evening, when I returned from drill, I found a closed chair carried by four slaves, a chair such as a queen might use, waiting beside the entrance to the officers’ barrack.

  Down from it stepped my mother, and in her hand was the tablet transferring to me a royal estate of some one hundred beru in extent. I set aside my mother’s veil that I might see her face, and her blue eyes were wet with tears.

  “Oh, my son, my son—and is it really true then?”

  “Yes, Mother, it is true.”

  And thus it was that I fulfilled the promise I had made as a child and by the king’s grace led my mother from the house of women.

  Chapter 7

  That first night I took my mother to lodge with Kephalos near the Gate of Adad. The following morning, having left my ekalli Lushakin in charge of the company’s drill, I hired a horse and cart suitable for a court lady to travel in, and Merope and I set out on our journey to my new estate in the north. It had been some years since I had seen her, but this quiet woman who sat beside me in the cart while we picked our way over the narrow, rutted road was still the mother I remembered from my childhood. There were strands of white mixed in with the copper colored hair, and the tiny lines around the corners of her mouth spoke the language of a resigned sadness, but she was still, at least in my sight, as beautiful as ever. She hardly spoke on our journey. Instead, she watched me furtively, turning away her eves if I chanced to look at her.

  “I do not know what this place will be like,” I said finally—I was beginning to find the silence oppressive. “I do not think, however, the king would have made me a present of a dog hole. But if the farmhouse doesn’t suit you, we can rebuild it. I have instructed Kephalos to purchase some suitable house slaves and a woman to attend you.”

  “How can you afford all this, Lathikadas?”

  It was the first time she had called me by that childhood name, and I turned and smiled at her. For once she did not glance away like a bride on her wedding journey.

  “You needn’t worry, Merope. The king is not the only one who conspires to make me a man of substance—that rascal slave of mine already seems to own half of Nineveh, and I appear in his account books for enough silver to keep the likes of you and me for the rest of our lives. He is a rogue but a good friend and robs me, I think, only a little. Never fear. I will build you a house worthy of the king’s lady and there, for once, you shall be the mistress.”

  “I am not the king’s lady, my son—only one of his women. And he has not come near my bed in many years.”

  I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. And as our shadows began to lengthen along the road, we came to the boundary stone marked with the winged disk of Ashur to show that we had crossed onto the king’s land.

  No, the king my father had not gifted me with a dog hole. As we rode along, the fields, bare now and covered with yellow stubble, stretched to the right hand and to the left as far as the eye would carry. And the farmhouse was not of brick but of mountain stone and built after the Hittite pattern that the rooms might have sunlight during all the hours of the day. My heart rose within me, for I was bringing my mother to a palace.

  By the time I had brought the cart to a stop, the farmhands and household slaves had already gathered before the great wooden doors to greet us. As I stepped down they all bowed as one.

  “I am Tiglath Ashur,” I said, in the voice I used to address soldiers—I was unused to the ways of country people and conscious of my youth, and thus afraid of seeming either raw or weak. “And this is the Lady Merope, my mother.”

  “Yes, Lord—a rider was here yesterday to bring us word of your coming.” A tall man with a black beard and the weathered face of one who has lived out his life within sight of the northern mountains stepped a little apart from the others and bowed once more. There was that in his manner to suggest he was not used to bowing. “I am Tahu Ishtar, overseer on this estate these ten years, in that time the king’s servant as he is the god’s, as I am now yours. We have prepared the house to receive you, and a woman will see to your lady mother’s comfort. If you will follow me, Lord.”

  We dined that night on roast kid and barley bread washed down with beer—these were not people who had ever tasted wine—and when the meal was finished and my mother and I warmed ourselves against a brazier placed in the center of the room, I enjoyed a sense of comfort and safety such as I had almost forgotten was possible. The smell of wood smoke was like myrrh.

  “Will you be happy here, Merope?” I asked. “I can only stay through the second half of the month, but I will come as often as I can. This will be our home from now on. Will you be happy here?”

  “Yes—it is like a dream.”

  There were tears wetting her checks. They glistened in the red light of the fire. I sat down beside her and put my arm across her shoulders, thinking to myself what an empty life she must have led in the house of women that she could think it a dream to find herself here, on an isolated far
m, with nothing to sustain her but the occasional visits of her son.

  “You must marry, Lathikadas,” she said suddenly, letting her hand close on the front of my tunic. “You must bring a wife here, a girl to share your sleeping mat, to bear you children and bring happiness to your life.”

  “I am young yet, Merope. There is a world of time to think of taking a wife, and for now I am content that you should be mistress here.”

  I had thought my mother was expressing more a foreboding than a hope, but I was mistaken. I could feel the tension growing as her fingers tightened on my collar—this with her was no womanish fit of baseless possessiveness. Something, some idea or recollection, had frightened her.

  “I fear I cannot order your house as you would wish it,” she went on—with a hint of panic in her voice. “My son, I have been a slave since childhood, and one does not learn the domestic arts in the king’s harem—and I would never be jealous. I would wish you to find love with her, that she might. . .”

  “That she might what, Mother?”

  She looked up into my face, and I saw something almost like terror in her eyes.

  “That she might drive the memory of Esharhamat from your heart, my Lathikadas.”

  I will not attempt to describe what I felt in that moment. I was too astonished to sort it all out—that word of my harmless meetings with Esharhamat should have reached Merope’s ears. Was this business the common gossip of the palace? Could it have reached as high as the king?

  No, that it could not have. I was alive and in high favor. But the favor of the mighty is a fragile thing, and all at once I felt that the very ground beneath my feet was no stronger than the crust of stale bread, that it could collapse under my weight from one instant to the next and I would fall to a shameful death. It would take no more than a word.

  “But, Mother, how could you have. . .”

  “How? You can ask me how?” She made some pretense of laughter, but it was a bitter sound. “How would I, walled up as I was in the house of women, have heard anything of Esharhamat and my son? You forget whom I have there as a companion, and is there a mud turtle from here to the Bitter River who can make a splash that Naq’ia will not hear?”

  Naq’ia—yes, of course. And would not Naq’ia delight to torment my mother with such news? I could understand Merope’s fear. I could feel it myself.

  But I took her face in my hands and kissed her brow, just as I had done as a child.

  “It is quite innocent, Mother. I see her from time to time—that is all. Nothing evil can come of it.

  “And now I think it would be well if we both found our beds,” I continued, as if I had answered all her doubts and could turn her thoughts as easily as I might wheel a chariot about over the broad plain. “Your women wait for you beyond the door. And tomorrow I would rise early to see my property. I would have these people know that their new master is a soldier and does not sleep till noon like some tavern harlot.”

  Merope showed me her smile, which was a smile I had seen on the lips of other women. A smile that said she knew what all women know, that men are no more than children.

  “It would be well, my son, if you were as wise in all things as in this.”

  . . . . .

  The next morning the sun had not risen above the eastern mountains when I opened the door of my new house and stepped outside into the cold light, but Tahu Ishtar, my overseer, was already waiting for me. One hand clutching the shoulder cloth of his rough brown tunic and the other a staff—the mark of his station as the javelin I carried was of mine—he bowed stiffly when he saw me. Standing beside him was a thin little boy who could not have been more than twelve. At a glance from the overseer he too bowed, so low that I could almost see the back of his neck.

  “My son Qurdi,” Tahu Ishtar said, “who by my lord’s grace will succeed to his father’s office when I am summoned by the Lady Ereshkigal.”

  The boy smiled shyly and then dropped his eyes to the ground.

  “Will my lord be pleased to inspect his property now?”

  I wore the uniform of a rab kisir in the quradu and my father was the king, but this man, without any show of insolence, had made it plain that he had seen nothing yet to make him tremble with awe. Outside the cities, where they have not learned to be corrupted by foreign manners and the power of wealth, the men of Ashur are just that way—they are not slaves.

  “I will be very pleased.” I said, smiling at the boy Qurdi. The overseer merely bowed once more.

  We spent the first half of the morning looking over the buildings—the threshing floors, the granaries, the barns and stables and cellars—and I was pleased to discover that I seemed to be a most prosperous farmer. I was possessed of sheep, cattle, and horses. I had barley and millet. Flocks of geese patrolled the grounds, looking for the grain that lay scattered for them. In great clay jars kept in the cool earth I had beer and cider enough to drown whole companies of thirsty soldiers. The land had been bountiful to me. And all these things Tahu Ishtar showed me, explaining everything in a calm, detached voice, as if he concerned himself with none of it. He was a proud man and had no wish to appear to boast.

  I said little, asking a question now and then, listening to the answers in silence. My overseer would not curry my favor and neither would I his, for I was not a boy now and men must respect each other. The boy Qurdi followed us everywhere, standing close to his father but watching my face.

  “There will be snow on the ground soon, Lord. There is little enough to do now, so the people keep to their houses and make ready for winter. You will see their village when you inspect the fields, but for that we must take horses.”

  We returned to the stables, and I picked myself a great black brute of a horse, bridled him, and threw a blanket over his back. When both Tahu Ishtar and I were mounted, and Qurdi had climbed up behind his father, we set out.

  The circuit of my estate occupied more than three hours, through orchards and vineyards and across fields of bare, turned earth and well cared for irrigation canals wide enough for barge traffic and brimming with silt laden water that glistened like polished iron in the cold winter sunshine. Tahu Ishtar explained how each field would be planted against the spring harvest, how the canal locks were managed, and where my tenants worked during each season of the year.

  “Will you live among us, Lord?” he asked finally, careful not to look at me as he did so.

  “When I can—yes.” I could not know whether or not it was the answer he wanted. “I am a soldier and we are at war, but I am leaving my mother here and will come as often as I am able.”

  He nodded, still without looking at me.

  “That is good. It is better for the land when the lord lives on it, and the king, of course, was seldom here. I have not seen the king’s face these ten years, although I wrote to his scribes in Nineveh when there was need of advice. I suppose now that will no longer be required.”

  We pulled up our horses in front of one of the dozens of narrow wooden bridges thrown across the canals, and at last Tahu Ishtar turned his face to me. It seemed that, since I did not intend to hide myself in some great house in Nineveh, living off the revenues of lands I never visited, he had decided I was someone he could bear the sight of.

  “No, that will not be required. I prefer to make my mistakes in person.”

  With the suddenness of spring thunder, Tahu Ishtar opened his mouth and laughed. It was like a soldier’s laughter, unforced and fearless. We were not the same men now; we had shared a joke.

  He raised his arm and pointed to a wisp of smoke against the mountains.

  “Come, then. Yonder is the village where your people wait. You will find yourself an object of curiosity, since there are many among them who have never yet seen the face of their lord.”

  To enter a village along the flood plains of the Tigris is to venture back into the world of the ancients, for thus the fathers of our race lived before the times of kings and cities, when there was only the land and the g
od. I had seen many such, circles of mud brick huts, places too small to have names, but always before I had been the soldier who passed by on the road to somewhere else. I knew nothing of the lives lived before these cooking fires and had never tasted the water drawn from their wells. All who live in the king’s mighty shadow are just the same and are thus strangers in their own country, for it was in the villages that we began and it is to them that we return to find the roots of our greatness. We are a race of farmers, for our land is rich, and it is a proverb in every barrack that the best soldiers are born with mud between their toes. The lords in Nineveh liked to forget this, but it was true all the same.

  As we rode toward the village I could see that, just as my overseer had promised, a crowd was gathered against our arrival. Already, even at a distance, there was that shouting which comes from many throats, except that these were not for us. These were the cries of lamentation, and this assembly had come together not to welcome their new lord but to bewail some catastrophe unique to themselves. Tahu Ishtar was mistaken—my tenants had forgotten my very existence.

  The women in their white wool tunics and their colored shawls over their heads—and they were mostly women, their children clustered around them, and a few old men—threw up their arms and sobbed like the ghosts of the unburied. A few sank to the ground, picking up handfuls of dirt to cast upon their shoulders and heads. The cooking fires had been left to burn themselves out and water jars were scattered about, their contents draining into the earth.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What has happened? What distresses them?”

  Tahu Ishtar came down from his horse and they gathered about him, all shouting at once. I could understand nothing. At last he stepped over to take my bridle as I dismounted, and his face was hard as ice.

  “The lions have come back.” His voice was without the least hint of expression, as if he had in that instant lost the power to feel the meanings of words. “When the cold weather comes, hunger drives them down from the mountains. Before this they have stolen only a few goats, but now they have carried off a child.”