The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “You must pay no heed to these Assyrian physicians, Lord, for their whole therapy is based on the foolish notion that illness comes from the gods’ anger and they will do nothing but burn incense and pray over you. A little Greek skepticism is all you require.”

  He would consult endlessly with Merope over my diet—he was worse than any mother—and at last, when I was sick of his fussing, I chased him back to his patients in Nineveh. I think he was glad to go, for country life was not much to his taste.

  At the end of the second week, when I was strong enough to walk about a bit without tiring, one of the farmhands came running with word that he had seen the dust from a troop of cavalry that seemed to be coming in our direction, and within two hours the Lord Sinahiusur himself dismounted at my door with an escort of twenty men.

  It was a raw day, so after I had sent his soldiers to cheer themselves in my cookhouse I took the turtanu into the best room my house had to offer. We sat across from each other on a pair of stools, warming ourselves over a brazier and a jug of Lebanese wine that tasted like honey and stung like a wasp.

  “The king has sent me. He only recently heard of your mishap and wished to express his concern. You are recovering, then?”

  “Yes, Lord.” I smiled and shrugged my shoulders, wondering what had really brought him—the turtanu Sinahiusur would not have journeyed all this way from the capital merely to pay a sick call. “In a week or so, when my strength returns, I will have nothing to show for this adventure except a few scars.”

  He reached across to me and placed his hand upon my arm, as if he would feel that strength for himself. And then he nodded his head.

  “Good, then. And since it seems to stand so well with you, my boy, I will exercise my privilege as your uncle and tell you to your face that I believe your mind turns too much upon ‘adventures.’ You were a young fool to risk your life on so light a pretext—the land of Ashur is filled with villages, but not with princes of the blood. Be not in such a hurry for a glorious name, for it will come soon enough of its own. You will be rab shaqe before long—this I know. You should think what it is best to do with such power.”

  He tasted the wine again, quite as if he had not another thing on his mind, and set the cup down upon the small circular table that separated us.

  “This is very good,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  “A gift, Lord. You remember the slave Kephalos?”

  “Oh, that Ionian rascal! Yes, I have heard that he has done well for you, and I rejoice in it. Perhaps that is what I should have done with him—turn him out of the house to make his own way. He is rich now, is he?”

  “And has made me rich. Lord. You put me even deeper into your debt when you gave me that Ionian rascal.”

  The lord turtanu laughed and then, quite suddenly, his eyes grew serious.

  “Tiglath, you should know that the king is convinced Arad Ninlil will never succeed him.”

  He paused for a moment, as if expecting me to speak. He searched my face—I know not what he saw there, but at last he continued.

  “He is a weak, foolish boy whom his mother spoilt when she had the care of him, a great disappointment to his father. The omens are all against him, and there is a seer named Kalbi, son of Nergal Etir, who speaks of a reign of darkness over the land. The king dislikes all priests and has since they told him that our mighty father the Lord Sargon fell through his own impiety, for the king loved his father. But these warnings against Arad Ninlil frighten him.”

  “Is that why he has delayed the marsarru’s marriage to the Lady Esharhamat?”

  “Yes—that is why.”

  For a moment the Lord Sinahiusur watched me through narrowed eyes, as if in warning, but he made no remark. He was a wise man and held many secrets within the walls of his skull, and I could not hope that my feelings for Esharhamat had escaped his notice. But perhaps he judged that the time was not ripe to speak of it.

  “I myself favor the rightful succession in this matter,” he went on. “After Arad Ninlil comes Esarhaddon, as the son of the king’s second lawful wife. Do you concur with me in this?”

  “Yes—of course.” I could not keep the astonishment out of my voice, for why should the Lord Sinahiusur discuss this matter with me?

  “Then know that it is the king’s hope that you shall follow him on the throne of Ashur.”

  It was as if someone had clubbed me on the back of the head. I was struck dumb. The turtanu sat quietly, seeming to wait for some answer, but I had none.

  “Have a sip of wine, Tiglath,” he said finally, and with his own hand he brought the cup to my lips. “I wish to know what you will do.”

  “Do, Lord?”

  “Yes, do. Would you fight your brother for the succession, boy?”

  “Lord, I love my brother—if the god makes him king, I will serve him with my life.”

  “You know that whoever succeeds will marry the Lady Esharhamat, do you not?”

  “I would not set myself against the god, Lord—not even for the Lady Esharhamat.”

  “You are a good lad, Tiglath Ashur,” he said, and once more he put his hand upon my arm. “I did not think you would disappoint me.”

  “My lord, as I have said many times, I am in your debt.”

  “Yes—but it is well to remember that neither you nor I will settle this, nor even the king. This matter will rest with the god.”

  . . . . .

  That night the Lord Sinahiusur was a guest in my house, and the next morning he set out again on the road to Nineveh, leaving me behind with a burdened heart. I did not wish to be king and I loved my brother, yet I loved Esharhamat more than life. I seemed marked out for misery. All this the Lord Sinahiusur understood, for he was a wise man.

  “Remember,” he said, as we made our farewell, “the king may live many years yet, and Arad Ninlil may yet succeed. Or Esarhaddon may die, or the god may speak against him. We do not know what time will bring in its wake, but for now the Lady Esharhamat is a widow and at her own disposal. The king will wait as long as he may before he puts this question to the god, and you have until then to be happy—that must be your reward, Tiglath. But I promise you that until the god speaks, no one will interfere. That must be enough to content you. Is it?”

  “As you say, Lord, it must be.”

  “Yes—it must be.”

  “Lord?”

  “Yes, Tiglath Ashur?”

  “If my brother Esarhaddon is to succeed, then he should be brought home from the west. The king should know his son and, in any case, it would please my brother.”

  The turtanu looked about him for a moment, as if my house and farmyard reminded him of something, and then his eyes settled on my face and he nodded.

  “You must give this estate of yours a name,” he said. “A name such as befits the seat of a prince. I might suggest the name ‘Three Lions’ that your exploit will be remembered forever.”

  “It shall be as you think best, Lord,” I answered, hardly knowing if he mocked me or was in earnest.

  “No, it shall be as you think best, Tiglath Ashur. I shall see that Esarhaddon is brought back, although I fancy it will make little difference. Good-bye, nephew. May you recover your strength quickly.”

  I watched him ride away, and the cold winter wind brought tears to my eyes. Or was it the wind? I knew not.

  Chapter 8

  I had not been to see Esharhamat since my return from Three Lions, for during the days of my convalescence I had had little enough to do except to think and I had thought little enough about anything but her. If a man has time to think, his duty always becomes clear enough—he is only betrayed into weakness and sin when circumstances crowd around him. Viewed from a distance, my own sick fancy of love seemed ridiculous enough. I had allowed a childhood infatuation to loom too large in my memory, and my liver had become inflamed because of a foolish abstinence from women. I decided to be a sensible man and a loyal subject of my father and to resume my visits to the temple of I
shtar. I would renounce Esharhamat.

  So I did not visit her garden where, in my fancy, she waited by the fountain, her fingertips drifting over the surface of the water as she dreamed of me. There is no limit to the vanity of youth, so while I suffered I took a kind of smug pleasure in the nobility of my sacrifice and the conviction that she must suffer more. I filled my days with drill and hard exercise, and after a time I began to sleep quietly enough. I would forget her presently, I told myself. I even began to believe it.

  The illusion was strengthened by the return of my brother. Esarhaddon came back from the west with a black beard that reached to his collarbone and an Ammonite woman who wore a ring through her nose. He brought them both to my room in the officers’ barrack, where he waited until a runner could bring me notice of his arrival. My throat tightened when I saw him, and even after we had embraced we both could hardly speak. I had not understood how much I had missed him.

  “Who is that?” I asked finally, pointing to the woman in the purple-and-white linen robe who was sitting on my bed as if she slept there every night, her arms tinkling with gold bangles as she ran her hands through her hair. I had never seen hair that particular color—it was black but seemed to glow from within with a reddish flame. She smiled at me as though she would have liked to break her fast with me.

  “That?” Esarhaddon turned to look, quite as if he could not imagine to whom I was referring. “Oh, that! That, brother, is Leah, whom I won playing at lots with a tavern master in the city of Salecah—I think, personally, that he was not sorry to lose her on account of the vexatiousness of his wife. Would you like to borrow her? She is not good for another thing in the wide world, but she can press the seed out of your loins like juice from a grape. Try her for a night—by the sixty great gods, the things that woman knows to do to a man! It is like having the whole temple of Ishtar all to oneself. Have you wine here, brother, or shall we have to go into the city to get drunk together?”

  And drunk we did get—wildly, gloriously drunk. We held riot through the streets of Nincveh, turning over beer pots and tumbling tavern harlots as if we two were a conquering army and had taken the place by storm. We brought the woman Leah with us, Esarhaddon leading her about by a thin silver chain through the ring in her nose—the man who had put it there was wise, for although I could only understand one word in three of her heavily accented Aramaic, it was clear that in that tongue at least she was as fractious a creature as ever drew breath. Finally, out of simple curiosity and when I was drunk enough, I accepted Esarhaddon’s oft repeated imitation and took her aside into a wine shop storeroom and went into her, and never have I known a greedier woman. She would not be content and when I had spent myself she slipped her lips over my member, holding me tightly with her mouth until, faster than I would have thought possible, she had brought me back to full vigor. When I came away my groin ached like an old wound in the cold.

  There was not more than an hour to dawn by the time we found our way back to the house of war, so we headed to the steam house to sweat ourselves sober. We sat upon the cedar benches mopping our limbs, and Leah, her fine linens stripped off and tied around her waist as if they were rags, tended the fire for us and poured water on the baking rocks. The sight of her made my head ache.

  “How is it her hair is that color?” I asked, for it poured down her naked back and in the dull lantern light seemed almost ready to catch fire of itself.

  Esarhaddon, who had not finished with his debauch and was busy breaking the seal on a final jar of Babylonian beer, looked up to see what I was talking about and then grinned and winked at me.

  “She soaks it in wine six times in the month and spreads it out over the brim of a wide straw hat with no crown, letting it dry in the sun. Why? Did you think she was born like that? Brother, such women do everything by magic. The west is a land filled with wondrous things—I have been to Judah, where the holy men work such spells that they are more powerful than the kings. And you should see the Egyptian harlots in Damascus—someday I will conquer that land just so I can have my fill of them. But by the sixty great gods, Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib, where within the four corners of the world did you collect all those gaudy scars?”

  “I will tell you all my stories for a taste of that beer—my tongue feels as thick and dry as a clay tablet.”

  In the end I told him all my stories, everything that had happened since his departure for the west, including my conversation with the Lord Sinahiusur.

  “Did you believe him, Tiglath?” he asked. For a man who had just been told he stood near to inheriting the mastery of the world, he did not seem greatly pleased. “I mean, do you really imagine it could be possible? One of us, the king?”

  “Yes, I imagine it possible. After all, the god could carry a village plowman to the throne of Ashur if it suited his purposes. You and I are the sons of a king, and you by his lawful wife. If the omens are indeed unfavorable for Arad Ninlil—or if he should die—why not?”

  I found myself watching Leah with nervous interest. Nothing I had been saying was actually treasonous, but it was not wise to speculate too openly about things touching the succession. She, however, was busy splashing her body from a bucket of cold water and seemed to regard our conversation with the indifference of total incomprehension.

  “Calm yourself, brother. She does not understand one Akkadian word in five, and does not care. She is like a cat—if she can groom herself, stretch out in the sun with a full belly, and find a hot male to service her, she is happy. Her mind turns on nothing else. This one is no Naq’ia.”

  With the mention of his mother’s name, Esarhaddon’s face darkened.

  “It would answer all her prayers, wouldn’t it,” he went on, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Then she would have the power she has dreamed of all her life.”

  “You would be king in this land, brother—not she. You could do what you liked with her, send her to some comfortable oblivion where she could content herself with ruling over her women. You are not hiding your face in her skirt now.”

  “Am I not? You think not?” He laughed, throwing back his head, but it was a bitter sound. “I have not seen her in years, Tiglath, but still I feel her fingers about my neck. No—even as king I would never be strong enough to stand up to her.

  “Besides, I do not even want to be king.” He stood up and shook himself, making the sweat dance from his body like rain. “You can be king with my blessing. You are the clever one—you would do very well as king. For myself, I am a soldier, not an intriguer.”

  “But you will have Naq’ia, and she is intriguer enough for the pair of you.”

  “By Adad’s thunder, you speak truth, Tiglath Ashur—but would you want that breasted jackal settling the destiny of the world? No, no more I!”

  And then he laughed again, and the cloud lifted from him. We finished the beer and broke the jug against the steam house wall, and we were gay and carefree once more.

  “I have it, brother!” he roared, his arm over my shoulder as naked we walked back to the officer’s barrack, Leah carrying our clothes and lighting the way for us with a lamp, for it was still short of dawn. “If I am king, you shall be my turtanu, and if you are king you can spend all your royal vigor on the Lady Esharhamat and I shall be master of your house of women—hah, hah, hah!”

  . . . . .

  The temple of Ishtar saw a great deal of me in those days. In keeping with my resolution, I wore myself out on the cult priestesses, and on those evenings when I was not paying my devotions to the goddess I was carousing through the city with Esarhaddon, drinking wine until my head throbbed and rutting on tavern harlots. Wherever we went Esarhaddon brought Leah along, leading her by the silver chain that ran through her nose ring—he even took her with him when he visited the sleeping mats of other women, since during his time in the west he had developed a taste for taking his pleasure thus. He once said it was his ambition to buy a pair of identical twins to keep as concubines. “Two women as alike a
s a pair of hands,” he would say. “I wouldn’t wish to be able to tell one from the other, like one woman with two bodies—I might even give them both the same name. That would be luxury!” And while he spoke thus, sitting on a bench in the steam house with a cold cloth and a pot of beer, Leah, as silent and practiced as a dairymaid, would kneel between his feet and milk him dry.

  And thus the moon dwindled to a sliver and grew fat again as I spent the days in preparation for war and my nights in debauchery. But if I thought that thus occupied with drill and whoring I had escaped from Esharhamat, I was greatly mistaken. I could stumble back to my quarters within two hours of dawn, my brain numb and my manhood wrung out and shriveled like a date husk after pressing, yet I had only to lie down upon my pallet and close my eyes and her unbidden memory would flood into my mind. I had learned how little this torment of love has to do with the body, but I had learned nothing else—nothing that would allow me to find an instant’s peace.

  And so when the hour came, as I had known it would, that I returned from the parade ground to find an enclosed carrying chair waiting for me beside the entrance to the officers’ barrack, I knew that within would be one of Esharhamat’s women, shrouded in veils and secrecy. I had only to push the curtain aside and a narrow hand emerged to press into mine a wooden tablet no wider than the span of a lady’s fingers and coated on one side with wax. Scratched into the wax was Esharhamat’s message: “Why do you never come now? How am I to endure life if my eyes never see your face? Come, or I shall perish of grief that my ghost may haunt you in the darkness. Come, or I shall know you love me not.”

  Even as I stood staring at the words, there was a knock from within the curtained chair and the bearers scrambled to their feet. There was no need to wait for an answer, for Esharhamat must have known she had won. I went to my room and threw the wooden tablet onto the brazier, and as I listened to the wax hiss as it burned I realized that what I felt most deeply was relief. I would see her again. I could surrender now to what I had always known would be my undoing. I must love Esharhamat while I lived.