The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  The next morning I dismissed my soldiers to a day of rest, put on my best uniform, and walked through the gateway across the dusty patch of ground that divided the house of war from the palace where dwelt my father the king and all the members of his household. All this time, nothing had separated me from her but a few mud brick walls.

  When I was shown into her garden I saw her sitting beside the fountain, dressed as she had been that first morning outside the Great Gate, in the costume of mourning with the red widow’s shawl covering her hair. I stood before her and she looked up into my face, and her brilliant black eyes were wet with tears.

  “I seem always to be weeping for you, Tiglath.” she said, burying her glance in the stone floor at her feet. “For your danger or your unkindness—it is the same, since it seems I must lose you to one or the other.”

  “Is that why you are in mourning?” I asked. I could not help but smile, since the device was so transparent.

  “Have you not made my heart a widow, Tiglath?”

  I took my place beside her, but though I was close enough that my arm touched hers she would not look at me again. I covered her hand with mine, but she drew it away. It seemed I was in deep disgrace.

  And while she pouted thus, and I struggled with myself to find some word to speak to her, I looked about me and saw with no little shock of surprise that we were completely alone. It had never happened before that Esharhamat had received me without some two or three of her women in discreet attendance at the opposite side of the garden, chattering among themselves like monkeys. It could only be that their mistress had made a point of sending them away.

  “I hear you spend almost all your evenings with the harlots at the temple of Ishtar,” she said at last. “And when you are not with them, you crawl through the wine shops and brothels with Esarhaddon. I hear the two of you keep your own courtesan, whom you lead about on a leash.”

  “And who speaks to you of such things, Esharhamat?”

  “No one—everyone. It is the common gossip of the palace. I listen as to a thing indifferent, the doings of a stranger.”

  “Then you have grown indifferent to me?”

  I made so bold as to put my arm about her waist and for an instant—merely an instant—she seemed to pull away from me, but then I had no difficulty drawing her into my embrace. We were playing a game, only that. I think we both understood clearly enough who was surrendering to whom.

  “Oh, Tiglath,” she said, burying her face in my chest, “is the company of these women so much more to your liking than is mine? Do they give you such pleasure then that you would desert me utterly? Oh, Tiglath, how unhappy you make me!”

  She wept miserably, shaking in my arms as if the falling sickness were upon her. It was one of the most joyful moments of my life.

  At last, when her tears had dried against my tunic, she seemed to rest, holding my free hand in her lap with both of hers. She was quiet, and I could hear her breathing deeply as if in sleep. My bowels were melting in tenderness—what would I not have done or suffered for her sake then? The shawl had slipped down from her head and with my lips I could find the part in her shining hair, black as the waters of death.

  “You must not take pleasure with other women,” she whispered, almost as one speaking in a dream. “Whatever you would have from them I can give you. You see, Tiglath? I am grown myself into a woman, and I think you would find me fair.”

  With a quick movement she reached up and undid one of the clasps of her tunic. Then she took my hand and slid it inside so that it rested over her breast, which was firm and tight, and I could feel her heart beating just beneath. The flesh was as smooth as alabaster, and the nipple pressed against my palm with an urgency of its own. When I let my hand slide across it she moaned softly and raised her face to look at me and my lips found hers and kissed them hungrily, for I was stirred to the soul.

  “I would spill the blood of my maidenhead for you, Tiglath. I would do it now if you wished it. I belong to you—my heart and my body are yours, now and always.”

  Her quick little tongue darted into my mouth and felt nervously along the tip of mine. Her breathing was quick and hot. She meant everything that she said, for her hands carried the same message and they glided up my thighs and cupped around my member, hard as bronze.

  Desire closed off my voice and clouded over my eyes. Where had she learned such arts, I wondered in my choking passion. Or perhaps these are things the knowledge of which women have as a birthright. Not even the most skillful of harlots had ever aroused such longing in me.

  She undid a second clasp on her tunic and it fell away, sliding down her arms, leaving her exposed from shoulder to navel. Her skin was a pale pink, for she blushed even to her breasts at her own boldness. My hands covered them, as if I would protect her modesty, and I kissed her throat, letting my lips drift down and down. . .

  “This will not do.” I said—I found I had just voice enough for that. I lifted her tunic back up to cover her shoulders, wanting her more than ever now. “This is madness, Esharhamat, my love, my—”

  “Oh, damn you!” she screamed, and the hot tears started in her eyes. “Damn you, Tiglath, you coward—how dare you speak to me of your love!”

  Her little sandled feet kicked at my shins as if they were a door she meant to break down, and when that did not satisfy her fury she went for my face with her nails and would have raked her claws across my eyes had I not held her hack. I took her in my arms and held her to me, pinning her arms so that she could not move—she even tried to bite me, such was her rage.

  But at last she was quiet once more. When I was sure I touched her cheek with my lips, but she did not struggle. But if she was overmatched in strength, that was all—and she understood enough to use only weapons of her own choice.

  “I would have risked all for you,” she whispered tensely, her mouth almost against my ear. “Everything, for just one moment of your love. And you have not even courage enough to push your way in between my legs. Let me go, Tiglath, for I will not hurt you.”

  Nothing, not the sharpest sword, has the cutting edge of a woman’s scorn. I released her, feeling as if my bowels had been torn away. I would have preferred anything, even to the meanest death, to the cold contempt I saw in her eyes.

  “Think what you like,” I said, my voice thick, “except that I do not love you.”

  “Oh, I know you love me, Tiglath—after your fashion.”

  There seemed no word I could speak that would not make me look a bigger fool, so I turned to go. Esharhamat’s garden was no more than twenty paces across, but on that morning it seemed a limitless desert.

  “Tiglath!”

  I looked back in time to see her push the tunic from her shoulders so that it slid caressingly down her body to leave her naked, the red linen gathered about her feet like a pool of blood. Yes—she had not lied. She had grown to a woman and I found her fair.

  “You have eyes at least—use them! And come back to me when your love is strong enough to allow you to take what you want.”

  For a long moment we stood there like idols of stone. I know not what was in her heart, but for myself I did not understand how I could bear ever to lose the sight of her. But at last, when I could bring myself to look away, I turned once more to go, for there was still no word upon my lips. Surely now, I thought, surely we will now be parted forever.

  “Tiglath!”

  Even with my back to her, I could hear the quick sound of her sandals against the flagstones. As I turned, she threw herself into my arms and as I lifted her up she wrapped her bare legs around my waist, burying her face in my neck as if she clung to me out of love for her life. And then her hungry mouth covered my face with kisses.

  “Only come back to me, Tiglath—my love, my god! I would die if you stayed away.”

  I was half mad with that mixture of tenderness and lust that can make a man believe the world begins and ends in one beloved body. I knelt there in Esharhamat’s garden, her legs s
till tight about me, as she arched her back and let my lips wander over her breasts. Her little mat of black hair was pressed tight against my belly—I could hear her breath catch each time she moved and the sweet smell of her flesh filled my nostrils. Yes, she had spoken no more than the truth. There could be no price too high for this one moment of passion.

  “No—you are right. This is not how it should be.”

  She pushed herself away, as if struggling against us both, but even as we kneeled together there under Ashur’s bright sun I could not keep my arms from her.

  “Let me get my tunic,” she said in a level voice—all the violence of rapture seemed drained from her. “I begin to feel foolish this way.”

  When she had covered herself she came back to me and took my hand. Nothing in her look or manner betrayed what had happened between us.

  “Come to me again in a few days. By then perhaps I will have thought of something.”

  She smiled at me, her smile filled with a sense of foreboding. Yes, let the god help all men, for they are but lots held in a woman’s hand.

  “What is there to think of, Esharhamat? We love each other, but this thing cannot be.”

  “Can’t it?” Her eyes flashed in something like anger. “It can—it must! The god has given us to each other. I feel this in the marrow of my bones. If he has let us find love he will find us a way to happiness. I will not allow myself to be so helpless. I. . . Trust me, Tiglath. You have not a woman’s cunning.”

  A woman’s cunning—that was what she called it. Yes, the cunning that is blind to all which it does not wish to look upon. This bright little bird, consumed by the sightless passion of springtime, her heart hammers her breast as she sails on the storm dark wind, hurrying to build her nest in the brittle, naked branches, stealing straw from everywhere, and she cannot see that the tree is already dead.

  And this she called a woman’s cunning.

  Chapter 9

  As the Fates would have it, I did not see Esharhamat again for many months. The next morning, even before the sun rose, I found a messenger standing in the doorway of my quarters; he handed me a tablet bearing the king’s own seal which commanded me into the royal presence without delay. I had time only to splash a little water in my face and put on my uniform before the messenger and I set out for the palace at a dead run. But we needn’t have hurried so—I was left to wait in an outer room, pondering how much the king might know of my offenses and how he would choose to avenge himself.

  When the door to the king’s sleeping chamber did open, it was not my father or even one of his pages who came out to meet me but the Lady Shaditu, wearing only a thin linen robe that caught the light from behind to show the outline of her body as clearly as if she had been naked. The look on my face only made her smile.

  “I have been about my duty. He is pleased that I should help him bathe,” she said, not even bothering to hold the robe closed in front as she shrugged her thin shoulders. “He is old—what can he do except look?

  “Now, if it were you, Tiglath, brother. . .

  She came near me, put her arms about my neck, and kissed me most wantonly on the mouth.

  “Now in Elam,” she whispered hoarsely, “in Elam it is a mark of high favor when a royal prince beds with his sister. It means he will—”

  But of late I had had quite enough of women who threw themselves at me and I pushed her roughly away, so roughly that she stumbled and fell to the brick floor.

  “We are not in Elam, Lady.”

  But she merely leaned back on her white arms and giggled like a drunken harlot.

  “I could have you impaled upon a stake for that,” she said, quite as if it were a matter of no importance—she made no attempt to rise. “You must enjoy putting your life at risk, brother. Either that, or you are wiser than you seem and know that women find a little brutality exciting. Come and help me up, then you may kiss me yet once more.”

  When I did not move, she found her feet alone.

  “Another time will serve as well.”

  “Come in, Tiglath, my boy—been getting acquainted, eh?”

  It was the king. His head was covered with a cloth as he stuck it out the door. He motioned to me with his arm.

  “Come in, come in, my son—now run along, pet, for we two have men’s affairs to speak of.”

  He smiled at Shaditu quite as if she had been a child, and with a glance at me that mocked all men she left the room on her bare feet. The instant she was gone the king seemed to forget her existence. He put his arm over my shoulder and I walked with him into his private apartments.

  “I have news that will make you very happy, Tiglath Ashur, Son of Sennacherib, King of Kings. You see, we have this little difficulty in the north. . .”

  I was to lead a punitive expedition against a tribe of barbarians who had come down from the eastern mountains and had the effrontery to raise their tent poles within sight of the northern reaches of the Tigris River. The farmers in that area had sent a messenger to Nineveh complaining that their villages were being raided and their women and livestock carried off, and so the king, so he told me, felt that this would be a good chance for me to test my new infantry tactic. I was to leave at once. On three hours’ notice my men were to be ready to march. There was no time even to send a message.

  And though it tore at my liver to be away from Esharhamat, I could not disguise to myself the fact that mixed with my sorrow was a certain measure of relief, as if I had escaped, at least for the moment, more than one dangerous entanglement.

  Besides, I was an officer with his first independent command—I had three companies of foot soldiers under me and a detachment of cavalry. I did not relish the prospect of another encounter with my all too loving sister, and Esharhamat’s love was a trap that always stood waiting for me. I could ruin both our lives just as easily one time as another.

  After the first days march we camped almost within sight of Three Lions, but I did not ride over to see my mother. It would not have made a favorable impression on my men had I done so, but I cannot claim duty as my principal reason for staying away. I was quite honestly afraid to look Merope in the face, for she would be certain to ask about Esharhamat and I had no confidence in my talents as a liar.

  We were six days reaching the place where the river bent in toward the Taurus Mountains like a drawn bowstring. There was still almost a finger’s depth of snow on the ground, but I had no difficulty in finding the traces of my nomad adversaries—I had only to look about me at the burned villages, and to smell the rotting corpses of men and animals, to know they were close at hand.

  “Such pointless butchery,” I thought to myself, “as if they were boys pulling the wings from flies because they can find no other sport. These are not a people who will stand and fight like soldiers—one glimpse of an army in the field and they will run back to their mountains like deer. I have made this journey for nothing.” My heart was black with anger.

  But I needn’t have worried, for the Uqukadi, although they were savages, were not cowards. The Uqukadi—that was what they called themselves, though doubtless now they have disappeared from the earth or been swallowed up by other peoples; in those times nothing was more ephemeral than the tribal groupings of the mountain nations.

  I had no sooner made camp than their delegation was at my tent, come to parley on such insulting terms that it was almost an open challenge to battle.

  There were three of them, all of middle years with shocks of gray in their beards, although they seemed to rank themselves by age, and all dressed in the blue tunics and black vests that appeared to be the costume for men of substance among them. But the resemblance went no further. The varieties of human nature are the same among all races, and their leader, a heavy, slow moving man given to smiling at nothing, I could have met in Babylon or in Ethiopia, where the tribal elders tie bones into their hair and live in huts made of grass.

  The next in precedence was clearly the fire eater among them, a tall man with a s
trong face—I noticed that he carried a scar that ran on the left side from his hairline almost to his chin—and fierce black eyes that seemed to pop slightly out of their sockets. I decided then and there that if I should ever take this one in battle I would have his head on a stake before sunset, for he was the sort who by instinct seeks power and, when he has it, causes no end of vexation to his own people and all their neighbors.

  The last—and I have often wondered what quirk of social ordering could have raised this one to the eminence of treating of war and peace even for a tribe of mountain bandits—was small and narrow shouldered and, I gathered, almost an idiot. He never spoke, but nodded vigorously whenever either of the others did—sometimes even when I did. Or perhaps he was not so weak in the head after all, since he was the only one of the three who had sense enough to be frightened. Throughout our brief interview he seemed on the verge of running away like a deer that has seen a snake.

  I met them sitting behind a small table in my tent. I did not rise when they entered, nor did I open my lips. I thought it well for them to understand that an officer in command of the soldiers of Ashur does not stand upon forms of courtesy with ragged nomadic raiders who count their wealth in goats. For perhaps as long as two minutes, therefore, the four of us waited in tense silence.

  “I wonder what the great king in Nineveh is thinking of that he sets a boy to lead his troops,” said the eldest at last, in reasonably fluent Aramaic—the idiot’s head bobbed up and down several times in agreement, all the time staring at me with eyes that pleaded like a whipped dogs.

  “Perhaps he felt that a boy, as you choose to style me, was all that was required.”

  I forced myself to grin at him, as unpleasantly as I could manage. Already then I realized we were only probing for weakness—if I did not take their heads back with me to the king, they would probably find some slave to cut my throat as I slept. There was no way this would end except in blood.

  “The king in Nineveh is merciful,” I went on, still showing them my teeth. “If you go now, leaving behind your swords, your women, and your livestock, he will allow you to crawl back to your mountains, there to starve to death in your own good time. If you do not, I will take these things from you and you will die here.”