The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  The Ruler of the Earth’s Four Corners was now old. He had many weaknesses and his mind had grown maggoty with a thousand anxious fears. And, although he still clung to all the symbols of his days of glorious and triumphant youth, his hunting and his revelry, to all the splendor of his power, I suspect he was not blind to the changes in himself. There were but few whom he trusted, but he came to lean on them more and more. The turtanu Sinahiusur—his brother and perhaps his only real friend—the Lady Naq’ia, myself, and his daughter, the Lady Shaditu.

  I saw much of Shaditu in those days. If I sat at the king’s left hand, she sat at his right. When he returned from his almost daily round of slaughter, she was there to meet us at the royal gate, bearing a bowl of water in which he could wash the dust from his face. More than once, as we sat opposite from each other at the banqueting table, her naked foot slipped under the hem of my tunic and she would run her toes over my skin, smiling at me the whole time like the most wanton tavern whore.

  And if I did not become her lover, many did. Many a young man cooled his lust on her sleeping pallet, and everyone—except, it seemed, the king—knew. Or perhaps he refused to know. Or perhaps he did know and was past caring.

  And, of course, there was always the Lady Naq’ia. She shared his bed almost every night, for if the king went into his other women it was merely for the sake of appearances. Sennacherib had fathered many children, but in the winter of his life he had only passion enough left for her, whom he seemed to need as another man needs air to fill his lungs. The lady Naq’ia was silent and seldom seen, but all knew that in the palace of the king her word had the force of law. I tried, as best I could, not even to remember her existence, but she was part of the atmosphere of those times, like the scent of death on the wind.

  And thus, hemmed in by my life as a courtier, with its duties of attendance and the constant pressure of its pale intrigues and nagging, unspoken rivalries, by that world of faint menace which had become the king’s inner circle, I had many excuses for putting off my visit to Kephalos’ house near the Gate of Adad. I made the most of them, for I did not relish the business.

  But at last the thing must be done.

  I did not send word to Kephalos that I wanted to see him, for I was afraid that he might guess my errand. Kephalos would know what the whole city knew, and many must have recognized the face of the man who had met a great lady at the steps to the temple of Ishtar—and I would not give him time to frame an excuse for refusing me. It was cowardly of me, for he would need no excuse beyond the claims of simple prudence, but even taken by surprise my slave would be agile enough in his own interest and I had no confidence of being within my rights in this matter.

  So I simply appeared before his door one morning, at an hour when I could assume he would be unencumbered with affairs.

  The boy Ernos—no longer quite a boy—met me and took my cloak, bowing low and glowering the whole time, as if he suspected some mischief, and when I let it be understood that I wished to see his master without delay he led me to the upper story of the house where, behind a curtained doorway, I found Kephalos lying comfortably in a huge bronze tub, big enough to serve as the sarcophagus of a king, up to his beard in hot, heavily perfumed water. Philinna, naked as dawn, was squatting on the floor behind him, rubbing his fat back with a cloth. They both looked up with surprised annoyance, as if I had caught them at something they would have been as happy to keep to themselves.

  “Do not attempt to rise, Worthy Physician, or you will slip and break your head. You see how polite I am? I have not even asked you what you are doing in that thing—what is it, by the way?

  “I am surprised at my young master’s ignorance,” he announced grandly, taking the cloth from Philinna to wet it and wring it out over his head. “For was it not the king your father’s own army which brought this back with them among the spoils from Babylon? It is a most civilized refinement, such as one would expect from the Babylonians—one washes one’s body, thus, more effectively and far more agreeably than in a sweating house, where one is also annoyed by the presence of all such common riffraff as care to enter so public a place.”

  As if to illustrate his point, he raised his foot out of the water and allowed Philinna to polish it with great vigor, as if she imagined it to be a copper cooking pot. While she did so, her great breasts rolled around like water skins on the deck of a pitching boat.

  “Yes,” I answered, in Akkadian. “Esarhaddon too thinks it entertaining to take his women to the baths with him. I am surprised you do not have her in there with you, Kephalos. Would you not find that more convenient?”

  “The Lord Tiglath Ashur has a waspish tongue for such an early hour. Can it be that he imagines he has cause to be displeased with his servant?”

  He watched me for a moment through narrowed eyes, as if I were a patient to be treated with salves or hot mustard water, and then his expression cleared.

  “No,” he went on finally. “I see it is not with Kephalos that he is at odds, but with himself. Philinna, hand me a drying cloth and then be about preparing the prince something to eat. In any case, leave us.”

  When the door curtain swung shut, Kephalos, who had already wrapped himself in a sheet of linen the size of a sail, waited for a few moments, his head cocked to one side as if he were listening for something, and then padded over to the entranceway and peeked outside. He left huge wet footprints on the tile floor. I stared down at them with uncomprehending wonder—I could hardly understand what I was doing here.

  “She is gone. There is no one without,” he said, smiling and nodding. Then, after he had adjusted his linen covering, by now grown damp straight through and clinging to him like a skin he was in the process of sloughing off, he raised his hands in a gesture of cynical resignation. “The man is a fool whose trust resides with his household servants, Lord.”

  “Am I not to trust you then, Kephalos?”

  His hands slowly sank through the air, and as they did my slave’s face seemed to melt like wax, the ends of his mouth collapsing into a frown as his forehead creased and buckled under the weight of his sorrow.

  “Oh, do not speak the thing, master,” he said, even as he sank down onto the rim of his great bronze tub. “Pray, tell me quickly you have not come about the Lady Esharhamat, for though all men whisper you will be king one day, you are not yet safe in the house of succession, and to take that one to your sleeping mat is to flirt with the executioner’s knife.”

  I did not trouble to ask myself how he could have known what I wished of him. I did not need to ask, for when I met the veiled lady at the temple of Ishtar I had announced my intentions to the world. And, though I felt defeat and ruin crowding about me, like a farmer who watches a summer flood washing away his barley harvest, I merely shrugged my shoulders, as if we discussed a matter of indifference. Doubtless I fooled no one.

  “She is a widow, Kephalos, and quite at her own discretion until she is given again in marriage. Besides, I have been led to understand by the turtanu Sinahiusur that a blind eye. . .”

  “The blind eyes will be yours, master, cut out of your head with a dagger should the Lord Esarhaddon become king and discover that you have been rutting on his bride.”

  “All women are alike to Esarhaddon—he is not fastidious on this point. Besides, my brother loves me.”

  “Yes, my young fool of a lord, but he does not love me!”

  Kephalos threw himself to his feet with such violence that the water in his bath nearly cascaded onto the floor. He stamped about like a man distracted, his eyes the whole time fixed imploringly on my face.

  “Lord, do not imagine that your brother’s forgiving temper can be relied upon to that degree—if he finds that you have been using my house as a . . . Oh, by the blessed gods of the west, I cannot bear even to think upon it!”

  “Does this mean that in this I am not to trust you, Kephalos?”

  “No, master, since it seems I have no hope of dissuading you from this folly—it mea
ns nothing of the sort.”

  My slave, the clever and prosperous physician Kephalos, regarded me with something which in another man might have been mistaken for aggrieved sorrow, as if I were the son who had disappointed a father’s fondest hopes, but I knew that look merely meant he was thinking.

  “Everyone saw you on the temple stairway, master. It was most unwise to meet the lady there.”

  “But perhaps not everyone is clever enough to guess the lady’s name.”

  “Everyone is that clever, master.” He laughed with sudden brevity, as if the joke had only then occurred to him. “This is the price of glory, that all men know your face and are interested in your concerns. If the Lady Esharhamat is spoken of outside your father’s palace, it is only because she is loved by the mighty prince, the Lord Tiglath Ashur, whose name is feared to the ends of the earth.”

  “Do not mock me, Kephalos. It is not wise to mock me in this.”

  “I do not mock you, Lord—though you have behaved like a great fool and deserve to be mocked. I simply point out what is plain to all men except yourself.”

  He put his hand upon my shoulder and peered earnestly into my face that I might see he was not in jest. And then he smiled.

  “Come, my foolish young master. Let me dress myself that we may both preserve our dignity, and then we will drink more wine than is good for us and discuss how best you may enjoy the Lady Esharhamat’s embraces in safety.”

  Chapter 13

  The year which followed, while I basked in love, glory and hope, was the happiest of my youth.

  Kephalos, who in all practical matters was much wiser than I, saw at once that there was no hope of hiding my intrigue with Esharhamat from the eyes of the palace. At the same time, however, he judged that it was from there we had least to fear, since Esharhamat must marry whoever would be the next king and therefore enjoyed a certain immunity. No one would dare to move against her as long as her conduct escaped becoming a public scandal, and it was on this object that my slave lavished all his cunning.

  “At all costs, master.” he said, shaking his head vigorously—he had by then become more than a little drunk, which made all his movements more emphatic but seemed somehow to have no effect whatever on his agility of mind—“at all costs we must prevent this affair from descending to the common gossip of the city. The Lady Esharhamat is the prize for which all contend, for with her comes the throne of Assyria, and thus, should some other besides yourself become king, he cannot strike you down for enjoying her bed—at least, he may not do this in public—except if he does not fear to call the legitimacy of his offspring into question. This he will shrink from as long as the common people believe her to be virtuous, and this they will believe as long as you are discreet. She is a widow and commits no offense against decency by pleasing herself with you, but your brother the Lord Esarhaddon, should he rule, will want no hint of suspicion that his sons are not his own. As you say, he is not fastidious in his dealings with women and for himself will not care, but it is best that these matters be kept hidden from view.

  “And thus, master, under no circumstances must you bring her here, for all men know whose slave is the physician Kephalos and even the good people of Nineveh are not so blind as not to see what takes place under their very eyes. Besides, there is the small matter of my own safety—Esarhaddon will not scruple to let his wrath fall on me if I too openly assist you to enjoy his future lady of the palace. No, I must make other arrangements.”

  There are in every city certain quarters where people know it is wisest to pay heed only to their own affairs and leave their neighbors in peace. One’s comings and goings are not noted, and if the street is awakened in the middle of the night with sounds of violence, the residents will wait until there is quiet again, then perhaps someone will check to be sure whoever has been left lying in the gutter is actually dead, and then everyone will return to his own blameless rest. In such quarters it is well understood that all men have secrets and that the less these are noised about the better. It was in such a quarter that Kephalos purchased two houses, on different streets, which happened to share a common back wall.

  “This is called the Street of Nergal, master.” He gestured with his arm as if dismissing a tavern keeper. “Here a young man in a hurry for his inheritance could for about five silver shekels hire a man to cut his father’s throat—unless, of course, that young man’s name happened to be Tiglath Ashur; the murder of a king is rather too ambitious a crime for such as call this place home. But everything else, from stolen copper cooking pots to the favors of little beardless boys, is for sale here somewhere. One has only to know where to look.”

  I glanced about me and had no difficulty understanding how the place had come by its name, for that god of plagues, the great patron of the underworld, would have felt quite at home among these leprous looking walls, these buildings whose upper stories seemed to teeter out toward the street, as if balanced on the edge of collapse. Unlike most of Nineveh, where people in all their noisy, busy self-preoccupation crowded the streets so that one could hardly pass, here there was quiet, and but a few furtive, silent figures—veiled women and men who turned their backs when they felt one’s eyes on them—stood about, shuffling their feet, as if waiting for someone they rather wished would never come. Indeed, the place seemed under a kind of curse.

  Kephalos peered at me with apparent amusement as we paced over the center of the empty street—anyone might have supposed we were measuring its length.

  “I can imagine what you are thinking, master, but I can assure you that no one here will come to you with his hand open. You will be under no threat of exposure, for these people are not much interested in matters of state and have probably never even heard of Tiglath Ashur. Besides, their greed is too cautious for them to think of practicing extortion against a royal prince. You and the lady will be safe enough. Come—let us look at the house.”

  The place had little enough to recommend it; there was not so much as a three-legged stool on the ground floor, merely an empty cooking grate and a few clay jars with cobwebs stretched over their mouths. Above, in the larger of two rooms, I found a blanket, a sleeping mat rolled up against a wall, and a copper pan for washing oneself in.

  “Come in here, Lord, and see my contrivance.”

  There was a doorway cut in the back wall, covered with a bullhide curtain. Kephalos pushed it aside and then opened a heavy wooden door that had been barred from our side. We walked through to a larger room which took up the entire upper story of a different house. The shuttered windows looked down upon a street I had never seen before.

  “The Lady Esharhamat will come to this entrance in a closed chair,” he said as we gazed down at the heads of passersby. “You will wait for her in the other house—why should anyone guess there is any connection between your visits and hers? The man from whom I bought these two buildings claims that they have been the scene of many intrigues, none of which have ever been discovered. You will notice there is a wine shop across the way—it seems a humble-enough place, the retreat of men who have nothing to sell but their sweat, but it does a brisk business in rooms taken by the hour and is not unknown to great ladies whose tastes run to muscular porters and boatmen smelling of pitch. The sight of a closed chair is not so uncommon in this street that anyone would pay it special attention.”

  “It is nothing if not sordid,” I answered quietly. “I wonder how she will see these ‘arrangements’ of ours.”

  Kephalos shrugged his shoulders, as if at a thing indifferent.

  “Probably with far less delicacy than you do, my foolish young master. Women, even those like the Lady Esharhamat, who are hardly more than children, go through the world with their eyes open and have fewer illusions than men. Intrigue is their natural element—you will see, Lord. All will be well.”

  . . . . .

  “All will be well.” Kephalos, who could imagine no obstacles but of time and place, did not understand. Or perhaps it was I who did no
t understand—I do not pretend to know. It was all a confusion and has remained so.

  But my slave was right that I would be able to hide nothing from the eyes of my father’s court. Within a month, when I went to bid farewell to my brother Esarhaddon before his removal to Borsippsa—the king had appointed him shaknu of the whole of Sumer, with full martial powers—I had that lesson driven forcibly home.

  “I hear you have purchased a house on the Street of Nergal,” he told me, as almost his first words. “This, I assume, is for the fair Esharhamat? Come into the garden and tell me all about it that I may know how to chide her when she becomes my lady of the palace. It is always well for a husband to know some little secret which will reduce his wife to silence when she begins scolding about his other women. Come, for I have secrets to unburden as well as you.”