That night, when the lamp beside our sleeping mat had been extinguished, I let my hand slide up over Naibas hips, carrying her night tunic with me. She settled closer to me, opening her legs that my fingers might caress the downlike hair of her cleft, and her lips searched for mine as I guided my manhood into her. Was there less passion or more in her embrace? Who was I to her in that moment when her body arched and her breath escaped in tortured, whimpering gasps? A woman’s pleasure blinds her eyes, and thus her lover becomes whom she pleases.
She fell asleep in my arms, as she had countless times before. She sighed in her sleep and dreamed.
“I have lost her,” I thought. “I own her body, but she is no longer mine.”
And what of it? I had never been hers. I was not wounded, not even in my pride—I did not even care. It was simply a kind of joke that the gods had played on me.
I would wait. Naiba was my property and thus far my property had not been interfered with—her soul was not my concern. It might all come to nothing, leaving us all the way we were, and if it did not. . . But I had time until then. I would wait.
I was at Three Lions for five more days and that, it seemed, was time enough for something—perhaps only an understanding, the knowledge of another’s heart that fills a glance—for something to have developed between my concubine and the son of my overseer. Naiba was still half savage and, more than that, a woman grown. What had she not learned of men in the house of my servant Kephalos? What would she not risk to gain some object close to her heart? What could she not conceal? She served my bed each night, as if nothing had changed. But Qurdi—poor Qurdi, once that firm limbed little boy who had straddled the back of the lion skin his father had brought me, peering curiously into its open mouth—he had not yet so completely left his childhood behind him that anyone with eyes could not read this trouble in his face. He was not born to hide anything in his soul.
Thus I knew all.
And yet there was this mystery—that I should be so little touched by the matter. I did not love Naiba, but love is only one small part of the bond between a man and woman. She was mine, no less so than if I had covered her with the veil and called her “wife.” A year ago I would have felt—what? Anger? Yes, at least anger. And my wrath, against this my chattel and her lover both, would have been terrible to behold. Now I only hoped that they would be discreet, that things did not reach such an extreme that I would be forced to act. Above all else, I wished to avoid punishing the injury I did not feel.
But if my heart did not swell with anger, was I empty? No. Then what was there? I searched and found. . .what? Relief. I was secretly pleased, because here at least was one woman who would weep no salt tears when I turned from her. Here was no Esharhamat.
Esharhamat. I had only to speak her name, to whisper it in the privacy of my unquiet mind, and all was made plain to me. I had returned to her, by the simple device of consenting to return to that city of dead hopes, where perhaps, had the god willed it, she might have sat at my side as consort and queen. Each marker stone on the road to Nineveh brought me nearer to her. She filled my breast and left no room for little Naiba, who had held me in the protective circle of her embrace, as if only waiting for this moment.
Such were the thoughts in my mind as I kissed Merope goodbye and prepared to depart for the city where I would once more be the son of a mighty father, covered with favor and glory, the darling of empires, the master of all save my own voiceless passions.
Chapter 25
Once again, he seemed to be waiting for me. He sat in the dust before the last marker stone on the road to Nineveh. I knew who he was as soon as I could distinguish that the shape in the distance was a man and not simply one of those tricks the sun plays with distant objects. I was not even surprised.
He looked unchanged from the first time I had seen him, some seven years before. I stopped my horse before him and my shadow fell across the spot where he crouched on the ground. He glanced up with his blind eyes that focused on nothing, and he smiled.
“The Lord Tiglath Ashur comes home at last,” he said. “He is welcome.”
I instructed the ekalli in charge of my escort to proceed down the road, telling him that I would catch up in a moment. He stared at the maxxu with an expression of something almost like horror and obeyed without uttering a sound.
“Who welcomes him, old man?” I asked. “Do you speak for yourself, or for another?”
“Are you not summoned, Prince?”
A blind man may seem to look beyond what he does not see, as if through the obscuring veil of this world. So it was now. His eyes were fixed on mine, but what was revealed to him was the insensible truth behind the mask. His brown, withered lips parted, as if to laugh, but he made no sound. He seemed to mock me in silence.
“I know now you are from the god,” I cried, my heart clenched with apprehension. “Speak—what do you want of me?”
“I, Lord? Nothing.” The thin shoulders moved in dismissal beneath the faded yellow robes. “Have you seen so much and learned so little? You, who have climbed Mouth Epih to pray there and receive dreams? Did not the god cradle you in his hand at the Place of Bones? And yet you ask what I want of you.”
“Then what have you come to tell me? Speak! Have mercy on me, for I am full of darkness!”
“This is better, Lord. Learn to submit, for the god’s will is each man fate. But I have come with his message only—that you must harden your heart, for you enter now the time of partings. In the years to come you will speak ‘farewell’ until your tongue sickens of the sound.”
“This is every man’s fate.”
“Yes—at the end of life. But you are still young.”
“Is this why I am brought to Nineveh? To say ‘farewell?”
“No, but to do the god’s will.” He raised a thin arm, and seemed to dismiss me even from his thoughts. “Go now, Prince, for your eyes still blind you. Go.”
I would have spoken again, for there was much I wished to know, but saw it would have been in vain and said nothing. An old man sat in the dust by the roadside, sightless and poor before a mighty prince, but the prince had become an object unworthy of notice. I was nothing. He seemed to have forgotten my existence.
I spurred my horse and rode away, not looking back. I would not have dared.
. . . . .
How long may a thing trouble the mind after it has been forgotten, the shadow that darkens all and is thus itself invisible?
The king’s riders met us before we were within two beru of the city gates and raced away to announce our coming. Nineveh’s walls were draped in banners, and we were met with bread, flowers, and wine. I rode up the Street of Ishtar, my head ringing with the people’s cheers, and my father met me on the palace steps and embraced me in the sight of all. I had forgotten the blind maxxu with his talk of partings. I had driven him from my thoughts.
The king was beside himself with joy.
“My son!” he shouted, his voice cracking with emotion. “My son, the conqueror of nations! No man is more glorious than my son, the pride of Ashur!”
And the people cheered, as if I had come back with a hundred foreign princes yoked to my chariot. A mob will cheer any man if he is raised up before them; the king might have done as much for the slave who cleaned his sandals. Yet I did not think of that either, for it was I whom the king loved.
Gathered about him on the steps were all the great men of the court—or, rather, nearly all. Esarhaddon, I noticed, was absent. And the Lord Sinahiusur as well.
The king had grown into an old man.
“We shall feast tonight, eh?” he said, leading me inside the great bronze doors, taller than four men. “We shall grow drunk and merry, chasing away each dark thought. Yes? Shall it not be so?”
“Yes—it shall be so.”
Where was my mind while I spoke? The king, his hand on my shoulder, clutching at me as if afraid he might fall, followed my steps. I had almost forgotten him, because for an instant. .
.
She might have been no more than a shade in that vast hall with its painted walls and its columns of cedar, each so huge that two men could not touch hands around it. I caught sight of her but for a moment, before she retired quickly back into the shadow and was gone. Yet not so quickly that I did not know her.
Esharhamat, whose face I saw in every night’s darkness. I knew her. I knew her behind her veil, as I would have known her had my eyes been torn from their sockets. Just a glance—that was all she gave me. What was I to read in that look? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps only dead hatred. I did not know.
She was great with child. So that much, at least, had been true.
“Yes. Tomorrow will be time enough to speak of the business of state. Yes? Tomorrow I will be the king again.”
He squeezed my arm and I awoke from my waking dream. “Look at me,” he seemed to be telling me. “I am your father, and I love you. And I am the king this moment.”
Yet I could not help but notice how the jeweled turban no longer hid the gray in his hair, and that he seemed always short of breath. His face was full of lines and his cheeks sunken. He was not what he had been.
We did grow drunk and merry that night, but it was not the wine that clouded his mind. He would tell a story, breaking off in the middle because he had forgotten what he had wanted to say, wrathful if anyone attempted to remind him. And always, in his wrath, he returned to Esarhaddon.
“That cursed boy! For he will never be anything more than a boy, a puling baby clinging to his mother’s skirts. He will never be a man, and may it be the god’s will that he never reign as king.”
“It is already the god’s will that he shall reign,” I said, laying my hand upon the Lord Sennacherib’s arm—for so small a thing as this touch, which ten years ago he would have scorned as an intolerable impertinence, now had the effect of distracting him into a calmer state of mind.
“And he was always a good soldier. You should give him command of an army that he might fight some great war. He would not make you ashamed.”
“I am ashamed of him now.”
The king, sullen and resentful, clenched his fist and lowered it lightly to the table.
“Where is the Lady Shaditu?” he cried suddenly. “Where is she? Why is she not here to honor her brother?”
His eyes cast about, searching for someone he might punish for this offense. At last they came to rest on a chamberlain, an elderly eunuch whose name was Shupa and who had served him for thirty years.
“Well? Go and fetch her!”
The chamberlain, who knew his master’s temper, bowed himself out of the royal presence as quickly as he could, his head ducking all the while like a bird picking up seeds.
I looked about me, at the other faces round the table, at the king’s princely brothers and their sons, at my own brothers, whom birth had placed higher or lower than myself, at the men of humble birth whom fortune or virtue had raised to power at the king’s side, men who had been great in the Land of Ashur, some of them since before I was born. Some of them could not—or would not—meet my eye. All were afraid. Did they know what had happened between Shaditu and myself that last night? Nabusharusur had known, or guessed. Perhaps in all Nineveh only the king did not know.
But did they need that knowledge to make them afraid? Was it not enough to be the king’s servant in the deep twilight of his life, when the heir was filled with hatred? They listened to my father as he mocked his successor, and they said nothing—what could they say? How many of these men would find their heads between their feet the day Esarhaddon took the king’s mace in his hand? No—they had enough to fear without my little sin weighing on their minds.
And the king? He had already forgotten about Shaditu. An Arab girl with skin as pale as wood smoke was dancing, clicking little cymbals between her fingers and thumbs in time to the music of a flute player in the pleated linen tunic of an Egyptian. The king laughed, clapping his hands, and the Arab girl smiled with her eyes. The king had drunk too much and could not count time to the music, but that did not matter. And his wrath was lost in a moment of idle pleasure.
“Is she not fine, Tiglath my son?” He nudged me with his elbow, almost knocking the wine cup from my hand. “Is she not a pretty thing? Yes? And the way the oil glistens on her breasts and belly! Would she not press the seed from a man’s loins, eh? I will make you a present of her—do you hear that, you pretty slut? I give you to my son, the mighty Tiglath Ashur, whom the gods love. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Dread Lord, the Lady Shaditu...”
“Yes? What is it you want, Shupa, eh?” He turned, scowling, but I think he was only startled.
“The Lady Shaditu. . .”
“Yes? What of her?”
“She begs your pardon, Dread Lord, but her head troubles her and she will not come.”
“Yes? Well, what of it? Why do you pester me, Shupa? Can you not see that I am with my son?”
And at last, when the late hour and the wine and his own weakness overwhelmed him, I helped the master of the wide world to find his bed. I unlaced his sandals and covered him with a cloak and sat beside him the little time until he fell asleep. The king was old and his life, like spilled wine, was dripping away with hardly a sound.
I had grown to manhood in that great palace, and I needed no lamp to guide my steps as I sought the door that led outside to a courtyard shrouded in darkness. It was empty. No one was there, only the still, quiet night. I sat down on an old stone bench, cradling between my hands the wine cup I had carried away with me, my heart filled with memories.
“I am Tiglath Ashur! My father is Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth, King of Kings!”
The words rang in my memory, as if they had just been spoken. And I had looked up and seen the king, shining like the sun—just here, all those years ago.
Lord of the Earth, King of Kings. And now an old man, my father, lay snoring in his room. And Tiglath Ashur—what of him?
A glimpse of her, stepping out from behind a pillar for one quick peek at her old lover. Esharhamat, in whose eyes a man might lose himself. At least she had not forgotten me, although doubtless it would have been best if she had.
I tasted the wine and set the cup down between my feet. It had lost its savor for me, and the night had lasted too long.
“My Lord?”
I turned to look but saw nothing. And then someone stepped out of the shadows—a woman. For a moment I thought. . . But no. It was only the Arab girl.
“No one could tell me where my lord slept tonight, so I came looking for you.”
What could she be talking about? And then, of course, I remember—my father’s little present.
And why not? What difference could it make?
“Come here,” I said, gesturing to her. “Come here, and let me look at you.”
She approached, moving silently on bare feet. I held out my hand and she took it. She knelt before me. She smelled of sandalwood and sweet oil.
“They tell me you are a great conqueror,” she said. “Tonight you can conquer Arabia.”
Her laughter was like the music of silver bells. She opened her tunic and let it glide from her shoulders, knowing I would find her beautiful.
“Let us find a place to take our ease,” I said, standing up. “We can go to the house of war and kick some sleeping cadet out of his bed.”
Perhaps I had drunk more than I thought. Perhaps I stumbled. My foot brushed against the cup I had left resting on the ground, and its wine spilled across the stones like blood.
. . . . .
“You are not in the house of women now, Prince.”
I had been asleep, my nose pressed against a soft breast that smelled sweetly of oil. Before I knew what had happened I felt a hand closing around my ankle and myself being dragged out from beneath the blanket.
It was Tabshar Sin.
“You have missed breakfast, and I will put you to cleaning out the stables until dinner,” he said, grinning at me. With the stump of an a
rm that protruded from his green uniform he gestured toward the sleeping mat
“Who is your friend?”
I didn’t know. It suddenly came to me that I had not the remotest hint of an idea.
“Who are you?” I asked, turning to her. She grinned, as if at a fine joke. “The rab kisir wishes to know your name, and so do I, for you are lovely. Who are you?”
“What name you wish, Lord—though I was born Zabibe. My mother named me after a queen.”
“And very right she was.”
Tabshar Sin held a pan of water for me and I washed my face, awake now and happy to see him.
“Doubtless I have been assigned rooms in my father’s house, although I know not where. Go and find them—wait for me there, Zabibe.”
She gathered up her robe and left, and I was not sorry. A woman is a fine thing at night, when one feels lonely and wishes to take one’s case, but the daylight belongs to men.
“Come,” I said, putting my arm across Tabshar Sin’s shoulders—he was smaller than I remembered him. “You must tell me all the news while we empty a jar together, for I have a great thirst for the beer of Nineveh. . .”
We sat with our backs against the wall of the old cadet quarters, enjoying the sunshine, already a little drunk.
“Do you remember?” he asked finally, his eyes closed and a faint smile playing on his lips. “I gave you your first instruction with the sword, just here. I thought, ‘he has tenacity, but the gods help him in a duel.’ I hope you have improved since then.”
“A little,” I said, thinking of Esarhaddon. “Enough to keep every drunken knave from cutting my throat, but it is not my weapon.”
“No—it was Esarhaddon’s weapon. But that was before he became the marsarru and forgot what it is to be a soldier.”
I did not reply. I do not think Tabshar Sin expected that I would.
“I have only one cadet left.” He sighed, like a man numbering his afflictions. “One more royal prince—and he will be with the army at the start of the next campaign season.”
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