The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  Something in his voice made me look at him, really look at him, for the first time, and I saw what had eluded me before—that Tabshar Sin, like everyone else, had grown old. There was more white than black in his beard now, and his face, when he closed his eyes, was almost that of a corpse.

  “What will you do then?” I asked him.

  “I do not know, or even care very much. I suppose I will go home to my native village, where I know no one, and water date palms.”

  “Come back with me to Amat. Train up soldiers I can use to fight the Medes.”

  “Do you mean it?” He opened his eyes and looked at me, almost as if I had startled him awake.

  “Yes—I mean it.”

  “Then I might have the good fortune to be killed in battle.”

  “Then you will come?”

  “Yes, of course I will come. I thank you, Prince—it will be like old times.”

  “No. It will be better.”

  I took the beer jug that he had been cradling in his lap and tipped it back until its contents washed to the very back of my throat. I was very pleased with myself.

  “Where is Esarhaddon?” I asked, not precisely sure why.

  “In Calah. But he will be here tomorrow, for the king has summoned him. I think the king cannot resist any opportunity to humble Esarhaddon, so he must be in Nineveh while you are here that he may witness the people’s love for his brother.”

  “Am I loved?”

  “Yes. But do not preen yourself too much on account of it. It is true that you are praised because you fight the Medes and hate the Babylonians, but you are praised all the more because you are not Esarhaddon.”

  “And yet he it was who found favor with the gods.”

  “But with no one else.” Tabshar Sin moved his shoulders, as if he felt the cold. “There will be trouble. I shall be just as happy to be gone from Nineveh when the Lord Esarhaddon begins his reign.”

  “And yet much may happen before then. The king may yet live many years more.”

  “Yes, but not reign many more. You have seen him, Prince. How long must it be before your brother becomes king—in fact, if not in name?”

  He reclaimed the beer jar, but only to hold it once more in his lap. He closed his hand around its neck and then seemed to forget it entirely.

  “So, you see,” he went on at last, closing his eyes once more, “I shall not be sorry to be gone. Or if a Median spear finds me; it is all the same.”

  . . . . .

  All the rest of that morning I found myself sought out by officers and soldiers, some of whom I knew from the wars in the south, some of whom I had never met. I seemed always to be at the center of a little knot of men, some of whom asked me questions—about how the Scythian cavalry fought, and if I had found chariots of any use in the mountain campaigns—and some merely stood about and listened. A few even asked if I would accept them for service against the Medes. It seemed that my reports from the north had enjoyed a wide currency within the house of war. My popularity with the army, it seemed, had never stood higher.

  But, as Tabshar Sin had pointed out, this was less my doing than my brother’s—I was not he, and I did not follow him in loving the Babylonians, so I was loved myself.

  Ever since the Lord Sennacherib had sacked Marduk’s city and left her a waste, a home for foxes and a nesting place for owls, there had been two parties, two ways of thinking in the Land of Ashur. One held that the king had done a wicked thing in destroying the ancient power of Babylon. These spoke of her as of a mother, and they feared the wrath of her god. These wished to rebuild her walls, cleanse her sanctuaries, and have the king or one of his sons take once more the hands of Marduk and be king himself in Sumer. This was the will of the priests, and of many besides. The other party—and these were strongest within the army and among the common people—wished Babylon to lie in ruins forever. “Why raise up another nation of enemies?” they asked. “Have we not the barbarians in the north and east? Are these not enough?”

  While the king lived, one brick of Babylon’s great wall would not lie on top of another. Such was his will. But when the king died. . . It was well known that the priests had great influence with Esarhaddon, that he had spoken many times of our crimes against the old gods. Thus many were afraid.

  So the people and the army looked for someone whom they could prefer over Esarhaddon. Thus I was respected where he was scorned, and my name was on all men’s lips.

  But to set myself up as my brother’s rival was to break with the lawful succession and the will of the gods, and this I was not prepared to do. When my mind was at last understood, the people would set up another idol in my place. Hence Tabshar Sin’s warning.

  And Tabshar Sin was wiser than I, for I was yet young enough to be greatly flattered by the attention of so many. The vanity of soldiers, it is said, is like a hole dug in the sand—it will swallow anything.

  Yet the king was old enough to have grown foolish all over again—and to have ceased remembering, or caring, that one day another king must reign in the Land of Ashur—for he encouraged my pride and hated Esarhaddon, whom he might have turned aside to a wiser policy. The king did his part to make me an enemy of my own brother, and for this evil we would each of us one day be made to pay the price.

  But, as I have said, I was flattered. It seemed harmless enough to me that I should be made much of. Did I, the conqueror of many nations, deserve any less? Esarhaddon was to have the throne, so why should I not have glory?

  Esarhaddon was to have the throne—and did he not, even as marsarru, have that which meant more to me than any throne? Did he not have the Lady Esharhamat? It had been a mistake to return to Nineveh—even I could see this clearly enough—but now I had seen her. I could not help it. The poison was already in my blood.

  I could do no harm by putting myself in her way. Was this not what she had done? A few moments, a word—that was all I would ask. She was heavy with child, so it must all be perfectly innocent. There could be no scandal. This is what I told myself, and even believed.

  But neither could there be any thought of a secret meeting. There are no secrets in a royal palace, and doubtless Esharhamat was surrounded by spies—the Lady Naq’ia, if not her son, would wish to remain well informed. Besides, if Esarhaddon ever changed his mind yet again and decided on my death, it would not be out of jealousy over his wife.

  Thus I settled in my heart that I would go that same evening and call at Esharhamat’s garden. Perhaps, out of prudence, she would not see me, but I would go just the same.

  In the last hour of daylight, I found myself seated on the stone bench beside the fountain with the laughing water. A eunuch slave had shown me in and left me there alone while he sought his mistress—or almost alone, for a cat, stiff jointed and too fat to jump up into my lap, rubbed her back against my shins. I picked her up, for we were old acquaintances.

  “Well, my friend Lamashtu,” I murmured, scratching her under the jaw. At once she began to purr, burying her claws in my thigh out of pure contentment. “You have grown quite elderly since last we met. I see your mistress loves you yet.”

  “Her mistress was always constant in her heart.”

  I looked up, startled at the nearness of her voice, and saw Esharhamat standing with her hand upon the fountain’s rim. She had come without my hearing so much as the whisper of her robes.

  “It is not a claim which you can make,” she went on—her expressionless face seemed as hard as polished stone. “Why have you come here, Tiglath?”

  “I should think that that, at least, would require no explanation.” I smiled, feeling that I had made a foolish blunder.

  “You feel no scruples now, visiting your brother’s wife? But of course—I had forgot. Esarhaddon is in Calah.”

  She managed to smile. It seemed to require a vast effort of memory, as if she had forgotten how. The effect was not one of gaiety, but I think she had achieved her object

  “Yes, he is in Calah. He will be here to
morrow and we will meet in the presence of the king, but certainly you will see him before then. Tell him, if you like, that I came to see you.”

  “Do you wish me to believe that you are not afraid?” She sat down beside me, taking the cat from my lap into her own. “Very well—I believe you. I never thought your cowardice included any fear of Esarhaddon.”

  “Have you been so unhappy then, Esharhamat?”

  The look she showed me then, the astonishment and shock I saw in her face—I do not believe I had ever been so ashamed, although to this moment I still am not sure of what. Not that I suffered from any lack of choices.

  “Yes. Yes, I have been unhappy,” she answered, her voice suddenly quavering with unspilled tears. “I am unhappy now, and shall be so, I’ve no doubt, until death frees me—either his or mine, I do not really care which. I have been Esarhaddon’s wife for nearly two years, and you can think to ask if I have been unhappy?”

  She looked down at her belly, round as a melon, and pressed her hands against it, as if trying to hide it from my sight. The cat, perhaps sensing that this season of comfort was past, stole quietly away.

  “They named my little son Siniddinapal, but he died after only a few months. I loved him, but he died. ‘Do not despair,’ they said to me, ‘for you will have other sons.’ And now my womb is heavy again and I hate this child, even before he is born—he will be a son, you know. Esarhaddon’s son. He will be a king, like this father, and I wish I could. . . I wish my lord husband might have a corpse for his heir!”

  There is a bitterness which only women may know, a sense of injustice at the tyranny of their own passions, of having been betrayed by the pitiless logic of nature itself. It places them—some of them—outside this charmed circle which we, with such innocence, call the hazards of life, as if they had died even to the possibility of happiness and come back as avenging spirits. All this I learned, in that one moment, only by looking into Esharhamat’s hot, hating eyes.

  But it was the wisdom only of a moment. It vanished as, at last, the tears stained her burning face. She did not resist as I took her into my arms.

  “I am sorry,” I whispered, kissing her hair. “I am sorry. I meant but to obey the god’s will, and I have reflected misery on us all.”

  “Oh, do not speak to me of your god!”

  She pushed herself away from me, her anger flaming up again like stirred embers.

  “Your god—he plays with us! A child pitching stones at a bird’s nest could not have less pity. ‘The god’s will,’ you call it. Ashur’s will—for such an empty thing you let me go to Esarhaddon’s bed.”

  I started to speak, but the words died on my lips. I could only hold her shoulders between my two hands, feeling the terrible passion that shook her.

  “Do you know what it has been like for me in his bed—do you, Tiglath?” A terrible, mirthless smile pulled at her mouth as she spoke. “On our wedding night he said, ‘Let us see your backside, wife, that we may know what my brother has taught you of the arts of pleasing a man.’ That was what I learned behind the veil of marriage. I have been schooled in submission. Still, I do not think to this hour my lord husband takes much delight in me—do you know what he does sometimes, when he is drunk enough? He sends his harlots to instruct me. Sometimes he even comes with them. Do these little disclosures of my married life amuse you, Tiglath? Or can it be that you are embarrassed?”

  I admit I could not have said what I felt at that moment. I could not have spoken at all. The very air in my lungs seemed to have hardened into ice. I seemed as incapable of sensation as the tiles in the floor beneath my sandals. It was something like that instant in the midst of battle when one receives a great wound and one is suddenly lost in a blinding, paralyzing flash of light—the pain will come, but for the moment it is far away.

  Still, it must come. As I found my breath again I wanted to scream with rage. My hands itched for a weapon—an ax, for choice. I wanted to mix Esarhaddon’s blood with the dust. I would not merely kill him; I would cut him into tiny pieces and feed them to the dogs. Why had I not killed him when I had had the chance? His throat under the blade of my sword. . .

  I rose to my feet, trembling with dumb wrath. I could not look at Esharhamat. I could not.

  “Good—I am glad I told you,” she said, her voice calm, empty of passion. “See where the will of Ashur has brought us, Tiglath. For it is not pity I want, but shame.”

  “Then you have your will, for you have shamed me.”

  “Then I am happy.” She reached out her tiny white hand and touched me upon the arm. “For the day will come when I will ask you to turn your back on your god—and return to me.”

  Chapter 26

  The king expected my presence at his banquet that evening, but there was no room in my belly for the duties of subject and son. I hardly thought of the king’s existence. All I knew was that it would have been impossible to stay another hour in the city of Nineveh.

  So I made no excuses and left no messages. I simply went to fetch my horse from the stables in the house of war and rode out into the open country. Night was already covering the world with its wings, but this too I hardly noticed. My mind throbbed like a great bruise. I thought it might burst at the sound of another word.

  “Have I now grown so degraded by your brother’s touch that you cannot love me, Tiglath?” she had asked, mocking me with her question. “Do you wish to hear more of his visits to my bed—you have but to ask, for I shall hold nothing back from you. Who more than you has a right to know all the intimacies that pass between Esharhaddon and myself, all the little ways he has of endearing himself to a woman. Shall I tell you everything, Tiglath?”

  She seemed to laugh and weep by turns, or both together. And at last she threw herself into my arms, sobbing like a child.

  “Do not leave me in this darkness, Tiglath—I beg you. Do not turn from me again.”

  There were no more words. I do not even remember how I came away from her. I can only remember her face, stained with tears.

  So I rode away into the black night, half mad with rage and blind, helpless grief.

  For what seemed hours I kept my horse to a gallop, lashing him on until his flanks were slippery with lather, until at last he could run no farther and simply stopped, gasping for air, his great chest heaving with every breath. I dismounted and we walked on together, the lights of the city watchtowers far behind us.

  The wind was laden with ice and slipped through my cloak like a thousand iron needles. It was then so dark I could not even see the ground.

  At last, as my brain began to clear, I felt the cold as an annoyance, an unwelcome distraction, and looked about for some shelter. What I found was a ruined hut, no doubt the abode of some long dead farmer, its roof gone, its mud brick walls broken and worn down by weather but still solid enough to offer protection from the wind. I tethered the horse and crouched down in a corner, wrapping my cloak about my knees. It was not a place to offer much comfort, but I would not freeze to death there and somehow I could not be troubled to want anything beyond.

  No passion lasts forever. By the chill hours of morning mine had subsided into a sullen resentment, black enough but at least no longer tearing at my breast like a weasel trapped in a leather bag. I began to think with some satisfaction of cutting Esarhaddon’s throat. The idea charmed me—for a moment I experienced something almost like pleasure. Such a thing would be impossible—the person of the marsarru is as sacred as that of the king—but still I could not deny myself the satisfaction of imagining it. This is always the first step the mind takes to heal itself, the illusion that everything can be set right by some single action.

  Then I began to consider more practical solutions. If I could not kill Esarhaddon I could ask him to set his wife aside—he did not favor her, and once she had given him a healthy son. . . But this too was impossible. Everyone knew the prophecy that she was to be the mother of kings. Esharhamat was the seal of legitimacy on his claim to the throne. If she
had children by another man, and if the omens favored them, no son of Esarhaddon would feel himself safe.

  “Turn your back on your god—and return to me,” she had said. “Turn your back on your god.” Could I do such a thing?

  I would not be permitted to kill Esarhaddon honorably, in open combat, but I could contrive to have him murdered. Yes. Men died every day—had not there been questions asked about the death of Arad Ninlil? I would have no shortage of willing accomplices, should I choose to employ them, for rarely had a royal heir stood in lower favor than did my brother. A poisoned cup of wine perhaps. . .

  But could I do it? Could I? No. I had grown to hate Esarhaddon, but he was safe from me. I was not brave enough for such treachery.

  What was left? Furtive meetings with Esharhamat? Nothing more than that? Perhaps not even that.

  Not every knot might be untied, it seemed.

  Dawn was coming. Ashur’s sun was rising behind the eastern mountains. At first it only traced their ragged outline as the sky, with painful slowness, turned a pale gray. Then, finally, the god kindled his fire and rose once more to chase away the dark ghosts of night. The world had his gift of life for one more day.

  I cannot claim to have been very appreciative. My legs were stiff from the cold, I was hungry, and a dull, stubborn resentment clouded my mind like the fumes of wine after a night’s debauchery. I was in a filthy, poisonous temper that made everything, even the morning sunshine, into a grievance.

  I was many beru from the nearest dwelling—there was not even a plowed field within sight—and yet, looking about me, I had a vague sense of where I was. Possibly I had passed this way once or twice while hunting; at any rate, it seemed familiar.

  Within three hours I reached a village—I had not been looking for one, but I found it. The peasants gathered around my horse shouting, “Lord, Lord! The Lord Tiglath!” and almost as soon as I had dismounted I was besieged by women offering me beer from huge clay jars and baskets of fruit and roasted lamb.

  There were men here, it seemed, who had fought at Khalule. We sat down together around the cooking fires—the whole population it seemed, some sixty or seventy villagers, including children and old people—and held an impromptu feast.