The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  In the face of such insistent hospitality, one is hard pressed to concentrate on one’s private misery and, thus distracted, it was some time before I thought of the fact that I was the most wretched of men. I felt ashamed to have forgotten, but by then, of course, it was too late since, even against my will, I had grown quite cheerful, and I thanked the great gods for having blessed men with childish and inconstant hearts, that their griefs might know such narrow limits. I was not too proud for that.

  “Stay among us,” the elders told me. “Bring us good fortune and the blessings of the gods.”

  Why not? I thought. Yes, I will stay here for a time. I will hide myself here.

  But there was nowhere for the Lord Tiglath Ashur to hide. The next morning one of the king’s heralds, the silver ribbons hanging from his staff of office, rode into the village.

  “The Lord Sennacherib, King of the World’s Four Corners, greets the Royal Prince, the Lord Tiglath Ashur,” he announced, precisely as if he were addressing a multitude instead of one man. He was tall and smooth faced, really a very grand figure—they always are, these court warriors with their jewel encrusted swords. “I am one of many sent to discover the reason for the Lord Tiglath Ashur’s sudden removal.”

  It was what I should have expected. My father, who in old age was prey to sudden fears, had probably sent envoys in every direction with orders to find me or not return. It was possible his guards were still turning over each square cubit of the city, seeking me alive or dead. It was a cruel thing I had done. I should have left word.

  “You may tell the king you have found me,” I said. “I am here and will remain here for a time.”

  “The Lord Sennacherib bids you return at once.” He drew himself up very straight—he really was a pompous donkey.

  “That is not possible.”

  He smiled. And why should he not smile? Did he not speak with the king’s voice?

  “And why is it not possible?”

  “It is not possible because it is not my will!” I shouted—I had simply lost patience. “Go! Tell the king my father that I will come when I will come. Be gone!”

  I stamped my foot out of pure vexation, and the man actually started with alarm. They are such heroes, these palace eunuchs. Within the minute he was on his horse and raising clouds of dust on his way back to Nineveh.

  . . . . .

  Each day while I dwelt among the villagers I went out hunting alone. I brought home deer and wild boar, and my simple hosts rejoiced to be feasting on such abundance of fresh meat, but I took little pleasure in the sport.

  I simply wanted to be by myself and thus spent the better part of every afternoon sitting in the shade of an acacia tree, puzzling over the strange shape that life had taken for Esharhamat and Esarhaddon, and for me. My musings led me to no solutions—there could be no solutions; the god had seen to that—but the character of the problem gradually revealed itself with disheartening clarity.

  We were all trapped—Esharhamat in a marriage founded upon bitterness and contempt, Esarhaddon in an eminence as little suited to his wishes as to his talents, and I. . . I wanted a woman I could not have, which was a common enough fate, and I could live without the glory of kingship. Why then did I feel so estranged from myself? I did not know. That was my burden, not to know.

  And each night I sat among the village men, and we discussed war and farming—the only two fit subjects. We drank beer until sleep came, and then my dreams did not torment me. Thus I lived for five days.

  On the third day the king sent another of his heralds and I dismissed him too, although with greater courtesy than the first. And on the night of the fifth day, long after the inmates of the village had found their beds, yet another came, and this one I told I would return to Nineveh. He said his orders were to accompany me back, but I told him that this I would not permit. I was not a truant schoolboy to be hauled back by the ear. I would return as I had left, alone.

  The next morning, as I mounted my horse, a village woman gave me a pottery water flask and a small reed bag filled with bread and dried meat.

  I rode away without looking back. I heard no sound except the beating of my horse’s hoofs.

  The Gate of Nergal, which opens onto the road to Tarbisu, was still unlocked when I arrived, so I did not have to shout up to the watchman and identify myself in order to be let in. I simply rode through, one more man on horseback, among so many on foot, hardly noticed at all. A prince who leaves his escort behind him becomes like other men—he has no special majesty and no one recognizes him. Of this it is wise sometimes to be reminded.

  I had hardly arrived in my rooms to take off my cloak and wash the dust of travel from my eyes before a page burst in upon me and, directly behind him, the king himself.

  “I ought to have your feet chopped off for wandering away in such a manner,” he said, embracing me nevertheless. “And it is a crime punishable by death to refuse a royal summons. My son, much as I love you, I would have your life for this insolence were it not for your brother Esarhaddon. Your absence has obliged the Donkey to remain waiting here in Nineveh longer than pleases him, and I have been kept vastly amused by his impatience and anger. It is always a pleasure to see him annoyed, but he has been almost beside himself—he talks of nothing but your ‘unconscionable impudence’ and how he would have you flayed if he were king. You are fortunate finally to have accepted him as an enemy. Come—I have kept the banqueters waiting in your honor.”

  Our entry together into the great hall caused something of a sensation, for no one knew why I had left the city or how I would stand in the king’s favor when I returned—palaces do a lively custom in rumors, and possibly half the men who dined with us that night had expected some great change, like a movement of the earth itself, that would sweep them in or out of favor.

  And then there was the matter of Esarhaddon’s all too obvious reaction at the sight of the king leaning on my arm. His face went black with rage.

  So my father’s banquet was an occasion for great disquiet and, as happened so often in the last years of his reign, it declined rather quickly into a drunken orgy. It took hardly more than an hour before courtiers of otherwise blameless dignity, their faces flushed from wine, were pelting each other with pieces of roast meat. I saw at least three of the dancing girls lifted up to the table, placed on their backs, and rutted on by men who waited their turns in strict order of precedence. It was a scene worthy of a provincial army barrack after two months’ campaign.

  But the king enjoyed it all. He laughed and made rude jokes, encouraging those who held back to join in the general merriment. Baiting Esarhaddon and watching the depravity of his nobles—his pleasures in life seemed to have dwindled down to these. Finally he got up from his chair, walked to a corner, vomited loudly, and allowed himself to be led off to bed.

  And all the while my brother and I, as if by compact, drank little, spoke hardly at all to those around us, and zealously avoided one another’s eye. For either of us, one might have imagined, so much as to acknowledge the other’s existence would have been insupportable.

  But when the king had finally left I went to find my own rest, abandoning the field to Esarhaddon. I was weary of Nineveh. I wanted only to return to the safe forgetfulness of my garrison at Amat, where the only enemy was found in battle. I would most happily abandon all this glittering corruption to my brother, who doubtless had no more taste for it than I did. Let this be his punishment, I thought, to reign in this dog kennel until disgust gnaws straight through his vitals and he dies of it. As soon as the king would release me, I would fly like a bird from his golden net. The Medes would pay me back a thousand fold as I piled up their corpses as monuments to my immortal glory.

  Thus simple does the tangled web of life seem to a young man, for I was young then, although I felt myself to be old and full of cynical wisdom.

  In my rooms the Arab girl Zabibe helped me off with my robes and rubbed my limbs with hot scented oil. I almost fell asleep under her
cunning hands. Almost, but not quite.

  “My lord has been absent many days,” she murmured as she bathed my face in water mixed with flower petals. “I thought my lord had forgotten his servant.”

  I had forgotten her—the thought of her had never once entered my head—but it seemed impolite to say so, and I merely smiled.

  “Zabibe lives only to find favor with my lord,” she went on, her voice as gentle as the flutter of a bird’s wings. The tips of her fingers brushed against my manhood, which by then was as stiff as bronze. Her pale skin caught the light from the oil lamp beside my bed, making her seem the only real object in the room. “My lord must learn to put all care behind him, to let it fall away like a soiled garment. My lord must permit Zabibe to ease his heart.”

  I listened to her voice, feeling like a child whose ear is captured by a cradle song, knowing and not caring that I heard only the skillful chatter of a harlot. What did it matter what was real and what not? Why should I care? I had only now—this moment was all I could call my own. Happiness was a shadow, but pleasure at least was real.

  . . . . .

  I awoke the next morning with a headache. The brazier, cold for hours, had left a faint taste of smoke in the air, and Zabibe was snoring like a water buffalo. This was the end of passion—a winter morning, a pounding head, and a woman who, as soon as she opened her eyes, would expect to hear that she was the god’s first blessing. I put on my tunic and slipped quietly out of the room. Tonight I might desire this woman’s consolation again, but I could not face her now. I escaped to the house of war, where I could steam my soul clean again in the sweating house and enjoy a soldier’s breakfast of beer and boiled millet.

  “The Dread Lord Sennacherib, King of the Earth’s Four Corners, salutes the Royal Prince Tiglath Ashur!”

  Within the narrow confines of the officers’ mess, his voice boomed like a warm drum. I was sitting at a table with my back to the door, and I could not have been more startled if someone had jabbed me between the shoulder blades with a sword point. I turned and saw the herald with the silver ribbons hanging from his staff, and my heart sank.

  “The Dread Lord Sennacherib requests. . .

  “Yes—yes, yes. Just tell me where,” I snapped. I was growing weary of this little ritual.

  “If you will follow me, Lord—now.”

  He made a grand, sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate the way out, and I rose meekly to go after him.

  There was a litter waiting for me—in all my life I had never ridden in one, since I held my own legs to be as sound as another man’s, and this did not seem the moment to start behaving like a pampered concubine, so I dismissed it and followed the herald on foot. We passed back through the palace grounds and out the Gate of Igisigsig and into the royal gardens, which occupied the corner between the river and the city’s northern wall, a place my father loved and where I found him sitting under a vine arbor with a cup of wine in his hand. Esarhaddon was with him, looking no more cheerful than he had last night.

  “The hero has at last found a moment for us,” my brother cried, glaring at me as he rose from his seat. “I am astonished he can be bothered.”

  The king laughed and pitched the contents of his wine cup onto the ground beneath a flowering bush.

  “The marsarru here has been telling me that your campaign against the Medes is a profitless waste. He says our only real safety lies in avoiding the anger of the gods.”

  He laughed again, stamping his sandaled foot to emphasize the delicious nature of the joke, and Esarhaddon scowled and snorted like a bull beset by flies. It was obvious that this quarrel was of long standing.

  “My Lord Marsarru is, as always, correct,” I answered. “Only a fool risks the wrath of Great Ashur, but I think he will not be displeased if we remind the Medes that he and not their Ahura is lord in the Western Lands.”

  “I was speaking with reference to the temple of Marduk in Babylon.”

  Esarhaddon sat down again as I came near him. I think he was afraid I might have offered him my hand.

  “That place is in ruins—do you not recall, brother, how you and I labored at its destruction?—and Marduk has abandoned his city and now does honor to Ashur in our temple here in Nineveh. Were you by chance suggesting it should be otherwise?”

  I smiled at him. I hated him, at that moment, more utterly than ever I had anyone in my life. And it was not the Medes I was thinking of—or the ruined temples of Babylon, or the honor of the deathless gods—but Esharhamat.

  “Yes, my Lord Marsarru,” the king interposed. “Were you by chance suggesting it should be otherwise?”

  He sat with his hands on his knees, turning his head from one of us to the other. His eyes glittered with malicious pleasure, but the sun shining down on his gray old head pitilessly revealed his weary age.

  Esarhaddon picked up a pebble and threw it at a bird which had perched on a tree limb some twenty paces away. It was a near miss, and the bird fluttered into the air.

  “The Medes are no more danger than that,” he said. I could read in his eyes a consciousness of having evaded a direct answer.

  “Than what, my beloved son—that bird, or the unerring accuracy of your arm?”

  “The god of Babylon must be restored,” Esarhaddon replied, seeming to close his mind to the king’s mockery. “Marduk, who leaves no insult unanswered, has conceived a great wrath against the Land of Ashur. We cannot prosper until the city is rebuilt. If we neglect this duty, our royal house is doomed.”

  “I was not born in the Land of Sumer,” I said. “I am a man of the north and put my trust in the mercy of Ashur.”

  “No one needs to remind us that you are half a foreigner, my Lord Tiglath.”

  “Just as all men remember, my Lord Marsarru, that your mother used to sell her backside in the wineshops of Borsippa.”

  Esarhaddon rose in terrible anger, his hand already on the hilt of his sword. I believe, save for the presence of the king, we might have ended our quarrel there and then, but my father also rose and pushed us apart.

  “How dare you!” he shouted. “How dare either of you! Am I a plowman, born with mud between his toes, to watch my sons goad each other to deadly fight? I forbid this! Sit down, Esarhaddon, since you are most to blame. We were speaking of the Medes.”

  And, as quickly as it had arisen, the crisis passed. Esarhaddon resumed his seat, but from that moment on he might as well have been struck deaf for all the impact my words had on him.

  “Then may I now speak of the Medes?” I asked—it seemed we had done justice to every other topic.

  “Yes, my son. Speak of the Medes.”

  “They are a little people. They are not important.” My brother did not even look at me as he spoke.

  “The Sagarians, the Miyaneh, and the Iranzu—these are only tribes. Yes, they are little people, each in turn, and not important. But if they combine, and think of themselves as one nation, then they are important And this they are beginning to do, under a man called Daiaukka, who calls himself their king. I have met this king, and he is all that one would most fear in an enemy. Added to this, the Medes have found a new god. . .”

  I spoke for some time, telling all I had learned in the eastern mountains, and the king listened with great attention. He would stop me now and then to ask a question—a name, perhaps, or the meaning of some strange foreign word—but for the rest he preserved an impenetrable silence.

  “And it is your belief they will march west?” he asked at last, folding his hands in his lap.

  “Yes, Dread Lord. Unless we stop them, and soon, they will come down from their mountains like wolves. We must teach them the cost of their ambitions, and if the lesson is terrible enough perhaps then they will leave us in peace for a generation.”

  “And for this, I have no doubt, you will need a great army,” Esarhaddon said suddenly. “Greater by far than that which is presently under your command.”

  “I will need more men, yes. Perhaps sixty compa
nies more.”

  My brother nodded, as if this was the answer he had expected. The tight smile on his lips was that of a man whose worst suspicions had been confirmed.

  “My Lord King,” he asked, “have you considered to what end my brother raises such a force? Surely not to fight the Medes. It cannot be that a few mountain barbarians, who are a threat only in the eastern provinces, justify so massive a response. I think the Lord Tiglath Ashur wishes to strengthen his northern army for reasons which have precious little to do with the Medes.”

  “And what would those reasons be, my Lord Marsarru?”

  The king waited for an answer, watching his heir through narrow, speculative eyes.

  “I think he prepares for the day when a new king will reign in Nineveh. I think he plans himself to be that king.”

  Esarhaddon folded his arms over his chest and turned his gaze to me. I have found you out, his eyes said. You think you have been so clever, but your intrigues have been known to me from the start.

  “If that is what my brother believes, I have a very simple answer.” I smiled at him—in that moment my love for him was dead. “Let him take command of this army himself. Let it be his weapon, and not mine—he is an able soldier and no doubt will win his victory. Let the glory of conquest be his and not mine.”

  “So that you may remain behind in the capital and plot with my enemies? Tiglath, do you think I am such a fool?”

  “I prepare an army in the north to rob you of your inheritance,” I said, shaking my head in derision. “I also wish to stay in Nineveh and rob you of your inheritance. Make up your mind, Esarhaddon—which is it to be? You must settle for yourself what form my treachery is to take.”

  The king laughed, and when my brother tried to make some response, he waved him into silence.

  “Now, let us speak of serious matters,” the king said. “You say, Tiglath, that you can stop the Medes for a generation. And then they will return again?”