The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “It is early, I know, but I have had the auspices taken on that new son Esharhamat has whelped for your beloved brother, the Lord Donkey. I thought it a reasonable precaution since, sadly, the little brat gives no sign that he will oblige us by dying, like the last one. He proves as healthy as his father, alas, but the gods, who are wise, have greatly diminished the injury by declaring that this one, at least, will never sit upon my throne. The goat’s liver, I was told, was already filled with maggots, and its heart was as black as if it had been burned with fire. . .”

  Burned with fire. I remembered Esharhamat’s dreams about a fiery death and wondered what it was which the Lords of Decision had revealed to her.

  As always, I was careful in my replies and declined to offer advice even when the king my father sought it of me. I would not be turtanu, neither in name nor in fact, neither in Nineveh nor in Amat. Esarhaddon was to be king, and I saw no point in attempting to forestall the inevitable.

  So in the first day of Kislef, even while the roads were yet muddy from the first winter rains, I set off for the south with a bodyguard of a hundred men. Zabibe traveled with us in a wagon, but she did not enjoy the journey and filled my ears with complaints whenever I was unwary enough to venture near her, which was not often. Even for the hours of rest I joined my soldiers and pitched a tent on the ground, leaving her to the comforts of her wagon. I did not go into her except once, when we stopped for the night in a village near Elkosh and, having drunk more beer than was wise, I pushed her down on a table to unburden myself of a week’s abstinence. The next morning she reproached me bitterly, saying that she was up until nearly dawn picking splinters out of her breasts and belly.

  “Hold your tongue, woman,” I told her, “or I will sell you to a caravan driver who smells worse than his camels.”

  After ten days, when we approached lands belonging to my estate, I told the rab kisir in charge of my escort to take them and the wagon on to Nineveh. I wished to spend a few tranquil days at Three Lions, and I still had enough shame to wish that my mother might know nothing of Zabibe.

  After an absence of many months, it is a fine thing to return to one’s own place. Since becoming the Lord Sinahiusur’s heir I was the master of many fine estates, most of which I had never even seen, but Three Lions was my home. Here I was not rab shaqe and shaknu, nor the king’s son, nor the rival of great princes. Here I was merely a landowner and farmer. Here I ate my own bread and drank my own beer. And here, under the floor of my own house, I hoped one day to lay down my bones.

  The last harvest of the year had been gathered in, and the fields were empty and covered with withered stubble. The mud along the canal banks looked like molten granite—there was hardly water enough at the bottom to come up to an ox’s belly. The skies were the color of lead and far away I could hear the muffled booming of Adad’s thunder, but there would be no rain this night. By the time I rode into the deserted farmyard I could see flashes of lightning behind the eastern mountains.

  The house servants stood in a knot on the porch of my house, murmuring among themselves and staring at me as if they could not imagine how I had come there. A boy came from the stable to take my horse.

  “Well,” I said, grinning broadly and wondering what was the trouble, “and will no one bring her master a cup of beer? Where is my lady mother?”

  “I am here, my son,” she said, stepping out from the shadow of the doorway. “May the gods be blessed for having spared you to return to me.”

  I kissed her upon the lips and we went inside, where I washed my face in a basin of heated water. All the while my mother stood beside me, holding her hands clenched together at her waist like a supplicant. I could only wonder what new domestic catastrophe had befallen us—until Naiba came into the room, silent as a cat, and stood penitently beside the hearth. Her eyes were lowered; she seemed to be gazing down at her belly, which had swollen beneath her tunic to the size of a summer melon.

  I burst forth with laughter at the sight of her, and she ran away, weeping loudly and hiding her face with her arms.

  “Perhaps we had best not tarry any longer about the betrothal ritual,” I said at last, when I could control my voice again. “Best marry the hot little bitch off quickly, or young Qurdi will be a father before ever he is a husband.”

  “Then you are not angry, Lathikadas?”

  My mother stared into my face with an expression that struck a nervous balance between gratitude and astonishment, as if she were relieved to have detected me in some weakness.

  “No, Merope, I am not angry,” I answered, putting my arm over her shoulders. “I have not gone into the girl in almost a year, as you know, for she sleeps in your room and not in mine, so I have no interest in the matter. If Qurdi is not displeased, there is little enough reason why I should be.”

  . . . . .

  The next morning I received Tahu Ishtar and his son into my presence. It was a visit of ceremony, so I met them outside the door of my house. They bowed low and offered presents of embroidered cloth, copper jewelry, bread, date wine, and honeyed fruit. I accepted these in the name of my slave and thus gave my consent to this betrothal. At last, Naiba came out into the sunshine, escorted by my mother, and her future husband poured scented oil over her hair. At first she flushed with pleasure and then, almost at once, burst once more into tears and had to be taken back inside, Merope clucking over her like a brooding hen.

  “My wife was much the same when she was with child,” Tahu Ishtar said, after the women had gone. “Their livers grow full of demons. To have been born a man is a great blessing.”

  The three of us then drank beer together, and Tahu Ishtar and I agreed that, considering the circumstances, it would be well if the marriage took place before I was obliged to return to Nineveh. Qurdi stood silent as we talked and ground his toes into the dust. He would have his wife before he was three days older, but until then, it seemed, he was still only a boy.

  The next day and the next there was rain from noon to sunset, and a man could not even amuse himself with hunting. I tried to stay out of my mother’s way, for there was much to be done in preparation for Naiba’s marriage feast, and at last I retreated to one of the barns to sit on sacks of millet and grow drunk on beer. I felt out of place and wished I were still in Amat.

  But on the third day the sun was out again, and at the third hour of the morning, when the farmyard was filled with peasants from the surrounding villages, I led Naiba to the house of Tahu Ishtar, her new father in law, and, as she sat on a bench before the door, Qurdi covered her with a veil and declared in a loud voice that she was now his wife. He looked very pleased with himself and everyone cheered, for the boy was well liked—even Naiba did not weep as much as I would have expected. At the end I stepped forward and solemnly paid her dowry into Qurdi’s hands, counting out the hundred shekels of silver so that all could see that the overseer’s son was now a man of substance.

  There were seven goats roasted to feed the marriage guests, and we drank down many great jars of beer. Everyone was merry, and at sundown Qurdi led his new wife into his father’s house for the first time, although whether he was able to go into her when she was so far gone with child I do not know. Yet I think they were both very content with their bargain.

  I went to my own bed soon after that, taking with me for company a jar of strong date wine. I was pleased at the day’s work, for I wished Qurdi well and was fond of Naiba, but I cannot say that my pleasure was unmixed.

  “I will never put the veil over any woman’s head,” I thought. “And if I have sons they will be the children of concubines.” I had only to close my eyes and I saw Esharamat’s face—Esharhamat, whom I loved, who was my brother’s wife and the mother of his son.

  If a man drinks enough date wine he does not dream. He snores like a pig and nothing troubles him. This is the mercy of the great gods.

  . . . . .

  “My Lord Tiglath Ashur, the mighty rab shaqe, does not care for wine? But, I am always
forgetting, he drinks only the fresh blood of Medes!”

  This, followed by much laughter. It was a banquet given by Nabu Pashir—the son of one of the king’s lesser brothers, a man of no importance then but one who hoped for better in the next reign. I cannot even remember why I went, since I must have known that no one there would be quick to call himself my friend.

  But the joke went down very well. Esarhaddon, among such, could afford to display his wit.

  “In the spring my noble brother will fight a great war,” he went on, perhaps encouraged by my silence. “He plans to lead as many as twenty thousand men into the eastern mountains—it will be a kind of horse catching expedition.”

  There was more laughter, for the hour was late and everyone was drunk, even the harlots. The flute players sat in a corner, their knees drawn up to their chests, sleeping contentedly. The table was covered with puddles of spilled wine.

  I waited, saying nothing. The men who sat on either side of me faced away, watching my brother, trying as best they could to ignore my existence. Everyone else—everyone out of reach of my hands and feeling it thus safe to indulge a taste for mockery—divided their attention between Esarhaddon and myself. It was a game, and in this company no one harmed himself by becoming my enemy.

  He was the marsarru, I told myself. His person was sacred and no man could insult him in public. If I answered him at all, I would only end by making myself look ridiculous.

  Yet this was Esarhaddon, my friend from childhood, my brother whom once I had loved. Now he wiped his greasy fingers on his tunic, shot through with silver, and grinned at me, hating the sight of me. How had it come to this?

  “The great warlord—he sits up in that village of mud huts he calls a garrison and plots cattle raids against tribesmen who have never slept twice in the same place since the day they were born. Oh, it is all very glorious!”

  “Yes, and his mother is an Ionian tavern girl whom even the king does not. . .”

  I did not even know the dog’s name. He sat only two or three places from Esarhaddon himself, staring at me through wide, blinking witless eyes—perhaps he was fool enough to have imagined himself within some magic circle of inviolability, but he must have seen his error in my face for the words trailed away to nothing.

  The whole assembly fell silent as I rose to my feet. Men scrambled to be out of my way as I kicked aside the section of table that stood between us, for they knew that one among them had signed his death warrant.

  “No! NO—I. . .”

  No one tried to interfere, and this one was too drunk and frightened even to defend himself. I grabbed him by the beard with my left hand and with my right drew the dagger from my belt. One quick slash did the business, cutting his scrawny throat so deeply that my blade scraped against bone.

  Blood spurted forth, covering me, the table, even the wall behind—he did not even cry out. I released his beard, and he fell backward over the bench upon which he had been sitting, as limp as water.

  “I have repaid the insult,” I shouted, glaring defiance. “If anyone wishes to claim satisfaction for the deed, he will know where to find me.”

  I turned on my heel and left. As I made my way to the door, which seemed a journey of hours, I could hear Esarhaddon’s voice at my back.

  “Damn you, Tiglath!” he shouted. “I’ll see that you pay for this—damn you, Tiglath!”

  But no one attempted to hold me and, as I walked home, people in the streets merely stared—it was not their business to meddle if my clothes, my hands, even my face and beard were stained with blood. I must have looked like a butcher.

  I was a butcher. I had killed a man, and for no better cause than that he had started to insult my mother. Had I really killed him for that? No, I had killed him because he was not Esarhaddon—because it was therefore permitted to kill him. The blood which had soaked through my tunic and was now caking like dried mud should have been Esarhaddon’s.

  My slaves met me at the door. They had been slaves of the Lord Sinahiusur, just as the palace in which I lived had been his, and thus they hardly knew me. They said nothing, but what must they have thought as I stripped myself naked, my bare skin streaked with blood, and called for wine, hot water, and scented oil? I did not then trouble myself to think.

  I regretted nothing. I would not be mocked. Let the lord marsarru, the Chosen One of Ashur, let him be warned that I would not be mocked. I regretted nothing. Nothing—I. . .

  . . . . .

  The king, of course, was furious. I received his summons the very next morning and found him in his garden, sitting on a stone bench, with Esarhaddon just behind.

  But this, at least, was not a public occasion. Here I owed my brother no special respect.

  “I want to know how you dared do such a thing,” my father said, his voice level and deadly. “I want to know why you imagine you can cut a man’s throat in front of twenty or thirty of my nobles and hope to escape punishment.”

  Esarhaddon caught my eye and smiled tensely. It seemed that, for reasons of his own, he too wished to know.

  “First of all, they are not your nobles, but your son and heir the lord marsarru’s. Second, while he may choose to throw mud from the mantle of his office, he should teach his trained monkeys to hold their tongues, for they enjoy not his safety. If I killed a man, let his life be on Esarhaddon’s head—it is not my way to listen quietly to the tauntings of slaves.”

  “Is this true?” The king twisted around to look up at Esarhaddon. “Is this true, eh? Did the dog have the impudence to insult my son?”

  “The Lord Tiglath Ashur speaks words of fire, as befits a conqueror, but Girittu Marduk is no less dead.”

  “Was that his name?” I asked, returning Esarhaddon’s tight, contemptuous smile. “I did not realize such vermin aspired to the dignity of names.”

  “You should cut throats for a livelihood, Tiglath. You would make a great reputation for yourself in the alleyways of Nineveh.”

  “And my lord marsarru could set up as a brothel keeper, since the life seems so very much to his taste.”

  “I will have no more of this!” the king shouted, springing up from his bench as if it had suddenly turned into a slab of white hot iron. “I am an old man, and I will have no more of this—my head pounds with the thunder of angry voices. No more, I say!”

  The expression on Esarhaddon’s lips did not change, except that the object of his contempt was now not me but our father.

  “I am sorry to have tried your patience thus, Dread Lord, but since it involved a slight to the royal dignity—”

  “Yes—dignity.” The king repeated the word, almost as if it were part of an invocation. His eyes kept shifting from Esarhaddon to me, and they were filled with anxious uncertainty.

  “Yes—dignity. The dignity of our house. . .”

  An old man’s moods are as changeful as the sky in springtime. In an instant, seemingly from one breath to the next, the whole carriage of his body changed.

  “No—I remember now.” He took my arm in his hands, squeezing as if to test its strength. “An insult which had to be answered—the dog chose to cast a slur upon my son. What did he say, eh, Tiglath? Well, no matter. . .”

  He sat down again, and the anxiety had vanished from his face. He placed his hands upon his knees, seemingly quite content and at peace.

  Above the king’s head, Esarhaddon and I exchanged a look. My brother raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “You see how he is?”

  “But you must protect yourself, my son.” The Lord Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth’s Four Corners, glanced up at me, his countenance once more puckered with worry. “Go to the house of this man, this Girittu Marduk, and place offerings of bread and wine upon his bier, lest his ghost seek vengeance against you.”

  “It seems no less than a sensible precaution,” Esarhaddon put in, nodding sagely.

  “You see? Esarhaddon agrees.” The king’s gaze skipped back and forth between us. “Do this, Tiglath—do it at once. And
now leave me, both of you. I like to feed the birds that stop here in my garden on their way south. They know me and are not afraid, but they will not come if there are strangers about. Leave me.”

  I left, but I did not visit the house of Girittu Marduk nor offer sacrifice to his ghost, for the wrath of such a one, either quick or dead, caused me little enough disquiet. The shades of those I had killed could safely leave me to my living enemies.

  Esarhaddon had learned one or two things since receiving the god’s blessing. Somewhere, somehow, he had acquired subtlety—enough, at least, for him to find ways of managing the king. Yes, of course. The king was failing. In a few years’ time it would be Esarhaddon who would hold power in the Land of Ashur. It would be as the officers of the quradu had said.

  But I had grown accustomed to the knowledge that I walked within a nest of scorpions. It no longer made me feel giddy.

  When I returned home I saw a carrying chair waiting. The slaves who squatted before my door wore the tunics of the royal household.

  In the audience chamber, which in Sinahiusur’s time had been crowded with supplicants, I found only the Lady Shaditu.

  “You said you would kill me when next we met,” she murmured. She sat on a table, showing me the outlines of her legs through her filmy tunic. “But I do not think you will kill me today. I think that, for the moment, you are sated with blood.”

  She smiled, implying that she understood everything, that my crimes only made me more attractive. I knew that she was wicked, that her body was a path which must lead to disgrace and death, and yet the thought must intrude itself into my mind that she was also beautiful.

  “No, I will not kill you. But I will send you home with your backside in strips if you make me wait to know why you have come.”

  “Will you serve me like the slave woman Zabibe?” The smile on her lips softened, as if the prospect might not be wholly repugnant to her. “She is a spy—did you know that?”