The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “Yes. For the Lady Naq’ia.”

  “It would seem my beloved brother has grown wise with the years. Kiss me, Tiglath.”

  “Why have you come?”

  “Kiss me first, and then I will tell you. Kiss me—I know it is in your heart to kiss me.”

  She spoke no more than the truth, for I was in a strangely reckless mood. I leaned forward and kissed her and she threw her arms about my neck, forcing her way between my lips with her pointed tongue. My hands found her breasts—her nipples were hard beneath the palms and I let my fingers close over them, pinching hard. Her arms dropped away from me and she groaned with pain, but she did not struggle. Only her eyes, swimming with tears, pleaded with me.

  “It seems that you and my treacherous little concubine are just alike,” I hissed.

  “Yes—just alike.”

  Yes. I could see it in her begging eyes.

  Finally I released her, and at once she covered her breasts with her arms.

  “Do not toy with me, Shaditu. I am not one of your palace lovers.”

  “Would that you were, Tiglath, my love. I could wish that you. . . Oh! I think I shall carry the marks of your thumbs to my grave.”

  “Tell me why you have come, or you will fill it sooner than you imagine.”

  “I would rather you buried me in your bed,” she whispered, throwing her arms once more around my neck and kissing my mouth. “I love you, Tiglath, for you are the only man in Nineveh who is not afraid of me.

  I disentangled myself and stepped back beyond her reach, for indeed she did inflame my liver.

  “I am more afraid of you than anyone.”

  “No, not of me, merely of yourself. Of betraying yourself. And you are fortunate—or perhaps it is true that you are stronger than the rest of us—because you never have.”

  “And have you, sister?”

  “Oh, yes—and therefore I am filled with fear.”

  I could see that. It was in her eyes, that fear. And yet it was not fear of men or anything that men could do, nor even of death. It was a fear of the soul. It was the fear of abandonment and despair. It was the fear of one who has stepped into the darkness and knows she will never find her way back.

  “Now speak,” I said, driving pity from my heart—for who was I to pity Shaditu? “What have you come here to tell me?”

  At once she drew into herself. She sat on the table, coy and distant, playing with her painted fingernails. It seemed she was determined to make me court her favor.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked, not looking at me, still absorbed with her nails.

  “Why you have come here.”

  “I have told you—because I love you. And because I must choose sides, and quickly.”

  I did not require an explanation. The whole city was choosing sides—or attempting to force me into giving them a side to choose.

  “The king will very soon be king no longer,” she went on, quite unnecessarily, “for he is old and tired, and a younger man must take his place. All that remains to be settled is who it will be, you or Esarhaddon. I would rather it were you, but for my own sake I must be one of those who move the balance in the winner’s favor.”

  “The question has already been settled. Esarhaddon is the god’s choice. He is the marsarru and will be king.”

  “Will he?” She glanced up at me and smiled, as if I had said something amusing. “Perhaps, if you wish it, Esarhaddon will be king. But you could be his turtanu. The army will follow where you lead, and the army can have things all their own way. It has happened before that a tartanu has held a king in the hollow of his hand. Perhaps that is the god’s choice.”

  “Shaditu—sister—why did the baru Rimani Ashur take his own life? Was that too the god’s choice?”

  She withdrew her gaze and for a moment sat with her hands quiet, staring at nothing. For all her wickedness she was not a coward, and I could not remember a time before today when she had shown fear, real fear. But in that moment she was afraid.

  “Why would I know? My interest is in men’s bodies, not their hearts.” She laughed—a high-pitched silvery laugh, like the joyless laughter of the mad. And still she kept her eyes from me.

  “You seduced him, did you not?” I took her face between my hands and made her look at me. “You came to his bed and made him betray his office.”

  “How do you know. . ?”

  “Everyone knows—me last of all. I heard the story in Amat, from one whose name you perhaps have never even heard.”

  “It isn’t true. It isn’t! The Lady Naq’ia—”

  “What? Did she force you? Or did the two of you simply find you had ambitions in common?”

  She pulled away from me and then, after a moment, glared into my eyes with the defiant courage of the lost. No, she would not tell me. But she denied nothing.

  “What did Rimani Ashur see among the omens, sister? Do you know?”

  “If I told you, and this knowledge helped you to steal Esarhaddon’s crown from him, would you take his wife with it or would you take me?”

  “I would take Esharhamat.”

  “Then I fear the truth must have died with Rimani Ashur.”

  Again she laughed, and the sound was just as bitter. For now she had chosen her side.

  I struck her—hard and across the face, with the back of my hand. She fell to the floor, and when she turned to look at me there was blood on her mouth. But still she laughed.

  . . . . .

  That night I went to see Esharhamat in her apartments. I did not care who knew of it. Esarhaddon would remain in Nineveh for another ten days—if he heard, and wished to object, he was welcome.

  “Turn your back on your god” she had said. But it seemed that Ashur had turned his back on me. If he chose to hide his purpose, then I must feel free to follow my own.

  Let Esarhaddon object. This time I would not stay my hand.

  She met me in a room beside her sleeping chamber. She looked drawn, as if her recent delivery had sapped her strength, and her breasts were swollen with milk.

  “I will not suckle my husband’s child,” she said—the thought seemed to give her some pleasure. “He will have nothing from me except his life. They bring in herdsmen’s wives to nurse him. What could be more fitting for Esarhaddon’s son?”

  “Let me take you to my house. We will go to Amat—let Esarhaddon come for us there if he has the courage.”

  She seemed not to hear me. I was hardly there for her, her own misery absorbed her so.

  What had I done to us both?

  “Yet he flourishes,” she went on—had her mind broken at last? “He is healthy and strong, like his father. But this child will never wear the crown of Ashur.

  “Do you want me, Tiglath? Still? Then come with me—come. Only into the next room, where I can rest my back. We need not go as far as Amat, for it makes no difference.”

  And she meant it. She rose, and took my arm with her two hands, pulling me along. The door to her sleeping chamber was half open—why had I not seen that?

  “If Esarhaddon takes us together, what can he do?” She smiled, drawing me through the open doorway. “I must bear the son who will rule after him, and that son is yet to find his way into my womb. What can Esarhaddon do?”

  It was a small room and two of Esharhamat’s servants were there, crouched in a corner, folding and refolding pieces of white linen—women’s work, intelligible only to them. They looked up and, seeing me, rose to leave. They did not linger and their eyes were shining with fear, for they knew their mistress was committing a mad act. The door closed behind them with hardly a sound.

  With no word, Esharhamat slipped her tunic off over her head to stand naked before me. She was beautiful—to me more beautiful even than life—but her body was no longer young. Her breasts, once so small and tight, were heavy, waiting to burst, and her belly was puckered

  with the wounds of her childbearing. I knelt before her, pressing my cheek against her poor flesh, my e
yes flooding with tears of pity.

  “Am I grown so hideous then, Tiglath?” she murmured, her fingers smoothing back my hair. “Is love gone too?”

  “Oh no—my love, my love!” Over and over again I sobbed the words, for I could find no others. “Oh my love, my love.”

  We held each other a long time, alone, with only the flickering light from a single lamp for company. I do not know how long. My mind was lost to any thought but of Esharhamat. I knew no shame nor fear nor duty. I was an empty vessel until she filled me with the love of her.

  We were one flesh again that night. I went into her, and we became one. It was not the same with Esharhamat as with other women, for I had no thought of pleasure. My senses ached with dumb joy, but it was not for pleasure that I loved her. I could not bear to be parted from her, for my soul was in her body and without her I wandered in the empty air like a ghost. I knew I was alive only because I was with her. We were one flesh.

  “Come away with me,” I said, when at last words were possible between us. “Come away, and we will be together until death.”

  “How soon would that be?”

  “What does it matter? I cannot leave you again.”

  “You must—you know you must.”

  “I know nothing, save that I love you.”

  “I will not go with you, Tiglath.” She took her arms from about me and sat up on her sleeping mat. “The time for that is past. You speak only of what you wish to be, not of what can be. You have already made your choice—or perhaps your god has made it for you.”

  “Before you, I care nothing for this god or any other.”

  “So you say now, and believe. But it will not be the same tomorrow, or the day after. You belong to him, not to me. I understand that now. I do not even resent it. It is simply that which must be so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is his will.”

  I knew what she said was true, that she was stronger than I. I could not bear the thought of parting, of days or years without her. In my heart I cursed the name of god.

  “You enter now the time of partings,” the maxxu had said, “when your tongue will sicken at the sound of farewell.”

  In the darkness, while the world was yet shrouded by the wings of death, I rose and left her.

  . . . . .

  “I no longer find favor in my lord’s eyes?” Zabibe. always cunning, now played the penitent. She knelt before me, dressed in rags, her shoulders bare. “He does not honor me as before. I am banished from his presence and can count on my fingers the nights I have spent on his sleeping mat since our return to Nineveh. If I have sinned against my lord, then let him punish me, even onto death. But let him not turn from me, for that is blacker than any death.”

  She touched her head to the floor and embraced my ankles, bathing my feet with her tears. She was very convincing, but no woman is so dangerous as when she seems all weakness and submission. I realized that I had made a mistake in neglecting her.

  “Then bring me my whip,” I said.

  But a raw backside and such endearments as are implied in a little hard rutting would not satisfy her forever. Zabibe knew she had a rival, and she would not rest content until she had discovered her. After all, such discoveries were the purpose that had brought her to me. But in truth I was weary of living with her deceptions. And I had plans for Zabibe.

  In half a month I would return to Amat, leading the ten companies of soldiers who would man the garrison there while I took my new army into the Zagros Mountains. By then I hoped to have wiped the tablet of my life clean.

  “We must wait and see,” I told Esharhamat. “Perhaps I shall die on campaign, or perhaps Esarhaddon will get drunk and break his neck on a stairway. Or perhaps the god will tire of this folly and destroy the world. There is nothing for us except waiting.”

  It was true. I saw her only five times all the months I was in the city, and all the days between were simply waiting. I lived for those few hours with her, for nothing else. Even the thought of my war against the Medes filled me with emptiness—glory and danger were nothing if they carried me so far from her arms. It was no false delicacy which made me neglect Zabibe. It was no more than that, sometimes for many days, I simply forgot she existed.

  I heard many voices during these months in Nineveh, and only half listened to any of them. The king was old and would soon vanish forever, but what was death for one was life for many, and the conspiracies hatched out like maggots in the belly of a dead lion. There were whispers everywhere.

  I was constantly meeting people, some of whom were known to me and some not. These encounters would seem fortuitous—I would receive an invitation to join a hunt and, in a party of perhaps a hundred, I might find myself paired with a rab abru in charge of a garrison in Rasappa, home on leave. The hunt would be slow. We would talk. Certain hints would be dropped concerning the present situation. There would be complaints about Esarhaddon’s policy toward Babylon. I would make some answer and, suddenly, the man would be pledging me his support should I choose to contest my brother’s right to the throne. This, or the like, happened to me three, four, I know not how many times.

  Some meetings were not fortuitous. On the fifth day before the beginning of the festival of Akitu, two hours before morning, the steward of my house awakened me. He said I had a visitor who would not be turned away. The man came in a carrying chair and wore a hooded

  tunic that concealed his face—my steward could not even be sure it was a man. He suspected an assassin. I took my javelin from where it leaned against the wall and went to meet this strange visitor. I found him and, when we were alone, he pushed aside his hood. He was my royal brother, the scribe Nabusharusur.

  “You are surprised to see me,” he said, smiling with his lips only.

  “I am surprised by nothing that befalls me in Nineveh,” I answered. “If I may ask without rudeness, brother, what do you want of me at this hour?”

  Nabusharusur’s thin, nervous hand played over the sleeve of his cloak. There were lines around the corners of his eyes, as if he were always peering into the distance. He was a man—if he was a man—whose life danced forever on the point of a knife.

  “I come to tell you that you have enemies.”

  “This does not surprise me, since I have not led a blameless life.”

  “You mock me, brother.”

  “No, brother.” I shook my head and smiled, no more pleasantly than did Nabusharusur himself. “It is I who am mocked. I am not such a fool as you seem to think me.”

  “Then know that there are spies in your own house—the woman Zabibe, for one.”

  “So I have been told before this. What of it? In this city half the inhabitants earn their bread by spying on the other half. Tell me what I do not know.”

  “That this woman, to earn her bread, has promised the Lady Naq’ia that she will poison you. I would take no wine from her hands, brother—now, I see, I have told you something.”

  “Yes. And I might ask why you trouble yourself, brother, and how you know.”

  “I trouble because I still have hopes of you, Tiglath.” He shrugged his narrow, feminine shoulders, as if all his hopes had long since ended in despair. “You are a fool whom the past blinds to the future, but it may not always be so. And, as to my knowledge of this matter—as you have suggested, what secrets are not for sale in Nineveh?”

  He bowed and left me then and, as always, I was not sorry to see him go. Nabusharusur was an uneasy soul, and his discomfort was an atmosphere that he carried with him everywhere. Anyone who breathed the same air was infected with it. I returned to my chamber, all hope of rest fled, to await the coming of dawn.

  And the next night, at my sleeping mat, I found Zabibe and her whip and a silver vessel of wine. She smiled at me, and I knew that Nabusharusur had saved my life.

  “I am not thirsty,” I said. “But drink yourself, if you wish. Drink, before it loses its chill.”

  She shook her head.

  �
�No—I do not care for wine.”

  I had seen her drink this same wine more times than I could number.

  “Very well then, if you choose to vex me.”

  I picked up the whip, and she smiled again. Doubtless she thought I would parch my throat with desire for her, that sometime before morning I would drink the wine and die.

  She lifted the hem of my sleeping tunic and took my manhood between her lips. I cut her back with the whip and she moaned, and I could feel the pressure of her tongue. All the while she sucked on me I beat her, until the blood came. I went into her twice that night. But I did not touch the wine.

  The next morning, before the sun rose, I left her sleeping and carried the silver vessel with me. The cooks were already awake, so I went into the kitchen and took one of the long, thin loaves of bread that only servants ate. No one saw anything strange in this.

  The garden behind my house had fallen into disuse in the last years of the Lord Sinahiusur’s life. It was overgrown and wild, and there were rats—bold creatures the size of cats, that feared neither man nor beast nor god. I went outside and sat upon a stone bench, breaking off pieces of the bread, soaking them in the wine and casting them down upon the pathway.

  In time a rat came. He stood quite still when he saw me, watching me through tiny, cruel eyes, and then at last, when he was sure I would not interfere, he came and sniffed at a morsel of the bread. He ate it, and then another. I waited. He looked about for more, his long, naked tail dragging behind him.

  And then, in an instant, he came up straight on his front paws and then collapsed. I walked over and kicked him with my sandaled foot, just to be sure. He was as lifeless as a block of wood.

  So it was true—there was no doubt. I poured the rest of the wine onto the ground.

  Zabibe, no doubt, was surprised to see me alive.

  Tell a servant to fetch my breakfast.” I told her. “Be quick, for I have an appetite.”

  And, indeed, I did. All things taste good to the man who is happy to have been spared. This was a debt I owed my brother Nabusharusur.

  And Zabibe would pay. She would pay.

  . . . . .

  In the morning I would leave for Amat. The barracks of the house of war were ablaze with torchlight as soldiers prepared their kits against the long march. They were fresh conscripts and they knew that some of them were going to war. They would sleep but little tonight. I knew everything they felt. I had only to remember the long road to Khalule.