by Ron Goulart
Uncle belched. “That was, urrrp, that was splendiferous!”
But a few blocks away we lost track of where we were, and became uncertain of the neighborhood, which was far less fine than the one we had just been visiting. Suddenly I noticed a couple of toughs trailing a half street away, and I nudged Uncle in the ribs.
“Whaaat?” he burped again.
I nodded rearward, and slowly reached under my cloak to draw my long, curved knife, hiding the glint. When the thugs rushed us, we were ready, and I carved my initials in one’s belly while Uncle slit the throat of the other. A third man, hovering just beyond the rest, abruptly turned tail and ran off.
The villain whom I had sliced groaned in the mud and offal of the open sewer.
“Who sent you?” I asked.
When the man failed to reply, I shook him, like the rag doll he was.
“Who?” I repeated, pressing upon his wound.
“Ohhh,” he groaned, “oh stop, please. I don’t know. An officer. Paid me three Ishtars. Said two foreign folk would be at Kurbanu’s. One with a scar on his right cheek”—I looked quickly at the slash on Uncle’s face—“Ohhh.”
We would get no more out of this one.
When we found our way home, I told Uncle what the man had said.
“Someone does not like us making inquiries,” he said.
* * * *
Wonder of wonders, Prince Banu secured for us an interview with his grandmother on the next afternoon. We were escorted to the Royal Palace of Great King Sennacherib, where once again we were blindfolded, and led through a maze of rooms and passageways, until we were deposited on comfortable couches in a small waiting area. There we abided for some time until we heard the slight rattle of a bead screen being opened.
“My grandson says you wish to ask me about the Great King my husband’s passing.” The words were barely audible, but I detected the faintest trace of an accent, just as I could smell the barest essence of some exotic perfume. Perhaps it was myrrh or some other frankincense that I had never before encountered. Like this woman of power, it was rare and seductive and potent.
“What can you tell us of the officer known as Captain Azizu?” Uncle wanted to know.
“Tell you? I can tell you nothing,” she said.
“But you recommended him for advancement five years past.”
“That may be true,” she said, “but I receive advice constantly from many different quarters, and I can scarcely remember every person whom I may have sponsored, particularly a man of low birth.”
“I did not say he was of low birth.”
“Perhaps I assumed it.”
“You are not native to this region?”
“I was born in Calneh. My father was the Governor there, head of the family that once ruled the area. The Great King visited Calneh while he was yet in the House of Succession; he was captivated, and begged my father for the favor. So I became his Second Queen.”
“Who was First Queen?”
Zakutu coughed before replying: “Tashmetum-Sharrat.”
“She was Assyrian?”
“Yes.”
“She was the mother of Crown Prince Ashur-Nadin-Shumi, he who was made King of Babylon by his father?”
“Yes.”
“Ashur-Nadin-Shumi was betrayed to the Elamites twelve years ago?”
“Yes.”
“No one knows who betrayed him?”
“Yes.”
“The First Queen was also the mother of Arda-Mulishi and Nabu-Sharru-Usur?”
“Yes.”
“These men are accused of murdering the Great King Sennacherib, their father?”
“Yes.”
“But they did not kill their father?”
A long silence, and then: “This interview is over, impertinent little man.”
* * * *
On the seventh day, we again met the Great King Esarhaddon at Fort Sargon, northeast of Nineveh. We went through the same routine as before.
“What have you Greeks learned?” the monarch asked. “Time presses. I must enter into my capital city tomorrow, the eighth day of Adaru, at the hour chosen by my priests, or face further unrest. You see, gentlemen, how I am become even more of a prisoner of my office than my two disgraced brethren.”
The three of us sat there on a bench, Uncle Telemachos in the middle, Prince Banu to his right, and I to his left. Once again I acted as intermediary.
“We have examined the circumstances surrounding the passing of Great King Sennacherib,” Uncle said. “We have interviewed the officer who was there, and we have investigated some of the events that occurred. The statue of the god Nisroch was undermined over a long period by the hand of the killer, who toppled the image onto the outstretched body of your father. This much is without question.”
Then Telemachos said what he had to say to make his tale more palatable: “What I speak now is speculation, for I cannot prove any of it. The testimony indicates that the room was empty of priests, acolytes, or any visitors both before and after the Great King’s murder. There is no entrance to the temple save the main door, and this was closely guarded by Captain Azizu and his thirty men. Although these soldiers are no longer available to be interviewed, we talked with one of their colleagues. What he told us largely confirms the officer’s account.”
“But if no one was there, my father must have been killed by the gods, as the priests have indicated,” came that almost disembodied voice.
“Not so,” Telemachos said. “He was murdered, and the murderer had long planned his passing, knowing of his nocturnal habits in visiting the god. The only man in the room, other than the Great King himself, was Captain Azizu. Therefore, only he could have committed the sacrilege. Only he had the means and the opportunity.”
“Azizu?” echoed both Esarhaddon and his son.
“But how? And why?” the Great King continued. “Everyone knows him to be a loyal and faithful servant to the state.”
“Consider, Great King, that we only have his word as to the sequence of events. He ushered the guards out of the temple following their usual advance inspection of the premises, and escorted the Great King Sennacherib to his place before the statue of the god Nisroch. I believe that he then struck him senseless with the end of his spear; or perhaps he waited until the Great King was lying prone upon the floor, when he was most vulnerable, and violated him then. The body would have fallen without making any sound that could have been heard by the untrained troops roaming the perimeter outside. During part of this period he was unavailable to his troops, for when Sergeant Yari called to him for help, he did not immediately respond. This was unusual enough to be remembered later.
“Then the officer returned to his usual post for a time, making certain that his back was occasionally visible to his guards. When he reckoned that enough of an interval had passed, he crept forward, pushed over the previously loosened image onto the body of the Great King, obliterating at the same time the wound upon his master’s head that he himself had rendered, and then yelled as the statue shattered itself upon the floor. When the soldiers rushed in, he was already bending over the deceased body of the Great King, trying to make the dead come alive, and there was nothing anyone else could do. The subsequent search of the building turned up no one, of course, because there was no one to be found. The guards naturally believed the death to be the act of the god whom Sennacherib had offended.
“As to the why of it, this is what we know, mighty King. The Prince Arda-Mulishi was briefly heir to the throne after the unfortunate death of his full brother, King Ashur-Nadin-Shumi, who was himself betrayed to the Elamites while he was serving as subsidiary King of Babylon for his father. But Arda-Mulishi was not the charming and intelligent man that his elder had been, and so he fell out of favor with the Great King. Despite the ministrations of the First Queen, you were named to his place in the House of Succession. All of this happened eleven years ago. Queen Tashmetum-Sharrat, where is she now?”
“She dw
ells in the palace of the late Great King Ashur-Nasir-Apli at the Holy City of Ashur,” came the rough reply. “She and my mother did not get along.”
“No, they did not get along,” Uncle said, “and that was one of the problems. Second Queen Zakutu wanted to be First Queen, but she could not assume that role, because Tashmetum-Sharrat was Assyrian, and Zakutu, whose original name was Naqi’a, was Phoenician, or, if truth be told, Calnehan. Calneh, as I know very well, is a port town not very far south of the village Atalur, where we landed on our journey here. It is also the seat of governance for the entire region, is it not?”
“I believe this is so,” the Great King said.
“Does the town of Qarqara fall within its control?”
“I believe this is so.”
“Captain Azizu was a native of that place, and I think that he either knew or was connected to one of the Second Queen’s relations, and that that cousin recommended him to her. She made him her man, and she sponsored him five years ago for the vacant Captaincy of the Royal Household Guards.
“Your father was troubled in his mind after the death of his eldest son, and the subsequent destruction of the city of Babylon. He believed that he had committed sacrilege, but was bound to the prophecy that he had himself commissioned from the priests, that Babylon could not be rebuilt again for a period of seventy years. Once written down, the dictum ensnared him, and there was nothing he could do. But he could change the succession back to the next eldest son, the full brother of his much beloved Ashur-Nadin-Shumi.
“I believe that Queen Zakutu learned of his intention, and I believe she took the action she considered appropriate to preserve your inheritance. This is one explanation. You may accept or reject it, as you will.”
I gasped out loud at his effrontery, and so, I think, did the prince and his father.
“You have another theory?” Esarhaddon growled. He was not a happy man.
“The Prince Arda-Mulishi plotted with his younger brother to secure the throne, knowing that his father would never give it to him, subverted Captain Azizu with promises of advancement beyond his station, and murdered the Great King Sennacherib on the twentieth day of Tebetu in the year of the eponym, Nabu-Sharru-Usur.
“That is all I have to say about the matter.”
We waited then in silence for a very long time, not moving even the smallest bit, lest we be struck down by the wrath of the Great King.
“This is my pronouncement,” the Great King Esarhaddon finally intoned. He clapped his hands, and when his servants entered the room, he ordered them to record his words. “We thank the Greek merchants who have visited the center of the earth, and who have rendered us a great service. As a token of our regard, we grant unto them special trading rights with the Kingdom of Assyria, all taxes to be remitted for the first five years of the agreement. Record it!” he demanded. “Further, the stranger named Te-le-ma-khu is to be given 100 gold pieces, and together with his party will depart our kingdom by the start of the New Year, bringing the good tidings of his new fortune to his homeland.
“However, the stranger who is named Akhu-Ilai will remain in Nineveh as chief of his station, and will be given a house of his own, with a Turtanu chosen by me to supervise that place, and servants and women to satisfy his every wish. He will have his own 100 lots of gold, and he will be recorded on the tablets as a man of position and power, as one who may advise the Great King on all matters relating to the west, and as friend and companion to the Great Prince in the House of Succession.
“Let this be recorded forever on the tablets of stone, let no man expunge my words or alter them in any way, lest they be condemned by the gods to unceasing torment.
“A copy of this document will be sent to you.”
We heard him rise from his throne and begin to exit the room. Abruptly, he stopped and said: “Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Captain Azizu is hereby appointed as your new Turtanu, Akhu-Ilai.”
* * * *
Later that evening, Uncle took me aside and looked me in the eye. “Be careful, nephew,” he warned. “You know too much, and we have made great enemies these past few days.”
“And great friends too,” I said.
“And great friends too,” he said, laughing and clapping me on the back.
Not long thereafter, Uncle and the rest of our party departed for home, carrying with them this account that I have made of the strange and curious adventures that we had faced together.
I shall miss him, grandsire, as I miss you now. But when you see your dear son again, when you meet Telemachos the son of Homeros, kiss him once in the exuberance of first greeting, and then let him kiss you once again on my behalf.
I do not know whether I shall see you again in this life, but so long as I have the power to ink a word upon a papyrus sheet or etch a line upon a tablet of clay, you will hear the echo of my voice within your soul, you will feel the wine-kissed wind of my breath touching your hoary brow, and you will laugh out loud once more for the pleasure of it.
This, I think, is the true judgment of the gods.
WILL FOR A KILL, by Emil Petaja
Jeff Conn didn’t like Fitch. He didn’t care for that twitchy little mustache, or the way his beady black eyes shifted when he presented Jeff with a clammy handshake. Maybe Jeff was tired. Five hundred miles on a crowded wildcat bus doesn’t put a guy in the best of humor. Maybe that was it.
“I’m Philip Fitch,” the little guy said when he opened the front door. “I’m your late great-uncle’s lawyer.”
“Oh?” Jeff’s youthful face assumed the solemnity indicated by the mention of his uncle’s abrupt death. “How do you do.”
Outside, a boisterous March wind worried chimneys and shutters and trees; inside, it was warm, but somehow the night chill stuck to his veins. It was gloomy here in the big hall.
Removing his overcoat, Jeff glanced into the library at the big, snapping fireplace. It looked more inviting. Also he noticed the tray on the table near it, on which sat a brandy bottle and three glasses. Put him in mind of how much Rocky Dewer, his great-uncle, had liked brandy—especially good brandy.
Jeff made a beeline for the table. Behind him, Fitch was making some kind of a protest, but he paid no attention. He needed a nip to warm him up. He lifted the bottle and whistled. The dusty old label read Napoleon.
Uncorking it, his eyes hit on something half-hidden behind the big couch in front of the fire. He forgot about the brandy for a minute, staring. It was a coffin, a beautiful, burnished oak casket. It was open, and a figure rested on the rich silk lining.
“Old Rocky Dewer,” Jeff muttered. He held the bottle a little more tightly as he looked down at the old man. In the flickering light of the fire, Rocky Dewer might well have been merely asleep. He was wearing his dress suit, an antique, rusted around the elbows and collar. And a white shirt and string tie.
No, Jeff decided. His beard was too neat, his eyes were meekly closed, and his gnarled hands were folded reverently across his lean chest. No. Rocky Dewer would never look so benign and peaceful while breath still lingered in his body!
Nor had he acquired the nickname “Rocky” for nothing. It took spit and guts and a slice of the old nick to sashay out here into what was then a wilderness—to carve an empire out of it, then fight both man and the elements to hold it.
Rocky Dewer had been little, but he made a big noise. Even in death, Jeff was thinking, he was capable of creating a middling tempest. Tonight, when his will was to be read. At midnight. In twenty minutes, to be exact.
Jeff started pouring himself a drink, but Fitch pulled the bottle away nervously. “Not yet,” he twittered.
“No? I need a drink. Why didn’t you tell me he was still in the house?”
Fitch only gave him a quick stare. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Dewer left instructions as to how everything was to be handled tonight. He—he wanted to be here. The others will arrive at exactly midnight, on the midnight train. The will is to be read then.” He adde
d, “I thought you would arrive with them. You’re early.”
Jeff found a chair. He lit a cigarette and mulled the situation over in his mind.
The others, Fitch had said. There were two other relatives—Lucy and Kent. The last time he’d seen either of them was eight—no, nine years ago. Lucy had red pigtails. Kent wore heavy glasses and spent all his time in the house, trailing after “Uncle Rocky”.
Since Rocky’s wife died, in the Nineties, he had no near relatives. There were only Lucy Dean, his wife’s niece, Kent Forgey, and Jeff. Kent was a distant cousin. Jeff’s mother had been Rocky’s niece.
When the three of them were kids it was a yearly ritual for them to spend two weeks of their summer vacation with “Uncle Rocky,” at his request. It went on like that for several years, then the invitations ceased.
At the time it didn’t mean much to Jeff. Later he realized that having them visit him at the big lonely ranchhouse was not merely a polite gesture. Rocky knew he hadn’t long to live, and had wanted to see something of his young relatives—find out who to leave his fortune to. Proud as he was of his Colorado empire, Rocky wouldn’t want it sold and divided. He wanted his mines and lands kept and managed the way he had managed them all these years. One of the three was to inherit. And when the invitations ceased, that meant Rocky had made his decision.
Jeff glanced at the table, where Fitch was fussing with papers in his brief case. Except for the snapping of the fire, the room was deathly still. The brandy bottle tantalized Jeff. He wriggled in his chair, sighed.
“He died rather suddenly, didn’t he?” Jeff remarked to break the unendurable silence.
Fitch’s black eyes leaped to him. “What makes you say that?”
“Saw Doctor Reck at the bus depot. He told me the old man had been very sick, but seemed to be improving. Then, suddenly it was over.”
Fitch cleared his throat. “He was eighty,” he reminded Jeff. “And he never would behave himself. Doctor Reck told him he ought to stop drinking, but Rocky always said that was the only thing he had left, that he’d lived his life out anyway.”
