I went to Esarhaddon’s room and questioned the officer in command of the watch.
“Does the king still sleep?”
“Yes, Rab Shaqe.”
“That is well. Take me to where you are holding the physician Menuas.”
My orders had been carried out scrupulously. I found the prisoner, stripped naked and chained by the hands, feet and neck so that he could not even stand up, in a windowless room not much larger than a baker’s oven. The expression on his face when I opened the door was one of sheer terror, although, after so many hours in the dark, he may merely have been dazzled by the light of my oil lamp.
I crouched on the floor beside him, setting the lamp down between us, and the guard closed the door from the outside. Menuas and I might have been alone in the universe.
“By the great gods, Lord, I have done. . .”
“Do not lie, Physician,” I said, interrupting him. “Do not add perjury to your sins, and do not insult me by implying that I can be deceived. I have examined your medicine box and found the Aphantos with which you have been poisoning the king.”
For a moment he said nothing. He merely whimpered abjectly, as if his sufferings had robbed him of his wits. And in truth I found it impossible to feel any anger against this wretched man. Who could say what threats or promises Naq’ia had marshaled to make him do her bidding.
And yet the murder of a king is a fearful thing.
“It—it is a remedy for impotence,” he said finally, perhaps not even daring to hope he would be believed. “It is a remedy. . . It is. . .”
I smiled at him wolfishly.
“I have known the king since we were boys together,” I answered. “I have never known him to lack force in his loins, although his passions are cool enough now. I have neither the will nor the power to save your life, Physician. Yet if there is to be any mercy for you, you must speak only the truth.
“Is there an antidote?”
He said nothing. He merely stared at me with his small, frightened eyes, not yet ready to accept that there was no hope for him.
“Do you know what punishment is reserved for crimes such as yours?” I went on at last. “You have raised your hand against the Servant of Ashur—do you know what will be done to you? You will have the hide stripped off your body while you still live. Can you imagine what that is like? I have seen it done, and it is terrible even to watch. The men who do it are greatly skilled, and they take their time, since they want their victim to remain alive and sensible to the very end. Thus they begin at the palm of the hand, you see, and they peel away the skin in a single piece, even taking the fingernails, and then they cut up the inside of the arm. . .”
He opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out.
“Can you imagine, Physician, what it must be like to be no more than a piece of raw, bleeding meat, rolling around helplessly in the dust, unable even to close your eyes because your face as been flayed off, and your eyelids with it? Finally they will feed you to the dogs, and you may be still alive even for that last indignity. Think of it, Physician—you might die only when the king’s hunting dogs have torn you to pieces. You might even live to hear them snarling at one another over the bloody scraps.”
I paused, to give him time to imagine it all, to let his mind fill with expectations of pain and horror. That is the point of torture, to focus a man’s attention on his suffering, and thus make it unbearable.
I could not save him from his fate—no one could. Yet it served my purpose to let him think so, if only for a while.
“Spare yourself,” I said, breaking the silence. “If you can, spare yourself this death. Is there an antidote?”
For a few seconds he seemed capable of nothing except little choking sounds, as if the words had caught in the back of his throat. Then he swallowed and looked away for a moment, trying to compose himself enough to allow him to speak.
“There is no antidote,” he whispered, without raising his eyes. “In the beginning, if the poison is stopped, the effects will pass off of their own. But by this stage there is nothing to be done.”
So it was finished. Nothing could stop the slow ebbing of my brother’s life. I had not really expected otherwise, but the heart seemed to turn to stone within my breast.
“Was it poison in Egypt?” I heard myself asking. Menuas hesitated and then nodded his head. “The same?”
“No—another. A stronger poison called—“
“I do not care what it is called. Why did he not die then?”
“When you started to suspect, I was too frightened to administer the fatal second dose. The Aphantos was more like the normal progress of disease, so I have been giving him small amounts ever since the end of the last campaign. The Lady—“
“Do not speak her name, dog!” I grabbed the iron ring around his neck and pulled him to his feet so that it almost strangled him. “Never speak her name—neither to me nor to anyone else!”
I released my grip and he dropped back to his knees, almost gagging as he tried to catch his breath. He was a pitiful villain to have committed so great a crime.
“How long, then, can the king live?”
“Perhaps two or three days—no more.”
He raised his pleading, tear-filled eyes to me, his lips shaping the first words of a soundless prayer that I might give him at least a crumb of hope, but I rose and tapped the door to let the guard know to open it. I was finished with this man.
“Two or three days,” I repeated. “So be it then, Physician. You have sealed his fate and yours.”
“Lord—pity. . !” He tried to throw himself at my feet, but his chains would not let him and he merely toppled clumsily to the floor. “Lord! What am I to do?”
“Do? Prepare for death.” The door opened, and I snuffed out my oil lamp. “Turn to the gods for mercy, Physician, for you will find it nowhere else.”
. . . . .
Esarhaddon slept until morning, and I waited by his bedside, trying to decide what to tell him. He was the king, from whom the truth must not be hidden, yet he was also my brother, and how could I steal all hope from him by revealing that he had been poisoned, and that he was past all cure? And how could I darken his last hours by telling him that the poisoner who had robbed him of his life had been sent by his own mother?
In the end I told him nothing—the ties of blood and love meant more than the duty of a subject. Yet when he awoke he seemed to know all without being told.
“Call my officers,” he said to me, almost as soon as he had opened his eyes.
“It can wait. Take a little something to eat first.”
“No, Tiglath. Call my officers. There is little time left—I can feel it. And soon enough I will have no need of food. Call them.”
I did so, and soon the room seemed crowded as the rab shaqe of the army filed in and took their silent places around Esarhaddon’s sofa. There were perhaps twenty-five of them, not merely the leaders of this expedition but commanders from every garrison within a week’s ride. Some of these men I had known since boyhood; others had been my comrades-in-arms at Khalule and Babylon, and in the Zagros when we waged war against the Medes. A few had risen up during my years of exile, but I had marched at their side through the Wilderness of Sin and taken their measure in battle against the Egyptians. These were soldiers, men who could be trusted.
And all had been brought hither by news of the king’s illness, ready to do their master’s bidding while he lived and, should he die, to secure the peace of the empire according to his will. It seemed as if all the armed might in the world was focused in that tiny space.
I helped Esarhaddon to sit up, arranging some cushions to support his back, since he was too weak to do it for himself—he had spoken no more than the truth when he said he could feel his end coming, for he was failing rapidly.
“I am close to death,” he said, in the voice he might have used to discuss his plans for a battle. “I have made certain decisions touching on the next reign, an
d I wish to know if you will support them. I will be gone, gentlemen, so the matter will be in your hands.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if gathering strength, and then opened them and looked about him, turning his gaze from one face to the next. No one spoke.
“The marsarru is young and without experience,” he went on. “We are entering a time that will be full of war, and I do not believe he is ready for the burden of rule—he may never be ready, but this is a thing which only time can reveal. Until then it is my will that my brother, with whom you are all acquainted and who needs no words from me to make his glory known, shall act as turtanu. The boy Ashurbanipal shall have the name and honor of kingship, but all power, in peace and war, shall rest with the Lord Tiglath Ashur.”
I felt a cold shock go through me, for nothing had prepared me against this. I tried to keep all expression out of my face and to avoid the eyes of the men who all at once were studying me as if I were a stranger to them.
“Well?” Esarhaddon glanced about him challengingly. “How is it to be? Will you abide by this? Have none of you anything to say?”
There was a brief buzz of conversation as the commanders of the king’s army exchanged whispers, and then Kisri Adad, rab shaqe of the quradu, an old soldier whose loyalty and integrity were beyond question, stepped forward.
“So long as the life and honor of the marsarru are respected, and his right of succession, which each of us has sworn to uphold, then no one here will withhold his obedience from the Lord Tiglath Ashur, whom every man honors.”
He turned his gaze from the king to me, seeming to demand an answer to his unspoken question. Yet for the moment I was silent—I seemed to have lost the power of speech.
“What say you, Tiglath?” Esarhaddon asked finally. “Will you respect young Ashurbanipal’s rights, or will you use your power to push him aside and make yourself king in name as well as in fact?”
No doubt the form of his question was a kind of jest, but at least it had the effect of rousing me to something like anger, and I found my voice did not fail me when I made my answer.
“What man here can say he has ever known me to break faith with my king?”
Kisri Adad nodded, and behind him rose a murmur of approval.
“That is enough for me,” he said.
“Then take your oath upon it,” Esarhaddon answered, holding out his right hand. “Swear your obedience to the Lord Tiglath Ashur, the king’s turtanu.”
Kisri Adad knelt beside the couch and touched his forehead to the king’s hand.
“I swear it,” he said.
He rose, and after him each man in turn knelt by the dying king and swore to obey me as master of the world.
. . . . .
“I had to do it, Tiglath. There was no other way. This is why I would not let you take the oath of succession, for you are the true king and I would not have you bound to the son who usurps your place.”
We were alone again. I sat beside Esarhaddon, and he clutched my hand in his as if nothing else held him to life.
“You know I will not be able to hold such power long,” I said, my voice hardly more than a whisper. “Ashurbanipal is no pliable simpleton—soon I would have either to put him under virtual arrest or have him killed. I can do neither.”
“Yes, but he does not know that. As you say, he is no simpleton, so he will be too cautious at first to dare challenge you. Thus you will have time enough to find a way to escape.”
“Escape from what?” I asked, already knowing the answer. The real question was if Esarhaddon did.
“From my mother.”
His grasp tightened around my hand—the increase in pressure was hardly noticeable, but it seemed all the strength he had left.
“Promise me, Tiglath, that you will not have my mother killed,” he said, with all the fervor of a prayer. “She is an evil woman, I am well aware. She has committed many crimes, yet she remains my mother. I know you must do something if you are to save yourself, but find a way to spare her life.”
“You spared my mother when you thought me a traitor against you. I will spare yours. Much as I would like to see the Lady Naq’ia with her head between her feet, I will do nothing against her. You knew that, without asking.”
His hand relaxed again in mine.
“Yes, I knew it. Still, I had to ask.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then, suddenly, he laughed.
“Do you remember, Tiglath, when we were boys, and we got leave from the house of war to go into Nineveh and have dinner with that scoundrel Kephalos? He gave you a purse of silver, remember? And we divided it between us by the light from the open door of a tailor’s shop and went off in search of harlots.”
“Yes, I remember.” My eyes seemed to brim with tears as I spoke. “You found one, in that wretched little wineshop, but my shyness unmanned me.”
“Yes.”
Esarhaddon grew quiet for a moment, so that I thought he might not speak again.
“We might have divided the world between us, Tiglath—just like that purse of silver. We should have. Where did it all go wrong?”
“We grew up, and found the world a more complicated place than a boy’s trust can imagine.”
“It was my fault,” he said, his voice hardly more than a breath.
“It was both our faults, yours and mine together. And the world’s. And no one’s, for the god willed that it should be so.”
When I glanced down at him I saw that he was asleep. Perhaps he had not even heard me.
When I was sure he was resting quietly, I went out onto the balcony to breathe a little clean air and be alone. The sun was not more than an hour over the eastern horizon, and the morning sky was still stained a bloody red. I was in despair, as if the trap that had been waiting all my life had finally closed.
“What must I do now?” I murmured, hardly knowing to whom my words were addressed. “What would you have of me?”
And out of the sun, soaring on the day’s first breeze as if he meant to conquer the very air that held him, rose an eagle. I watched him pass overhead. I saw the shadow of his spreading wings sweep over the dull earth. And then he disappeared into the western distance.
“There is no place for you in a future than cannot be unwritten,” Shaditu had said. And what was this if not a second warning, whispered across the voiceless sky?
I went back inside, my very soul quaking with dread. I felt as if I had seen the god’s own face.
Esarhaddon was still asleep—it was a sleep from which he never woke up. The next morning, just before dawn, Death claimed him for her own.
XLVIII
Within hours of Esarhaddon’s death, I presided over the punishment of his assassin. I had no choice, since by arresting the physician I had declared his guilt, and the soldiers of Ashur would misinterpret any show of clemency toward one who had taken the life of their sacred king. Thus, since I had accused Menuas, and set his penalty, it was my duty to witness the execution of the sentence.
I had loved my brother, and never more than in those last few hours, when we seemed at last to have recovered our trust in one another, and my heart was black with grief. I had held his dead hand and wept like a woman. My eyes were still stained with tears when I took my seat before the great gate at Harran, when the prisoner, naked and trembling, sobbing for mercy in a voice that had grown hoarse with despair, was brought before me to hear his fate. How I hated him at that moment—hated him all the more because I knew that the real murderer was not here but in Calah, forever beyond my reach.
So be it, I thought. Menuas alone would feel the full weight of my revenge.
“There can be no pity for you,” I told him—had I really convinced myself that I might find some comfort in this dreadful act? I know not. “You have set yourself against gods and men by the enormity of your crime. When at last it comes, you will welcome the emptiness of death.”
I nodded to the executioners that they should begin their work, and I watched
while, amidst the screaming and the stench of blood, a man’s skin was meticulously stripped from his body.
The only other time I had seen a man put to death in this particular manner had been during the lifetime of the king my father. Marduknasir, prince of Ushnur, had refused the chance for a peaceful surrender, and so the Lord Sennacherib had leveled his city and driven its subjects away with scourges. Marduknasir himself was flayed alive and his hide nailed to the door of his ruined palace. The king, well fortified with wine, had presided, keeping his face impassive.
I tried to do the same now. Perhaps I succeeded, yet I had only to glance around to see the effect this grisly scene had on others. It held them, for such things have their own appalling fascination, and each man’s eyes registered his horror. Only Enkidu seemed hardly to notice, as if he lived outside the circle of human sympathy. But who ever knew what he thought or felt?
At last the wretched work was done, and when the raw carcass that was all that remained of Menuas the physician lay twitching in the dust, and no man, perhaps not even he, could have said whether he yet lived or not, I rose from my chair.
“Someone have the goodness to cut his throat,” I said, my voice perhaps a trifle thick, for I felt as if an invisible hand were clutching my windpipe. “This has gone on long enough.”
“And what of the skin, Rab Shaqe?” one of the executioners asked, holding it up for me to see—he was spattered with blood and seemed to be inviting me to admire his handiwork, for the skin was all of a piece, even to the beard and the face with its empty eyelids. It made me sick to look at it. Sick with shame at the evil men do in the name of justice and revenge.
“What shall be done with it, Rab Shaqe?”
“Tan it,” I answered. “Have it tanned and cured as if it were the hide of a slaughtered ox. Bring it to me when you have finished. Perhaps I can put it to some use.”
The Blood Star Page 75
