Lilah (2 page)

He spoke her name, very softly: ‘Lilah.'

He wore the dress of a Persian warrior: a short, close-fitting, long-sleeved tunic, purple with large fawn circles, and equally close-fitting ankle-length trousers. The straps of his sandals were tied high up his calves. His belt was as wide as a hand, its gold buckle adorned with a lion's head. Three chains, of silver, gold and bronze, linked it to the bull's-head brooch on his right shoulder. A felt ribbon embroidered with gold thread held his oiled and scented hair in place. A dazzling smile gleamed within his finely plaited beard.

He repeated her name, laughing now, almost shouting. ‘Lilah! Lilah!'

Lilah began to laugh, too. He held out his hands to her, palms upraised. She moved forward slowly, a touch stiffly, and placed her palms on his. Antinoes' hands were hot. They closed over hers, and the mere touch was like an embrace. Antinoes' eyes sparkled in the setting sun.

‘You're here,' she murmured, hardly aware that she had spoken.

He raised their entwined hands to his lips. He was still laughing, silently, as if he were out of breath. A caressing laugh, a laugh of pure joy, which enveloped them and carried them away.

They let go of each other's hands, the better to embrace. The laughter was swept away by their kisses. The kisses were swept away by their impatience.

For a long moment, the terrace around them seemed to contain the whole world. Susa had vanished. Time and troubles had evaporated. Only the deep, translucent sky of the dying twilight remained.

They undressed with all the clumsiness of long-separated lovers. Time, memory, impatience and fear faded away in their turn.

Once again, they were Antinoes and Lilah.

The silence of the star-studded night lay heavy on the city when, both out of breath, they untangled their limbs.

Here and there, torches glowed in the courtyards of the great houses. Naphtha flames, held in wide dishes, danced on the walls of the Citadel, as they did every night, forming a royal diadem that hung in the darkness.

Antinoes freed himself from Lilah's arms and stood up. He groped for a little applewood chest, which contained a flint and a wick. A moment later, a torch crackled into flame.

Now Lilah saw clearly the body she had held in the darkness. Antinoes' waist was slimmer, and there were two dimples low on his back above his buttocks. During the war against the Greeks, when the King of Kings' brother had kept him far from her, he had grown harder.

He turned as he slotted the torch between the bricks of the parapet, not far from the table still piled high with food, and she discovered the scar. ‘Your thigh!'

Antinoes smiled with a touch of pride. ‘A Lydian sword at Karkemish. It was only the seventh time I'd been in close combat, so I wasn't very experienced. He was on the ground. I should have been more careful.'

Lilah's fingers followed the twists and turns of the pale furrow in Antinoes' solid thigh.

He leaned down and seized her fingers, entwined them again with his own. ‘It's nothing. It took only a moon for the wound to heal. Since then, I've only fought in a chariot. When you're in a chariot, the enemy doesn't aim at the legs, but at the heart or the head. As you see, I still have both of those.'

Lilah fell back, and stared up at the sky. ‘How
many times,' she murmured, ‘when the night and the stars arrived, I thought about that. Even though you were beneath those same stars, you were far away, and I imagined you dying. Or you were seriously wounded and you wanted to see me, but I had no way of knowing. A spear went through you, and then the wax tablet informing me of your death went through me too.'

Antinoes laughed. ‘It would never have happened. The Greeks and Cyrus the Younger's mercenaries learned to fear me.' He knelt, keeping a slight distance between them, and looked at Lilah in silence, serious now. ‘I know every inch of your face,' he whispered, closing his eyes. ‘That was what I thought about. Your eyes, so black that I can see myself reflected in them even by daylight, your lashes, your long straight brows, as delicate as a wisp of smoke. Your high, stubborn forehead, like a young bull's, your cheeks that blush both when you're angry and when I kiss them. I know every line of your mouth – I've drawn them a hundred times in the sand. The upper lip is longer and fuller than the other. A mouth so sweet, so alive, that I can always tell what you're thinking.'

His eyes still closed, he reached out his hand, trembling slightly. With his fingers, he traced the curve of a breast, glided over her belly, and stroked her hair, which hung loose down to her hips.

He opened his eyes. ‘In the last two years, I've seen many women,' he went on. ‘The beauties of Cilicia or the northern Euphrates, the wives of the great warriors of Lydia . . . The more beautiful they were, the more they made me think of you; the more foolish or provocative, the more I dreamed of you. And whenever I came across one who could compare with you, I was angry at her for not being you.'

He caressed her gently, as if reinventing her body with his fingers, imprinting every curve, every inch of skin, on his palm.

‘When I fought, you were with me. Arrows and swords could not touch me. The mere thought of your beauty protected me.'

Lilah gave a throaty laugh, leaned forward and embraced him, ready to kiss him again. She pressed her hard nipples against Antinoes' chest as if she wanted to be absorbed by him.

‘I was never afraid when I fought,' he murmured, ‘but every day, I was afraid you would forget me. Every day I dreamed you might forget Antinoes. The men of Susa, I told myself, would be mad not to see your beauty.'

‘So, we both felt the same terror.' She bit the back of his neck, and he shivered.

‘Don't laugh!' he cried. ‘Now we're together for ever.'

For a brief moment Lilah froze at his words. But Antinoes' kisses wiped out the cold. Her belly was soon on fire again, as Antinoes' member swelled against her thigh. She gripped his shoulders and pushed him down onto the cushions, her love's warrior and her lover's enchantress.

The moon was rising above the Zagros mountains when she whispered that it was time for her to return home.

‘Stay the night!' Antinoes protested.

She smiled, and shook her head. ‘No, not tonight. We're not yet man and wife, and I don't want my aunt Sarah to find my bedchamber empty in the morning.'

‘Oh, come on! Your aunt Sarah knows perfectly well that you're here, and she's delighted.'

Lilah gave a little laugh and stroked her lover's eyelids, tracing his eyebrows with the tip of her index finger. ‘Then I'm the one who wants to get back to my bedchamber by dawn, thinking about you, smelling your scent on my skin.'

‘You'll smell it all the better if you remain here. Lilah, why must you go? We've only just been reunited.'

‘Because I'm your lover,' Lilah whispered, kissing his brow. ‘Your lover, but not your wife.'

She started to move away, but Antinoes sat up
and gripped her wrist. ‘When? When will you be my wife?'

She found it hard to meet his eyes. The darkness and the warm, flickering light of the torch made the shadows on his face seem harsher. She thought of how his face must look in battle.

‘I'll go to see your uncle first thing tomorrow,' Antinoes insisted. ‘We'll name the day. As far as I'm concerned, everything is ready. I've made offerings to Ahura Mazda and left a tablet with your name on it for the royal eunuchs. That's the law for high-ranking officers. As you know, the King and Queen may oppose a marriage . . . between a Persian officer and someone who is not of our race.' He broke off with a grimace and shook his head. ‘Lilah, what is it? Don't you want to be my wife?'

‘I want nothing else,' she said with a smile.

‘Then why delay?'

Lilah gathered her hair to cover her breasts, and searched for her tunic among the cushions. Antinoes waited for a reply, but when none came he stood up abruptly and walked to the parapet, barely illumined by the light of the torch. ‘I came back to be your husband,' he said quietly. ‘I shan't leave Susa again until that house down there is your home.' He pointed up at the diadem of the Citadel, shining unperturbed in the night. ‘There, in a few days, I shall wear a helmet with red and white plumes and a
leather breastplate with the insignia of the heroes of Artaxerxes. But without you, without your love, even a Greek child could vanquish me.'

He spoke without looking at her. Lilah put on her tunic. As she was about to hook the sides together, Antinoes came to her and seized her arms. ‘It's Ezra, isn't it? It's Ezra who's holding you back.'

‘I have to talk to him.'

‘Hasn't he changed? Does he still hate me?'

Lilah did not reply. She freed herself from his grip and fastened her tunic.

‘Does he know I've come back?' Antinoes asked.

‘No. I'm going tomorrow.'

‘To the lower town?'

Lilah nodded.

Antinoes grunted, and moved away from her. ‘What a fool!'

‘No, Antinoes, he's no fool. He does what he thinks is right. He studies and learns, and that's important.'

An ironic look on his face, Antinoes was about to reply, but Lilah raised her hand. ‘Don't mock, that would be unfair. Soon after you left, an old man came to see him in the lower town. His name is Baruch ben Neriah. He used to live in Babylon. That's where he found out that our family possesses the scroll of the laws given by Yahweh to Moses. He's a gentle old man, and very learned. All his life
he's studied from copied and incomplete papyri. He invited Ezra to join him in his studies. Since then, both of them have been immersed in the texts. Ezra is becoming a sage, Antinoes, a sage of our people, like those who led the children of Israel before the exile.'

‘That's fine. Let him study! Let him become a sage! What do I care, provided he leaves you free to marry me?'

‘Antinoes! You used to love Ezra as much as I did.'

‘That was a long time ago.'

‘Not too long ago to remember. You know as well as I do that Ezra is not cut out for everyday life. One day he will be a great man—'

‘No. To be a great man, he'd have to stop being jealous. Jealousy lessens him, just as hatred weakens a warrior before a battle.'

Lilah fell silent, and tried to smile. She went up to him, stroked his naked torso, put her head on his shoulder, and held him tenderly. ‘My one desire, my one joy, is to be the wife of Antinoes. Be patient a little longer.'

Antinoes buried his face in Lilah's hair. ‘No! I've been patient long enough. I want you with me for the rest of our lives. I came back so that we could be together. And we will be. If Ezra can't accept that, we'll become man and wife in spite of him. All we need is your uncle Mordechai's approval.'

Lilah took away her arms. ‘Antinoes . . .'

But Antinoes was not listening. He clasped her again to his naked body, indifferent to the growing coolness of the night. ‘And if we can't be man and wife,' he went on, ‘we'll be lovers for ever. If we have to leave Susa, we'll leave Susa, and I'll relinquish my chariot captain's breastplate and baldric. We'll go to Lydia, to Sardis. The sea is wonderful there, and I'll become a Greek hero . . .'

Lilah took his face in her hands and kissed his mouth to silence him. Passion inflamed them once more. ‘I shall have no other husband but you, my beloved,' she said. ‘Give me time to convince Ezra. I don't want our joy to be his sorrow.'

THE YOUNG SLAVE
pulled on the reins, the mules champed at their bits, snorting, and the chariot halted in the shade of a medlar tree.

Lilah stepped down, and signalled to Axatria to help her.

The handmaid took the huge basket from between the benches, and arranged the leather straps so that her mistress could hoist it onto her shoulder. ‘It's too heavy.' She frowned. ‘It's not for you to carry such a load.'

‘It'll be all right,' Lilah replied, resting the basket on her back. ‘No need to worry.'

‘Of course I worry! I'm ashamed, too. Your tunic will be rags by the time you get to Ezra's house. God in heaven, what do you look like?'

Axatria tried to smooth the fabric, creased already
by the straps, and adjusted the half-moon brooch that held Lilah's transparent shawl on her hair.

‘Your hair will be out of place by the time you get to your brother's house – and he loves to see you looking beautiful. And what would your aunt say if she could see you laden like a mule while your handmaid sits comfortably in the chariot?'

Lilah smiled. ‘Ezra will be happy to see his sister even if she's a bit rumpled, and I won't tell Aunt Sarah, I promise.'

Axatria seemed neither amused nor appeased by this answer.

Giving a little shake to make sure that the straps rested against her hands, Lilah walked away from the chariot, along the street that cut through the last gardens in the upper town. She had not gone far when she tripped on the raised edge of a paving stone and stumbled. She had hardly had time to regain her balance than Axatria was gripping the basket. ‘You see? It's too heavy. It'll be easier if the two of us carry it.'

‘Let go.'

But Axatria would not yield, and tried to take the straps from her hands. Lilah was angry now and pushed her so forcefully that Axatria stumbled and almost knocked both of them over.

‘Axatria! Leave me be!'

‘Why should I let you do something so stupid?'

Axatria's naturally dark complexion had turned almost purple. She was not pretty, with a squat figure, heavy breasts and wide hips, even though she had never given birth. She had the flat face typical of the women of the Zagros mountains: a short nose, high cheekbones and thick, curly hair. But her dancing eyes, full lips, as frank as they were sensual, and her eager, mocking expression were not without charm. Now, though, her eyes blazed with anger and her mouth was like that of a mother with an unruly child.