Servant of the Bones (9 page)

“ ‘Azriel, I think we took the wrong turn.’

“ ‘Why, they won’t notice us any more than anyone else. They see me with a rich man. I’m a merchant. I’ll say I sold you your beautiful girdle of gold and these jewels.’

“He laughed at that, but he made us sit down together and we were once again whispering. ‘What do you know about the Persians!’ he asked me. ‘What do you know about the cities that Cyrus conquers! What do you know?’

“ ‘Well, I know the lies the Persians spread, that Cyrus brings peace and prosperity and leaves people alone, but I don’t believe it. He is a murdering King like any other. He is on the march like Assurbanipal. I don’t believe the Persians will peacefully accept the surrender of this city. Who would believe them? Do you?’

“I realized that he was no longer listening to me. He pointed ahead. ‘This is what I meant,’ he said, ‘when I said we took the wrong turn. But they would have found us anyway. Be calm. Say nothing. Give away nothing.’

“I saw what he saw, a great mass of the Hebrew elders storming towards us, clearing back the crowd and thickening
it on all sides. And at the head of this crowd was the prophet Enoch in a fury with his white hair streaming in all directions, and he gazed on Marduk, and I knew he saw Marduk, whereas all those around him, uneasy and unsure, and not wanting to provoke a riot, only saw a Noble Man and their slightly crazy Azriel, whom they already knew to be a troublemaker of a mild, powerful, and obedient sort.

“Marduk looked the prophet in the eye! So did I. He came to a halt not far from us. He was half-naked, as prophets often are. He was covered with ashes and dirt and he carried a staff, and I knew for the first time since I had ever heard of him—he wasn’t a favorite of mine—that he was a real prophet because of the way he beheld Marduk with flaming indignation and violent faith.

“ ‘You!’ he declared, lifting his staff and pushing it at Marduk. The crowd fell back in fear. I mean, this figure did look like a rich man! But then the most terrible of all things happened. The prophet opened wide his eyes, and said, ‘Bring to yourself your loot, the gold that your soldiers took from our temple in Jerusalem, clothe yourself with it, you stupid, useless idol, go on, you were made to be metal!’

“And before I could think to act, the gold did come down upon Marduk and enclose him, but he resisted it, and I tried to banish it, and between us we made it a light covering only, and it did not have the deep vitality of the visions I had so long had. But the gold was all over Marduk, and the streets were filled with the sounds of running feet. I looked up at the distant houses that enclosed the garden, and the rooftops were thronged with onlookers.

“My father suddenly pushed his way to the fore, and threw his arm in front of Enoch. ‘You hurt us with this, don’t you see!’ he declared, and then he too saw Marduk standing there now dusted with gold, and Enoch hit my father with his staff.

“I was enraged, but my brothers surrounded the prophet, and Marduk took my arm. ‘Stay with me,’ he said imploringly in a soft whisper. ‘Am I all gold?’ I explained he was covered over with it, and it was getting thicker but he was not the moving idol that he had seemed to me at first. He merely
smiled and he looked up at the people on the rooftops and turned round and round, and people began to scream.

“ ‘Silence,’ shouted Enoch, stamping the bricks with his staff, his beard shuddering. You should have seen him. He was in his glory. I tell you, prophets are murderous, a murderous breed. ‘You, Marduk, God of Babylon, are nothing but an impostor sent out from the temple!’ he roared.

“Marduk laughed under his breath. ‘Well, he’s giving us a way out, Azriel, what a relief!’

“ ‘Do you want them to believe in you, my Lord? All you need to do is vanish and reappear. I’ll help you.’

“He gave me a devastating look.

“ ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I disappoint you. You don’t want to be the god.’

“ ‘Who in the hell would want it, Azriel? No, I shouldn’t say that. Let me say, who would give up life for it? But there’s no time. Your prophet here before us is about to bellow like a bull.’

“And Enoch did just that. He raised his powerful voice, though how such a thunder could come from such a scrawny rib cage, it’s hard to imagine, and he declared:

“ ‘Babylon, your time is come. You will be humbled. Even as we speak, the anointed one comes, Cyrus the Persian, the scourge whom the Lord God Yahweh has sent to punish you for what you have done to his Chosen people and to lead us back to our own land!’

“Roars came from the Hebrews, roars and prayers and chants and bowing and bowing to the Lord God of Hosts, and the Babylonians looked on in amazement, some of them even laughing, and then Enoch made his prophecy again:

“ ‘Yahweh sends a saviour in the person of Cyrus to save this city…aye, even you Babylon, you yourself will be delivered out of the hands of mad Nabonidus into the hands of a liberator.’

“There was a beat of silence. Only a beat. And then the roar rose from all—Hebrew, Babylonian, Greek, Persian. The whole crowd cried up for joy. ‘Yes, yes, the anointed one,
Cyrus the Persian, may he liberate us from a mad king who has left the city.’

“Hordes began to bow to Marduk, bow at his feet and stretch out their arms and then back away…

“ ‘All right, impostor, savor your moment!’ cried Enoch. ‘It is the will of Yahweh that your city be surrendered without bloodshed. But you are no true God. You are an impostor and in the temples there are nought but statues. Statues, I tell you. You and your priests will see us leave in triumph and you will thank us that we have saved Babylon for you!’

“I was truly speechless, no joke. I couldn’t figure this out! But Marduk only nodded his head and took the insults of the prophet, and then he turned and threw up his arms. ‘I’m leaving you now, Azriel, but take care and do nothing until you have my advice! Be on guard against those you love, Azriel. I feel dread, not for Babylon, Babylon shall conquer, but for you. Now comes my moment of pride.’

“He then began to blaze with gold light, and I could see by his maddened eyes that it was coming from him, and as the Babylonians and the Jews saw it, he had the strength from them to grow brighter and then he said in a huge voice, more huge than a man’s, and rattling the lattices and echoing off the buildings:

“ ‘Get away from me—Enoch and all your tribe. I forgive you your rash words. Your God is faceless and merciless. But I call down the wind now to scatter you all!’

“And the wind came. The wind came with huge ferocity over the rooftops, lifted off the desert and filled with sand. The gold figure of Marduk suddenly grew immense before me, but I knew now this was illusion, for it was paling, and as I stood looking up at him, he exploded into a shower of gold, and the people went completely wild.

“Everyone ran. Panic drove them. What they had seen drove them. What they had heard and, if nothing else, the wind salted with sand drove them.

“Only I stood there, my brothers now rushing to my side, and the prophet, Enoch, laughing, just laughing and throwing out his arms! Then he bore down on me, shoving my father to
one side with his staff. He gave me the evil eye! He looked at me and he said, ‘You will pay for eating the food of the false gods. You will pay! You will pay.’ And he spat at me, and reached down for the sand that was gathered and threw it at me. My brothers begged him to stop, but he laughed, and he said, ‘You will pay.’

“I got furious, truly furious. My happy nature left me. I felt the first anger that would soon become common to me after my death. I leant forward and I said,

“ ‘Call on Yahweh to stop this sandstorm, you fool!’ and then my brothers literally dragged me away.

“A host of devoted elders rushed out to shelter Enoch and they picked him up and carried him away like a madman thrashing and screaming and gradually, gradually…as we ran to the shelter of our own house, the wind died away.”

I
  was almost sick by the time we reached the house. My brothers were carrying me. And outside the gate, what should we see?

“First were two of the other prophets, the more quiet ones who merely echoed the old words of Jeremiah sent from Egypt, and with them an old woman whom everyone feared and despised. Her name was Asenath, and she was one of our tribe but she was a necromancer, everybody knew, and such things were forbidden, whether the great King Saul had ever called up Samuel with the Witch of Endor or not.

“Also, everybody went to her for help from time to time. So you know, it wasn’t so great to see her outside our gate, but she had known my mother and my grandparents, and she wasn’t the enemy, just someone with an unsavory reputation who could mix up poisons to kill people and potions to make people fall in love.

“She had straggling hair, very white, and eyes which had turned a perfect brighter blue with age, rather than pale, and a withered long face and a great triumphant expression, and she wore all scarlet, defiant scarlet, silks all over her, as if she were some Egyptian whore or something, and she carried a crooked staff, with a snake on the end of it, not so unlike the staffs of the prophets, and she said to me:

“ ‘Azriel, you come to me. Or you let me in.’ ”

By this time all the household was in the courtyard inside screaming and yelling at her to get away from our house, old witch, and my brothers told her to go, but to my surprise my father said, ‘Come inside, Asenath, come inside.’

“Next I remember lying on my bed, and listening to people talk. My brothers wanted to know how in the hell I had gotten into this, and how could I believe this demon was Marduk when he was obviously a demon, and why had I not told them that I was conversing with other gods! My sisters kept saying, ‘Oh, leave him alone,’ and for a moment I thought I saw the ghost of my mother, but this might have been a dream.

“All the uncles and elders were gathered in the long rooms of the scriptoria which flanked the courtyard for half its distance…it was quite big, as I told you. And I didn’t know where my father was.

“At last, he sent for me, and my brother propped me up, and got me on my feet and took me to him. I didn’t like the door through which we passed. This was a small antechamber off the chamber of the ancestors, that is, the little room in which earlier Assyrians and Akkadians of this very house had buried their dead. This little room was part of their old pagan worship and we had never cleaned the paintings of priests and priestesses and ancestors of other people off the walls. Superstition stopped us, and after all, heathens that they were, their bones lay under the floor.

“There were three chairs in the room, simple chairs, you know the kind, of leather and crossed painted legs, but they were our very finest, and also there were three lamp stands, and in each the wick was burning the olive oil brightly, so the room had a splendid but frightening look.

“Old Asenath sat in one chair, and my father in the other, and they were whispering, which they stopped when I came in. I sat down in the free chair, and my brothers left us, and there we were among painted Assyrians, in the flicker of these lamps, in an airless place. I closed my eyes. I opened them. I deliberately tried to see the dead. I tried to see them as I had seen them when Marduk was with me. And for a moment I did. I saw them as wraiths throughout the room, sort of shuffling and mumbling and pointing, and then I shook my head and said, ‘Be gone.’

“Asenath, who had a very young voice for such an old hag, laughed at me.

“ ‘You learnt your imperial ways from the great god Marduk, didn’t you?’

“Silence from me.

“Then she said, ‘What? Won’t you own up to your loyalty to your god in your father’s presence? It doesn’t surprise. You think you are the first Hebrew who has worshipped the Babylonian gods? The hills around Jerusalem are filled with altars where Hebrews still worship pagan gods.’

“ ‘Which means what, old woman?’ I said, surprised at my own anger and impatience. ‘Get to the point. What do you have to say to me?’

“ ‘Nothing to you. It’s all said to your father. You make your choice. You make it. Ten years since the Festival has been celebrated but many, many more years since the true miracle of the Festival has been brought about. And the old priests; they know how to do it; but they don’t know everything; and for this, this which I hold here’—and she drew a cumbersome package out of her garments—‘they would give me anything and they will.’

“I looked at it. It was an ancient Sumerian clay envelope which meant that the ancient Sumerian tablet was untouched inside. It had never been tampered with. I could see that.

“ ‘What do I want with that? What do I care about the true miracle of the Festival?’ I said.

“My father motioned for me to be quiet.

“She put the clay envelope with its secret tablet hidden inside it into my father’s hands. ‘Hide it here with the bones of the Assyrians,’ she said. She laughed. ‘And remember what I said, they will give you Jerusalem for it! Do as I say! They’ve already sent for me. They don’t know clearly even how to mix the gold without me. I will help them, but when they demand the tablet of me, it will be safe with you.’

“ ‘Who gave you this all-precious tablet, Asenath?’ I asked sarcastically, becoming ever more anxious and impatient at this whole thing. I’d never seen my father so serious! I didn’t like it.

“ ‘Look at it, scribe, scholar, smart one!’ she said. ‘How old do you think this is?’

“ ‘A thousand kings have reigned since then,’ I said. ‘It’s as old as Uruk.’ And really this was the same as saying to you in English, this thing is two thousand years old.

“She nodded. ‘Given me by the priest they put to death, just to spite them,’ she said.

“ ‘I want to read the outside,’ I said.

“ ‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’ Then she stood up and leaned on her snake staff or whatever the hell she called it, and she said to my father, ‘Remember, there are two ways to do this. Two ways. I give you my counsel. Were he my son, I would give them this tablet. I would give it into the hands of the most ambitious. I would give it into the hands of the most dissatisfied and eager to be gone from here, and that is the young priest, Remath. Be clever. You hold your people in your hands.’