The Assyrian (13 page)

It was almost an invitation to examine him
more closely, but it did not take much time to solve the riddle.
Yes, of course. I wondered how I had missed it before.

“Nabusharusur! By the Lord Ashur—is it really
you?”

I began rising, as if to embrace him, but
Nabusharusur rather pointedly kept his seat. He seemed less pleased
with the meeting than I was. His black, hating eyes never left my
face.

“Yes, it is I,” he answered, his hands folded
together in his lap. “You, it is obvious, have fulfilled your
ambitions, while I have become. . . I have grown to be what you see
before you.”

He shrugged his thin shoulders. It was the
gesture of a woman, of one who knows he has become an object of
contempt and, still more clearly, that it was through no will or
fault of his own that this was so. In these moments he was alone,
as if, under the burden of his blameless misery, he had forgotten
our existence, and then he came to himself again and his eyes fixed
on Esarhaddon. I understood why at once—Esarhaddon was grinning at
him.

“I have come to have my will registered,” I
said quickly, for Esarhaddon could be a stupid enough brute at
times. I would gladly have kicked him but that Nabusharusur would
have seen me do it. “The war, you understand—I leave for the south
this week.”

“Yes.” Esarhaddon was still grinning, as if
he found the joke delightful. “That is at least one hazard you have
been spared, Nabusharusur.”

Esarhaddon, who was my royal brother, and
Nabusharusur, who was no less, exchanged a look that told me more
about both of them than I cared to know.

“Yes, Esarhaddon,” Nabusharusur said, almost
between his teeth. “There are many hazards awaiting the unwary in
this world.”

One who lives in a barrack, where men are
packed in together and the business of life is violence, cannot
help but acquire an intimate knowledge of all the shadings of anger
and hatred. I had seen fights over a jug of beer or the winnings of
a dice game where men would have killed one another had they not
been kept apart by their comrades—I once saw an infantryman from
Edom use his thumb to take out another soldier’s eye, and all
because of the hot sun and a cup of spilled water. But I had never
seen anything like the cold wrath in Nabusharusur’s face. It never
even broke the surface of his patient, contemptuous calm, but it
seemed all the deadlier for that. This was not the fury of a
moment, to be forgotten before dinner or, perhaps, regretted for
the rest of one’s days. This was a hatred that seemed ready to last
out the span of a man’s life.

And then, as if to say that he was accustomed
to such insults and counted them as nothing, Nabusharusur turned to
me. When he spoke his voice was as level as a pool of rainwater
after a storm.

“How do you wish to dispose of your property,
Tiglath?”

. . . . .

The hour approached. The day before the
army’s departure, I put on my new green uniform—I was a rab kisir
now, although, I must confess, this was because my father was the
king and not through any merit of my own—and went to spend one last
hour with Esharhamat. She received me, as had grown our custom, in
her garden. I found her sitting at the fountain’s edge, and as I
approached she raised her gaze to my face. In all the months I had
been going there, this was the first time I had ever seen her
cry.

“What is it?” I asked—it was a foolish
question to which I desperately wanted to hear the answer I knew
already. I took my place beside her and recklessly took her hands
in my own. She did not withdraw them. “What has made you unhappy,
Esharhamat? Tell me.”

“What is to become of me if you are killed,
Tiglath?”

I had only to look into her eyes, glistening
with tears, to know what she meant. The time of childhood was over,
she was saying, and of this woman I was the beloved.

“I wonder what will become of you if I am
not.”

Together we looked across the garden to the
spot of shade where the Lady Tashmetum-sharrat lay on a wicker
couch, fanned by one of her women while she stared at nothing.

“I will not be her son’s wife,” Esharhamat
murmured in an icy voice. “I am a widow—soon I will have control
over Ashurnadinshum’s estate, and then I will be free. No one can
compel me to marry Arad Ninlil, who makes the flesh crawl up my
back like a serpent. I may choose whom I like, and I choose
you!”

I smiled, partly at her still childish
confidence that she could have whatever pleased her—I speak only of
her power of choice, for it was not the child but the woman who
knew I would risk any fearful death for her sake—and partly because
no man could hear such words from those lips and not be happy. I
smiled, but I knew it was impossible.

“We are the king’s servants,” I said—I had
never felt the truth of it so deeply as I did that moment. “It is
your simtu to be the mother of kings. You cannot avoid that, no
more than I can choose to take the crown upon my head. You will
marry whom the king my father commands, as I follow him into battle
now.”

“You are suddenly very noble, Tiglath. I
think I liked you better when you were impudent.”

She withdrew her hands from mine. The tears
had already dried on her cheeks, and when I looked at her I saw
someone I did not know. The woman had put aside the child’s
softness, and her unsmiling mouth mirrored a will as hard as
flint.

“This war will not quickly end,” she went on,
almost as if she were telling these things to herself. “More than
one of the king’s sons may die in it. You told me once you have a
sedu—or was that simply more of your impudence?”

“I think perhaps it was nothing more than the
fantasy of a crazy old man.”

“Mind you come back from the war alive,
Tiglath.”

She smiled at me, and the smile was also one
I had not seen before.

“I have every intention. . .”

“I believe you will come back.” This time it
was she who took my hand. “He was not a crazy old man—I believe in
your sedu, Tiglath. Make the king love you, as the god does—as I
do. I will not marry Arad Ninlil, and if I must be the mother of
kings, you must be their father.”

. . . . .

When I returned to the royal barrack I found
I had a visitor of my own. Kephalos was waiting for me, sitting on
a stool outside my door, looking very important and out of patience
as the boy Ernos held a fan of ostrich feathers over him to keep
off the sun. He rose when he saw me, and I was at some trouble to
keep him from going down on all fours to embrace my knees.

“Master, come—let us go inside out of this
heat.” He took a large leather pouch and an even larger pottery jug
from the boy and then waved him away. “As you see, I have brought
my lord the finest wine from Lebanon that we may refresh
ourselves.”

“Then come inside,” I said, placing my hand
upon his shoulder and pushing open the door. “For the sight of you
is always welcome, Kephalos, my friend, even without the finest
wine, and from Lebanon at that.”

I really was glad to see him, for it had been
my intention to call upon him at his house that very evening and
now I was saved the trouble. I took two goblets made of blue glass
from a shelf under the room’s only window and, while my slave made
himself quite comfortable on my rolled up sleeping mat, I broke the
seal of the wine jug and filled them both to the rim.

Kephalos was as impressive a sight as ever.
He had grown stout in his prosperity and his beard, which had
reached vast proportions over the last few years, was combed and
curled and smelled of pomegranate oil, and he wore more rings and
bracelets than the most expensive harlot in Nineveh. His tunic was
of blue wool, shot through with silver thread like one of the
king’s own nobles and embroidered richly with yellow and green. The
turban on his head was set off with a silver clasp the size of a
war shield. No one looking at him would ever have taken him for a
soldier’s slave.

When we had both gladdened our hearts with
wine and Kephalos had entertained me with stories of his many
successes as a physician—which to him was merely a pretext for
robbing selfish and witless women—he lifted the leather pouch onto
his lap and opened the string.

“I bring you gifts, master—having been a
warrior myself and knowing you for a thoughtless and improvident
youth, I thought to supply a few items against this mad campaign.
No, no, my young lord—all wars are madness and enrich only the
crows and the jackals, but since you have set your heart upon this
one. . .”

From the pouch he took two small enameled
jars, green and red, their mouths sealed with clay.

“In this,” he said, holding the green one in
his left hand, “you will find a salve of great benefit in treating
all manner of wounds, but be sure you use it at once lest the wound
come to fester.” He lifted the other jar between first finger and
thumb, as if he wished to assess its weight. “And this, this is the
one sovereign remedy against the infections carried by unclean
women. Remember, Lord, that a soldier going into strange lands. .
.”

“Thank you, my friend,” I answered, making a
solemn show of refilling his goblet, for had I been compelled to
look him in the face I should have burst out in laughter and I had
no desire to offend him. Kephalos saw all men as no less wicked
then himself, but in his way he was an honest soul and I loved
him.

“And I, for my part, have a gift for
you.”

I rose and went to my kit bag, from which I
took an object folded carefully in leather. When I sat down again I
placed it before Kephalos and unwrapped it.

“I have made my will,” I said. “In the event
I should not return from his war, what I own—the silver you have
gained for me with your industry—I would wish put into my mother’s
hands, and I ask you, as a favor to a friend, to see to it.”

“This I will, master, but yours is a
melancholy subject. I would as soon. . .”

“I have but one other item of property, and
that is yourself.” He began to make a gesture of obedience, placing
his hands and forehead against my knees, but I held him back. “I do
not know what might befall you if I die, so you also are among my
heirs. Should my simtu come to me in the south, this tablet, of
which there is a copy in the royal archives, will attest that you
have been given your freedom.”

I could not restrain him now for he threw
himself to the floor, burying his face in his arms and clasping me
by the feet. He wept, and I wept—we were both, I suspect, a trifle
drunk, for the wines of Lebanon are notoriously strong.

“As you know, master, I was born a free man,”
he said, when he had regained his composure. “And I feel sure that
I am destined to die one. But know, Lord, that I would not purchase
liberty at the price of your life. Come back from your war no worse
than you are this moment—and mind about those filthy southern
women!”

At last, when he had risen to leave, he
placed his hand upon my shoulder.

“And, Lord, when you have used all that the
jars contain, be careful that you do not throw them away.”

The door closed on him. I poured myself the
dregs of the wine, puzzling over what he could have meant. Finally
I picked up one of the jars and was surprised by its heaviness.
Then I took my sword and with the edge scraped away a little of the
enamel on the bottom of the red one. The metal underneath was the
color of old honey and as soft as wax.

“Solid gold,” I whispered. I balanced them
again in my hands—each, discounting its contents, must have weighed
close to seventy shekels. “Kephalos, you clever rogue, may you live
forever.”

Chapter 5

The world holds many fine things to look
upon, but I have always believed that the finest sight which can
fill a young man’s eyes is that of an army on its way to war. A
young man’s heart swells with dreams of glory, and while kings wage
wars for revenge or profit and common men to escape their debts or
their wives or the reach of the law—or because they have been
conscripted—the dreamy youth shoulders his arms and marches to the
drum of greatness, fame, adventure. The army of Sennacherib was a
magic carpet stretching far, far into the distance, and it would
carry me. . . I hardly knew where, but surely to some shining
triumph. This impression stayed with me for many weeks—indeed, up
to the morning of my first battle.

On the day of our departure from Nineveh I
almost envied the crowds that lined the southern road, for I was a
great way back in the parade, looking after my baggage and my
company of a hundred men, some of them old campaigners but some of
whom knew less about being a soldier even than I did myself. I did
not see the king in his war chariot, and the sound of the trumpets
was but a distant murmur. By the time we passed through the city
gates, the people had stopped cheering hours before. The only
witnesses to our going were a few glum shopkeepers and the poorest
among the harlots, those who served travelers with the dust of
their journeys still clinging to them, and they merely laughed at
us, shouting obscene jokes and lifting up their tunics that we
might know what we were leaving behind, perhaps forever.

I held the rank of rab kisir, with authority
over a hundred men, but this was purely a matter of courtesy. The
armies of Ashur had not conquered most of the world because they
were led by fools and raw boys, and I had been made to understand
quite clearly that, until I proved my worth, I was to regard myself
as no more than another soldier. The man who had been set at my
elbow as ekalli—the word means nothing more than “messenger”—was in
actual command. His name was Nargi Adad, and he had campaigned with
Tabshar Sin in the wars of the great Sargon. Indeed, he had been
part of the army that had had to fight its way home after the
king’s death, and it was from him that I heard the story of that
final battle.