The Assyrian (4 page)

Bag Teshub, I suspect to display his prowess
as a teacher, gave me a tablet in the tongue of Sumer—it was a
simple prayer to Enlil, an ancient god, the guardian of the nether
world. I read it haltingly, but the turtanu Sinahiusur, resplendent
in his tunic embroidered with blue and green and shot through with
silver, nodded his head as he stroked his black beard in approval.
Of the others’ recitations I remember nothing, except Esarhaddon’s
remark as we were dismissed.

“I read well enough to make sense of a
dispatch.” he said. “And what more does a soldier need? It will
do.”

We four little boys, our tasks as children
behind us, were led away by Bag Teshub and the Lord Sinahiusur,
down a corridor we had never walked before, through a door that I
had never seen open, and into the hard light of the outside. This
was the moment of parting. The turtanu stood with his hands on
Esarhaddon’s shoulders, for Esarhaddon was the son of the king’s
second lawful wife—not like me, whose mother was merely one more
among the royal women—and thus he had already been selected from
among us. But as the Lord Sinahiusur held my brother under his
hands, his eyes were all the time on my face. He seemed intent upon
carrying away in his mind my indelible image. What his thoughts
might have been I had no notion. He never spoke.

“Come, my children,” Bag Teshub murmured,
looking away from Esarhaddon as if the sight of him troubled his
conscience. “Come now—you are all to be scribes. Your lives will be
here in the palace of the king. Great things perhaps await
you.”

My disappointment in that moment was the
sharpest emotion I had yet experienced. So I was not to be a
soldier after all. For me there were to be no conquests, no glory.
I would pass my days copying tablets. In my heart I cursed the old
eunuch for distinguishing me before the king’s turtanu—I was naive
enough to imagine that was the cause of my unhappy fate. I had
forgotten the half smiles of the Lady Naq’ia.

“Come this way.” he went on, his voice
piping. “The moment has come for your—your initiation.”

While the turtanu led my brother Esarhaddon
away, we three were conducted to a vast courtyard far off from the
house of women. There four men in the vestments of priests awaited
us, their sleeves rolled up to reveal the heavy bulging muscles of
their arms and their faces set as if they cherished some special
anger against boys of our age. I will remember the expression on
their faces all of my life. I have seen it many times since, but
that was the first.

We hung back, we three. We were afraid and
tried to hide ourselves behind Bag Teshub’s skirts. But even he, in
this place, was not our friend.

“Start with this one.” he said, his voice
strangely altered. He grabbed Belushezib by the shoulder and thrust
him forward. Belushezib did not stand on his dignity as a king’s
son—he let out a scream of terror as two of the priests grasped his
arms, twisting them cruelly as they marched him to a low stone
altar in the center of the courtyard.

In late summer we children wore nothing
except thin linen robes and loincloths. These the priests removed
from Belushezib’s body as roughly as they might have ripped the
skin from a rabbit. The boy kept screaming the whole time, as if he
really were being flayed alive.

At first I understood very little of what was
taking place. I saw two of the priests holding Belushezib down upon
the altar stone by his arms and legs while another, carrying a
leather cord in his hands, stepped forward and made a loop with it
around Bclushezib’s private parts, choking off the scrotum as he
pulled the cord tight. It was all done in the calmest, most
workmanlike manner, as if they were cooks in the king’s kitchen
dressing a sheep for the night’s banquet. Nabusharusur and I
watched in horror as the fourth priest produced a knife with a
curved blade and sliced open the scrotum, letting its bloody
contents spill out over Belushezib’s legs. I thought the air would
shatter with his shriek of terror and pain.

And then, of course, everything was plain to
me.

“How dare they?” I thought. “How dare they do
such a thing?” But they did dare, and as I felt Bag Teshub’s hand
on my shoulder I knew that I was next.

I looked up into his beardless face—he was
smiling at me. The skin around his neck was loose and jiggled when
he moved. He was fat and strengthless, and he had been the old
king’s brother.

Suddenly I understood why my mother had been
so afraid, and why Naq’ia had smiled.

Yes, of course. Esarhaddon was not here. He
was safe, should the throne come to him. And I was here, about to
have my manhood stripped away from me before it had even begun.

And Bag Teshub could smile.

“No—not to me.”

Whether I actually spoke these words I know
not, but they filled my mind. My father was the king, and they
would not do this to me.

They had finished with Belushezib. One of
them took a torch, dripping with burning pitch, and seared closed
his wound. He screamed yet once more, but no one paid any heed.
They were already turning their eyes to me.

“Go on, Tiglath,” Bag Teshub whispered. “It
is over in a moment. Show them what a brave boy you are.”

He gave me a gentle push forward. The priests
were content to wait for me. The one with the curved knife balanced
it in the palm of his hand, almost playfully. I took a step, then
another, then another. I hardly knew what I was doing.

I would have been a warrior, and a warrior
tells himself he is not afraid of suffering and death. I was not
afraid of the pain—and I hardly knew what death was. But this
shameful dishonor. . . No, it must not be allowed to happen.

I knew what I had to do.

They were far from expecting resistance. I
approached them meekly, my eyes upon the ground, like the boy that
they thought me to be. The one with the knife was closest to me,
his back to the altar stone. He was so sure he had me in his power
it was almost like an invitation.

I was only a boy, but my mother had taught me
to be agile and quick. I shuffled my feet as I approached him. I
kept my eyes down.

Then, at the last moment, when he began to
reach out his hand to me. I rushed at him with all the sudden force
I could command. It was enough—I hit him just above the knees,
striking hard with the palms of my hands, and he rocked back,
losing his balance. He fell backward over the altar and, as I had
expected, allowed the knife to slip from his grasp.

It fell clattering to the stone floor. While
they all recovered from their surprise I had just time to scoop it
up as I ran to one of the pillars that supported the arcade around
the far end of the courtyard. I ran like a deer, my heart pounding
within me. I did not stop until I had that massive granite pillar
at my back. I turned, the knife in my hand, to face my
tormentors.

“I am Tiglath Ashur!” I shouted I was half
mad with fear, but it was mingled with a strange exultation such as
I had never known. “My father is Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth,
King of Kings! Come near me at your peril!”

For an instant there was only silence. I
could even hear the faint whispering of the wind overhead. For that
instant I thought I might really have won.

But then I was answered with laughter,
laughter that boomed like thunder, like the laughter of the god
Ashur himself. How dare they? I was so filled with wrath that I
wished to shed tears until I saw that it was not the priests who
were laughing. They had forgotten my existence. They were on their
knees, their races pressed against the dusty stones.

And then I saw them, across the courtyard, in
the shadow of the arcade, two men. I strained my eyes to see
clearly and, as if to oblige me, they stepped out into the
sunlight.

One of them I knew. He was the turtanu
Sinahiusur, the king’s brother; he stood silent and majestic as
before, wise and heroic.

But I hardly had eyes for him. I was looking
at his companion, he who had dared to laugh at me, who laughed
still. His tunic was covered with gold. I thought I was in the
presence of a god.

He gestured toward me with his arm, his lips
still smiling.

“Bag Teshub—Uncle.” he said. “This is but a
boy, though he roars like a lion, eh? Take the knife from him.”

Bag Teshub picked himself up from the stones
and came toward me, bowing even as he walked.

“Give me the knife, Tiglath. We are not in
the schoolroom now. This is the—augh!”

He had come too close. The knife struck out
and cut him across the hand so that red blood spattered his arm and
rolled to the ground. I waved my little weapon threateningly and he
jumped back and out of danger. And the thundering laughter sounded
again.

“He is as he styles himself, eh, brother?”
the golden man said, turning a little toward Sinahiusur. “This one
has the bowels of a prince, eh?—yes? I am convinced, so let it be
as you think best. He shall be spared the knife.”

Sinahiusur said nothing. He merely placed his
right hand upon his breast and bowed. And then he turned his eyes
to me.

“Bow down, Tiglath Ashur,” he said, in a
voice like the stroke of an ax. “Bow down before the king thy
father.”

My knees became as water and I fell to the
stone floor, touching it with my forehead I was in the presence of
the god’s chosen one, and my mind was clouded with awe. It was
Sennacherib who stood before me, whom I myself had named Lord of
the Earth.

“Come to me, boy,” he said, his voice all
gentleness. “Come and let me see you.”

In all my life I had never yet seen the king
my father, and now I stood before him. He rested his hands upon my
shoulders and my eyes clouded with tears.

“Do not be afraid, my son. Have a lion’s
heart and I will make you great in the land of Ashur. How is that,
eh? Better?”

There was a slight sound. It was Bag Teshub,
his bleeding hand wrapped in a scrap of linen, clearing his
throat.

Yes—what is it, Uncle?”

“What of the other, Dread Lord?”

Because, of course, we had forgotten all
about Nabusharusur. He stood in the shadow of a pillar as if he
wished to disappear altogether. I do not know what I felt for him
in that moment; perhaps my heart was too glutted to feel anything
more.

“Yes, of course.” The king’s face went hard,
though his hand still rested lightly enough on my shoulders. “I
think one lion is enough for this day, eh? Fulfill your task,
Uncle.”

The priests were quick this time. They gave
Nabusharusur no chance to resist but lifted him from the ground by
his arms and legs. He screamed, he filled the air with his shrill
voice, but in an instant he was upon the altar stone and the cruel
knife had begun its work.

“No, do not turn away, my son,” the king
said, laying his hand upon my cheek so that I could not. “Learn to
be a man and shrink not from pain and blood.”

And so it was that in my ninth year I learned
what it meant to become a man of Ashur.

Chapter 2

Sinahiusur was a pious man, a respecter of
omens. He had remembered the child who was born the night the great
Sargon died, and thus it was that the god’s mark which I bore was
my deliverance, as my mother had said it would be. So I was sent to
the house of war after all, and the king my father’s eyes were upon
me. “I will make you great in the Land of Ashur,” he had said. I
was to have all the world could offer, it seemed.

And in the house of war I found
Esarhaddon.

His eyes met mine at the door of the royal
barrack, whither I had been conducted after receiving the king’s
blessing and parting from him. It was evening and Esarhaddon was
still in his leather breastplate, polishing his new sword as he sat
on his sleeping roll. He glanced up at the sound of footsteps and,
even in the flickering yellow light of the oil lamp that rested on
the floor, I could see the mingling of surprise and joy in his
face.

“By the sixty great gods, is it really you,
Tiglath?”

He sprang to his feet and came rushing toward
me, the sword still in his hand as if he planned to run me through
merely as a friendly demonstration. In an instant our arms were
around each other’s necks, and I will never know how he kept from
cutting off my head.

“So it is you, in your own flesh, and not
some deceiving gallu called up by Zaqar, Lord of Dreams? I thought
you were going to the tablet house to be a mud scratcher with the
others.”

“I was very nearly rendered fit for nothing
else,” I said, and then I told him of what had happened. He did not
seem surprised, and the fate of Belushezib and Nabusharusur moved
him not at all. Would he have felt the same had it been my simtu to
go under the gelding knife? Would he have smiled smugly then and
spoken bland words about the god’s will? I will never know. But
when I described how I had sliced open old Bag Teshub’s hand he
threw back his head and laughed.

“Did you really do it, Tiglath? By Adad’s
thunder, I wish I had been there to hear him howl! Tiglath, my
brave brother, I will love you onto death for every drop you
spilled of the old maiden’s blood. And so you really saw the
king?”

“Yes, and he put his hands upon me and called
me ‘my son.’”

“Then you are blessed. Remember your poor
brother when the king has made you shaknu of Babylonia and the
black headed people feel your foot upon their necks like Sargon
come back to life.”

This made him laugh all over again—it was
mere excess of good spirits, for Esarhaddon was possessed of a
loving heart.

“What is it like in this place?” I asked,
looking around me with a curiosity I did not trouble to disguise,
for the royal barrack had been my dream no less than my
brother’s.

“What is it like in this place?” Esarhaddon
put his arm over my shoulder and led me inside the tiny room we
were to share for the next four years. “‘This place.’ as you call
it, brother, is the temple of glory.”