The Assyrian (43 page)

“No—tonight I leave for the north. I am
leaving now.”

She sat up suddenly, pulling the blanket
around her. Even in the flickering light of the oil lamp I could
see that her face was flushed and angry.

“You cannot leave. I will not allow it. I
will tell the king what you have done!”

“Tell him.” I turned to her with cold,
indifferent eyes—indeed I felt nothing. “Do, tell him. But never
seek to see me again, Shaditu, for the next time I really will kill
you and you will take no pleasure in the manner of your death.”

“Dog! I hate you! The gods damn you, Tiglath.
. !”

Even as I left this dwelling for the last
time, I could hear her curses trembling in the air behind me.

Chapter 16

“Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods, true
king.” “Did you think I would let that cold little bitch puppy have
you?” As I rode through the night, the lights of Nineveh fading at
my back, these words of Shaditu’s throbbed in my mind like a bruise
someone had made the mistake of touching. What could she have been
talking about? Had she even known herself?

“Can you not see that we have both been
tricked?” What had Esharhamat tried to tell me as I abandoned her?
What was this secret that everyone seemed to understand except
myself?

“Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods. . .”
The words trembling with desire.

I had raped my own sister, if rape may have
so willing a victim. She had wanted it to happen, and just that
way, but if she had not wanted it I would have taken her in any
case, and I would have killed her if she had resisted. But she had
not thought of resisting. It would seem she had been as busy in her
seduction as I had been in my rape.

And somehow this crime, for which I felt no
remorse, not then nor later, brought peace to my mind—if peace can
be the dead, icy, unfeeling calm which had descended on me. But it
gave me the leisure to consider many things: the follies of hope,
the blank wall that was my own future, and my sister’s strange
words. And Esharhamat’s.

Somehow, I knew not how, she had snatched my
life from me. I was not to learn the truth of it for many
years.

But at least she did not seek my death. I do
not believe that Shaditu made good on her threat to tell the king
about our encounter. At least, I received no summons back to
Nineveh. No armed men were sent to take my head. And after some
time, when I saw my father once more, he did not speak of it or act
toward me as if I had stolen his heart’s jewel.

What, after all, could she have told him? The
truth, perhaps. She might have been unwise enough to do that. And
perhaps the king decided to do nothing. As I have said, these are
things I will never know.

What I did know, or came to know—word reached
me by dispatch within a few weeks after the event—was that on the
day after my brother’s proclamation as marsarru, even before he had
slept through a whole night in the house of succession, the baru
Rimani Ashur was found hanging by his neck in the sanctuary of the
god Shamash.

There seemed to be no doubt he had died by
his own hand. He had left no word behind to explain himself, but
that his death had been his own act was clear enough. He had nailed
one end of a leather belt to the lintel of the doorway, made a
noose, stuck his head through it, and kicked away the stool upon
which he had been standing. All this he had done under the very
eyes of the god, the Lord of Decision.

It was a strange thing to happen, and it made
a strange impression. Rimani Ashur might have killed himself for
many reasons—I believe now that I know the reason, but I could not
have then—and yet the city, by the conjunction of the two events,
saw his suicide as an act of remorse for calling Esarhaddon to be
the marsarru. All through his days, and through no sin of his own,
my brother was to live with the stain of this event upon him. He
was cursed from the beginning.

But as, in the darkness, my way lit by
torchbearers, I traveled along the road north, I understood nothing
of these matters. They lay in the future and in the past, both of
which were closed to me.

It was not quite first light when we arrived
at Three Lions, but even at such an hour we passed men on the road,
shouldering their hoes as they made their way to the fields. They
stared at me with astonishment as I rode by, unaccustomed to the
sight of armed men, not recognizing their lord in the darkness. I
can only guess what terrible apprehensions must have risen in their
minds.

As I came near my house, one of the kitchen
women came outside to see what the commotion was. She was a huge,
sturdy woman and she carried an oil lamp, treading over the bare
ground with ridiculous delicacy.

“Well, Shulmunaid,” I said, smiling broadly
as I dismounted from my horse. “And have I changed so much that you
no longer know me?”

She glanced quickly up at my face and let out
a shriek, dropping the lamp in the dust as she turned and ran back
into the house. Within a quarter of a minute there were twelve or
fifteen people come to witness the master’s unexpected return. Even
my mother came, only a moment later than the others—she must still
have been asleep. She rushed into my arms, burying her head in my
chest.

“Oh, Lathikadas,” she wept, “is it really
you? I thought. . . I was afraid. . .”

“No, Merope, they have not killed your son.”
I let my hand settle on her bronze-colored hair. “The king has not
made me pay with my life because I cannot succeed him.”

I gave orders that my men were to be fed and
that beds were to be found for them. We would stay a day and a
night, which would give me just time to settle my affairs. I did
not expect to be back for a long time.

A breakfast was prepared for me and I ate it
while the fires in the sweating house were lit. I would clean
myself and then sleep and then speak with the overseer Tahu Ishtar,
but these matters could wait. First it was necessary to explain to
my mother all that had happened and how the future would now shape
itself. This I did over breakfast, and she listened to my words,
saying nothing. Her stillness was that quiet sorrow of one who has
seen from the first how all things must work themselves out.

“I do not know what I will find in Amat,” I
said. “I will send for you as soon as I know I can do so in safety,
but garrison towns are wild places, so that may not be soon.”

“I can leave here on an hour’s notice,” she
said calmly, and I found it possible to believe her. “I would
rather follow you to the earth’s end than stay here alone.”

“Amat is the earth’s end.” I smiled at her,
knowing what she meant. “Beyond is only the kingdom of Urartu and
the tribes of the eastern mountains—it is the point of the spear
with which the Land of Ashur keeps these at bay. I am afraid we
will not discover there a very refined society.”

“What is that to me?”

“What is that to me?” For Merope it was all
very simple—her son had hurt himself playing with the big boys in
Nineveh, and now she and he were heading off into a mountain exile.
Time and love would bring all right again. This was why she
lived.

I went to the sweating house and steamed out
the poisons which collect in a man when he has been vexed in his
liver and then I slept until it was nearly dark again. I was too
tired to dream, which was a blessing.

When I awoke Tahu Ishtar was waiting for me
under the vine arbor in the garden. He rose and bowed when I
approached.

“It is well with your son Qurdi?” I asked
him, and he nodded.

“He is grown almost to manhood. Lord. I think
he will make a fine overseer when my sedu beckons.”

“But may the god grant this will not be soon,
Tahu Ishtar.”

He bowed again, with all the dignity of a
great prince before his king, for this was a man who understood the
uses of power.

“I gather you are bound for the north, Lord,”
he said, as if it were the most indifferent matter in the world—the
god alone knew what they understood here of how matters stood in
Nineveh, but my overseer was neither blind nor a fool. He must have
guessed much.

“Yes. I will be gone for a long time. I may
not return for many years.”

“It is a harsh place, the north.”

“It is that, Tahu Ishtar, and its links with
the world outside are tenuous. I think it best that you take the
management of Three Lions entirely into your own hands.”

“Am I not to write, Lord?” He raised his
eyebrows, as if mildly surprised, but gave no other sign. I could
only smile.

“Yes, write—by all means, write. Tell me how
the crops do and if the river floods more or less than last year. A
man likes to receive news of such things. But do not wait from any
word from me before you do what is needful. It may not come in
time.”

“It shall be as the master of Three Lions
declares.”

Thus did I order all things against my
departure.

. . . . .

The journey to Amat lasted twelve days. There
were no towns of any size along the way and few villages, so for
the most part we pitched our tents wherever the darkness found us
and slept on the ground. At first this was no hardship, for the
month of Ab is a time when many choose to sleep outside, wrapped in
a blanket on their roofs to escape the heat of their houses, but as
we climbed higher into the mountains the nights turned cold. By the
time we reached our destination I think we were all looking forward
to a bed in a warm room.

Amat—we stood on the crest of a hill and
looked down at it in the valley where it nestled like something
held in a man’s hand. Behind it rose the mountains of the Hakkari
range, ragged as broken ice. In mountains such as these, in such
holy silences, the gods were supposed to have their dwelling
places, where they could look down upon the little works of men,
smiling with indifference. What must Nineveh seem from such a
height? What must Tiglath Ashur and his little sorrows seem to
these, which had risen from the foundations of the world and would
endure forever? If a man grieves, it is well for him to remember
his own insignificance, to remember that his heart can break
without shattering the earth as well. If I had been searching for a
place in which to lose myself, I had found it.

But a man is not a god and cannot live in the
peaks of mountains, so we turned our eyes to the valley.

The town was a poor thing even by the
standard of some other garrison towns I had seen. There was the
fortress and, outside its walls, grouped around the market square,
some twenty or thirty squat little buildings of unpainted brick,
mostly wine shops and brothels and the houses of various other
small traders who lived off the custom of the soldiers. There was a
general atmosphere of slackness—everywhere there were the little
telltale symptoms of sagging discipline and hopelessness, as if the
men stationed here had long since forgotten that they were part of
the army of Ashur.

I was shaknu of a vast territory, but, like
most frontiers, it was sparsely settled and my capital, it seemed,
was no Nineveh. That was just as well, I thought. I would have my
work set before me, and work was to be my salvation. I had not come
here to delight myself in the pleasure palaces of a great city.

When I approached the fortress gate, the
guards, who seemed completely occupied in a game of lots, did not
even trouble to challenge me—indeed, they hardly seemed to notice
my presence. I rode up to one who wore the uniform of an ekalli
and, as he came up from his crouch and turned to see who addressed
him, I caught him across the side of the head with the butt on my
whip, knocking him to the ground.

“You and you!” I shouted, pointing at random
to two of his company. “Arrest this man and have him put in a cage
in your stockade. He is to have neither food nor blankets for three
nights; if he is still alive at the end of that time, bring him to
me. Now someone go find the commanding officer of this dog hole and
tell him that the rab shaqe Tiglath Ashur has arrived and would be
gratified of an audience—run, you scum!”

They ran, but I doubt if it was to find
anything except a hiding place. The fortress compound made a
depressing spectacle. The drill fields were muddy and overgrown
with weeds, dirty children played on the plank sidewalks outside
the headquarters offices, which looked as if they had not seen a
daub of whitewash since the reign of Great Sargon, and on the walls
there did not seem to be even a proper guard mounted. Boredom hung
in the air like the pall of death. It would be many months before
these soldiers were ready to face an enemy in battle—I would have
no time here for bitter memories. The king my father had done well
when he chose Amat as the scene of my exile.

As my escort dismounted and looked around
them with as much dismay as I felt in my own heart, I summoned
Lushakin to me with a silent gesture.

“See that the men are billeted and fed,” I
told him. “Then have a look around this pigsty—without drawing
attention to yourself—and bring me word of what you find.”

“Yes, my prince. We are a long way from home,
eh?”

Longer, as it turned out, than either of us
could have imagined. As I walked through the mud to the garrison
commander’s quarters I had the sense of having stepped outside the
civilized world—even the Elamites would have been ashamed of this
place.

“We had no idea you would arrive so quickly,”
I was informed as I stepped up onto the porch. The young officer
who met me—”young” being entirely a relative term; I was his senior
by no more than a year—gave the impression of being torn between
his duty to offer the customary welcoming courtesies to the new
shaknu and a strong desire to bar my way. “Our rab abru is gone for
the day on province business—I really couldn’t say precisely where
he might be found. He will be back by evening, so if perhaps you
would allow me—”