The Assyrian (54 page)

“Your mother, the Lady Merope, described to
me your state of mind as she understood it—she said you were like a
man riding away to find death. I have made a few inquiries of my
own since arriving here, and what do I discover? Everyone tells me
the same thing, that you occupy your time with nothing except
soldiering. The brothel keepers claim they have done no business
with the garrison commander since his arrival, and I find not a
single woman worth the name among your household slaves. I warn
you, Lord, that you will never retain your respectability if you
continue to go on in this fashion. It is neither proper nor
rational nor balanced for one still in the first bloom of his
youthful power to keep his fist clamped around his manhood as if it
were for nothing except pissing through. Have a care for your
health and a decent regard for appearances or, mark my words, in
the end this behavior will lead to nothing but ugly rumors.”

“And as my physician and my friend, Kephalos,
what would you recommend?”

Kephalos nodded and touched the side of his
nose with his finger—a salute, of sorts, to my wisdom in seeking
his advice.

“I have already taken steps. Lord,” he
answered.

Steps? What steps? An hour later, when I went
to my sleeping mat and found her waiting for me there, I could not
account for my own surprise. The room was heated by a brazier which
had almost flickered out, and that and the oil lamp I held in my
hand gave all the light there was. Still, did I need the blaze of
the bright sun to see that she was beautiful?

“I am Naiba,” she murmured as I crouched
beside her to peer into her eyes, which were large and black and
reminded me so much of my lost Esharhamat. She pulled aside the
blanket that I might see her naked body—she was only a slave girl,
the gesture implied, and wished through her submission to find
favor with a new master. “I am Naiba, Dread Lord.”

“Yes. I can see that.” I said.

This made her smile, for her name meant
“beautiful” in the language of the nomad tribes. It was a smile
worthy of her name, and made me glad I had kept my ears open among
the Sacan.

“Do I please you, Dread Lord?”

“Yes. You please me.”

“Then come into me, and find your rest.”

She was hardly more than a child. I lay
beside her and her girl’s breast barely filled my hand. And yet,
when my mouth sought her own, I found her slippery; pointed little
tongue pushing between my lips with an urgency that suggested no
small experience of passion. I wrapped my hand around the neck of
the lamp and snuffed out its light.

In the darkness I was free to believe
whatever I would, and in the darkness this girl became for me
another Esharhamat. I was back once more in that tiny room in the
temple of Ishtar, and the old force of my love flooded into me like
new blood. As I entered her, and she shuddered beneath me, her name
was on my lips like a cry of despair, but I could not speak it. The
delight, the joy of her became the only tongue I knew. Had I found
my voice it would only have been to choke on my own sobs—I had her
once more in my arms and now, for a few moments, I did not have to
be alone.

I knew her three times that night before we
fell asleep in each other’s embrace and I think I gave her
pleasure, although this is a matter in which no man may quite trust
himself. She was not Esharhamat. Of course, I knew that. Even the
illusion passed off after the first time, but I do not imagine the
girl could ever have grasped all that she meant to me that night.
Perhaps, however, she understood a little that I had given
something of my secret self into her care, and if she did—and even
if she did not, for what right had I to ask for understanding?—I
was grateful to her. And my gratitude was to last forever.

“She is one of the captive women whom you
took as tribute from the conquered Uqukadi,” Kephalos told me at
breakfast. “I have kept her as a slave in my own house and did not
force my way through her maidenhood until last year, so she is just
nicely broken to harness without having lost her bloom. I trust she
did not bring shame upon your servant, Lord, and you are
pleased?”

All this he said while Naiba, in a thin linen
tunic that clung to her breasts like a veil, knelt at my elbow,
smiling and serving me my beer and honeyed barley paste. She might
have been a block of wood or not even in the room.

“How could I be otherwise than pleased?” I
placed my hand on her hair, which smelled of cedar oil, and she
twisted her head slightly and kissed me upon the wrist. “How old
were you, child, when I robbed your parents of you?”

“I had just turned eleven that winter,” she
answered. “But my parents did not feel the loss, for my mother was
already dead and my father was among those whose heads you had
struck from their shoulders.”

She smiled as she said it, as if speaking of
indifferent things, but I felt a cold thrill in my throat.

“Then truly you must hate me, for I have done
you an injury.”

“How is that, Dread Lord?” she shrugged her
shoulders, as if puzzled at my meaning.

“Because I had your father killed before your
eyes.”

“Oh! I hid my face, so I did not see it. And,
besides, you were the conqueror—you killed only the clan leaders
and thus showed mercy. If my father had triumphed. . .”

She hid her face behind her hands and laughed
at this amusing notion.

“And since then I have been a house slave in
Nineveh, where every cur in the street lives better than the
Uqukadi, whose women must walk through the snow behind the horses
of the men. And now I am the pillow girl of a great prince.”

“You see, my foolish young master?” Kephalos
grinned and folded his hands over his broad belly in amusement.
“For all the scruples of your delicate conscience, the world is
what it is, which even this slip of a girl knows better than you.
You need have no fear—she will not push a kitchen knife between
your ribs while you are sleeping, not to avenge a father who
probably treated his hunting dogs with more kindness. To her you
are Tiglath Ashur, Dread Lord, the mighty prince and warrior, whose
manhood any woman would be honored to take into her belly. This one
has made a good bargain with life, and she is wise enough to know
it.”

“And you have made a good bargain for me, my
friend.”

“I hope so. Lord,” he answered, reaching
across the narrow little table to put his hand on my shoulder. “You
have doubtless noticed her resemblance to a certain lady whose name
we need never mention? I saw it even when she was but a skinny
child and have saved her for you, knowing the day would come when
you would need such consolation—any but a fool could have seen how
that sad business would end. Use her as you will, believing
whatever you like until at last it comes to seem true, for it is
unhealthy for a man to harbor up his own seed like a miser, letting
it turn putrid to poison both his body and mind. Any woman is
better than none, and this one is better than many”

Kephalos spoke no more than the truth, for in
the months and years that followed the girl Naiba became precious
in my sight. She could not have been any older than thirteen that
first night on my sleeping mat, and yet from that time on she
filled a woman’s place in my house. She took care of my clothes,
scolded my servants, and looked after the household money. And she
looked after me just as well. When I was away on campaign she
prayed for my safety to both Ashur and to her own gods. When I
returned she would lead me to the sweating house, strip herself
naked, and rub hot oil into my weary, tender muscles. I did not eat
a meal under that roof that she did not place the dishes before me
with her own hands, smiling at me from the sweetness of her child’s
heart. She poured the wine for me and my guests and helped me to
bed when I had drunk too much of it. And every night, drunk or
sober, I slept with her arm outstretched across my waist and her
tight little breasts pressing against my back.

And between us subsisted affection and regard
and—so I hope and believe—even passion. But no love. Not, at least,
such love as would ever have driven Esharhamat from my thoughts.
Naiba, I am quite sure, although she never spoke a word of it, knew
that story, and she was too wise to let her feelings for me go
beyond a certain fondness. I was her lord, and she took pleasure in
the touch of my body, but that was all. And I was not discontented
that it should be so.

For at that time I was very little occupied
with domestic life—I had not forgotten, nor was I allowed to
forget, that I was shaknu of the north and commander of the
garrison at Amat, and that I faced the enemies of Ashur across a
narrow divide of mountains.

I had only to glance at the tablets which
awaited me after my return from Urartu.

Among them was a letter from the king: “Why
have you not sent me any word?” it began. “Have bandits cut your
throat and left you for dead in some rocky gully, or have you
forgotten those who love you? I am an old man, beset with many
troubles, and my eyes hunger for the sight of you. Send me some
message that I may know you live and remember your father’s
name.”

Before my first morning in Amat had ended, I
picked up a stylus and wrote out my reply.

“To the King my lord, your servant Tiglath
Ashur. May it be well with you the King my lord. May Ashur and
Shamash be gracious to the King my lord. I have been on campaign
north of the Bohtan River and beg to send you word of a great
triumph. . .”

I described to him the battle, the courage of
the Scythians, my meetings with their headman Tabiti, and the
alliance into which I had entered in his name. And I told him of
the seventeen mina of gold I had extracted from the Urartians and
gave my impressions of that place.

“This is not a friendship to support us, for
their king is a fool and the might of their armies no more than a
boulder in the stream, around which, when the moment comes, the
vast numbers of the mountain tribesmen will pour quickly enough—one
need only look to the example of the Scythians. I think the snow
which chokes their valleys and the passes over their mountains for
seven months of the year a greater barrier against the nomads than
all their might. I think we must look to ourselves for safety.”

And I begged the Lord Sennacherib to send
reinforcements that I might lead a series of campaigns against the
eastern tribes. And I begged his permission to keep the gold and
use it to support and strengthen the garrison.

The king’s reply, when it came, made almost
no reference to my report. The northern borders, it seemed, were
too far away to interest him greatly. His concerns were nearer to
his own bosom, and it was his pleasure to be querulous.

“Your brother the Lord Donkey vexes me almost
daily about Babylon. Can you credit that he would rebuild the city
we were at such pains to destroy? He claims to fear the wrath of
Marduk. He sits in Calah—out of my reach, or so he seems to
imagine—surrounded by his magicians and his priests, and gives
himself the airs of a king already. He fancies himself such a
favorite of heaven that if he chances to wake up with a headache
after a night of drinking, or if his favorite harlots come down
with lice, he must be consulting the omen books to read the meaning
of such strange and unnatural events. That, at least, is what they
tell me. All men should have proper reverence for the gods, but
even a king may dare to squat and empty his bowels without first
consulting the soothsayers. I see his mother’s busy hand in all
this nonsense. . .

“Yes, very well. Work your own will about the
gold, and I will send you seven new companies of infantry and five
of horse after the spring floods. I wish, my son, that you would
return to Nineveh to fetch them yourself. Would that you could be
here with me once again, for if your exile is bitter, so is
mine.”

When one’s father is a king and one’s brother
is the heir, one is wise to tread lightly around such items of
family gossip. I did not, therefore, respond in my next letter to
these complaints about Esarhaddon. Instead, I asked after the Lord
Sennacherib’s health, and suggested that if he was low spirited he
should keep his diet spare and take more exercise, recommending
hunting as good for the liver. Beyond this, I described to him such
improvements as I planned to make in the garrison buildings, and I
made it clear that these improvements would include a palace for
myself to be built within the fortress walls. I wished him to
understand that I regarded myself as fixed in Amat for some time to
come and had no idea of returning to Nineveh. He would have to work
out his difficulties with the marsarru without reference to me.

If the king was chastened, however, he gave
no sign of it. For all the years I lived in the north, he kept me
regularly informed about “the Lord Donkey”—I hardly remember him
referring to Esarhaddon under any other name.

The king my father, who claimed to have had
but two ambitions for his reign, to destroy forever the power of
Babylon and to hand over the Land of Ashur to one worthy of
succeeding him—and who witnessed in Esarhaddon the frustration of
both these aims—the Lord Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth’s Four
Corners, now decayed almost from hour to hour into sulking old
age.

All his letters to me he wrote with his own
hand, for he trusted no scribe. And he wrote with most unkingly
candor, so his mind was open to me and I had no difficulty in
reading there the bitterness of one who had wearied of life.

But I told myself that these things no longer
concerned me, that I was a garrison commander and a shaknu and no
more, that my share in the management of the state was confined to
a stretch of mountain waste. I was now a prince in nothing except
name and lineage, and it was my business to be the king’s soldier.
The name of that king was no longer my affair.