The Assyrian (74 page)

“This is wise.” The learned physician nodded
gravely—he was by then too far gone in drink to notice any sarcasm
but, as ever, his mind was clear enough to grasp the main point.
“You will make this tribe of wandering thieves great—a nation to be
feared. And this Tabiti is, I think, your friend. In the years to
come, when your brother sits on the throne, you may have need of
such friends.”

“I am not hatching treason, Kephalos. You
sound like the wagging tongues of Nineveh, each one with his own
story of how I am plotting to betray Esarhaddon.”

“I say nothing of betrayal, Lord, but a man
who can claim powerful allies is treated with respect.”

I closed my ears to such talk. Ever since my
brother had been named marsarru I had taught myself how to be deaf
to what I did not wish to hear. After a while I left Kephalos’
house and returned to my scribes, who were more than eager to bury
me with work. By the time the sky had begun to darken I had
forgotten all about the wisdom of my alliance with the Scythians,
who, in any case, had folded their tents and were already on their
way back to the land of Shubria. I rubbed my eyes and thought only
of half an hour in the sweating house, dinner, and my bed.

It was in the sweating house, as I watched
the steam rise from the glowing brazier, that I remembered Zabibe.
The bitch — how dare she follow me from Nineveh without my leave?
Even a wife would not think to act in such a fashion.

But, of course, she hadn’t followed me. She
had arrived in Amat some three days before, carried in a sedan
chair like a great lady—one need not wonder that my servants were
frightened of her.

Who had provided her escort? A slave woman
does not embark on such a journey on her own. Someone had told her
to come, had provided her with money and protection. Someone had
sent her. I wondered why it had not occurred to me before.

She was a spy.

I did not trouble myself to ask for whom—my
movements and intentions were not of interest to that many
people.

Had Esharhamat guessed? “Let her believe she
is favored,” she had advised. Yes, Esharhamat would have understood
all these matters better than I. I, who would not even listen when
my own slave told me to protect myself with powerful friends.

For a moment or two I considered sending this
Arab slut packing back to my father’s house of women, but only for
a moment or two. After all, what would she learn in Amat that I
would not want known in Nineveh? Or, more probably, in Calah?

No—let her stay. Why put Esarhaddon and his
mother to the trouble of finding another to fill her place? I would
use her like a tavern harlot and let her pry into whatever secrets
she liked.

But tonight, in this at least, I would follow
the wise counsel of my friend Kephalos and cut a few notches from
her backside that she might remember not to play the fine lady. I
had only to recall the fear filled eyes of my servants and the
wrath boiled within me.

“Ekalli, go down to the river’s bank and cut
me a green switch, about the length of my arm. Make sure it is
straight and smooth and strip the bark away from all save the thick
end.”

He grinned, showing me his teeth stained with
date sap. He was but a lad, fresh from some peasant village, and he
knew it was not his hind parts which would feel the lash. That was
all he had learned to care about.

The switch cut through the air with a sound
like startled bees. The wood, where the bark was peeled away, was
still slippery. I smiled as I thought how I would make my little
Arab monkey dance.

There was a tiny room off my sleeping chamber
which I used when dining alone. She was waiting for me there, she
and some two or three of the household women, preparing the table
for my meal. She was wearing only a thin white linen tunic that did
not even reach her knees and that she sponged so that it clung to
her body. When I first saw her she was crouching beside my chair,
almost as if claiming it as a possession.

Yes, of course my slaves bowed to her—she was
the master’s concubine, she who had found favor in his eyes, the
woman into whom he pressed his seed. She would be presumed to have
power, perhaps even to the power of life and death, and it was a
presumption she was at some pains to encourage.

Well, all of that would cease this very
evening.

When she saw me she smiled, and then, when
she saw the switch in my hand, the smile froze on her lips and her
black eyes seemed to thrill with terror.

The other women, as soundlessly as mice, fled
the room.

“My Dread Lord, I. . .”

But her voice died as I raised my whip and
then allowed the tip to settle gently on her bare shoulder.

“You have overstepped yourself,” I said,
letting my voice become almost lifeless. “A harlot with a pretty
body, who knows to dance to the flute and cymbals, who can kindle a
little lust and thus imagine herself mighty.”

“If my lord is pleased. . .” She dropped her
eyes, which by then had grown shiny—like so many women, she
understood the power of meekness. Yes, let the foolish man believe
she had grown all submission.

“My lord is not pleased. He is not pleased to
have his servants, trusted and faithful these many years, driven
from his door like masterless dogs. No—he is not pleased.”

I reached out with a sudden movement and
grabbed the sleeve of her tunic. Even as I dragged her to her knees
the fabric gave way with a frightful tearing sound, leaving her
half naked. She huddled by my feet, her face almost touching the
floor, but I took a handful of her long black hair and pulled back
her head, forcing her to look at me.

“You—are—less—than — nothing,” I said,
speaking through clenched teeth, letting the whip keep time with
the words. “You—are—no—one—in—this—house!”

With each stroke a thin red line appeared on
her back, and as she stared up into my face a thin sheen of
moisture appeared on her brow, and I could hear her soft moan. At
first I thought it was pain, but it was not pain—at least, not only
pain.

“Oh . . . my lord—my Lord Master. . .”

Her voice seemed to come from some hidden
place deep within. Her hands, braced against my legs, crept under
the hem of my tunic and she pushed aside my loincloth. I weighted
more heavily the stroke of my whip, until it seemed to cut into her
flesh like the edge of a sword, coating it with blood, but she only
seemed to grow more urgent.

“My Dread Lord. . .”

The words were indistinct, muffled. She
pressed her face against my groin and then, suddenly, took my
manhood between her lips. I could hear the gasps of breath as she
seemed to devour me, like a starving beggar.

I am not made of stone. My senses were not
dead. All wrath left me, to be replaced by something infinitely
more savage. My lash dropped unnoticed to the floor.

She drew back for a moment, still clinging to
my legs; her eyes, as she looked at me, were swimming with
tears—not of pain or fear, but unspent longing.

“My lord—I beg you. . .”

Had I been in a trance? In an instant I came
to myself and pushed her away—hard, that she struck the floor. I
turned and left the room, my brain burning.

For two hours I sat outside, on a stone bench
in my garden, letting the cold night seep into me. The thoughts
tumbled through my mind, one after the other, too quickly to be
more than a blur. What had I seen inside myself that filled me with
such delicious, terrible dread? Was I a beast or a man? I did not
know—I did not wish to know. Yet I could not turn away from this
knowledge, which only waited to possess me.

I thought of Esharhamat and my brother. Was
it like that? Was I no more than that—or was Esarhaddon so much
wiser than I?

Yes, of course. Esarhaddon, with his slow,
coarse, deliberate lechery—he, at least, understood himself.

At last I grew weary even of my own ecstatic
remorse. My head galloped. I would drink myself quiet, and then
sleep.

In my chamber I found Zabibe, waiting, still
wearing the same thin white tunic, now little more than a handful
of rags.

I had not expected this, had not wished it,
but she had come nonetheless. A silver vessel of wine, still cold
from the cellar, stood at the end of my sleeping mat, with a gold
cup beside it.

The whip lay on my pillow, still stained with
blood.

Zabibe poured the wine and with her own hands
brought the cup to my lips. I drank, although my throat seemed to
squeeze shut. I drank, and felt my desire awaken all over again.
Still, I had come to hate her.

This she understood—and welcomed.

“Show me your backside,” I said.

She crouched down on her knees and elbows,
her head to the wall. The welts on her shoulders looked almost
black in the lamplight. I could hear her breathing, in quick little
starts, as if some violent passion cut each breath into a hundred
ragged fragments.

I placed my hands on her buttocks and pushed
them apart. As I thrust into her, the only sound that escaped her
lips was a whimper of blissful, welcome pain.

This woman, it seemed, had found that which
she sought. It was a thing I must not try to understand.

Chapter 28

Zabibe kept the whip, and each night she
would leave it, along with a vessel of wine and a single cup, at
the foot of my sleeping mat. It was mine to use, and if I did not
use it she became at first restless and then cold and unresponding,
but it was hers to keep, to hide away, to treasure. It was her
focus for an intense hunger of the senses, an excitement that was
almost like religious frenzy, as if that limber wand had become her
idol, the symbol for her god, to whom she prayed for release
through submission and pain.

At first I covered her back and buttocks with
angry stripes, marks she carried sometimes for days, but in time I
had but to touch her gently on the back, to let her feel the whip’s
hard smooth surface on her skin, and this alone would set her
sobbing with desire. She would beg me, but not to spare her—never
that. She wanted me to threaten her, with pain, even with death.
She wanted me to hurt her. I sometimes took a fold of her breast
and squeezed it between thumb and first finger until I left a
bruise. I did worse things as well, things it shames me to
remember.

Once or twice I forgot myself and nearly
killed her, and she almost seemed to wish that I had, as if that
would have stamped her happiness with perfection. It was an
unaccountable yearning.

And it was much the same for me. We played
this cruel game almost every night for months, and there was no
surfeit, but rather the appetite fed on itself. She was becoming an
obsession.

The bonds between men and women are as varied
as the patterns the sun makes on rippling water, and as quick to
change. I do not speak of love, for love has not often entered my
life and I did not love Zabibe, nor she me. Passion was all we
shared, and passion, which can exist side by side with contempt and
even hatred, is not the same as love. I took a cold, exquisite
pleasure in this woman, in her flesh and in her pain mingled
craving. But that was all.

And what of Esharhamat? Had I forgotten her?
Had I become so busy with feeding my new appetite for cruelty that
she had passed from my thoughts? Hardly that. Indeed, it seemed
that the more I became entangled in Zabibe’s net, the more I longed
for Esharhamat.

“I do not care how you spend your seed,” she
had told me, “so long as I have your heart.” I have learned to
stand in awe before the wisdom of women, and in this Esharhamat was
wise. She knew she had no rivals. Whom could I love but Esharhamat?
I wrung out my loins into Zabibe in an ever rising frenzy of desire
and yet, day by day, I grew to loathe the sight of her.

And I do not think it was any different for
her. I think we learned a mutual hatred as we toiled in our mutual
lust.

But Zabibe was not all that Amat contained. I
had not been sent there to entertain myself with a harlot, but to
fight my father’s battles. I had an army to prepare for war, and
for hours, sometimes days at a time, I would hardly think of her as
I lost myself in the honest, happy hardship of drill.

I promoted men out of the companies that had
fought in the campaigns of the last two years and put them in
command of the recruits who had just come up from Nineveh. Tabshar
Sin was now in charge of training at the garrison, and when he
could vouch for his little boys as decent parade ground soldiers I
would take four or five companies at a time up into the mountains
for field maneuvers, going out on forced marches lasting sometimes
twelve, sometimes fifteen or twenty days. We would return to Amat
with sunburned faces and bleeding feet, for I knew what these men
would face in the lands of the Medes and therefore spared them from
no travail, but the farm boys who had left returned as
soldiers.

And always my old instructor in arms begged
that he might be allowed to accompany us, and always I returned to
him the same answer: “Tabshar Sin, would you shame me in front of
these puling infants? As their commander and the veteran of many
battles I enjoy some credit with them now, but what if they were to
see me worn to nothing beside one old enough to have lost a hand in
the wars of my grandfather?”

“I understand you well enough, Prince,” he
would answer, looking at me through narrow, accusing eyes. “You are
afraid I am too old and might hold you back.”

“I am more afraid we might hold you back, my
friend.”

“Then promise me this—that you will not leave
me behind when next summer you march into the Zagros Mountains. I
have yet a few good battles left in me and I wish to see this rogue
Daiaukka whom you admire so much, to judge for myself if he is all
you have claimed for him.”