The Assyrian (76 page)

“Damn you, Tiglath!” he shouted. “I’ll see
that you pay for this—damn you, Tiglath!”

But no one attempted to hold me and, as I
walked home, people in the streets merely stared—it was not their
business to meddle if my clothes, my hands, even my face and beard
were stained with blood. I must have looked like a butcher.

I was a butcher. I had killed a man, and for
no better cause than that he had started to insult my mother. Had I
really killed him for that? No, I had killed him because he was not
Esarhaddon—because it was therefore permitted to kill him. The
blood which had soaked through my tunic and was now caking like
dried mud should have been Esarhaddon’s.

My slaves met me at the door. They had been
slaves of the Lord Sinahiusur, just as the palace in which I lived
had been his, and thus they hardly knew me. They said nothing, but
what must they have thought as I stripped myself naked, my bare
skin streaked with blood, and called for wine, hot water, and
scented oil? I did not then trouble myself to think.

I regretted nothing. I would not be mocked.
Let the lord marsarru, the Chosen One of Ashur, let him be warned
that I would not be mocked. I regretted nothing. Nothing—I. . .

. . . . .

The king, of course, was furious. I received
his summons the very next morning and found him in his garden,
sitting on a stone bench, with Esarhaddon just behind.

But this, at least, was not a public
occasion. Here I owed my brother no special respect.

“I want to know how you dared do such a
thing,” my father said, his voice level and deadly. “I want to know
why you imagine you can cut a man’s throat in front of twenty or
thirty of my nobles and hope to escape punishment.”

Esarhaddon caught my eye and smiled tensely.
It seemed that, for reasons of his own, he too wished to know.

“First of all, they are not your nobles, but
your son and heir the lord marsarru’s. Second, while he may choose
to throw mud from the mantle of his office, he should teach his
trained monkeys to hold their tongues, for they enjoy not his
safety. If I killed a man, let his life be on Esarhaddon’s head—it
is not my way to listen quietly to the tauntings of slaves.”

“Is this true?” The king twisted around to
look up at Esarhaddon. “Is this true, eh? Did the dog have the
impudence to insult my son?”

“The Lord Tiglath Ashur speaks words of fire,
as befits a conqueror, but Girittu Marduk is no less dead.”

“Was that his name?” I asked, returning
Esarhaddon’s tight, contemptuous smile. “I did not realize such
vermin aspired to the dignity of names.”

“You should cut throats for a livelihood,
Tiglath. You would make a great reputation for yourself in the
alleyways of Nineveh.”

“And my lord marsarru could set up as a
brothel keeper, since the life seems so very much to his
taste.”

“I will have no more of this!” the king
shouted, springing up from his bench as if it had suddenly turned
into a slab of white hot iron. “I am an old man, and I will have no
more of this—my head pounds with the thunder of angry voices. No
more, I say!”

The expression on Esarhaddon’s lips did not
change, except that the object of his contempt was now not me but
our father.

“I am sorry to have tried your patience thus,
Dread Lord, but since it involved a slight to the royal
dignity—”

“Yes—dignity.” The king repeated the word,
almost as if it were part of an invocation. His eyes kept shifting
from Esarhaddon to me, and they were filled with anxious
uncertainty.

“Yes—dignity. The dignity of our house. .
.”

An old man’s moods are as changeful as the
sky in springtime. In an instant, seemingly from one breath to the
next, the whole carriage of his body changed.

“No—I remember now.” He took my arm in his
hands, squeezing as if to test its strength. “An insult which had
to be answered—the dog chose to cast a slur upon my son. What did
he say, eh, Tiglath? Well, no matter. . .”

He sat down again, and the anxiety had
vanished from his face. He placed his hands upon his knees,
seemingly quite content and at peace.

Above the king’s head, Esarhaddon and I
exchanged a look. My brother raised his eyebrows, as if to say,
“You see how he is?”

“But you must protect yourself, my son.” The
Lord Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth’s Four Corners, glanced up at
me, his countenance once more puckered with worry. “Go to the house
of this man, this Girittu Marduk, and place offerings of bread and
wine upon his bier, lest his ghost seek vengeance against you.”

“It seems no less than a sensible
precaution,” Esarhaddon put in, nodding sagely.

“You see? Esarhaddon agrees.” The king’s gaze
skipped back and forth between us. “Do this, Tiglath—do it at once.
And now leave me, both of you. I like to feed the birds that stop
here in my garden on their way south. They know me and are not
afraid, but they will not come if there are strangers about. Leave
me.”

I left, but I did not visit the house of
Girittu Marduk nor offer sacrifice to his ghost, for the wrath of
such a one, either quick or dead, caused me little enough disquiet.
The shades of those I had killed could safely leave me to my living
enemies.

Esarhaddon had learned one or two things
since receiving the god’s blessing. Somewhere, somehow, he had
acquired subtlety—enough, at least, for him to find ways of
managing the king. Yes, of course. The king was failing. In a few
years’ time it would be Esarhaddon who would hold power in the Land
of Ashur. It would be as the officers of the quradu had said.

But I had grown accustomed to the knowledge
that I walked within a nest of scorpions. It no longer made me feel
giddy.

When I returned home I saw a carrying chair
waiting. The slaves who squatted before my door wore the tunics of
the royal household.

In the audience chamber, which in
Sinahiusur’s time had been crowded with supplicants, I found only
the Lady Shaditu.

“You said you would kill me when next we
met,” she murmured. She sat on a table, showing me the outlines of
her legs through her filmy tunic. “But I do not think you will kill
me today. I think that, for the moment, you are sated with
blood.”

She smiled, implying that she understood
everything, that my crimes only made me more attractive. I knew
that she was wicked, that her body was a path which must lead to
disgrace and death, and yet the thought must intrude itself into my
mind that she was also beautiful.

“No, I will not kill you. But I will send you
home with your backside in strips if you make me wait to know why
you have come.”

“Will you serve me like the slave woman
Zabibe?” The smile on her lips softened, as if the prospect might
not be wholly repugnant to her. “She is a spy—did you know
that?”

“Yes. For the Lady Naq’ia.”

“It would seem my beloved brother has grown
wise with the years. Kiss me, Tiglath.”

“Why have you come?”

“Kiss me first, and then I will tell you.
Kiss me—I know it is in your heart to kiss me.”

She spoke no more than the truth, for I was
in a strangely reckless mood. I leaned forward and kissed her and
she threw her arms about my neck, forcing her way between my lips
with her pointed tongue. My hands found her breasts—her nipples
were hard beneath the palms and I let my fingers close over them,
pinching hard. Her arms dropped away from me and she groaned with
pain, but she did not struggle. Only her eyes, swimming with tears,
pleaded with me.

“It seems that you and my treacherous little
concubine are just alike,” I hissed.

“Yes—just alike.”

Yes. I could see it in her begging eyes.

Finally I released her, and at once she
covered her breasts with her arms.

“Do not toy with me, Shaditu. I am not one of
your palace lovers.”

“Would that you were, Tiglath, my love. I
could wish that you. . . Oh! I think I shall carry the marks of
your thumbs to my grave.”

“Tell me why you have come, or you will fill
it sooner than you imagine.”

“I would rather you buried me in your bed,”
she whispered, throwing her arms once more around my neck and
kissing my mouth. “I love you, Tiglath, for you are the only man in
Nineveh who is not afraid of me.

I disentangled myself and stepped back beyond
her reach, for indeed she did inflame my liver.

“I am more afraid of you than anyone.”

“No, not of me, merely of yourself. Of
betraying yourself. And you are fortunate—or perhaps it is true
that you are stronger than the rest of us—because you never
have.”

“And have you, sister?”

“Oh, yes—and therefore I am filled with
fear.”

I could see that. It was in her eyes, that
fear. And yet it was not fear of men or anything that men could do,
nor even of death. It was a fear of the soul. It was the fear of
abandonment and despair. It was the fear of one who has stepped
into the darkness and knows she will never find her way back.

“Now speak,” I said, driving pity from my
heart—for who was I to pity Shaditu? “What have you come here to
tell me?”

At once she drew into herself. She sat on the
table, coy and distant, playing with her painted fingernails. It
seemed she was determined to make me court her favor.

“What do you want to know?” she asked, not
looking at me, still absorbed with her nails.

“Why you have come here.”

“I have told you—because I love you. And
because I must choose sides, and quickly.”

I did not require an explanation. The whole
city was choosing sides—or attempting to force me into giving them
a side to choose.

“The king will very soon be king no longer,”
she went on, quite unnecessarily, “for he is old and tired, and a
younger man must take his place. All that remains to be settled is
who it will be, you or Esarhaddon. I would rather it were you, but
for my own sake I must be one of those who move the balance in the
winner’s favor.”

“The question has already been settled.
Esarhaddon is the god’s choice. He is the marsarru and will be
king.”

“Will he?” She glanced up at me and smiled,
as if I had said something amusing. “Perhaps, if you wish it,
Esarhaddon will be king. But you could be his turtanu. The army
will follow where you lead, and the army can have things all their
own way. It has happened before that a tartanu has held a king in
the hollow of his hand. Perhaps that is the god’s choice.”

“Shaditu—sister—why did the baru Rimani Ashur
take his own life? Was that too the god’s choice?”

She withdrew her gaze and for a moment sat
with her hands quiet, staring at nothing. For all her wickedness
she was not a coward, and I could not remember a time before today
when she had shown fear, real fear. But in that moment she was
afraid.

“Why would I know? My interest is in men’s
bodies, not their hearts.” She laughed—a high-pitched silvery
laugh, like the joyless laughter of the mad. And still she kept her
eyes from me.

“You seduced him, did you not?” I took her
face between my hands and made her look at me. “You came to his bed
and made him betray his office.”

“How do you know. . ?”

“Everyone knows—me last of all. I heard the
story in Amat, from one whose name you perhaps have never even
heard.”

“It isn’t true. It isn’t! The Lady
Naq’ia—”

“What? Did she force you? Or did the two of
you simply find you had ambitions in common?”

She pulled away from me and then, after a
moment, glared into my eyes with the defiant courage of the lost.
No, she would not tell me. But she denied nothing.

“What did Rimani Ashur see among the omens,
sister? Do you know?”

“If I told you, and this knowledge helped you
to steal Esarhaddon’s crown from him, would you take his wife with
it or would you take me?”

“I would take Esharhamat.”

“Then I fear the truth must have died with
Rimani Ashur.”

Again she laughed, and the sound was just as
bitter. For now she had chosen her side.

I struck her—hard and across the face, with
the back of my hand. She fell to the floor, and when she turned to
look at me there was blood on her mouth. But still she laughed.

. . . . .

That night I went to see Esharhamat in her
apartments. I did not care who knew of it. Esarhaddon would remain
in Nineveh for another ten days—if he heard, and wished to object,
he was welcome.

“Turn your back on your god” she had said.
But it seemed that Ashur had turned his back on me. If he chose to
hide his purpose, then I must feel free to follow my own.

Let Esarhaddon object. This time I would not
stay my hand.

She met me in a room beside her sleeping
chamber. She looked drawn, as if her recent delivery had sapped her
strength, and her breasts were swollen with milk.

“I will not suckle my husband’s child,” she
said—the thought seemed to give her some pleasure. “He will have
nothing from me except his life. They bring in herdsmen’s wives to
nurse him. What could be more fitting for Esarhaddon’s son?”

“Let me take you to my house. We will go to
Amat—let Esarhaddon come for us there if he has the courage.”

She seemed not to hear me. I was hardly there
for her, her own misery absorbed her so.

What had I done to us both?

“Yet he flourishes,” she went on—had her mind
broken at last? “He is healthy and strong, like his father. But
this child will never wear the crown of Ashur.

“Do you want me, Tiglath? Still? Then come
with me—come. Only into the next room, where I can rest my back. We
need not go as far as Amat, for it makes no difference.”

And she meant it. She rose, and took my arm
with her two hands, pulling me along. The door to her sleeping
chamber was half open—why had I not seen that?