The Assyrian (93 page)

“Who is the black one? Is she new?”

“Yes.” He smiled, half to himself. “A present
from. . . Tiglath, that was a foul trick you played on me.”

“If I have offended. . .”

“I said to stop it! Damn you, when you take
that tone I know you only mock me.”

“You are the king, brother,” I said, finding
myself almost capable of pitying him.

“Am I? Yes. What of it?” With the petulant
discontent of a child, he threw himself back down upon the couch.
“I wish by the sixty great gods I wasn’t.”

“Nevertheless, you are. And there is nothing
either of us can do about it.”

Suddenly he grinned at me. “No—there isn’t,
is there.”

“No.”

For a long moment he said nothing, but merely
lay there on his back staring at the ceiling. I waited, since there
was little else I could do.

“You came to Khanirabbat,” he said finally,
still staring at the ceiling, as if addressing it rather than me.
“You could have joined the rebels—perhaps even been king in my
place. Yet you came. And when I sent that idiot Sha Nabushu. .
.”

“You are the king. If you recall, we have
already agreed to that. I am a soldier and the king’s servant.”

“And if the king demands your life?”

“Then I suppose I will die.”

“And when I die, you are thinking, the Lady
Esharhamat’s little bastard Ashurbanipal will rule in my place. You
note I call my son a bastard, Tiglath—he whom the world in its
ignorance calls my son. Or perhaps you imagined I would not
guess?”

He looked at me now. Had he been a god
instead of a man, I would have been burned to ashes under that
look. Yet I said nothing.

“My son will rule, Tiglath—brother. My son,
and no other. I bear you no ill will over this—over this, in
particular—for I hate her as much as she does me. But my son will
have a crown.”

“That is for the god to judge. He will choose
your successor no less than he chose you. It is vain to imagine
otherwise.”

The lord king sprang to his feet, trembling
with rage as his face grew dark as a thundercloud.

“May the god damn your black soul,
Tiglath.”

“And may the god grant you all that we both
know you deserve—Dread Lord.”

There was a moment—only a moment—when I
imagined Esarhaddon might be about to speak the words that would
have made him my brother again. There was something in his eyes
which suggested that pain of recognition a man feels when at last
he has seen what he is about to lose. We stood facing each other.
Anything might have happened. And then how different might have
been the histories of our two lives.

“Guard!”

In an instant I found myself flanked by
soldiers. And as I looked once more into Esarhaddon’s face I knew
that the moment had passed—or that what I had seen there was
nothing more than my own last vain hope. Now his eyes showed me
implacable hatred, and the despot’s freedom from remorse.

“You will conduct the Lord Tiglath Ashur
out,” he said, his voice half choked with anger. “I believe
somewhere we must still have the iron cage in which we accommodated
the king of Babylon, the Lord Nergalushezib, during his stay with
us. Find it—and place it at my brother’s disposal.”

One of the soldiers attempted to take me by
the arm, but I shook him off and laid my hand across his face hard
enough to knock him to the floor.

“Don’t you dare!” I whispered through
clenched teeth. “I will go because it is the king’s will, but for
no reason else. Never dare to put your hands on me again!”

Both soldiers were armed and I had no weapon,
not even a dagger, yet the one who was still standing retreated a
pace. He looked to the king, his eyes pleading, as if afraid I had
the power to strike him dead.

And Esarhaddon too was afraid.

“Yes, of course,” he said, forcing out a
syllable of feigned laughter. “Remember your manners and behave
yourselves—he is, after all, the Lord Tiglath Ashur. A hero, and a
prince!”

I could hear his laughter echoing behind me,
even as the soldiers conducted me away.

. . . . .

In our family, it seemed, nothing was ever
discarded. The cage was in a corner of the palace dungeon, its bars
coated with more than ten years’ accumulated dust.

The jailer, who was a kindly old man, a
former soldier with half his left foot gone, cleaned it up for me
as best he could and even gave me a cushion to sit on—the cage was
not large enough to allow anyone to stand up inside it. He brought
me my meals of bread and water and lightened my spirits with such
conversation as was in his power. He remembered Nergalushezib very
well and had helped to nail the crown to his head. He told me the
cage had not been used since that time.

He had a wife and lived in the city. By his
comings and goings I was able to keep some track of time and thus
knew the days of my captivity. It was on the twentieth, in what I
took to be the middle of the night—although, in that windowless
cellar I could not be certain—that I received a visitor.

I certainly had not expected one. I assumed
that, the jailer aside, the next person I would be likely to meet
down there was the man sent to cut my throat. But it was not he. It
was the king’s mother, the Lady Naq’ia.

She was at that time between forty and fifty,
yet, aside from the gray in her hair, she seemed little changed
from the woman I remembered from my childhood. Her tunic and veil
of black linen, shot through with silver, were the same. Her beauty
was untouched and her smile was still unreadable.

The jailer—not my friend, but the one who
relieved him, who never spoke—brought her a stool and she sat down,
dismissing him with a wave of her hand. For a long moment she said
nothing. She merely peered in through the bars at me, as if the
sight gave her immense pleasure.

“How is your mother, Tiglath?” she asked
finally.

“Well, Lady, when last I saw her. That was a
month and some days ago.”

“My son has sent a new shaknu to Amat, so I
assume she will now go to your estate called Three Lions?”

“Where I hope. Lady, she will be allowed to
live in quiet.”

“Of course, Tiglath.” She smiled. “Your
mother is a sweet soul and I mean her no harm.”

She lapsed into silence again. And then,
suddenly, as if something had reminded her of a joke, she laughed.
It was a brittle, silvery laugh, of a kind experience has taught me
to mistrust in women.

“Perhaps you do not remember,” she said. “It
happened when you were only a child—I told your mother once that
you would end your days making bricks for the city walls.”

“Yes, I remember. Is that to be my fate?”

“That is the difficulty, Tiglath—your fate.
As much as it would please me to see you sweating in a loincloth,
in mud up to your elbows and knees, I think it is not to be.” She
shook her head, looking as if she would have liked to reach through
the bars and comfort me.

“There is the city mob to think of,” she went
on. “A man who commands their affection as you do is not to be
publicly humiliated—they would not stand for it. And then there is
my son. He wants to kill you but I am not sure he quite dares. And
even if he finds the courage, would it be wise to kill you? How can
we kill you when the mob and the army both hold you in honor, when
you have made so public a submission to our power? Yet how can we
not, when Esarhaddon will never be true king as long as he stands
in your shadow? It is, as I have said, a difficulty. I have yet to
make up my son’s mind for him.”

The smile, which had never left her face,
changed slightly.

“Or perhaps you have been imagining yourself
in Esarhaddon’s hands? No—in mine, Tiglath. Did you think I would
trust my son with such a decision?”

“He is king, Lady, not you.”

“Yes, he is king. Yet I made him so, and
without me he will not last as king for very long. He knows this—or
soon shall.”

“The god made him king, Lady.”

“No, Tiglath.” She shook her head, gently,
like a mother instructing her child. “The god had nothing to do
with it. I made him king, and no other.”

So it was true. The rumors I had heard from
the lips of Nabusharusur—they were true. The omens had been
tampered with. It was not simply a wishful fancy of those whom the
sudden and unexpected elevation of my brother had disappointed, but
the truth. Perhaps—and I shuddered at the thought—perhaps Shaditu
had not lied when she called me “true king.”

For the first time since my father’s murder,
I felt the cold grip of fear in my heart—not fear of death, but of
what is worse than death. It had all been for nothing, I told
myself. Everything, my whole long surrender, for nothing. It was
not the god’s will I had served, but Naq’ia’s.

All this time—Naq’ia’s.

“And the death of Arad Ninlil. . ?”

“Not I, Tiglath—at least not directly.” She
placed her fingers together before her lips, in what seemed no more
than amused pity. “Dare I speak the name of Esharhamat to you, or
do you still imagine her so fair, so innocent? Men are just such
credulous fools. Yes, Tiglath, she did what I could not, although
through means of my contriving. In this, if nothing else, we were
allies.

“She poisoned him at dinner, and under the
very eyes of his mother. The deed took courage, and a heart as
hardened as my own. And her punishment now, as my son’s wife,
believe me when I tell you it is just.”

I had no desire to hear more. I covered my
face with my hands.

“Do what you will with me, Lady,” I said.
“For you have made me the most accursed of men.”

“Yes, Tiglath—I know as much.”

She rose, for she had achieved her purpose,
and was thus willing enough to leave me to my thoughts.

“Esharhamat will not suffer alone,” I said at
last, my heart full of anguish. “The god will not permit these
things to stand unavenged.”

She paused for a moment, her hand already on
the door, and smiled yet again.

“Perhaps not, Tiglath, although I care little
enough for your crude northern god. Yet it seems it is not upon me
that he visits his wrath. Look about you. It is I who may leave
this dungeon, and you who must stay. Will you ever leave it, I
wonder?”

. . . . .

I did leave it, for the god’s voice was not
stilled. Had I remembered his promise, all that he had revealed to
me, I would have understood his design.

But I did not. My heart, in the days which
followed, was closed to hope. I lay in darkness, waiting only for
death.

And one day I really thought it had come.

But it was not death which came, only
Esarhaddon, wearing a soldier’s tunic. He came with his bodyguard
of quradu. He came with a sword in his hand.

“Let him out,” he told the jailer. And then,
as if his wrath would not be contained, he struck the cage with his
sword, making the bars ring. “Let him out, I say!”

It was the dream. Had not the god foretold
this? The city a cage, Esarhaddon beating his sword against the
bars. . ?

I could see it in his face. He wanted to kill
me, but I did not need Naq’ia to tell me he would not dare. I
grinned at him. I knew no fear of him, for I had the god’s
promise.

The jailer undid the lock and opened the
narrow little door. It was the first time in almost a month that I
had stood upright, and my knees trembled beneath me.

“Get out of your kennel, dog,” my brother
growled, his face black with rage.

In the end, two soldiers had to help me. I
stood, leaning against the cage that had held me like a fox in a
trap, and I mocked Esarhaddon. I had no need to speak. To look him
in the face was mockery enough, for it was he who was afraid, not
I.

“Go ahead,” I murmured. “The sword is in your
hand. Nothing stops you. Kill me and be king forever—if you have it
in your bowels even to be a man.”

“Tiglath, do not. . .”

“Strike!” I shouted, not even caring. “Now or
not at all.”

We both knew that was the choice.

He was a long time deciding. In his heart, in
his face, reigned a conflict plain to all who saw him. Yes, he
wanted to kill me. Yes, that was why he had come.

Still, to this hour, I do not know what
except the god’s will stayed his hand, but at last he threw his
sword down to the brick floor.

“Clean him up! The Lord Tiglath Ashur, my
royal brother, looks like a dung carter.”

He looked about him, smiling, demanding
applause for his wit. There was only silence.

“He shall not hear my judgment like a slave,”
he said, his voice level now, his eyes on me, as if he spoke to
myself alone. “Bring him to me in three hours’ time.

He turned on his heel and left.

I had three hours. I was taken back to my
rooms, hardly able to walk at first but gradually rediscovering
that lost art, and there I was fed and bathed by slave women I had
never seem before—not my servants, but Esarhaddon’s. They did not
speak. The solitude of my confinement was preserved, and it was
better thus.

“Let him do his will,” I told myself. “Let
him kill me if he likes, but he will never live down the shame of
this day.” I took comfort in that, in believing that I had somehow
won—that there was something yet to win.

And at the end of the allotted time I was
clothed in the silver tunic of a prince and brought before the king
in his great hall. He waited there, but not alone.

It was a noble place, the great hall. At its
entrance stood the great winged bulls with the heads and beards of
men, which are the protective genies of kings. On the walls were
carved and painted panels, monuments to the glory of our father’s
victories. I had seen the Lord Sennacherib here a thousand times,
banqueting with his nobles, dispensing justice, receiving tribute
from the rulers of lesser nations. All the might and power of
Ashur’s land found its expression here, no less than in her armies,
no less than in the temples of her gods. When foreigners came to
this place, they trembled. When we came, we, prince and common
folk, for whom the king’s voice was as Great Ashur’s own, we
thrilled with pride.