The Blood Star (3 page)

But Kephalos, who understood every refinement
of this sort of negotiation, was undismayed. He merely took his
hand from a secret pocket in the bosom of his tunic and allowed a
shower of tiny silver coins to fall through his fingers to the
floor below. In an instant the woman was on her knees making her
obeisance before this mighty lord who, for reasons best understood
by himself, chose to be disguised as a beggar and, at the same
time, gathering up his bounty with a single deft movement of her
right hand.

“A clean room, woman,” he said, in Aramaic—so
his conjecture about her origins had been close to my own—“and hot
water for my servant and I to bathe in, and fresh clothes, and food
and such wine as can be had in this doghole. Are we to be kept
waiting forever?”

“Yes, Your Excellency—I mean, no!” She
scrambled to her feet and immediately took Kephalos by the arm,
leading him through a curtained doorway as delicately as if he were
an invalid as well as rich. I, largely ignored, was left to follow
if I would.

A few minutes later, stripped naked and lying
on a pair of thick, sweet-smelling reed mats, we were sponging our
faces while four giggling harlots in flimsy linen tunics busied
themselves with rubbing fragrant oil into our backs and limbs.
There was a pitcher of cold Lebanese wine on the floor between us
and I could already detect the scent of cooking meat.

“I have a razor in my bag,” Kephalos said,
inclining his head toward me confidentially—why I cannot imagine,
since he spoke in Greek, which certainly these women had never
heard before in their lives. “That is my contrivance. We will shave
off our beards. A man is unrecognizable without his beard and,
since a smooth face is not the fashion here, everyone will take us
for foreigners. In my case, of course, it will be no more than the
truth, but they will believe it just as quickly of you—do not take
offense, Master, but the fact is, half Greek as you are, you have
not truly the look of an Assyrian.”

One of the harlots, all smiles and dimples, a
chubby little thing who was massaging Kephalos’ massive rump,
tittered as if he had made a joke. He reached back and pinched her
knee and she laughed all the louder.

“You see, Lord? It is a great protection to
be a foreigner.”

“Yes—I can see that plainly.”

“Then it is settled about the beards, though
I shall hate to part with mine. It was ever a great attraction for
the women, but perhaps I have reached the age when I should begin
to grow indifferent to such things.”

While he was thus resigning himself, our
hostess entered with a bowl of pomegranates, red as blood, and
behind her a servant carried a large plate heaped with chunks of
roasted lamb on a bed of millet. She smiled at Kephalos, giving the
impression she would have found him a tasty enough dish by himself,
and, after waving away the dimpled girl, herself squatted down on
the floor beside him to stroke his hair with the tips of her heavy,
ring-laden fingers. These attentions seemed to please Kephalos.

“Your Eminence must forgive our poor house
for misjudging appearances and not seeing the lord beneath the
muddy rags. Your Eminence met with some misadventure?”

“We were set upon by robbers who stole our
horses and pack animals,” he replied, rolling over onto his back
and thus displaying, in the size of his erect manhood, that such
comforts as her “poor house” could provide had not been lost on
him. “They were as numberless as flies in summer, the coarse,
cowardly devils. It was nothing except our stout resistance that
kept them from stripping us of our lives—and discovering, when they
searched my corpse, that they had in fact missed the greater share
of their spoils.”

“The brave man is safe in any danger.” She
knelt down and lowered her mouth to kiss him upon the brow. “You
honor us, Eminence. All that we have is yours. My name is
Kupapiyas, should you have need of me. I was born in the Land of
Hatti, where women are taught what value must be put on a lord’s
comfort.”

So—at least I had been correct on the one
point, for the kings of Hatti had ruled in Musri and Tabal for as
long as men could remember.

“Do you enjoy much custom from the garrison,
Lady?” I asked.

It was the first time she had heard my voice,
and the sound of it did not seem to please. Kupapiyas of Hatti
twisted her head to look at me, her eyes narrowing as if she
fancied herself insulted in being addressed by one as low as
myself.

“My servant is doubtless thinking that we
will need horses,” Kephalos added quickly, intervening on my
behalf. “Perhaps, since we are strangers here, you could tell us
whether the commander would regard it as an affront if we
approached him on the matter. I have heard men mention the name of
one Zerutu Bel. . .”

“The
rab abru
? Hah!”

She sat up suddenly, and her great backside
settled on the floor to spread out like a split grain sack.

“You will need to go farther than you might
find convenient to do business with him—his throat was cut by
command of the king in Nineveh and his body left outside the walls
to be eaten by dogs. That was nearly a month ago. There is a new
rab abru
now, a rogue named Dinanu, who would sell you his
mother if you wanted her. Speak with him if you have need of
horses.”

I cannot claim it was not an unpleasant shock
to hear of the death of Zerutu Bel. He had not been numbered among
the rebels at Khanirabbat, nor, so far as I know, had he had any
hand in the conspiracies of my royal brothers Arad Malik and
Nabusharusur, but it seemed that mere innocence was no protection
in the reign of Esarhaddon. His throat cut and his corpse left to
the dogs—that a brave man and loyal soldier should suffer such a
death at the hands of his own king was as shameful a thing as I
could imagine.

Yet why should I have been surprised? I too
had kept faith with Esarhaddon—and with far greater provocation to
contest his right to our father’s throne than could have heated the
imagination of the
rab abru
of Birtu—yet I was now a
fugitive, a man whose life was forfeit even to the meanest of my
brother’s subjects. Had I been fool enough to suppose that
Esarhaddon’s wrath would reach down no lower than myself?

Zerutu Bel was a skeleton which the crows
were picking clean outside the walls of Birtu. To the king in
Nineveh my head was worth its weight in silver shekels, and every
soldier in the garrison would know it. There was no one here whom I
could trust as a man of honor—not if the reward for honor was the
fate of Zerutu Bel.

Kephalos and I must be off as soon as
possible.

The next morning was a market day, so I was
up early, early enough that the mistress of the house, Kupapiyas of
Hatti, was still snoring quietly next to Kephalos. I washed my face
in a basin of water—last night, in conformity with his plan, my
wily servant and I had played barber to one another, and now it
felt strange to be rubbing my hands over a naked chin.

I heard a grunt behind me and saw that
Kephalos too had roused himself. He sat up, loudly cleared his
throat, and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips—he too, when he
felt the smooth flesh of his jaw under his hands, seemed
startled.

There had been a girl on my own sleeping mat
last night. She woke quickly enough and with a bright smile, as if
mightily pleased with herself and all the world, inquired of me if
our eminences would care for breakfast. I sent her off in search of
raw figs, bread and beer.

“That one will not be so agile,” Kephalos
said, pointing back towards his sleeping mat after the girl had
gone. I could believe him. Kupapiyas, with her backside rising like
a mountain range and her thick cheek pressed against the floor,
never stirred. “I put something in her wine at dinner. It was not
only courteous but also wise of me to go into her last night. The
thoughts that find their way into the mind of a spurned woman are
dark, and ours is not a situation that allows us to invite much
scrutiny. Yet I did not anticipate finding her companionship so
amusing that I would wish very much of it. Look at her, dreaming of
youth and beauty—as ugly and mean-tempered as a brood sow. What is
it in me, I wonder, that such women find so fatally attractive,
even without my fine, handsome beard?”

“Let us be gone from this place, Kephalos—I
feel danger.”

It was a moment before the lover of Kupapiyas
could be summoned back from the pleasure of his own reflections,
but at last he fixed me with a frowning stare, as if I had
suggested something indecent.

“This haste is most unseemly, Lord. We have
been many days exposed to all manner of hardships—we need to
recover ourselves.”

“Kephalos, we are in the midst of a garrison
of soldiers, and their commander is a dog who begs scraps from
Esarhaddon’s table.”

“Yes, but we are safe enough within these
four walls. . .”

“These are the walls of a wineshop, dolt!
Soldiers come to wine-shops, to drink and to gossip with the
harlots. Do you imagine we can remain undetected for long?”

“Yes but, Master—a day. One single day? I am
tired. My bones ache, and I have need of a little comfort!”

He was begging me. His eyes pleaded for that
one day, almost as if he would die without it. And had he not saved
me in Nineveh? Had he not stayed behind to rescue his ruined lord
when he could so easily have fled to safety? And did I not owe him
this small thing?

“One day then. And we leave tomorrow morning,
as soon as they open the gate.”

“Yes—yes! I will prepare everything against
tomorrow morning. You will be safe enough if you stay inside this
room. I will do everything. I will purchase the horses. . .”

“You will do nothing of the sort.
Kephalos—what do you know of horses? Some farmer will sell you his
broken-winded old mare, and you will pride yourself on your guile,
thinking you have robbed him. No, it will not do. I will purchase
the horses.”

“As you wish,” he answered, shrugging his
shoulders, happy enough, I think, to have carried his main point.
“I will attend to the provisions, and I need to find a few items
for my medicine box. The horses will be left to your more expert
eye, but perhaps it would be well if they remained your one task
outside this room—no one will know me in Birtu, but the Lord
Tiglath. . .”

“Your wisdom is not lost on me, Worthy
Physician.”

It was not until the girl had returned with
our breakfast, and we were nearly finished with it, that our
hostess, the Lady Kupapiyas, at last returned to life. Eventually,
after a few groans and several clumsy, strengthless attempts, she
was able to sit up, her elbows resting on her knees as she stared
straight ahead, seemingly at nothing, an expression of the most
malignant resentment upon her face.

“I will provide a remedy,” Kephalos murmured
to me, mixing a greenish powder into a cup of beer and stirring the
whole with his finger.

“Here you are, my little river swallow! A
little something to return the twinkle to your bright eye. Drink
now. . .”

With hands that seemed to have forgotten how
to grasp, she finally took the cup, Kephalos guiding it to her lips
lest she drop it. The effect was astonishing. In less than a minute
our hostess was nestled next to her great lord, smiling and cooing
like a fifteen-year-old virgin, stroking his arm as he skinned a
fig for her.

“And now, my little duckling, you must
enlighten my servant here concerning how best to proceed in the
matter of horses. . .”

Dressed in the clothes Kupapiyas had found
for me, I ventured out into the streets of Birtu. I had never felt
so much a stranger anywhere. The very dust under my sandals seemed
strange.

Birtu was like a thousand other towns within
the borders of Ashur’s empire. It was like Amat, where for four
years I had been garrison commander and
shaknu
of the
northern provinces. Yet as I looked about me, I found myself hardly
able to believe that I was here and that this was what the world
looked like.

I kept expecting people to stare at me in
astonishment and fear. They did not. As I walked along, men brushed
by me, hardly noticing my existence. Why should they? I was no
longer a prince. I was not even the king’s soldier. I might look
like the servant of a Lydian merchant, but even that was a lie. For
the first time in my life I was required to face the world stripped
of rank and position, alone. I had become no one. I was now merely
myself. It was an odd sensation.

The bazaar was busy and noisy and as
anonymous as an ant heap. Everything was for sale: melons, rugs,
jewelry, live geese, great mounds of dates and onions and dried
fish. Scribes wrote letters and copied deeds for local farmers and
merchants from Lebanon and Egypt. A physician was treating a
patient for an eye infection under a tavern awning. There was even
a slave auction, although the three or four girls who sat around
disconsolately on the block were not comely and attracted few
bidders.

At one of the stalls there were weapons for
sale, a common enough thing in a garrison town. Javelins, bound
together with a string like a shock of wheat, were leaning against
the reed-mat wall. I motioned to the trader to show me one—it was
sound and straight and had good balance, and it was tipped in
shining bronze.

“Your honor has been a soldier?” he asked,
smiling, showing me a mouthful of stained teeth. He was a wizened
little creature, as old as the world, and his hands moved
tentatively about as if of their own volition, like spiders feeling
their way in the dark. Yet if he had made this, he understood his
craft.

I rolled the shaft between my palms, watching
to see if the point would twist and betray a kink in the wood. It
did not.