The Blood Star (74 page)

“I did not kill him.”

“Did you not, by the Sixty Great Gods! Then I
have been robbed, for I paid the spy who told me of it one hundred
silver shekels. Well, it hardly matters. He is dead—someone must
have killed him.”

“The woman who is now my wife killed him. She
did not know who he was. She did it to save my life.”

“You have taken a wife?”

“Yes. An Ionian woman.”

“The one who is traveling with you?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Esharhamat will be disappointed
to hear of it.”

Esharhamat.

I cannot well describe how the sound of that
name clenched my heart. I had not seen her in nearly ten years. .
.

“But if it was your wife, then you as good as
killed him,” he went on, precisely as if we had never strayed from
the subject—Esarhaddon was not a man to notice when he had
inflicted a wound. “In any case, by the time I heard of it you had
already escaped. It was good of you, by the way, to leave
Abdimilkutte behind for me. It would have been humiliating if he
had slipped through the net.”

On this point at least I thought it better
not to disabuse my brother, so I said nothing.

“I would have pardoned you then, you know.”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes were full of the sadness of
wasted chances. “I would have pardoned you that night when we met
outside the walls if your pride had let you bend a little. You
cannot know, Tiglath, how I have missed you all these years.”

“Do not speak to me of pardon.”

I stood up—the illusion was shattered. We
were not children again, Esarhaddon and I, and there was no
forgetting all that had happened between us.

“Do no use that word to me!” I shouted, for I
had found my wrath again. “Would that you had left me where I was,
for I will not hear you speak of ‘pardon’. It was never I who
betrayed you, My Lord King, my thick-headed fool of a brother, for
if I had I would be sitting on the throne of Ashur this day, and
you would be a corpse whose bones the birds had picked clean these
many bitter years I have spent wandering the edges of the earth.
Never say you will ‘pardon’ me, Esarhaddon, or I will give you the
word to eat at the point of my sword!”

“What a temper you have now, brother! Is this
what comes of living among foreigners?”

He laughed, as if he had made a jest, and
took another swallow of wine, for he was very drunk now.

And then, in an instant, his face darkened
with melancholy.

“I have said I repent. For pity’s sake ask no
more of me, Tiglath, for I am a king and I have my pride. Let it be
enough that I have restored to you all your property and
honors.”

Now he too stood up, but he had to reach out
his hand to my shoulder lest he fall.

“I will never understand why you must always
have the last word,” he went on. “You must always carry your point,
mustn’t you. You must persuade our father to make war against the
Medes so that you can go off to become a great hero while I am
forced to stay at home to grow drunk each night and rut on
Esharhamat that she may bring forth sons who may as easily be yours
as mine. . .”

In that moment, with his hand still on my
shoulder, I could easily have drawn my sword and killed him—he
almost looked as if he would have wished me to, so black was his
mood. Instead, I merely brushed away his arm.

“I think it best we do not speak of
Esharhamat,” I said quietly, for I was past all anger.

“As you wish.” He reached down to pick up his
wine jar, as if the matter were of no importance to him. “What,
then, am I to tell her?”

“Tell her. . ?

“Yes, of course. I have promised her I would
make it right between us again, and I do not like to disappoint
her. She is not well, you know.”

“What—what is wrong with her?”

“The gods alone know.” He shrugged his
shoulders. “Some woman’s complaint. She has not been right since
the birth of her last child. I believe I shall miss her when she
dies.”

I wished to hear no more. I took the reins of
my horse and jumped up on its back, longing to be as far from this
place as I could.

“Where will you go?” Esarhaddon asked,
looking up at me like a child who knows he is about to be
abandoned.

“To Three Lions, now that it is mine again.
And then—I know not.”

“You will not find your mother there,
Tiglath, for she is dead.”

“I knew.”

“You knew?” It was as if I had struck him
between the eyes with my closed fist. “How could you have
known?”

“I knew—that is enough.” I pulled the horse
around sharp and he snorted loudly, as eager to be away as I
was.

“Then come to Nineveh when you are finished
grieving. Your king awaits you in Nineveh. When will you come?”

“Who can say? Perhaps never.”

He shouted something after me, but I did not
hear what it was. I heard only the wild beating of the horse’s
hooves, like the sound of my own heart.

Half an hour after I left Esarhaddon the sun
was quenched behind the western horizon like an ember dropped into
the sea. It was rough country and, so far from the main caravan
trail, treacherous. I did not care to lose my way under the
moonless night sky, so I decided I would not try to go on before
morning. I found a low bluff to shelter against, tethered my horse
and wrapped myself in a blanket, hoping for the release of a little
sleep.

It was a doomed enterprise—too much had
happened too quickly and I could not sort it out. My mind felt
numb, helpless against the tides of feeling and memory that flooded
over it unbidden.

“
Esharhamat will be disappointed to hear
of it.”
I had taken a wife, and Esharhamat would be
disappointed to hear of it. She was my brother’s wife and the
mother of his children—many children, so I gathered—and I cannot
describe how I shrank from the idea that she must now hear of my
marriage.

“
I do not care how you spend your
seed,”
she had told me once,
“so long as I have your
heart.”
Now, after all this time, would she still whisper those
same words to her soul? Did I wish it? Selana did not deserve this
of me. It seemed that I could keep faith with nothing.

I had been away, wandering the earth, these
seven years—had I changed so much? Or, perhaps, I had not changed
at all. I did not know which was worse.

And what of Esarhaddon? He was my brother and
yet my king. Did it matter if I loved or hated him? Did I know
which, or could the two exist together?
I have repented of
it,”
he said. Did I believe him? Did I care?
“Your king
waits for you in Nineveh,”
he said. Let him wait, I
thought.

Nothing was settled. I was now once more a
great man in the Land of Ashur, so the king said. I was returned to
favor, so the king said. He might even believe it, yet it meant
nothing. There was no safety.

I spent that night in a kind of giddy
despair, waiting for the sleep that never came, waiting for
dawn.

At the first hint of daylight I started on my
way again. I found the main road quickly enough, but Selana and
Enkidu were at least six hours ahead of me. I did not catch up with
them before I reached the gates of Rasappa, two days later.

In the days when my father still imagined he
could bully the gods into making me king after him, I had visited
Rasappa to pray at the temples and win the garrison to my cause.
That had been nearly fifteen years before, and I had not been back
since, but the place was little changed. I entered through the main
gate just an hour before sunset, a little against the tide of
farmers returning home after a day at the bazaars. The two guards
looked as if they were already half asleep.

“Did you notice a man and a woman enter the
city this morning?” I asked one of them. “Foreigners—the man has
wheat-colored hair and is the size of three. He carries an ax slung
over his shoulder. If you saw him you would remember.”

“We only came on duty at noon,” he answered.
Yet he looked at me strangely, so I thought it possible he might be
lying. “Friends of yours, these foreigners?”

“Yes, friends. Due to an accident we became
separated on the road.”

“Well, we saw no one like that. Try the
wineshops.”

I thanked him and went on through. A moment
later I happened to glance back and noticed that he and his
colleague were engaged in what had every appearance of being an
argument.

It has nothing to do with me, I thought. To
them, doubtless one dust-stained traveler is like another.

I made other inquiries and quickly discovered
the stable where Selana and Enkidu had left their horses.

“A foreign woman? Young?” The ostler seemed
to brighten at the recollection. “She wears a marriage veil but
lets it hang open as if she has forgotten that it is there?”

“I fear so, yes.”

“She gave me a piece of silver. She babbled
at me in a tongue that sounded like the birds chirping, but her
coin spoke clearly enough.”

He laughed at the recollection, or perhaps
only at his own joke.

“Where did they go when they left here?” I
asked.

“To the tavern just opposite,” he answered,
indicating the direction with a short, chopping motion of his hand.
Then, as if some thought had just come into his mind, he tilted his
head and regarded me through narrowed eyes.

“But pardon me, Your Honor—do I not know you
from somewhere?”

“It is unlikely. I have been away for several
years.”

He accepted this as an answer without seeming
to believe it, and I bade him a good evening. It is strange how the
habits of a fugitive stay with one, for I had a dread of being
recognized.

At the tavern I was shown to an upstairs
room, where I surprised my friends at their dinner. The
impenetrable Macedonian merely grunted and turned back to his food,
but Selana, looking up at the sound of the door curtain being
pushed aside, dropped a bowl of millet and onions into her lap and
let out a shriek to awaken the dust of my ancestors.

“I have been visiting with the king,” I
announced pleasantly. “I found him in a forgiving mood—I am
welcomed back as his friend and brother.”

First she wept, and then, almost immediately,
she was of course furious with me.

“My lord frightens everyone and then, after
three days of suspense, turns up again as if he had just stepped
outside to empty his bladder!” she shouted, hot tears streaming
down her face as I held her, her little fists beating at my chest
as if she intended to break my collarbone. When this did not avail,
she pulled herself loose from my embrace and kicked at me so that I
was hard pressed to preserve my shins from injury. “You knew all
along there was never any peril—you have thought of this game
merely to torment me!”

“Be quiet, Selana, and bring me some wine,
for the last thing to pass my lips was a handful of water from an
irrigation ditch, and that this morning. Knowing how the landlord
would doubtless cheat foreigners by giving them worthless food, I
have ordered up bread and melon and the roasted hindquarters of a
goat.”

I sat down and began eating her millet with
greedy fingers, for I was hungry past imagining.

“And do not imagine that we are out of all
jeopardy just because Esarhaddon did not have my throat slit on the
road—we are not. The king says he loves me again and may believe
it, but he was never the real danger. The king has a mother who is
as cunning as an adder and hates me worse than death.”

“What will happen now?” Selana asked, lying
by my side in the darkness. It was yet an hour or two before dawn,
but sleep had fled from both of us.

“I cannot say. The king expects me and I must
go, but perhaps it would be just as well to let him wait a while
yet. One of my farms is about half a day’s ride from Nineveh—it
appears to me mine still, since my properties have all been
returned to me. We will stop there.

“One of. . ? You have more?” Even in the dark
I could see her eyes grow wide with wonder.

“Yes—of course. In this land your husband is
a royal prince and rich beyond avarice. I own vast estates, most of
which I have never even seen. I have a palace in Nineveh. You will
have the finest garments and jewelry of gold, copper and silver.
You will have servants past counting, Selana. Will it please you to
live as a great lady?”

“How can I know? I. . . I am a peasant girl,
Lord. I was born in a stone hut to parents who knew nothing all
their lives except work, sleep, food and rutting. I never even
owned a pair of sandals until you found me. Oh, I wish we could go
back to Sicily!”

“That I fear we cannot do. Yet you will like
Three Lions—that is the name of the place. If I have a home on this
earth, it is Three Lions.”

“I thought the farm in Sicily had become your
home.”

I did not answer, but poured myself a cup of
wine from the jar beside our sleeping mat.

“Do you think we shall ever go back there?”
she asked, after a long silence. “Do you even want to go back?”

“We must wait and see. It is not in my
hands.” We both understood that I had not answered the
question.

“Yet surely the king will let you go if you
wish it—he would not hold you against your will.”

“It is not in the king’s hands either.”

She did not understand—how could I have
explained to her that Esarhaddon and I, even Naq’ia, though she
acknowledged no will but her own, could only wait upon the pleasure
of heaven? The Lord Ashur was wise, but he kept his purposes
hidden.

She did not understand, but she was clever
enough to hold her tongue.

As dawn approached I began to be aware of a
curious silence that had settled around us.

Even at this hour, while the sky was still a
pale gray, I would have expected to hear the rumble of farm carts
on their way to the market stalls. There should have been the
sounds of voices in the street below us, the shouts of revelers
going home at last to their beds, and the muttered conversations of
respectable tradesmen who had risen early to open shop for the
day.