The Blood Star (77 page)

“I believe what I have seen, Lady.”

Naq’ia, whose blood was colder than the
winter wind, laughed at this. The sound was like the tinkling of
little copper bells, like no human laugh. It made my bowels turn to
water.

“Yet it is good to remember, Tiglath Ashur,
that heaven sometimes preserves a man only to make him wretched.
Your god perhaps has drawn a magic circle around you, but it
extends no wider than your own footprints.”

“I understand you, Lady,” I said, for the
threat was plain enough. “I have a wife, and you think to make me
afraid through her. But she too has a protector.”

“The giant with wheat-colored hair?” She
nodded, as if nothing could have mattered less. “He appears a
simpleton. Yes—I have seen him.”

“He is not a simpleton, but something both
less than a man and more. Do not misjudge, Lady, for if any
accident should befall my wife he will seek you out. There will be
nowhere to hide yourself from his wrath, and with the great ax he
carries he will split you open like a rabbit. It will avail you
nothing then that your son is a king. He will not care.”

Was she frightened? If she was it did not
show, but she understood well enough. Once more the shoulders moved
under her black tunic.

“You must think me a very wicked creature,
Tiglath.”

“I do, Lady—the most wicked I have ever
known.”

I suspect that in her own strange way she was
flattered, but who could ever hope to look into Naq’ia’s dark
soul?

“Yet it is some virtue, at least, that we can
speak so frankly to each other,” she said at last. “Who is there
else in the wide world to whom I can reveal my mind, Tiglath? My
son? No, not he. Only you, who holds me in such scant honor.”

“On the contrary, Lady—if fear is a kind of
honor, I honor you. I am not likely to slight your claims to
respect.”

“Sit down beside me, Tiglath.” She moved a
little aside on the stone bench, making room. “Esarhaddon has
waited seven years and can wait a while longer. Sit with me for a
time and bear an old woman company.”

Stirred in with my earliest memories is the
fear of Naq’ia. No man has ever inspired such dread in me, perhaps
because men are not gifted at dissembling—not that Naq’ia attempted
to conceal her hatred for me, but even as her tongue spoke of my
destruction her manner was soft, almost motherly, as if I were
nothing more than Esarhaddon’s boyhood friend, known to her since
infancy, almost a second son. Thus it had become a matter of habit
to treat her with courtesy. I did as she asked and took my place
beside her on the bench. Besides, Naq’ia did not gossip idly. If
there was something she wished to tell me, I thought it best to
know what it was.

She spoke to me of all that had befallen the
Land of Ashur since I left it, of Esarhaddon and her disappointment
in him, of many things besides. More than this, she told me of
Ashurbanipal, the son whom I could never acknowledge as my own,
Esharhamat’s child.

“He is very intelligent—he would make a
better scribe than king, I fancy, for he does not relish his
training in the house of war. But of course what else can one
expect when his mother spoiled him so? By that, if by nothing else,
I would have known him for your son rather than Esarhaddon’s.
Esharhamat is not so fond of her other children.”

“Who else knows then?”

“Oh, the secret is safe enough.” Naq’ia made
a loose gesture with her hand, as if to wave away any thought of
disclosure. “Esarhaddon suspects—more than suspects—but only you
and I and Esharhamat know for certain. The boy himself, of course,
hasn’t an inkling. He calls me Grandmother and I treat him as if he
were my heart’s darling, preferring him even over his
brothers.”

“And that because he will rule one day, and
they will not.”

Naq’ia glanced at me quickly, out of the
corner of her eye, and smiled.

“So you say, and the omen readers, but
Esarhaddon insists that the child of his loins shall sit upon a
throne and be called king. He favors the boy Shamash Shumukin, and
why should he not? They are alike as a pair of hands, those two. I
too am fond of him—his mother never loved him, so I have been
called upon to fill her place.”

Yes, I saw clearly enough now. Perhaps she
could not help herself, I thought. I could almost have pitied her.
Naq’ia, who lived for power, to whom intrigue was as natural as
breathing, saw plainly that she had lost her chance with Esarhaddon
and was plotting to be great in the next reign. She might be dead
by then, or too old to care, but she must weave her web or lose all
pleasure in life.

In my blind stupidity, I imagined it was no
more than that.

“Esharhamat is not well, you know,” she said,
as if she thought I might not have heard. “Will you see her?”

“I think not, Lady,” I answered, lying to her
and to myself.

“Ah—you feel some scruple about it, but that
was ever your way, Tiglath. Do not concern yourself, for Esarhaddon
will not mind. They have softened toward one another in recent
years, so much so that my son would not deny his wife anything that
could ease her mind. In any case, there will be no more children,
so there can be no harm done. Or perhaps it is because of the
pretty foreign girl you have taken to wife. . .”

“I will not see her, Lady,” I said,
rising—this had gone on long enough, I had decided. “I will not
because it is not my will.”

“Yes, I see that it is not.” She smiled,
offering me her hand to kiss. “The will of Tiglath Ashur, which,
like the will of heaven, is unknowable, even to himself.”

. . . . .

“Where have you been? I thought perhaps you
had left again on your travels.”

Esarhaddon enjoyed his own jest enormously,
laughing and slapping his thigh hard enough almost to raise a
bruise.

“I have been sitting in the garden with your
mother,” I answered, not particularly amused—in my heart I had
forgiven my brother, but he could still nettle me. “She complains
that her son is a fool and a bad king and lies under the gods’
curse.”

“That only means she is angry because I have
grown up and slipped the leash.”

Nevertheless, his face blackened with
something between wrath and dread. Esarhaddon was lying naked on a
couch, playing with a small bowl of dates while one of his women—an
Elamite from the look of her, with breasts like melons and skin the
color of wood smoke—was rubbing oil into his legs. He kicked her
away, hard enough that she pitched over onto the tile floor to land
backside first with a loud smack, and then he stood up and wrapped
a sheet around himself, knotting it at the waist with quite
unnecessary violence.

“She said I was cursed by the gods, did she?”
he went on, glowering, looking around as if for someone else to
punish. “And if I am it is no one’s doing but hers—you will do well
to stay away from my mother, Tiglath. She will poison you if you
are fool enough to give her the chance.”

“Then I promise not to accept any dinner
invitations.”

“That is wise of you.”

He seemed to grow a little more cheerful. The
Elamite woman was still lying on the floor with her face hidden in
her hands, crouched in supplication before her master’s
displeasure. Esarhaddon looked down at her as if he had momentarily
forgotten her existence, and then he laughed and put his hand on
her naked back, patting her as he might pat one of his hunting
dogs. When she had summoned courage enough to rise to her knees, he
took her right breast in his hand, seeming to measure its
weight.

“She is not a bad one, this,” he said,
smiling down at her with the pride of ownership. “Her husband was a
tavern keeper in Kish. I gave him a hundred silver shekels for her
and forgave him his taxes for five years, but one cannot expect a
tavern keeper to put a proper value on such a woman. She can press
the seed out of you like a millstone. Her name is Keturah. By the
gods, I believe will make you a present of her, simply because I
love you so well.”

I was about to refuse—Selana’s reaction, if I
began collecting women to be run in teams, like chariot horses, was
something I had rather imagine than witness—but my brother was a
king, and the gifts of a king are not to be despised. Besides,
Esarhaddon had meant the offer kindly, and he was not the sort of
man to appreciate my wife’s objections, or even to imagine she
could have any. I did not like to hurt his feelings.

“She may not relish the change,” I said,
thinking. . . I know not what I thought.

“Nonsense. Unless you met with some accident
while you dwelt among the foreigners, you will do well enough for
Keturah. Like a wise harlot, she measures a man strictly by the
contents of his loincloth—in handfuls. Hah, hah, hah!”

He did not even notice that I failed to laugh
with him. He was too occupied with looking about him for his wine
jar.

“Keturah, you worthless slut,” he shouted,
honoring her with another kick, “fetch us more wine. And bread, and
cheese, and some lamb boiled in millet. Can’t you see that we are
hungry? Be quick, or your new master will think I have merely grown
tired of your sloth. Go!”

An hour later, our bellies full and our heads
buzzing with wine, we sat outside together in the shade of a
courtyard wall. Esarhaddon looked half asleep.

“Do you remember when we were boys in the
house of war?” he asked suddenly, after a long silence. “Do you
remember the night old Tabshar Sin sent me up to the barrack roof
without my supper as a punishment for fighting, and you stole bread
for me, and a jug of beer? Do you remember how drunk we got that
night, how we almost fell off the roof we were so drunk?”

“We were very young then,” I answered, for I
did remember. “You have to be very young to get drunk on half a jar
of beer.”

“What went wrong, do you suppose? We trusted
each other then.”

“We were boys then, Esarhaddon. We are men
now, and much has happened in the meantime.”

“Yes.” He sighed and leaned forward to rest
his arms on his knees. “The gods decided I would be king—or,
rather, my mother decided it for them—and then I decided that you
wished the throne of Ashur for yourself.”

“I did, only I did not want it badly
enough.”

“Because if you had, you would be king now,
and I would be dead.”

“Yes—that was the price I was not willing to
pay. Your death.”

“Yes. I believe it. No one wanted me to be
king.” Esarhaddon straightened up and wiped his face with his
hands, as if waking up after a long debauch. “Not our father, not
the army, not even I. No one except my mother.”

“Your mother, and the eternal gods.”

“You believe that, do you?

He looked at me with a kind of amused
scorn—Esarhaddon, who all his life had lived in the most dreadful
fear of the Unseen. That look should have told me everything.

But it was Ashur’s pleasure that I would
never know the truth until it was too late.

“You believe that fat priests can read the
gods’ will written in the entrails of a goat?” he went on. “Do you
really, brother?”

“Yes. No less than you yourself. That is how
the kings of Ashur have been chosen for a thousand years, and we
are all still here, still masters of the earth. We must trust that
the gods have chosen wisely this time as well.”

“The gods, then, keep their purposes
hidden—or perhaps they simply are not so clever as my mother.
Remember, Tiglath, that I warned you.”

When the sun began to approach its zenith, a
chamberlain was sent to remind the king that his ministers required
him. Esarhaddon threw an empty wine jug at his head and chased him
away with a string of hideous curses.

“The Land of Ashur will not rule itself,” I
reminded him when he had caught his breath again.

“No, nor be ruled by a drunken fool, you
might add.” He shrugged his shoulders, as if dismissing all hope.
“My servants tell me lies and do what they like—I am a soldier,
Tiglath, not a mud scratching scribe. The tax rolls are a riddle to
me, and the speeches of foreign envoys tie my poor brain in
knots.”

“You have a
turtanu
. Leave these
matters to him.”

“Sha Nabushu?”

My brother laughed. He laughed until he had
to wipe his eyes.

“Sha Nabushu?” he went on, when he could
speak again with tolerable calm. “That empty melon? That daub of
unfired clay? He is so frightened of my mother that he will not
even loosen his loincloth to piss without her express permission.
Sha Nabushu?—have you ever met the man?”

“Yes, I have met the man,” I answered coldly.
“It was he you sent to relieve me of my command before
Khanirabbat.”

But Esarhaddon, far from being abashed at
this reminder, turned to look me in the face, quite as if I had
said something brilliant.

“Yes—that is true. I did, didn’t I.”

For a moment there was no sound except the
tinkling of water in the courtyard fountain next to which we
happened to be standing. I was taller than my brother by more than
a head, so he had to reach up to put his hand on my shoulder. He
almost seemed to be pulling me down to his level, as if he wished
to whisper something in my ear.

“Then here is your opportunity to return the
compliment,” he murmured. He seemed infinitely pleased with
himself. “Go to him. Strip him of his title and rank. Become
turtanu
in his place and rule the Land of Ashur as king in
all but name. Only leave me the army and I will be happy
enough—free at last of this burden, I will conquer what is left of
the world and make a name that will live forever. If you like, you
can set Sha Nabushu to molding bricks for the city wall.”

“I will serve you in any way you wish,
Esarhaddon. I will put on a soldier’s cloak and fight in any war,
in any distant, god-cursed place you name. You have only to say ‘Do
this,’ and I will do it. Yet I will not be your
turtanu
, for
if the god had meant me to rule, he would have made me king in your
place.”