The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome) (29 page)

I nodded dubiously. The Hanging Gardens might once have been magnificent, but the decrepit remains could hardly compare to the other World Wonders we had seen on our journey.

Then I walked a few steps beyond the opening of the shaft, to a spot that afforded an unobstructed view of the ziggurat.

The walls of Babylon had been pulled down. The Hanging Gardens were in ruins. But the great ziggurat remained, rising mountainlike from the midst of the dun-colored city. Each of the seven stepped-back tiers had once been a different color. Almost all of the decorative work had been stripped away (by Xerxes when he sacked the city, and by subsequent looters), and the brick walls had begun to crumble, but enough of the original facade remained to indicate how the ziggurat must once have appeared. The first and largest tier was brick red, but the next had been dazzling white (faced with imported limestone and bitumen, I later learned), the next decorated with iridescent blue tiles, the next a riot of patterns in yellow and green, and so on. In the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the effect must have been unearthly. Amid the ziggurat’s marred perfection I noticed tiny specks here and there on its surface. It was only when I saw that these specks moved—that they were, in fact, men—that I realized the true scale of the ziggurat. The thing was even larger than I had thought.

The sun was beginning to sink, casting its lowering rays across the dusty city and bathing the ziggurat in orange light. Etemenanki, the Babylonians called it, the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. Truly, it seemed to me that so huge and strange a thing could scarcely have been created by human hands.

Antipater had similar thoughts. Standing next to me, he broke into verse:

“What Cyclops built this mound for Semiramis?

Or what giants, sons of Gaia, raised it in seven tiers

To scrape against the seven Pleiades?

Immovable, unshakable, a mass eternal,

Like lofty Mount Athos it weighs upon the earth.”

Travel-weary and light-headed though I was, I caught Antipater’s mistake. “You told me Nebuchadnezzar built the ziggurat, not Semiramis,” I said.

“Poetic license, Gordianus! Semiramis scans better, and the name is far more euphonious. Who could compose a poem around a name as cumbersome as ‘Nebuchadnezzar’?”

*   *   *

As darkness fell, Darius helped us find lodgings for the night. The little inn to which he guided us was near the river, he assured us, and though we could smell the river while we ate a frugal meal of flatbread and dates in the common room, our room upstairs had no view of it. Indeed, when I tried to open the shutters, they banged against an unsightly section of the city wall that stretched along the waterfront.

“Tomorrow you see Etemenanki,” insisted Darius, who had shared our meal and followed us to the room. “What time do I meet you?”

“Tomorrow, we rest,” said Antipater, collapsing on the narrow bed. “You don’t mind sleeping on that mat on the floor, do you, Gordianus?”

“Actually, I was thinking of taking a walk,” I said.

Antipater made no reply; he was already snoring. But Darius vigorously shook his head. “Not safe after dark,” he said. “You stay inside.”

I frowned. “You assured Antipater this was a good neighborhood, with no thieves or pickpockets.”

“I tell the truth—no worry about robbers.”

“What’s the danger, then?”

Darius’s expression was grave. “After dark,
she
comes out.”

“She? Who are you talking about? Speak clearly!”

“I say too much already. But don’t go out until daylight. I meet you then!” Without another word, he disappeared.

I dropped to the floor and reclined on the mat, thinking I would never get to sleep with Antipater snoring so loudly. The next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming in the open window.

*   *   *

By the time we went down to eat breakfast, the sun was already high. There was only one other guest in the common room. His costume was so outlandish, I almost laughed when I saw him. The only astrologers I had ever seen were on the stage, in comedies, and this man might have been one of them. He wore a high yellow hat that rose in tiers, not unlike those of the ziggurat, and a dark blue robe decorated with images of stars and constellations sewn in yellow. His shoes were encrusted with semiprecious stones and ended in spiral loops at the toes. His long black beard had been crimped and plaited and sprinkled with yellow powder so that it radiated from his jaw like solar rays.

Antipater invited the stranger to join us. He introduced himself as Mushezib, an astrologer visiting Babylon from his native city of Ecbatana. He had traveled widely and his Greek was excellent, probably better than mine.

“You’ve come to see the ziggurat,” speculated Antipater.

“Or what remains of it,” said Mushezib. “There’s also a very fine school for astrologers here, where I hope to find a position as a teacher. And you?”

“We’re simply here to see the city,” said Antipater. “But not today. I’m too tired and my whole body aches from riding yesterday.”

“But we can’t just stay in all day,” I said. “Perhaps there’s something of interest close by.”

“I’m told there’s a small temple of Ishtar just up the street,” said Mushezib. “It’s mostly hidden from sight behind a high wall. Apparently it’s in ruins; it was desecrated long ago by Xerxes and never reconsecrated or rebuilt. I don’t suppose there’s much to see—”

“But you can’t go there,” said the innkeeper, overhearing and joining the conversation. He, too, looked like a type who might have stepped out of a stage comedy. He was a big fellow with a round face and a ready smile. With his massive shoulders and burly arms, he looked quite capable of breaking up a fight and throwing the offenders onto the street, should such a disturbance ever occur in his sleepy tavern.

“Who forbids it?” asked the astrologer.

The innkeeper shrugged. “No one
forbids
it. The deserted temple belongs to no one and everyone—common property, they say. But nobody goes there—because of
her
.”

My ears pricked up. “Who are you talking about?”

Finding his Greek inadequate, the innkeeper addressed the astrologer in Parthian.

Mushezib’s face grew long. “Our host says the temple is … haunted.”

“Haunted?” I said.

“I forget the Greek word, but I think the Latin is ‘lemur,’ yes?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “A manifestation of the dead that lingers on earth. A thing that was mortal once, but no longer lives or breathes.” Unready or unable to cross the river Styx to the realm of the dead, lemures were said to stalk the earth, usually but not always appearing at night.

“The innkeeper says there is a lemur at this nearby temple,” said Mushezib. “A woman dressed in moldering rags, with a hideous face. People fear to go there.”

“Is she dangerous?” I said.

Mushezib conversed with the innkeeper. “Not just dangerous, but deadly. Only a few mornings ago, a man who had gone missing the night before was found dead on the temple steps, his neck broken. Now they lock the gate, which before was never locked.”

So this was the nocturnal menace Darius had warned me about, fearing even to name the thing aloud.

“But surely in broad daylight—,” began Antipater.

“No, no!” protested the innkeeper’s wife, who suddenly joined us. She was almost as big as her husband, but had a scowling demeanor—another type suitable for the stage, I thought, the innkeeper’s irascible wife. She spoke better Greek than her husband, and her thick Egyptian accent explained the Alexandrian delicacies among the Babylonian breakfast fare.

“Stay away from the old temple!” she cried. “Don’t go there! You die if you go there!”

Her husband appeared to find this outburst unseemly. He laughed nervously and shrugged with his palms up, then took her aside, shaking his head and whispering to her. If he was trying to calm her, he failed. After a brief squabble, she threw up her hands and stalked off.

“It must be rather distressing, having a lemur so nearby,” muttered Antipater. “Bad for business, I should imagine. Do you think that’s why there are so few people here at the inn? I’m surprised our host would even bring up the subject. Well, I’m done with my breakfast, so if you’ll excuse me, I intend to return to our room and spend the whole day in bed. Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, Gordianus! Go out and explore the city without me.”

I felt some trepidation about venturing out in such an exotic city by myself, but I needn’t have worried. The moment I stepped into the street I was accosted by our guide from the previous day.

“Where is your grandfather?” said Darius.

I laughed. “He’s not my grandfather, just my traveling companion. He’s too tired to go out.”

“Ah, then I show you the city, eh? Just the two of us.”

I frowned. “I’m afraid I haven’t much money on me, Darius.”

He shrugged. “What is money? It comes, it goes. But if I show you the ziggurat, you remember all your life.”

“Actually, I’m rather curious about that temple of Ishtar just up the street.”

He went pale. “No, no, no! We don’t go there.”

“We can at least walk by, can’t we? Is it this way?” I said.

Next to the inn was a derelict structure that must once have been a competing tavern, but was now shuttered and boarded up; it looked rather haunted itself. Just beyond this abandoned property, a brick wall with a small wooden gate faced the street. The wall was not much higher than my head; beyond it, I could see what remained of the roof of the temple, which appeared to have collapsed. I pushed on the gate and found that it was locked. I ran my fingers over the wall, where much of the mortar between the bricks had worn away. The fissures would serve as excellent footholds. I stepped back, studying the wall to find the easiest place to scale it.

Darius read my thoughts. He gripped my arm. “No, no, no, young Roman! Are you mad?”

“Come now, Darius. The sun is shining. No lemur would dare to show its face on such a beautiful day. It will take me only a moment to climb over the wall and have a look. You can stay here and wait for me.”

But Darius protested so vociferously, gesticulating and yammering in his native tongue, that I gave up my plan to see the temple and agreed to move on.

Darius showed me what he called the Royal District, where Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar had built their palaces. As far as I could tell, nothing at all remained of the grandeur that had so impressed Alexander when he sojourned in Babylon. The once-resplendent complex, now stripped of every ornament, appeared to have been subdivided into private dwellings and crowded apartment buildings.

“They say that’s the room where Alexander died.” Darius pointed to an open window from which I could hear a couple arguing and a baby crying. The balcony was festooned with laundry hung out to dry. The surrounding terraces were strewn with rubbish. The whole district smelled of stewing fish, cloying spices, and soiled diapers.

If there had ever been an open square around the great ziggurat, it had long ago been filled in with ramshackle dwellings of brick and mud, so that we came upon the towering structure all at once as we rounded a corner. The ziggurat had seemed more mysterious when I had seen it the previous night, from a distance and by the beguiling light of sunset. Seen close up and in broad daylight, it looked to be in hardly better shape than the mound of rubble that had once been the Hanging Gardens. The surfaces of each tier were quite uneven, causing many of the swarming visitors to trip and stumble. Whole sections of the ramparts leaned outward at odd angles, looking as if they might tumble down at any moment.

Darius insisted we walk all the way to the top. To do so, we had to circle each tier, take a broad flight of steps up to the next tier, circle around, and do the same thing again. I noticed Darius pausing every so often to run his fingers over the walls. At first I thought he was simply admiring the scant remnants of decorative stonework or glazed brick, but then I realized he was tugging at various bits and pieces, seeing if anything would come loose. When he saw the expression on my face, he laughed.

“I look for mementos, young Roman,” he explained. “Everyone does it. Anything of value that could be removed easily and without damage is already removed, long ago. But, every so often, you find a piece ready to come loose. So you take it. Everyone does it. Why do you frown at me like that?”

I was imagining the great temples of Rome being subjected to such impious treatment. Antipater claimed that the ancient gods of this land were essentially the same as those of the Greeks and Romans, just with different names and aspects: Marduk was Jupiter, Ishtar was Venus, and so on. To filch bits and pieces from a sacred structure that had been built to the glory of Jupiter was surely wrong, even if the structure was in disrepair. But I was a visitor, and I said nothing.

The way became more and more crowded as we ascended, for each tier was smaller than the last. All around us were travelers in many different types of costumes, chattering in many different languages. From their garb, I took one group to be from India, and judging by their saffron complexions and almond-shaped eyes, another group had come all the way from Serica, the land of silk. There were also a great many astrologers, some of them dressed as I had seen Mushezib that morning, and others in outfits even more outlandish, as if they were trying to outdo one another with absurdly tall hats, elaborately decorated robes, and bizarrely shaped beards.

On the sixth and next-to-last tier, I heard a voice speak my name, and turned to see Mushezib.

The astrologer acknowledged me with a nod. “We meet again.”

“It would seem that every visitor in Babylon is here today,” I said, jostled by a passing group of men in Egyptian headdresses. “Is that a queue?”

It appeared that one had to stand in line to ascend the final flight of steps to the uppermost tier; only when a certain number of visitors left were more allowed to go up. The queue stretched out of sight around the corner.

Mushezib smiled. “Shall we go up?” he said.