Twilight in Babylon (15 page)

When will this day be over?

And when she got home, she still had to bake some of those round things for the
lugal.
It was part of their “deal.”

*      *     *

Shama delivered their food and resumed his fanning. Kidu was nibbling on Puabi’s breast, and smoke hung like another curtain in the room.

“You are so beautiful, Aiza,” he muttered against Puabi’s skin.

His mistress, who wasn’t intoxicated with opium, shouted and shoved him away. “Who is Aiza?”

“You are,” the mountain man slurred. His pupils were swollen, so that his hazel eyes looked soulless and black.

“I am not, you sodden louse! Who is Aiza? Shama,” she said, and turned to him. “Bring me the scribe who keeps the list of the women who have visited the
en.
” She pushed Kidu away, and he slid down in the pillows. “You aren’t supposed to visit any one female more than once a month,” she said to him. “Who is Aiza? Does
she
have your heart?”

Shama watched silently. Puabi was known for her jealousies. It was one of the reasons the commonwealth had had so many
ens.
She couldn’t abide a man whose first devotion wasn’t to her even though the
en’s
job was to impregnate the women of Ur in season. Shama knew the next words that would fall from her lips; she was nothing if not consistent.

“I can make you
en,
” she told the slumbering golden giant. “I have the power to unmake you, also. Forget this not. Do you hear me?”

Kidu snored, and Puabi rounded on Shama. “Stop that! Stop fanning! You’re making my head ache.”

Shama dropped his fan and bowed his head.

Puabi stood silent for a moment, then drew a long, shuddering sigh. “Watch Kidu for me, Shama. He’s no more trustworthy than his predecessors.”

Shama dug in his waist pouch for the herb that would ease Puabi’s head. He dumped it into her beer and stirred, then handed the cup to her. “Why do the gods not smile on me?” she asked. “Why saddle me with weak men who are no more worthy of this role than oxen?

“I brought this man from the barbarous hills, I fed him and clothed him with my own hands, I endured his animalistic urges until I could train him how to congress with a woman—” Puabi threw her hands in the air. “I taught him how to speak beyond grunts, how to read.” She shook her head in disgust as Kidu’s snoring grew heavier and louder.

“Remove him from my sight,” she said to Shama. “And get me a bath.” Shama turned to summon the acolytes who could carry Kidu. “If this continues, Shama, these drugs, this insolent behavior, then Kidu must go,” she said. “He is on the last of my patience.”

*      *     *

The afternoon was divided up into disciplines. Mathematics, for calculating field areas; geometry, for figuring canals and irrigation schemes; medical science, to know how to care for one’s livestock; and accounting, to keep one’s taxes straight and correct. Each session was taught by a different “Father.” Afterward, the Tablet Father motioned for Chloe to come with him. They sat on the side of the building—the awning’s shade was too narrow for his bulk. He looked over her feeble attempts to write.

“Do you know why you make the list? It’s the first of many you will make. Do you know why?”

“I’ll use these words the most?”

He sighed and leaned back. “I was less than enthusiastic about your coming to the Tablet House,” he said. “You saw why, at the start of the day. Now…” He shook his head. “You don’t even know the most basic concepts.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “To learn those most basic concepts.”

He glanced at her sharply. “Doctrine of the name. It’s the foundation of the commonwealths between the two rivers. It’s the reason we have writing. No one else does.”

No one else in the world? Or no one else in Iraq? Chloe waited quietly. Sooner or later he would tell her. Until then, sweat would just continue to pool beneath her.

“When you name something, you bring it into being; it becomes self-aware. When you know its name, you control it. To make these lists and identify these things is to take mastery over the world in which you live.”

Chloe nodded.

“The First Father called the names of the creatures, and thus he reigned over them as
lugal.

“Now when you write something,” he said, “you make its life longer, permanent. As you wrote it, it will exist for as long as the writing lasts. It is the call of the scribe. To summon into being and identification and submission, all that is.”

“A large task for a mere human.”

“It is our job to organize for the gods, to administer their estates—this world.”

She swallowed a yawn, but nothing got by his eagle glance. “Your work is awful. Knead it blank and write it again.” He got up, and she made to follow suit. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll trust you not to fall asleep.”

He went back inside, and Chloe yawned so widely she was afraid her jaws would come unhinged. It was hot still and hours before twilight.
Why did I think I wanted to do this,
she wondered.
Was I drunk? School, in any time, any place, is hard. That’s why so few go and even less survive. Wasn’t primary school, secondary school, junior high, high school, and college—fifteen years of formal education—enough?

She looked at her hesitant marks in the clay and quickly transferred the information to the dust beside her. She dunked the clay into water and kneaded it until it was soft and pliant. Then she picked up the stylus and started again.

“Human, male.”

*      *     *

Ezzi was trembling, trying desperately hard to stop. Asa stargazer stood behind him, and the throng of stargazers, exorcists, diviners, and
asu,
stood behind him. The
ensi
looked like the goddess Inana, though Ezzi wondered if the goddess was cross often. The
ensi
certainly was.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked.

The
lugal
stepped forward. “I mentioned there was a sign in the heavens,” he said. “The stargazer is here to discuss it.”

“Where is Kidu? Where is
en
Kidu? Shama, go find him.”

“Ensi,”
the
lugal
said.

She cut him off. “Nothing, until the
en
arrives.”

Ezzi looked around the room while they waited. It was enormous, with colorful cone-studded walls and light, colorful carpets. The furniture was gold; he’d never seen such a thing before. Was it made of solid gold or was it just gilded?

A man came in, blond and big. His eyes were half-open. The
ensi
beckoned him to sit, then she sat on his lap. “Now you can talk.”

The
en
nodded off against her chest. She couldn’t wake him.

The
lugal
spoke again. “The stars proclaim something dire for our commonwealth,” he said. “Asa will tell you.”

Asa stepped forward. “The gods require you, ma’am.”

She sat up straight, jolted the
en
awake. “What do you mean?”

“Three signs,
ensi.
The first was the blood moon.”

“We beat the drums; the demons fled.”

He nodded. “The second sign was the flooding of the northern marshes.”

“Every season there is a flood.”

“Ma’am, Ur lost almost all of its seasonal slave labor. In addition to countless head of cattle, buffalo, and taxpayers. I believe there was one survivor.”

“What’s your third sign?”

“The sky is going to turn to night, in the middle of the day. The gods are not happy with us.”

Puabi looked at the
lugal.
“What does this mean?”

“Ma’am,” Asa answered, “the gods are finished with you.”

Cheftu’s fingers glided down the form next to him. She murmured in her sleep and shifted closer, her bare flesh against his. After months of living in the Jerusalem caverns, waiting, hoping, he was here; he was with Chloe.

He looked around the room, hazy in predawn.

Where were they?

It didn’t matter; they were safe. He’d found her,
le bon Dieu
be praised.

He kissed her shoulder as he prepared himself for any changes he might see. Though Cheftu’s love for Chloe never ceased, it was always disconcerting when they changed times, and her appearance became that of another woman. He never changed, thank
le bon Dieu.
The woman beside him rolled onto her back and pulled him close. He braced himself while he waited for her to open her brilliant green eyes.

“Wake up,
ma chérie,
” he whispered in his native French, one of the many languages they shared. “We are safe.”

Her eyes opened. The gaze that met his was black and blank.

“What did you say,
en
?” she asked.

In Cheftu’s mind, the words—words he’d never heard before—were communicated by pictures.
My personal logograms,
he realized. He stared at the woman, noticed she was fair-skinned, with a cap of black hair, and grotesquely overgrown eyebrows.

A series of images assaulted him; this woman, covered in mud and weeping in his arms; blood and stink, and his own torn shouting; a sense of loss that was searing and a sense of belonging that was wrenching.
He knew this woman; he owed her his very life.

Her gaze was sharp. “Were you waking me with song, my love?” she asked. Her touch moved from his shoulder to his buttocks. “Or were you calling another woman’s name again?”

“Chloe?” he said, just in case, if the chance existed, she was somewhere in that body. “Chloe?”

“Are you a bird this morning, my love? Last night you were…” She whispered in his ear, and Cheftu blushed at her words. She reclined, her smile sated. “I am pleased with you again.”

What had happened? Was he in the wrong time? Had all the prayers and supplications been for naught? The woman kissed his chest, as she hummed
Chloe
beneath her breath.

He couldn’t believe there wasn’t reason behind his being here, in this specific place. The woman wrapped strong legs around his waist—perhaps not this exact
specific
place. Bon Dieu,
I do not know where I am, or what manner of man, but please don’t let me sin,
Cheftu prayed. He tried to sit up, but she tightened her grip.

“Where are you going,
en
? The dawn is for loving. It’s a double hour before our obligations.”

Oh God, I don’t want to be unfaithful to my wife.
And Cheftu’s body, for all that his mind wrestled with, knew it was morning and she was willing. Moreover, the affection he felt for this woman was almost overwhelming. She meant a great deal to him, but she wasn’t his wife.

Thank God.

But no other clue to his identity was within sight. “Forgive me,” he said cautiously. He pictured the emotion and hoped it translated to her strange tongue. “I must intercede with the gods.”

Cheftu rose from the bed to remove himself from error or temptation. The woman turned onto her side and propped her head on her bent elbow. Her skin was like polished marble, contrasted with black eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and a substantial display of body hair. Egyptians had a preference for a smooth body, and Cheftu shared that feeling.

“Of course you must intercede,” she said. “But with me. Everyone else can wait,” she said with a smile, leaning back, running her hand down the curves of her breast, waist, and hip. She was exquisite, and she knew it. “I’m the one. Now come kneel between my feet and
intercede.
”

He fought the desire to do just that, to lose himself in her. “First, I must—” What was the word? “Relieve myself.”

She lay flat and waved toward him. “I’m starting without you then,” she said, touching her own body with purpose. “Don’t tarry.”

Escape.

He went out the door of the bedroom and found himself in a waiting room. Though his need hadn’t been real when he spoke, now it was. There didn’t appear to be any curtained area, a chamber pot, or a marble seat. Just a lot of potted palms.

For the first time, Cheftu glanced at his own skin.

He was golden brown above the waist and below his thighs, but elsewhere he was ivory. Paler than he’d ever been in his life. What was he? Who did she think he was? Where was this place? He wanted to leave, but was this his home? How did he get here? Where were his clothes? When she addressed him the first time, what had she called him?

En.

Was that his name, or a title? He stared at the dirt in the potted palm, and concentrated. In his mind he rifled through all the records of languages he knew. There was no definition for
en.
He could be the gardener; he could be the king.

“Kidu,” she called. “Oh, Kidu.”

His feet propelled him toward her, and Cheftu halted at the doorway. His head almost touched it. A low doorway. His “lover” was quite enraptured with herself, calling the name again and again. Perhaps he was Kidu?

He had to get out of there, despite the protests of his mind and body.

Then the realization stabbed him: he was not himself. He wasn’t Cheftu the Egyptian scribe, physician, courtier and lord: He wasn’t François, his birth name in Napoleon’s France, a child of humble origins born with a gift for languages. He wasn’t any of the men he’d masqueraded as in these past years: mage, diplomat, alchemist, slave. He had stepped into someone else’s body and life.

And Chloe was just… gone.

He turned away from the woman, his body fully aroused, his mind fully shocked.

A face appeared before him.

Cheftu started.

It was a man, bent with age and wiry with muscle. His gaze moved from the woman in the throes of passion to Cheftu, completely aroused and standing in the next room. The man didn’t say anything, but he peered intently up at Cheftu’s face.

Instinctively, Cheftu brushed at his chin.
I have a beard.
Bon Dieu. The woman was growing louder, becoming a nuisance to Cheftu’s thoughts, which already careened around madly like a dog with a foaming mouth, acting as a further goad to the part of him who longed to share in her ecstasy. “Clothes,” he said to the old man. He didn’t care about appearances or anything else. He had to think, to… reason out what had happened.