“Cede me those Hurrian territories west of the Mala river, all of them which I can take on my own.”
“You are jesting.”
I lay back from my food, regarding his thrice-chinned, greasy aspect.
“I am offering to let you keep your city Washuganni, and all east of the Mala river, whereas you only have some few lands around and about the Tigris now, and a refractory strip of country between you and your brother which will soon be black and free of stick or twig and useless to anyone.”
“You are offering me something you do not yet have,” glowered the Hurri king, brushing meat from his robe. Upon his head an ornate crown, peaked and jeweled, glittered.
“I will have it. I will have it before two years have passed. And when I take it, I will carry away all the gold and silver, the implements of the gods, the gold and silver doors from Assur! All that you thieves have collected will be mine. And if you and I reach no agreement, I will tumble the whole of Washuganni to the ground; no foundation of the city will stand. In other wise, if you and I find consonance between us, I will let the city stand, and even let you into it. I will acknowledge you as brother king and friend of Hatti, and other than a mutual assistance policy upon our shared borders, will ask no service from you. No tribute must you pay me; we will be Great Kings together, brothers ruling with peace between them. And that is the best, and the final, offer I am willing to make.”
“You must proclaim to all the kings that you recognize me in rightful struggle, that I am the true lord of Mitanni and Hurri, and agree to help me unite my disaffected lands. You must say to everyone: it is Artatama who is faithful to his oaths, chosen of the Gods, favorite of Teshub –”
“Ah-ha! At least there is one thing we agree upon: we are favorite of the same god.” He looked at me as if I had lost my senses.
I grinned at him. “I thought that you had finished. Surely you want to demand no more from me than that… I cannot go any further in that direction.”
“But you will go that far?”
“I will go as far in your behalf as you allow me. But not one step to my own detriment will I take. Those things you have proposed, the gods look upon them with favor. I would like to be continuously friendly with you, from this day forward, and unto the days of my sons. I wish nothing but proof on your part that you can provide me with aid in the matter of casting out this Tushratta from the seat of his usurpership.”
“Ah, proof is it… let me see, do you know that when Tushratta got the counter-presents in the matter of his daughter’s marriage to Akhenaten of Egypt, that the statues were of wood, only plated with gold? And do you know that Tushratta was so enraged that he called the Egyptian envoy Hani before him and complained, and even wrote to the king of Egypt and said this?” His belly was wobbling with laughter, his keen eyes watered at the precious joke. “Did you know it?”
“No, I did not know, and it is good that you tell me such things. Tell me more, and tell me of the lay of the city, and the fortifications of Tushratta’s palace, and the number of guards that patrol within.”
And he did that, and it was well with us. And before we left each back to his respective capitals, we had written on the spot an agreement between us, and taken each the other’s copy back to our chamberlains, and determined peace between us henceforth and mutual assistance in all the matters we had discussed.
I was triumphant. I had never been happier. All things seemed assured, all the desires of my heart within my grasp.
And so we took our time driving home, visiting first with the border commanders in the lands of Ishuwa and Tegarama, which were troublesome countries then, and when at last we arrived back in Hattusas in the dead of night we were ten days late.
I spent a time with my general Tarkhunta-zalma, instructing him to keep the thirty he had chosen in the city for the winter, for I wanted to use them in the spring campaigns. I spent a time in the chancery with Hattu-ziti going over the Artatama agreement, and when at last I had visited the king’s latrine in the basement and climbed the stairs to my chambers, I was feeling my weariness.
The Meshedi in the corridor had been leaning against the wall, talking to a palace woman. The girl flew off with a muffled squeal and the Meshedi struck an unmoving pose. But the look on his face seemed too fearful for so small an infraction; in such matters, I am not known for hardheartedness. Or at least, I had thought I was not.
But a king cannot take council with every palace praetorian, and I strode by him into my chambers without a second glance.
And I heard a noise that was not the doors, for they had closed silently behind me, and went round to the bedchamber.
And froze in my tracks. The floor shook beneath my feet. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. My whole frame trembled as if from a death-blow.
I launched myself toward the pair upon the bed, screaming curses, and even as Khinti scrambled up, naked, I had the man by his scruffy neck and was choking the breath from him. Somewhere in the moment between when I lifted the hairy adulterer from my bed and slammed him back against the wall and began pummeling him, I had a glimpse of his shocked, fearful eyes, of his mouth opening before blood gushed from his split lips.
Then Khinti jumped upon my back, locking her arms around my neck, kicking and biting and wailing.
I let go of him and pulled her off me, and cast her down to the floor. There she lay silent, unmoving, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, her panthers’ eyes pleading.
I turned back to the man, who had fallen to his knees. I lifted him up. And then I was striking him. And he struck back. So I struck until the face of Himuili, commander of one thousand, high official of the armies, could no longer be recognized.
While Himuili’s bones crunched, Khinti, sobbing, pulled desperately at my ankles, “Suppiluliumas, husband, dear lord, leave off. Oh please, please no –” And I would strike him again and she would plead more. Of a sudden there was in the room a Meshedi, trying to get me off Himuili. The first one could not and went for help, while the queen screamed for someone to get Kuwatna-ziti.
Then two more entered, and a voice I knew called my name.
But I could not stop. I did not until the Shepherd pushed between us, saying: “Tasmi, Tasmi take care! If you kill him you have signed her death sentence. Is that what you want?”
And I recollected everything then, and rubbed my bleeding hands one with the other and slowly, chest heaving, retreated before Kuwatna-ziti’s inexorable, wide-armed herding.
It was then that Khinti broke away from the two Meshedi who did not quite dare to hold her and threw herself at my feet, her arms around my legs, sobbing my name. I looked down at the curve of her naked back, at her black curls strewn upon the floor. I felt her cheek against my ankle, her tears between my toes.
If I touch her, I am lost. If I see her face, I will be unmanned. Or I will kill her. I felt my knees weaken, and the stone floor buck beneath my weight.
“You. Take her. Hold her.”
Upon my word, the Meshedi acted, dragging her up and away. She did not struggle, but hung between them as naked as a baby, clothed only in her beauty and her black curls.
I turned my back to her, slowly. And I saw there Himuili, mewling in a pool of his own blood, prone. And I saw the first Meshedi, whom I had thrown bodily from my way when he had tried to interfere, on his knees with his hands to his head.
“Tasmi! My Sun!” The Shepherd was shaking my shoulders.
I could hear Khinti, behind my back, weeping. I love her, I thought, and she has done this to me. And with Himuili; better with some common soldier. How, how could she do this? But I said only: “Get her out of my sight. This moment, she is exiled from Hattusas; and from all of Hatti. She takes nothing with her. No child –”
“My children! No! You have taken everything else. You cannot take them from me –” abruptly, she lapsed into tears.
“As I was saying: she takes nothing with her. No child. No robe. No shekel of gold. Throw her and h
er Ashiyawan relatives out of the gate. Tell them if they wish to avoid my wrath they will hold her in their domain, whence I exile her evermore. And her father who is in Arzawa, and all her kin in Hatti wherever they may be, they too are ousted from the land.”
“Tasmi, are you sure?” murmured the Shepherd through stiff and whitened lips, “Do you mean this? You do mean it… I –”
“No one questions the judgment of the king!”
“Yes, my Sun. And this man –?” He indicated Himuili with his foot.
It was then that Khinti recovered her voice, and strained between her guards calling my name, imploring my mercy, begging forgiveness. But I said only that I was not exiling Himuili. He would remain in my service, but under house arrest until he recovered, and that in my sight he had suffered enough already from a matter most likely not his fault. Then I walked out and left her there.
I spent a hazy interlude seeking a place where none would find me, not any of my sons, not any palace official, not any man of the armies. At length I went into the king’s shrine, and at the foot of the Storm God, my lord, I tasted regret. I regretted all the times I had taken another over her. I regretted all my years with the armies. I regretted every curse I had frothed and every blow I had struck. Mostly, I regretted that I had not lifted her up when she huddled at my feet, and kissed the tears from her cheeks, and pressed her against me one last time. Her eyes haunted the sanctuary, the perfume of her was a ghost wrapped around me. I cried for the first time since I was a child. Then, it had been over the conflagration that had once been Hattusas, up there with my black eagle alone in the night. But that loneliness was nothing. Now I was truly alone; all that I had ever loved had gone up into smoke, charred in the bonfire of my anger.
“I cannot, I cannot!” I groaned aloud to the god. But though my tears washed the hooves of the sacred bulls, I could find no way out of what I had done. There was no going back. “I have decreed it,” a hoarse and shaking voice said in my ears. I listened to it; it was my own voice. “I have spoken a judgment, and all know it. Meshedi have seen her naked with the smell of another man’s seed issuing out from between her thighs. I cannot forgive her. O, Storm God, my lord, help me!”
And the Storm God put acceptance into my heart. For the first time, I heard him; or rather recognized what it was that had been comforting me all along. For man is alone in all his teeming millions, and no one hears anything but his own heart. Woe to those that delude themselves otherwise: there is nothing else. And I could not take her back. I could not, though I heard the weakness in me screaming that I must run from the sanctuary, stop her, sweep her out from her wagon, and smooth away all memory of this awful night from us both like some stonemason preparing a rock to house the god’s image. No, I could not do anything. Only could I moan her name until I became free of it, and petition the god that he help me to forget.
In the morning, I had not forgotten, but by then she was gone.
It was necessary that I seek the twins. My little five year olds were all I had left of her. The morning light was impertinent to eyes not closed the night long, and my beard itched and all my skin felt greasy and dry at the same time. But I did not go and wash. I went straight to them, though they abode in a chamber adjoining my wife’s, and I did not want to go in there.
On the way I tried not to think of what Khinti might have said to them; or if she had wakened them, or not; or what someone else might have said to them; or what they might now be thinking themselves.
I tried, instead, to formulate some plan that might mitigate the disaster in the case of those who were so innocent and yet would be mostly harmed.
Outside their door, I almost turned and fled. To leave off until another time, when my own person was not aching in its total extent, was a great temptation.
But I went in there, past the Meshedi whose countenance, like every other’s I had passed; was blank and determinedly normal.
Inside was no sign that their mother was not returning; all was in place; every comb and jar aligned.
Their nurse met me, face ashen, her robe clutched at the neck, and bowed down low. I excused her, and closed the doors behind.
The sound of quiet sobbing, mixed with howls like some wounded animal’s did not in any way lessen.
My sorrel-haired princess, curled in a ball where her bed met the wall, shrank from my touch. Her eyes widened and her sobbing took a note of terror. She threw her hand before her face and began to scream, calling her nurse, calling her mother, screaming that a man had come to take her.
While I was trying to do something besides squat there dumb with my hand outstretched, a small weight flew at me from behind, pummeling my back, howling. Even then I was thinking that my beard had frightened my daughter.
But young Zannanza knew exactly whom he attacked.
“Give back my mother,” he snarled brokenly, as I got him in hand and held him by the wrists and he kicked at me, “You took her! You took her away! I hate you! I am going to kill you! I will!”
Then my daughter stopped her crying. She slid off the bed and came to where I yet crouched with my son’s fists clasped in my left hand, my right steadying me on the bed.
I started to say something, and could not. I only held Zannanza, whose threats had become unintelligible, but who yet jerked in my grasp.
“Abuya,” hiccoughed Muwattish, her round face puffed, “Abuya, I want my mother.”
Like an adult she bowed, and then tottered over to Zannanza and tugged on his hair. “Brother, brother, you are supposed to be brave. Protect us! Zannanza, you said you would! Do something!”
And then she stood quiet streaming silent tears with her hands clasped together before her, and like magic my son stopped his blind surging and I let him go.
He staggered back, caught himself, went to his sister and put an arm around her. His chin trembled, but he said quite clearly, “What are you going to do with us? Will we be killed?”
And they both looked at me and I had to say something. “I…” And I could not speak a word from my mouth, so I gathered them in against me and held them and whispered in their ears that I loved them and they were prince and princess whom I had sired, and nothing would ever change that. I promised them that things would be well with us, and when I had said that little Muwattish asked me why I sent their mother away.
“Because she no longer loved me, and no longer wanted to be my queen.”
“But Abuya,” Muwattish whispered back, “she told us she loved you, she told us to tell you that, and –”
It went on like that for a very long time, and all that I did over the years to erase it has come to naught. I tried every way I knew to make it up to them for what I had done. But I had lost them, and never, really, got them back. Whatever I did to elevate them, brought them low, and everything that I have tried to accomplish in their behalf has turned to offal. There are occurrences in life that go ill from their inception, and no matter how ardently you pursue them the trail is ever awash with tears. A bad thing cannot be made good; a man cannot will success out of failure, any more than the Sea Peoples could raise their islands back up again when they sank below the waves.
Khinti haunted me faithfully across the seasons. I suffered anguish in Hattusas, where her stamp yet hovered, so I spent much of the winter traveling in the Lower Country. I performed festivals with a relish, for they kept me busy and on the move. Into the king’s estates in the different towns I put women of this moment or that. I suppose I was working a revenge of sorts. Some men would have lost themselves in winey debauch. I ravished a few noble ladies and had to make wives of them, but on the whole I collected concubines and stocked my houses in the different lands and worked endless politics in a round of chariot-diplomacy that became a sort of mobile court as we readied for the spring’s foray.
I wrote Burnaburiash of Babylon that if among his eligible daughters he had one fit to exercise queenship that I would be pleased to take her as a wife. I listed my requirements, putting an
emphasis upon intelligence and literacy and judgmental acumen, but not leaving out that I needed someone young enough to bear me children and kind-hearted enough to raise her predecessor’s. And I sent rich gifts, chariots and fine stallions, and a scepter of good iron and a hand-mirror of silver and gold, and even an iron dirk, so that Burnaburiash would know that I was serious-indeed.
That was the last message I got out before the snows gated the mountain passes. I sent it from Kumanni, where I had found it necessary at last to go, and where I had at last faced the Priest, who of all my grown sons was the most incensed by what had occurred.
It was not pleasant, with the Priest, over Khinti. Telipinus had been a babe when Daduhepa died; Khinti was the only mother he had ever known. He went so far as to propose that I rescind the exile, and that he go to Ahhiyawa to persuade Khinti to return.
“I cannot do that,” I said, and walked out.
The Priest and I had nothing but formal communication between us until the spring’s campaigns made Telipinus’ ban of silence impractical.
I was numb with it by then; I no longer cared about the matter at all. I was studding myself to sleep each night with whomsoever, and in my mind then all women were no more than mares in a pasture. It is not at all the case, but, believing it I sired a son in the city of Ziplanda and a son in the city of Ankuwa on some very well born women and had to recognize them. While I was thinking that way, I was hurtful to my grown sons and those who cared about me, but no one could do any good with me, not anyone who tried.
In the matter of Himuili, no one seemed to understand what I was doing, but I was not too concerned about my public image just then.
When he was healed, in the coldest month of the year, I had him brought before me, and instructed him that he would be serving the armies as a field commander until he died a hero’s death in battle, and that he would be well-watched, but certainly free to do as he chose in day to day affairs and that I would in no way treat him worse than any other commander of ten whom I had.
I, the Sun Page 36