“Shepherd, it is the only thing that makes any sense.”
“You can not know his heart, Tasmi. Any man will jump at the chance of life when death’s spittle is on his cheek. Later, when the specter is remanded to memory, the abstract fear will not hold him: the horse does not respond to the memory of the bit, only the bit in his mouth will do.”
“He has nowhere to go.”
“He can go back to Egypt, taking his country with him.”
“Tsk. He is a prince, soon to be a king. He will remain loyal to his oath. And if he does not, I can crush him then. Then, now, it makes no difference. The only way to test the wind is to lick your finger and stick it out there. It is worth a thousand words of caution to turn him loose and see what he will do. And I am planning to keep him busy. He goes, next new moon, upon the first day of the New Year! And that is that. Let us talk of something else.”
“What?”
“Like why I, the Sun summon a certain Shepherd, man of the Storm God to my presence, and must languish the entire winter in Hattusas before he sees fit to arrive.”
“Did I not put your affairs before my own and labor the whole year in Hattusas while you went out plundering without me? Was I not getting fat and out-of-condition and bleary in the eyes and rusty of tongue while you were romping about in the lands of eternal summer –?”
“Eternal oven, you mean. Five months of blasting heat and five months of arid bleak nights and windy white days and that sky with never a cloud… you want the south, Kuwatna-ziti? It is yours. I give it to you. Laughing at my Majesty, are you? Keep it up, and I will do it: then you will be a poor sway-backed king trying to hold up his piece of heaven with the rest of us, and you will not be laughing any more! Now, why did you not come to greet me?”
“Tasmi, I have a life of my own. Not much of one, has the Empire left me, but what little there is, is dear unto my heart.”
“That is not right; you cannot have what is denied to me!”
“Is it not fair? You went out on the most important campaign since Mursili the Mighty raided Babylon, and you left me here to copy treaties and feed the gods their meal! Now, since you were coming back, I took a leave. I went to my daughter’s wedding. I visited my house in Arinna. With my lord’s permission, I reacquainted myself with my wives.” He was barking mad, was the Shepherd.
“Kuwatna-ziti, I had no idea you longed so for the field. I am sorry, truly touched. Not again will I do that to you – but this year, there was no one else who could serve in my stead.”
“Will you say that to me next year? I will not hear you!”
“I have just said I would not! Shepherd, must you yet berate me like a parent?’”
“Tasmi, you have lost all sense of proportion. I am merely restoring it. I have certain delicate matters to bring to your attention.”
“What, then?” I said in a deliberate, calm tone, trying to get my temper in hand, and what rode all about my anger: guilt that the Shepherd had been penned up: as he said, I had done it. But I had had to do it. Still, I felt remorse.
“The matter of Telipinus. He has come to me and asked me to mediate between you.”
I squeezed shut my eyes and harnessed an imaginary team of horses to an imaginary chariot, very slowly, giving attention to each detail.
“What makes him think he cannot come to me himself?”
“He wants to come to you himself, but he is not ready to meet with your Tawananna – with Malnigal. He said to tell you that his heart just will not allow it until he speaks with you privately.”
“All right, let it be done. But you are not going to obstruct me again, as you did in the matter of Titai, are you? Remember what sorrow came from it? This time, it will not be I who suffers. I have got this Babylonian bitch, and I care not at all about her personally, but she will be the Queen of Hatti, and all will accept her, because it is expedient, because her father is a Great King, my equal, and his position and his friendliness and his strategic location are important to me. And if it comes down to it, I should not need to justify this affair, which has been so long in culminating that everyone had plenty of time to accustom themselves to it.”
“Tasmi, in the matters of your women, I would never again presume to interfere. In the matter of a queen, your proclamation is sufficient to demand my loyalty.”
“Then, great Shepherd, help me. For in the matter of Telipinus, I cannot see how I can prevail. The very thought of confronting him turns me pale and weak, as if I were a woman myself.”
“I heard of how you settled the matter in the cases of Arnuwandas and Piyassilis. Was that really necessary?”
“Think about it for a moment, and then tell me you would not have done it exactly the same. I have no room for an additional woman in my heart: Khinti’s ghost yet resides there. And even if I was not haunted like a man who has failed to perform his god’s sacrifice, still, I would have done it: they, my sons, must not feel that I have thrown them over; nor must Malnigal be allowed to harbor in her heart any dreams of coming to power over them.”
“Tasmi, I wonder if you are not taking out on this girl all your sorrows; and that leads me to wonder how she can possibly understand it and you. You will make her dangerous, if she is not already, by constantly reassuring her of how little is the place for her in your life. Few concubines could accept that. How much harder will it be on a Queen? And as for there being no room in your heart for another woman, she is already in your bed. Is the Sun so afraid of what he might come to feel? She is pregnant, I have heard. And when she bears, if it is a son, and if by then you have not left off punishing her for her sex and all the hurts you fancy you have endured from previous queens, then how will it go? She is not in any way aware of the ancient history that obsesses you and makes her life cold and lonely: she knows nothing of your previous queens. But she knows Queenship. She is a princess. If she bears you a son and you still treat her like a namra, she will surely fall to manipulating affairs to her son’s benefit – you will have made it her only salvation. And then you will have created all the troubles you are laboring to abort aforetime.”
I had fled from him to the window, refused his face and sought the view instead. To the mountains I spoke then, very softly, saying: “Then tell me what to do, for in these matters I am helpless as a child, blind as a beggar, weak as a half-starved slave.”
It was not until I had commended Aitakama of Kinza to the fates, sent him back to his kingship with an introduction to Aziru of Amurru in his hand and the Sun’s wishes in his mind, that Telipinus deigned to visit me in Hattusas.
The day was not propitious. I had just received a messenger from Amurru, whose tidings had not at all pleased me. It was midsummer and hotter than I could ever remember it having been in Hattusas at that season. When we went down into Syria and there was a drought there, and when that drought continued to plague the Mitanni lands the entire time I was attacking them, year after year, folk said that it was the gods who had brought the drought upon the lands, to aid the Hittite armies. I wondered, that morning, whose gods were getting the credit for this season’s heat: Hatti was not officially fighting anyone. Tushratta’s whereabouts were unknown. Egypt’s palaces seemed sleeping in the summer sun: to Aitakama of Kinza’s assumption of his father’s throne, the Egyptians had made no reply; nor to his delicate announcement of his ‘autonomy’ over his father’s land; nor to his obligatory pleas for Egyptian money and troops. By my will he was continuing to suggest he was yet an Egyptian vassal. Meanwhile, he and Aziru of Amurru were making each other’s acquaintance, raiding hither and thither, setting small towns afire and looting in a way they must have hoped would seem to me random, but which was in reality a canny plan by which together they were enlarging their borders and propping up their own kingships by picking off smaller princes and incorporating the conquered kingdoms into Amurru or Kinza.
No sooner had I sent orders, by way of Piyassilis, Tarkhunta-zalma and six hundred chariots, that both Aitakama and Aziru prepare t
o lend their strength to Hittite forces I was just then loosing on Egypt’s country Amqa, than I received Piyassilis’ courier, with a message he had intercepted from the beleaguered princes of the Amqa area to Pharaoh, saying: ‘we are in the land of Amqa, in the cities of the king Aitakama of Kinza, who has gone to meet the troops of Hatti and he has set the cities of the king on fire’.
And I was distressed, for more than one reason. I was distressed because I had not wanted it revealed that the instigators in the Amqa fighting had been Hittite: as I have said, officially we were not fighting anyone. I was distressed because Aziru’s name was conspicuously missing from the document before me, in fact where it should have been was Hatti incriminated instead. Aziru was not following his orders, not at all. And I was distressed, finally, by the interception of the message itself: where one messenger is apprehended, five, six, or more might have slipped through.
So, having ascertained that Aziru was no longer cooperating with his brother vassal Aitakama, I had been about to call for Pikku and dictate an order to Piyassilis to arrest the Amurrite and bring him up to me, when I was interrupted by the announcement of the arrival in my palace of the messenger from Amurru.
Now, it was a good thing, the way I was feeling, that this messenger was no brother or son of Aziru. He might never have left there alive, might never have gotten to deliver his message.
But when I saw he was not, I said nothing of my wrath, only bade him leave what he had brought and wait without.
This he did, and when he was gone I cracked the clay envelope on the table’s edge without any concern as to what might be broken within.
But the tablet slid whole out of its sleeves, and there was no message from Aziru to me scribed into the clay. No, there was not. But there was no need. What he had sent me was a copy of a letter he had sent to Naphuria Akhenaten, “explaining” to Pharaoh why he had not been able to rebuild the sacked city Sumuru, and why he had not been in Amurru awaiting the Egyptian Lord Hani, a prognostication he had made while he was submitting himself to my Majesty after coming to meet me from Tunib, if you will recall. Truth notwithstanding, this is what the tablet said:
“As to Hani, I dwelt in Tunib, and did not know he had come. I went after him, but did not overtake him. Now may he come safely, and may you, my lord Pharaoh, ask him how I, Aziru, have taken care of him. My brothers stood before Hani, gave him oxen, birds, food and drink. I have given horses and asses for his journey…. When I come before Pharaoh, my lord, Hani will come to meet me like a mother and a father. You say: ‘You held back from Hani’. But your gods and the sun know that I was dwelling in Tunib. As to the rebuilding of Sumuru, Pharaoh, my lord, has spoken. The kings of Nuhasse are hostile, and have taken my cities on the advice of the man Hatib. Consequently, I have not rebuilt it. But now I will rebuild it in haste. You know that Hatib has taken half the implements and all the gold and silver you gave me. Furthermore you say: ‘Why did you take care of the messenger of Hatti, and not of my messenger?’ This is the land of my lord, Pharaoh. And you have placed me under the regents. Let your messenger come. I will give provisions, ships, boxwoods and other woods.”
So, smiling in spite of myself, I decided not to call Pikku to send to Piyassilis an order to arrest and deport Aziru to Hatti. Rather, I called Pikku and dictated a brief condolence to Aziru in the matter of his troubles with Hatib, and a suggestion that when I next heard from him I would hear he was aiding Aitakama in troubling Amqa, the country which yet so well-loved Pharaoh, and banished the matter from my thoughts, that I might prepare myself to receive my son the Priest.
It had been nearly a year since I had last seen Telipinus, since I had come back from campaigning in Syria by way of Nuhasse he and I had not been face to face. There had been no ill words spoken between us, but there had been no words at all. A priest or a king can always lay the responsibility for his unwillingness to face this matter or that at the Gods’ feet: because of celebrating this festival in such-and-such a town; or performing some long-neglected ritual on a riverbank; or sniffing out the truth about whatever case by incubation, the Priest of Kumanni had always been too busy to meet with me.
And that day, Malnigal was about to go into labor. As an expectant father paces the hall awaiting the cry of his newborn, so did I pace my small, dark retreat, awaiting my intractable prince. No thought had I then for my wife’s condition, only for the conditions she had brought about between myself and Telipinus. If the truth be known, I had given no thought to anything else but this long-awaited visit by Telipinus since I had heard of it eight days before. I think now that I would not have pressed Aitakama and Aziru so fiercely into line and so dangerously into service, if I had not been thusly preoccupied. Then, matters flew from my attention like messenger doves once their duties had been performed. No sooner did an affair of foreign lands alight upon my hand and I make an answer, than it flew away again and left me wondering what under heaven I might say to the Priest to restore relations between us to what they once had been.
When I was sitting in my favorite chair, supported by the ever-crouching carved sphinxes of Hatti, with my son Telipinus’ bony, ascetic frame opposite me and his piercing gaze reproving me, their determination as yet unspoken, I still did not have a single glimmer of hope that things might be made well between us. So, not having any alternative, I said:
“What can I do that will heal this rift, that will bring back to the Sun the love of his son, Telipinus? What cure has the Priest for his father, who is sick with grief? What will turn my prince’s face back toward me, you who have separated from me and no longer love me?”
And I could not further speak to him. Never had I spoken of love in so many words to anyone since the days of Titai. Never had I said it to Khinti, never to any of them. I found it harder to say than a submission uttered upon one knee.
Telipinus, blinking, his countenance twisting about, rose up from his chair, took a step toward me with outstretched hand, then drew back. And the hand became a fist that resounded upon the table, and with a sob he put his weight on the flat of his hands, and leaned over toward me, tears like rivers inundating him, and demanded brokenly how I could speak thusly. After all that I had done, how could I expect him to love me? Did the gods love me, and I ignore their worship? Did my wife, his step-mother, love me, and I banish her from the land? Did my children love me, and I take another above them?
I took him, then, in my arms like a lover. And he struggled a moment, and the manly rage went out of him, and the priestly censure, and he sobbed against me, a boy once more. I stroked his hair as I had never done when he was small, and murmured things my kingship had never let me say when his ears longed to hear them, and all the time my priestly prince sobbed little gulping sobs that choked him. Some time in that interval, when I could no longer speak, his arms went round me and pulled tight, and we stood there however long, holding each other as if by our desperation we could press so close that no person or thing could ever again insinuate itself in between.
We were like that, startled out of it by the importunate pounding of a messenger battering on the door to say that Malnigal had entered into her labor, and requested my presence.
“I will come. Tell her,” I called thickly, without allowing the door to open, that none see the tear-swollen faces and trembling limbs of two who ruled in Hatti.
“I will go with you,” said Telipinus through puffy lips. “There is no better time than the present.”
“Then,” I replied; dashing water on my face and inviting him to do the same, “let us see to it.”
She was lying upon a couch I had taken from the palace at Alalakh; its feet were ivory carved in the likeness of horses’ hooves; its frame was boxwood into which a processional scene was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with bitumen, with jasper and alabaster. The pitcher from which cool cloths were laid upon her brow was of solid gold. The couch had been spread with yards of pure white linen, a fortune’s worth of it, and on that snowy surface Malnigal’s soundl
ess struggles were near to consummation as we arrived.
Her legs up, taut belly shining, her head thrown back and eyes rolling, she gasped: “My… husband… I was waiting, waiting until you had come.” And with a groan deep as the earth’s when it moves, she raised up her belly toward the ceiling.
I had time to reach her, through the tinkling sistrums and the clouds of blue, pungent smoke, through the inevitable crowd of palace functionaries who attend the birth-throes of queens. As I stroked her brow, calmed her and offered my hand for her to bite or squeeze, Telipinus insinuated himself by the birthbed and dismissed the officiating priest. She raised her head, to which black curls clung wetly, to examine him, whose voice was not as the other priest’s.
“My son, Telipinus the Priest. Your son…”
“Priest,” she grated, “I am ready if you are.”
And even as Telipinus droned the incantation and the Old Women muttered, Malnigal screamed, and arched, and beads of perspiration turned to rivulets and inundated her convulsion-wracked form. A moment, and two, and three, and Telipinus invoked the Lady, and his hands reached for her belly. Malnigal, with an abrupt shudder, lay motionless, panting. Telipinus, crooning the gods’ words, reached between her legs, and raised up the bloody, struggling child and laid it on her collapsed belly. And she reached out with her hands, blindly, for her eyes were closed and streaming tears, whispering, “Suppiluliumas, his name, his name. Give a name to your son.” And Telipinus, wiping his priestly hands, leaned close and took the newborn prince from her, handing him into my arms. Whereupon Malnigal stiffened, half-rose, fell back, and demanded her mirror. When the silver mirror was brought, she bade me face him into the mirror and bespeak his name.
The Priest looked at me and I back at him, for it was her own Babylonian mystery she invoked upon us all then. But the girl, so beautiful, flushed with exertion and glowing in that moment of a woman’s triumph, got her way. Holding the child, who coughed, but did not cry, I knelt down by the bed, and spoke the child’s name, acknowledging him as a full prince then and there before all, and Malnigal held the mirror up to his face and my own, blew on the silver to fog it, and with her finger tracing a sign upon the misted metal, said, “Mursili, king of the universe, lord over creation, son of sons,” and a great deal more I did not understand in some ancient tongue.
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