The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

And this is what his mother had made of him, and in only half a year.

  . . . . .

  On the evening of the sixteenth day of Ab, the god at last would speak. I spent the morning of that day in Esharhamat’s arms, in the house on the Street of Nergal. We had to leave the windows open, for that upper room was like a furnace, but somehow Esharhamat’s body was always cool.

  “This may be the last time for us,” I said, and as I spoke the words my heart felt dead within me.

  “And if it is not, what then? When you are named marsarru, will you ask the king if we may be married?”

  “Those will be the first words to come from my mouth. You know that.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “But if I am not the marsarru?”

  “You will be.”

  “But if I am not?”

  “Then promise me—one thing only.”

  “If I can, I will.”

  “That you will come back here tomorrow.” She moved in my embrace, settling her check against my heart. “That in the first hour after midday, you will be here. I could not live if I did not see you once more.”

  “I will be here,” I said. “I promise. If I die for it.”

  And thus we waited through that final day.

  Chapter 15

  For two days after the auspices had declared that Esarhaddon must succeed him, the king hesitated. There was no announcement to the people, although they guessed—within hours after the baru had announced that the ginu’s entrails had been found to be clear of blemishes, a mob went to my brother’s palace and pelted his door with garbage. For two days Esarhaddon was not named marsarru and was not installed in the house of succession. The nation waited uneasily while her king struggled with his own heart.

  There were reports that some among the king’s younger sons were whispering rebellion within the ranks of the army, although nothing ever came of this, and it is well known that a certain beardless scribe was spreading reports that the priests had somehow played a trick with the omens to put a false successor next to the throne.

  And for all this I fear I must bear the blame. It was not my brother’s fault that so many voices were raised against him, but mine, for I had been too thorough in preparing the people to receive me as the Lord Sennacherib’s heir. They had been led to expect it, to regard it as inevitable, as the king’s choice and the god’s and therefore their own. Of course they felt cheated—and of course they blamed my brother. This was the fault of my presumption. It was my failure, not his.

  But finally the king appeared in public with Esarhaddon at his right hand and declared it to be the god’s will that the son of Naq’ia, his only living wife, should be his heir. There was no rejoicing, but the people accepted the king’s word and there was peace. It was, however, noted that the next day, the nineteenth day of Ab and the first in which the sun shone on my brother as marsarru, was an unlucky day in which men dressed in rags and ate no cooked food and did not bed with their wives. Thus did Esarhaddon come into his inheritance and thus, for me, were the words of the maxxu fulfilled: “Do not think that happiness and glory await you here, Prince, for the god reserves you to another way. Here all things will be bitter—love, power, friendship.”

  I was not in the city when the king broke his silence. I had already asked for and received a commission as shaknu of Amat and the northern provinces, where a border war with the mountain peoples of the east seethed continually like a cooking pot over a low fire. I would be a soldier again, I told myself, and perhaps I would die, if not a glorious then perhaps at least a useful death, for I felt that life had scratched the last word on my tablet—and all this when I was not yet even twenty years old.

  But before the king would consent to let me go he had to be dissuaded from ordering Esarhaddon’s arrest, that he could have him murdered in some dark cellar.

  “I am still king,” he raged, pacing back and forth, back and forth across the floor of his private apartments. In the middle of the night he had summoned me, and he, I, and the Lord Sinahiusur were alone together behind his locked door. “For all of what Rimani Ashur may or may not have found in the entrails of a dead goat, I am still king! Eh? Yes? You should have seen his face, Tiglath; his teeth were chattering, in this heat, and his skin was as gray as granite. That cursed priest was lying to me. He and your donkey brother are in a conspiracy; and by the great gods I’ll have them both hanging by their heels before first light. Eh? How will they like that? The traitors—the traitors!”

  Back and forth he paced, his sandaled feet slapping against the tile floor. I had received his summons expecting that it meant I had been chosen, and now I watched his tireless, restless wrath with weary eyes, my mind numb. I would not be marsarru. I would never have Esharhamat as my wife. My brain did not seem to have space even for these two simple facts.

  “There are no traitors, Dread Lord,” I said finally—my voice sounded distant, or as if it belonged to someone else. “You yourself have called Rimani Ashur an honest man. . .”

  “Yes, but he is a priest! Priests. . .” The king my father pronounced the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “A priest, but an honest man. And my brother Esarhaddon is the last one who would dare to tamper with the god’s mysteries. We—you must accept this as Ashur’s will.”

  “I will kill Esarhaddon. With the knife in my own hand I will open his belly so that his guts spill onto the ground like a basketful of wet washing.”

  “If you do, my father, then you must seek another son than me to rule after you.”

  His head snapped around to look at me and his eyes blazed, but I was not afraid of his anger—it seemed to me that probably in my whole life I would never be afraid of anything again.

  “If you kill Esarhaddon, if you do this wickedness, this blasphemy, if you deny him his life and his rights as your heir, then I will leave this land and never return. Dread Lord, you will never look upon my face more.”

  “Eh? What is the boy. . ?”

  “The boy is wiser than you are, brother,” said the Lord Sinahiusur, his voice sad and calm. “Would you invite civil war?”

  “We will have that in any case, eh? We will have that in any case, once I am dead—do you imagine the army will accept Esarhaddon, who would rebuild Babylon tomorrow if he could? Do you think they will accept him? Do you? Eh? Do you?”

  The king collapsed into a chair and stared down at his feet as if he felt they too had somehow betrayed him.

  “They will accept him if you accept him. They will accept him if Tiglath will accept him.” The turtanu raised his eyes to me. “What say you, Tiglath? Will you accept the god’s will, or will you divide the nation by making war upon the brother you have said you love?”

  “You know my answer to that. Lord—you have heard it before.”

  He nodded. He understood.

  “I feel pity for you, nephew,” he said finally. “This is what comes of men believing they can rule the god, who must have his own will in the end, yet it is hard. You feel this punishment most bitterly, although the sin is not yours.”

  “The sin will not be yours,” the maxxu had said. I started at the echo, and the Lord Sinahiusur and I exchanged a glance that made me wonder how much he could have known of that matter.

  Yet I had only to remember Arad Ninlil to doubt that I was so without sin. Had I consented, along with Esharhamat? If it was so, then the god had found a means of punishing us.

  “I will kill Esarhaddon—yes, I will have his life.”

  The king stared at me with dead eyes. He no longer believed his own words and his anger was spent, leaving only grief. I went to him and knelt by his chair, and he put his arms about my neck and wept. As if his heart were broken, he wept.

  “And what of you?” he asked finally, when the tears were spent and he was calm again. “What of you, my son—eh? Esarhaddon will never sit easy on his throne as long as you are alive. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I have nothing to fe
ar from Esarhaddon, nor he from me.”

  “Yes—the love of brothers is a beautiful thing.”

  He said it with a certain distaste, as if acknowledging a dangerous weakness. He sat silent, looking at nothing, seeming to brood over the wickedness of love.

  “And what of you—here, now?”

  “I must leave the city for a time,” I answered. “A long time, I think. There must be no focus for dissatisfaction with the god’s will. Give Esarhaddon his chance, and he will shine brightly enough.”

  “Where will you go, my son?”

  “Dread Lord, if you love me, send me where you would have blood spilled. I would fight a war—long and hard and terrible. I would have my heart rubbed smooth of all softness.”

  The king my father looked up at the Lord Sinahiusur, who nodded his agreement.

  “I cannot yet say what I will do,” he murmured, his eyes shifting nervously, as if he could bear to look at nothing for more than an instant. “Nothing is settled—I will send you word.”

  I bowed and left his presence. He and his turtanu—his brother, as Esarhaddon was mine—would speak together into the small hours of the morning, but there could be only one decision. The king would raise Esarhaddon until he stood next to the throne, and I would have to find some way of bearing my life. I could be happy without being king, but never to see her again. . .

  I went out into one of the palace’s many gardens, where the black night sky covered me from men’s sight, and I leaned against a pillar there in the darkness, trying to understand why I seemed to feel nothing. A hand seemed to press upon me that I might not breathe, but my heart was numb.

  “This is what it is to be dead,” I thought. “To be a soul fluttering on the night wind—bodiless, without passions, without ties to life.”

  There was a faint wind stirring, a hot, heavy wind, thick as water. It blew about me as if I were a shadow.

  “Esharhamat,” I whispered, and in that same instant I felt the sting of hot tears in my eyes and knew I was still a man to suffer over the loss of his beloved. “Esharhamat. . .”

  And there, in the darkness, where none might see, the god gave me a time to let this sorrow crack my breast.

  . . . . .

  In the first hour after dawn a messenger was shown into my presence bearing the king’s orders—it was to be Amat. I would leave Nineveh that night, quietly, taking with me an escort of only twenty men. I would travel with all haste; riders had already been dispatched to the north and my arrival would be expected. I would have full military powers, as if in time of war. I had one last day before leaving behind everything which had been, until that moment, my life.

  Amat—how that would gall Esarhaddon! And could the king have intended anything less?

  I waited one hour, and then another. Still no one came to tell me that Esarhaddon had been proclaimed marsarru—he might not even have been told yet. I would have to see him before I left. I would have to make my submission, that later there could never be any question that he did not command his brother’s loyalty.

  Esarhaddon’s palace was on the other side of the house of war, and I walked through the dusty barracks yards past troops of soldiers who stared at me as if at a prodigy of nature. Was I in disgrace and headed for death? Was I to be the next king? They could not guess, and thus knew not if they should raise their hands in salute or be still. Most only stared.

  I went straight to my brother’s rooms. None of his servants tried to stop me—they cowered away from me as if they suspected I carried a dagger beneath my cloak.

  It was Esarhaddon’s custom to breakfast late and I found him still at table, in a plain linen tunic, his feet bare, and surrounded by his women. I placed my clenched fist over my heart and bowed to him.

  One of the Babylonian twins started to giggle.

  “My Lord Tiglath is very formal this morning,” she chirped—this witticism was greeted by a wave of girlish laughter.

  “Get out.”

  Esarhaddon glared around him, and the laughter ceased at once.

  “Get out. Leave us—now!”

  Like a covey of startled quail, they scattered in all directions. Esarhaddon and I were quite suddenly alone.

  “Then my mother’s oracles were right,” he said.

  “Yes, Lord. They were right.”

  Lord. I saw the way my brother’s face changed when he heard me call him that—the word seemed to come as a disagreeable shock.

  “The king. . . he sent you to tell me?”

  I shook my head, struggling to seem blank, a mere messenger. There was now so much I could never say to Esarhaddon, whom I loved, who could never be quite my friend again.

  “The king will be brought to see things as they must be seen,” I said, not looking my brother too directly in the face. “The summons will come and with his own hand he will lead you to the house of succession, but—and be guided in this—you must give him time. Stay within the walls of your house, seeing no one, until he sends for you.”

  He watched me through narrowed eyes, as if half suspecting some treachery, but at last Esarhaddon nodded.

  “What you say is wise, Tiglath. It shall be as you advise. And now—come, sit down by me and take a cup of wine, like a brother. Or have you learned so quickly how not to love me?”

  There was that in his voice to tell me how I would have wounded him had I denied his wish, so I did as he asked, letting him fill my cup, although I thought I might choke on it.

  “It cannot be as it was between us,” I said finally. “You will be king in the Land of Ashur, and I will be your subject. It is best if we both understand as much, Esarhaddon. And there are other reasons as well.”

  “You mean, of course, the Lady Esharhamat.”

  “I will never see her again. She will be your wife and give you sons to follow you.”

  “Tiglath, my brother, for all I care you may have her and welcome. By the sixty great gods, I give her to you!” He put his hand on my arm, gripping me with strong fingers as if this were something we could settle between us.

  “Would that it were so easy, brother.”

  “Then I will make it up to you—see if I don’t. I will give you back like for like, double, triple! You may have Leah, and the Egyptian sisters—the pick of my women. Only leave me the Babylonian twins, I beg you. A man must have some pleasure in his life.”

  And the touching thing was that he meant it, every word. I knew then I could never make him understand. I could only shake my head.

  “I will leave Nineveh tonight,” I said. “I go to the north to make war on the mountain tribes. It is better thus.”

  Esarhaddon withdrew his hand from my arm.

  “I think you are jealous, Tiglath—jealous and spiteful. The very command I had asked for. I, who never wanted more. What he withholds from me, he gives to you with an open hand!”

  “You had Sumer.”

  “Sumer!” His face wrinkled with disgust. “I was a herder of sheep in Sumer—a man could die from lack of exercise ruling in Sumer. The king gives you this command only to show his contempt for me.”

  “He gives me this command because I asked for it”

  “Then it is you who despises me.”

  “You know that is a lie.”

  For a moment, while he seemed ready to rise from his seat and strike out, I thought all friendship might be over between us. But then, the struggle within him over, Esarhaddon grew calm.

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “Things have not turned out as we would have wished—that is all.”

  “Yes. That is the way of it.” He peered into his wine cup as if looking for something. “Do you suppose this could be the mongoose’s alu working itself out?”

  I did not know what answer to make, so I said nothing.

  For a long time we sat together in silence.

  “When do you leave? Tonight?” Esarhaddon asked finally, as if of a thing which had slipped his mind.

  “Yes, tonight.”


  “Then you will miss the ceremony of my elevation—I am sorry for that. But perhaps it would give you scant pleasure.”

  “I would see that, brother, with an easy heart and gladly. But I would not be present at your marriage.”

  “Women—they are a curse.” He shook his head, vexed, it seemed, by this insoluble difficulty. “You are sure you would not take a few of mine? Not even Leah?”

  I could not answer him—in such matters my brother’s head was filled with mud. I rose from the table. He rose with me and, when I tried once more to bow, took me in his arms and embraced me. He knew as well as I that, in some sense, we were parting forever.

  In the hallway that led to the front entrance, that door on which in less than an hour the people of Nineveh would vent their wrath, where now a bustle of ambitious men was already gathering, I met Naq’ia.

  “Then you have not come to murder my son, Tiglath Ashur?” she asked, smiling at her own witticism—she was radiant with triumph. I could not help thinking that she looked like a cat playing with a crippled mouse.

  “No, Lady. He is my brother and my lord.”

  “But now, I gather, no longer your friend?”

  “May a king have friends, Lady? If he may, then I am still his friend.”

  “Your behavior is all that it should be, Tiglath,” she said, holding out her hand to me. “But that was ever so. I congratulate you on the steady nobility of your character.”

  I knew she was mocking me, but I took her hand and touched it with my forehead, for she was now the mother of the future king and deserved this show of respect. But in my heart I hated her.

  I looked around at the men who watched us from the walls, not daring to venture too close—yes, of course, they all knew. The whole city knew by then. But Naq’ia had always known. I could see that in her face.

  “The god’s will has been accomplished,” she said, as if in answer to the question which had hardly shaped itself in my mind.

  Yes, of course. She had always known precisely how it would end. I could not help but ask myself how that could be, but the answer was not something I really desired to know—I had a sense, even then, that such knowledge as this it would be a blessing never to possess.