The Concubine's Son

by H A CULLEY

  The boy followed him from the large houses near the palace to the more modest area where many of the less wealthy merchants lived. Ibbi-Addad stopped outside one of the doors and knocked three times. The door was opened immediately and he went in. The boy made a mental note of the house’s location and went back to report to the agent who had employed him.

  The next morning Sin-Bel-Alim had a private audience with the king and Adiar.

  ‘As we thought, lord king, Ibbi-Addad couldn’t wait to relay the details of your agreement with Shamshi-Adad to his agent. Now we know who the messenger is, I will have my men in Susa keep a wary eye out for his arrival there and shadow him. If he goes to see Zuuthusu you will have the evidence you need to charge him with treachery.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you insist on evidence and a trial. My father would have executed him as soon as he suspected him; that way we could have kept the news about the treaty with Shamshi-Adad and the attack on Mari secret.’

  Hammurabi smiled at his wife. ‘I know you have little patience with my obsession with dealing fairly, even with my enemies, but it is something I care deeply about and you won’t convince me to play the despot.’ Adiar bridled at the implication about her father but Hammurabi smiled to rob his words of offence. ‘I never knew your father, but if I acted in the way you suggest, I would feel as if I was a tyrant, that is all I meant.’

  Adiar had calmed down somewhat since her marriage but she could still display her fiery temper if she thought that she or her family were being criticised or insulted. She was now very near the time of her confinement and that had also helped her to mellow a little. Nevertheless, she was a long way from agreeing with her husband’s concept of justice.

  ‘Well, at least arrange for Zuuthusu to be assassinated, once we know where he is hiding.’

  Hammurabi shook his head. ‘The man is a murderer, there can be no dispute about that, but we must capture him and put him on trial for patricide so everyone can see that he is guilty. There are still those who whisper in dark corners that it was me who did the deed and that Zuuthusu is merely a scapegoat. We must demonstrate that my half-brother’s lies are just that.’

  ‘And how exactly are you going to bring him back here to face you?’

  ‘My hope is that he will eventually be brave enough to take the field against me and that we can capture him.’

  ‘Huh, he has eluded you twice now. If you won’t have him killed quietly, our only hope is that he will be killed on the battlefield before he can flee the next time.’

  ‘If there is a next time. The reason I don’t mind him and the Elamites knowing about our alliance with the Assyrians is that Siwe-Palar-Huppak is wary of the Assyrians and so he will avoid provoking them by attacking Eshnunna or us.’

  ‘Sometimes I think my husband is even cleverer than I am.’ Adiar flirted with him and, despite her swollen belly, he felt a stirring in his loins.

  As soon as the merchant returned from Susa he was arrested and thrown into the prison that Hammurabi had built of stone, despite the expense of importing it. Mud bricks rooms were not secure enough and he had filled in the pit in which Zuuthusu had held the elders as soon as he became king.

  Ibbi-Addad had panicked as soon as he heard about his agent’s arrest but he couldn’t bear to leave without his favourite possessions and a few concubines. Rihat, the captain of the city watch, watched the bustle of activity in the courtyard of his house from the palace wall. Bashaa stood beside him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to put the old man out of his misery and arrest him?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is a little cruel to let him think he is going to flee and join Zuuthusu. Mind you I would love to see their meeting. I cannot think that Zuuthusu will welcome him with open arms, now that his usefulness as a spy is over.’

  With that, Rihat collected ten of his men and headed down to arrest the traitor.

  Chapter Six - The Fall of Mari – 1788 BCE

  Hammurabi felt pretty pleased with life. Six months ago Adiar had presented him with a baby boy, who they had named Samuditana; Isiratuu had taken over as chief minister after the conviction and execution of Ibbi-Addad. To make matters even better, he had now escaped from Babylon and its petty intrigues for a while to go on campaign with a token force of five thousand men to help Shamshi-Adad to capture Mari. He discovered in the Assyrian king a man with the same ambitions and intellect as himself. However, he had been less impressed by his fellow king’s sons.

  The elder, Isme-Dagan, was competent enough but he had neither the ambition nor the ruthlessness of his father. Shamshi-Adad was now fifty and, although still fit and healthy, he was beginning to show signs of his age. He wasn’t likely to rule for more than another decade, at most. When the Assyrian king died, Hammurabi couldn’t see Isme-Dagan holding on to the empire his father was carving out.

  Yasmah-Addu was even worse. He lacked confidence in his own abilities and seemed happiest when just carrying out specific orders. He seemed incapable of using his own initiative at all. Hammurabi knew that Shamshi-Adad planned to put his second son on the throne of Mari as soon as he had subdued the kingdom. He couldn’t see him lasting long, especially after his father died, and the Babylonian king was already thinking about how to replace him with his own man when the time came. But first they had to capture the kingdom.

  The city of Mari lay some one hundred and sixty miles north west from Sippar. Although the two were connected by the Euphrates, the area between them was virtually uninhabited. The road along the east bank was little more than a dirt track. Marsh and reed beds lined the river whilst the land to the right of the road consisted of barren hills and desert.

  Hammurabi had brought his ten year-old brother along so he could learn something about the art of war. The boy had forgotten all about his outburst against his brother and had grown up considerably over the last eighteen months. Nevertheless, he was only ten and had taken great delight in waving enthusiastically at the crowds as he stood in his father’s four-wheeled chariot at the head of the army marching out of Babylon. Now, however, the monotony of their slow passage up the Euphrates, coupled with the jolting motion of the chariot with its solid wooden wheels, had made him morose and miserable. To make matters even worse, Arishaka kept getting bitten by the insects that lived in the marshland near the river.

  ‘How much further is it?’ he asked for the third time that morning.

  ‘About ten miles less than the last time you asked,’ his brother replied, smiling to himself. ‘We are now in Mari so I’m about to send out the camels as a screen in front of us to make sure we don’t run into any enemy patrols. Would you like to go with them?’ The happy smile that lit up the boy’s face was answer enough.

  The fifty camels sent out as scouts in advance of the main body divided themselves into five groups of ten. Two groups rode ahead of the main body either side of the road whilst the other three spread out on the right flank of the column, travelling about a mile to the east. Arishaka sat in a double saddle strapped on the hump of a camel behind a boy a year or two older than he was. He had been placed in the middle group of the three on the flank as being the safest place for him. After a few miles they came cross some sand dunes which blocked their path. The scouts in front of them elected to skirt the dunes to the west but Arishaka’s group headed up into the sea of sand.

  The boy had never been into a sand desert before and he gazed around him in wonder at the dunes, formed into enormous heaps by the wind. His camel walked majestically up one side of a dune and then picked up speed as it strode down the reverse side. The army trudging along in its cloud of dust, lay spread out below him to the left, looking like so many ants. The dunes rose in fantastic shapes in every other direction. For a while the road near the river dropped out of sight as they dropped down the far side of a dune bigger than the rest.

  They climbed up to the crest of yet another dune to find a group of thirty or so warriors standing watching the army pass below them. One of th
em was using his polished bronze dagger to catch the sun’s rays and make it flash towards a distant hill that rose beside the river several miles away. As the two groups became aware of each other, there were two quick flashes from the top of the far hill, presumably an acknowledgment of whatever message had been sent to them. Then the camel riders sent two volleys of arrows at the patrol from Mari before turning and heading back to tell Hammurabi that they were being watched.

  There were only a few archers with the enemy patrol, but two of them managed to put an arrow each into one of the camels before it could run down the dune out of range. The camel collapsed, bellowing in agony, and both the camel boy and Arishaka were thrown off their perches. Arishaka remembered thinking how surprisingly hard and hot the sand was just before he passed out.

  ~#~

  Shamshi-Adad stood before the walls of Terqa, Mari’s second city, some twenty miles from the city of Mari itself. The walls were only fifteen feet high, but they were protected by a ditch filled with water from the tributary of the Euphrates on which Terqa stood. The bridges over the ditch leading to the three sets of gates had been destroyed so the Assyrians couldn’t use a battering ram without filling in the deep ditch first. Instead he decided to build an earthen ramp up which his soldiers could charge, and so take the city by storm.

  The problem was the enormous loss of manpower involved. Everyone carrying soil and rocks with which to build the ramp became a target. Shamshi-Adad solved this by working at night, when visibility was much reduced, protecting his workers using large wicker screens behind which they worked and lastly, by using local villagers rounded up from the whole of northern Mari. It was a sparsely populated land outside of the major cities, but it was extensive and had numerous small villages.

  His other option, to starve the city until it surrendered was too risky. The Syrian kingdom of Yamhad lay only a few days’ march to the north west and he wanted to secure Terqa before the Syrians had a chance to intervene.

  Once the ramp reached the edge of the ditch the work got more difficult. Because of the water the wicker screens could no longer be placed so as to protect the workers and Shamshi-Adad had to carry out his threat to kill a few workers before the rest would carry on filling the ditch with rubble.

  However, no sooner had the stones been deposited than they were washed away by the river.

  The solution was to dam the place where the Euphrates had been diverted to flow around the city. Once this had been done, at the cost of many hundreds more lives and another night, the work of filling in the ditch and continuing with the ramp could start again.

  ‘Why didn’t we wait until the Babylonians arrived, father?’ Ishme-Dagan wanted to know. ‘They could have led the assault and we could have saved many Assyrian lives.’

  His father muttered something impatiently under his breath, then he turned to his son, striving to put a tolerant expression on his face. ‘Because I don’t know when they will arrive, they would have to pass through Marian territory to get here and I want them fresh for the attack on Mari itself, which will be a much tougher nut to crack. Any other facile questions? No? Good.’

  Two nights later the ramp was complete and at dawn the next day Shamshi-Adad watched with his sons as his men stormed the town. He allowed them one day to sack the place and then he marched south to the agreed meeting place with Hammurabi, leaving a garrison of two thousand men behind to repair the damage to the fortifications, destroy the ramp and hold Terqa against any attack from Yamhad.

  ~#~

  Arishaka only lost consciousness for a minute. When he woke up, feeling dazed and sick, he felt something pricking him painfully in the chest.

  ‘Careful with him,’ a voice said in Arkkadian ‘Judging by his fine embroidered linen kilt and the jewelled dagger he was carrying, he is someone important, or more likely he is related to someone important, which is almost the same thing.’

  Arishaka opened his eyes and squinted up at the man who had spoken. He couldn’t make out his features because the sun was directly behind his head, but he was a large man who spoke with authority. The boy came to the correct conclusion that he was the leader of the Marian patrol. He felt for where his dagger should have been but it was gone. It had been a present from Hammurabi: a fine bronze dagger with a gold hilt and sheath decorated with lapis lazuli stones.

  ‘Get him on his feet, quickly now. Those camel fanciers will be back with their friends before long. It’s time we weren’t here.’

  Instead of heading towards Mari, as he had expected, Arishaka was surprised when the patrol headed further into the sand dunes instead. He trudged along despondently, earning many kicks and prods from the butt of a spear when he didn’t keep up with the gruelling pace set by the patrol leader. Only once did the boy glance back the way they had come. He was cuffed around his throbbing head when he did so, but he took heart from the barest split-second when he had glimpsed someone on a camel behind them. Before he was forced to face front again the rider had disappeared; when his guards looked suspiciously in the same direction they saw nothing.

  Walking through the hot, loose sand was exhausting and his throat was so dry he could only croak his thanks when they stopped briefly for a water break. Half an hour later they emerged from the dunes onto a rocky plain through which a river wound its way. At first Arishaka thought it might be the Euphrates, along which the Babylonian army was advancing, but then he realised the river was too narrow; it had to be a tributary.

  The sun was sinking over the bare hills to the west when the Marians made camp for the night. After he had been given a clay dish containing a small portion of pottage and was allowed to drink his fill of water, they bound his hands and feet with jute cord and left him to sleep under a blanket that stank of sweat, but which would keep him warm in the chill of the desert night. At first his mind raced with the events of the day, concern about his predicament and speculation about what his brother would do when he was told; but, eventually, he fell into a sleep in which he had a nightmare about being sold as a slave to a brutal master.

  ~#~

  Adiar and Hammurabi had developed a very successful rapport based on mutual respect, shared confidences, intellect and a more than satisfactory sexual relationship. Whilst she missed his company and prayed daily for his safe return, she was enjoying the freedom that being in sole charge of Babylon gave her. It was true that she had to consult Hammurabi’s inner council before making any major decisions but she flirted shamelessly with Sin-Bel-Alim, Rihat and Bashaa and they were completely under her spell. Isiratuu was less susceptible to her charms but even he admired her.

  So when Adiar ordered the arrest of Kinau, the chief elder since Isiratuu’s elevation to be a minister, Rihat obeyed without thinking too much about the likely consequences. The charge was treachery on the fairly flimsy grounds that it was rumoured that he had argued when drunk that Zuuthusu wasn’t completely evil and had some redeeming qualities.

  There was uproar in the city council chamber when his arrest became known. Isiratuu had been able to calm the elders down for now by promising to get Kinau released but, by her action, Adiar had changed overnight from being the darling of the people to being regarded as a tyrant. Isiratuu had a few choice words for Rihat on his way to see the queen. He didn’t even bother to reply to the captain of the city watch’s mumbled defence that he was only carrying out orders. He merely stared at him until Rihat lowered his eyes to the ground.

  He collected Bashaa on his way before knocking on the door to the queen’s private audience chamber. Adiar was closeted with Sin-Bel-Alim discussing the latest news from Eshnunna.

  ‘Ah, come in. We’ve had some good news at last. Our alliance with Assyria seems to have frightened the Elamites. They are now being much more conciliatory in their communications with my brother.’

  ‘That is good news indeed, lady,’ Isiratuu replied quietly, though he was seething inside. ‘But I fear I have some news that is not so welcome.’ He paused wondering how best to
put it whilst Adiar raised a quizzical eyebrow. Ignoring her look he continued. ‘One of the things that has endeared the king to the people is his fair dealing and his sense of justice. They are therefore at something of a loss to understand why their chief elder has been arrested when he has broken no law.’

  ‘The man is a traitor! He defended Zuuthusu.’

  ‘He was the worse for drink and merely said that the man had some redeeming qualities,’ Isiratuu replied calmly.

  ‘How can someone who commits patricide and usurps the throne have redeeming qualities?’

  ‘But you have locked up the most important man in the city, outside the palace, without a trial.’ Isiratuu was beginning to lose control of his temper now.

  ‘Perhaps it might be prudent to confine Kinau to his house for now, lady, until he can be tried,’ Sin-Bel-Alim suggested, trying to stop the confrontation from getting out of hand.

  ‘I have no intention of trying him. When my father was king he felt no need to ask his inferiors to pass judgement when he had already done so.’ The queen’s eyes flashed dangerously.

  ‘But your father is not king of Babylon, lady,’ Bashaa spoke for the first time. ‘King Hammurabi feels strongly about these matters. He would have questioned Kinau first and, if he felt that he had done wrong, then he would have sent him for trial. Rough justice is not his way.’

  ‘But it is my way. Now, get out all of you, before I have you arrested too.’ Isiratuu saw that she was in such a rage that there was no reasoning with her, so he led the others out of the room.