That was when he would need to save Chloe.
At the top, on the golden stage of the stepped temple, Shama pulled back the silver-cloth curtain that shrouded the doorway. Cheftu was blinded by hammered gold walls that reflected a single candle a dozen dozen times. He stepped inside, and Shama dropped the curtain behind him.
It was a giant’s room, a room for gods, not mortals. Everything was shaped from gold; the bed was nine feet long, the chair and table proportionate. The woman, resplendent in veils and jewels, who stood beside the bed, looked like a fairy creature. Fragile, elegant, and also gold.
She turned to face him.
Puabi.
* * *
“Chloe,” she heard a familiar voice say. “When you go around the next corner, step into the shadows.”
Nimrod.
She hesitated.
“Kidu sent me,” he said.
Chloe almost stumbled, but gained her footing and turned around the corner. Another woman waited—a tall blonde who looked no more like Chloe than Godzilla. But she was female. Nimrod introduced her as his wife, Nirg, while they threw Chloe’s veils and beads on the blonde. Then off she went, continuing up to the little blue room for anyone who might be watching from below. After appearing to enter the room, she would sneak back down to the courtyard, through the shadows.
“Where is Kidu?” Chloe asked.
“At the apex,” Nimrod said. “But that’s not where we’re going.”
“Where is that?” she said as she took his hand. He pressed a panel, and the wall opened to reveal a horizontal slab.
“Sit down,” he told her as he sat on the stone. “It’s a quick drop.”
It’s a dumbwaiter, Chloe thought as they experienced a controlled fall. And I’m inside the ziggurat? I thought they were solid. The landing was rough, but Nimrod didn’t apologize or wait; he just pulled her along passage after passage. “Are we inside the temple still?” she asked.
“Now we are beneath it. Tales from Before say these corridors run under the ground from here to the mountains. These were ancient places where the humans hid when the gods turned against them.”
She was almost breathless by the time they stopped at a doorway.
“Ningal waits within.”
She felt her eyebrows hit her hairline with surprise.
“Ssh. All the women will be given nepenthe to make them pliable, you especially. Ningal will give you something to combat it. You have to memorize his directions quickly.”
“Is nepenthe the poison?”
“No, Kidu has the answer to defeating the poison.”
“Ningal’s here?”
“He refused to help unless he could see you, make certain you were well.”
“When does the sacrifice take place?”
“Twenty-four double hours.”
Chloe nodded, and stepped inside.
* * *
Cheftu looked down from the heights of the golden chamber into the courtyard of the stepped temple. There, men protested the “nomination” of their wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers for the “journey.”
Yet, this was the way it was done. The ensi was accompanied by the finest women the gods would accept. The most beautiful, skilled, successful—the city was beggaring itself of talent and funds, Cheftu thought. How could he change this tradition? There was no higher authority than the council. The list was published; it was decreed.
The meteor showers had exacerbated the society’s fears. The new star that had precipitated this whole series of events burned even brighter. Cheftu needed to ask Chloe what was really going on out there, in space, as she called it. Her nation had landed on the moon, she’d once claimed. Maybe she could offer an explanation. Someday.
“Are you going to say nothing?”
“What should I say, Puabi? You court your death by staying here.”
“Surprised to see me, I gather?”
He glanced at her. “Not especially. You seem to be everywhere that I am. This is no different.”
“Your Chloe is going to die. I let Ulu go. Some underling brought her to me. She was painted with gold and had the worst dye job. She would never pass as me. She was old, with jowls. I told her she was free.”
“How did she react?”
Puabi shrugged. “Strangely, actually. Said something like, ‘Of course I walk away. Now that I have nothing to walk to. I guess I’ll just keep walking.’ I didn’t understand. But the question is, do you understand me? Chloe is going to die.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Do you not care for her?”
Cheftu shrugged. “She is particularly talented in the bedchamber.”
“Better than me?” Puabi asked. “That can’t be! I’m the goddess!”
He shrugged again. “What happens after all of this is over?”
“I come back. I become ensi again, and we carry on as before.”
“How many days before you come back?”
“Rudi insists I be gone a week. To be sure it’s safe, and that the gods have accepted my substitute, and so forth.”
Cheftu sat down. “Good journey, then.”
She put her hands on her hips. “That’s it? All you have to say to me? You care so little for your position?”
He bowed his head. Calm. Cool.
“You better reconsider your options, Kidu,” she said. “You can be replaced easily.”
Good.
Shama opened the curtain again, and Chloe, dressed as Chloe, stepped in. Puabi turned on her with a hiss. Cheftu felt his stomach knot. How had this happened? “You must be Puabi?” Chloe asked the ensi.
Puabi stood tall—though she was still considerably shorter than Chloe, and she looked puffy and pale in comparison. His wife’s shorn hair sprang from her head in fat curls, and Cheftu had to smile. They were so indicative of her personality. Unfettered and alive.
“Chloe, the Khamite?” Puabi said in her haughtiest tone.
“Chloe, yes.”
“Why are you here? Didn’t Rudi restrain you?”
“Rudi sent me up to remind you that you have a sledge waiting and a ship that sets sail on the tide.”
“You’re dying in my place.”
“Actually, I’m not,” Chloe said.
No, chérie, don’t tell her! Cheftu almost leaped to his feet, shouting.
“What is your meaning?”
“I mean, it’s going to cost you.”
Puabi looked at Cheftu. He held his hands out in bewilderment, a feeling that was not feigned.
“I am the ensi.”
“Then you’re going to die.”
“I am not! I’m leaving!”
“On one condition,” Chloe said.
“I don’t have to listen to this, I can send you into that tomb, and no one will know.”
“They will know, because I will tell them. Paint me, sit me down, disguise me however you want, Puabi. You can’t hide the fact that I have a scar, right here,” Chloe said, and pulled back her hair just above the nape of her neck. Cheftu could see the long, jagged cut, healing nicely. “You don’t.”
A scar that the ensi, who was supposed to be perfect, flawless, and unmarred, could never have.
“Kidu—” Puabi said. “She—”
“This is between us,” Chloe said to Puabi. “Human female to human female. I will denounce you and send them after you unless you promise me on your own life, something.”
“What? Gold? Jewels? You have the en!”
“A school.”
“A what?”
“A Tablet House for girls.”
“Have you lost your reason?”
“With a female Tablet Father. Mother. Whatever.”
“You want a school?”
“Yes. I want it paid for by public funds, and I want any girl who has the capacity to learn to be free to attend. Regardless of her financial status, or family connections.”
Puabi couldn’t have been more at a loss. She stared at Chloe as
though she were a speaking tree. “That’s… all?”
“Swear to me, Puabi.”
“Certainly. I swear.”
Chloe pulled out a document, densely written on clay, and Cheftu felt his world shift. Cuneiform! For the first time he recognized the writing of the pre-Babylonians. Was that the present, was that when they were living? The other writing he’d seen, it had used the same marks, but it had been written before the characters were turned on their sides, which is the way the ideograms would be read for the next millennia. The way he’d learned it. When did this turn happen?
“I don’t have my seals,” Puabi said calmly.
“You don’t have to. I do.” Chloe smiled. “Remember? I’m Puabi. You’ve already signed it, I just thought I would give you your copy. The Justice Ningal is acting on my behalf and will keep my copy. Of course, a third copy is already in the Office of Records and the fourth, well, should it become necessary to reveal its location, someone will.”
Cheftu felt like he was going to burst with joy. His Chloe, being as Chloe as ever. Mon Dieu, how he loved this woman.
Chloe smiled at Puabi. “You can go now.”
Puabi glared at Kidu, then took her tablet and walked to the door. Shama didn’t even open the curtain for her; she had to lift it herself. They heard her steps fade away.
“Is she going to come back with a knife?” Chloe asked.
“That would require climbing the steps again,” Cheftu said. “I doubt she has the breath for it.”
They stood, feet apart, looking at each other.
“You are really… tall,” she said. Her breath was light, a little ragged.
Kidu’s body—Cheftu’s body—raged. “Chérie,” he said and opened his arms.
* * *
“Why did you nominate me?” Chloe asked softly. He felt her breath on his chest. She was alert. “You could have told Asa no, find someone else.”
“It’s the only way I can have you.”
“Dead?”
“You’re not going to be dead. I’ve shown you the plans to the tomb. You know the way out.”
“If I survive the antidote, the nepenthe, and the poison.” She turned the goblet he had given her over. “The bottom is hollow?”
“Filled with sea sponges. Thus, when you turn it horizontal, the liquid will run through that tiny hole in the bottom and be absorbed by the sponges in the base. You will appear to drink but not actually consume anything.”
“Oh good. So all I have to worry about is the nepenthe and the antidote.”
“Do you trust Ningal?” He kissed her head.
“Do you?”
His arms tightened around her. “With all my heart.”
“Me too, though with all my body.” She kissed his stomach. “Speaking of, this new body of yours is quite, uh, nice.” Her hands touched him, ran over his skin with strength and purpose.
“As the en, I can’t marry you. I can’t be faithful to you. The only way out of this is for both of us to die,” he said.
She sat up and looked at him. One brown eye, one green. It should have been odd, but it seemed completely normal. It was an oft-repeated Egyptian saying, but the eyes were the windows to the soul. These travels had changed her; she was half-ancient, half-modern.
“Both of us?” she said.
“I’ll finish my responsibilities here, then appear to die. The populace will take it as a sign from the gods.”
“Do these people know about the real god, the big one?”
A change in the light caught Cheftu’s eye; he drew Chloe to his side, protectively. “Shama?”
The old man waved through the curtain.
“I must go, chérie.”
“Will you come back?” Chloe’s tone was calm, but her expression was alarmed.
“They will have sequestered you,” he said.
“Will I be here?”
“No, you’ll be in the temple complex with the other women.”
She handed him his skirt and belt. “Are you in there yet, in that body, Cheftu?”
He froze in the act of putting on his necklace. “I am, but part of me has become Kidu.” He looked at the clasp to catch it. “I can’t explain it.”
“I understand better than you think.”
“You know your way through the pit now, but, chérie, you must put a handmaid in your place. She must wear your coronet and jewels.” He took a deep breath. “You must be sure she is attended by two women. Do this all before I come into the tomb.”
She opened her mouth. “I’m going to have to move corpses? And you wisely waited until now to mention it?”
He continued to speak. “Go to the well, as we discussed. Wait there. It may be for a day, or it may be for several. Make sure the scene is complete. Priests might return. We want no cause for suspicion. Nimrod will come for you at the well.”
“And then?”
He kissed her, moving in a fluid instant motion, enveloped in her scents of sesame and pomegranate, his senses filling with heady heat, erotic memory, and passion. “We’ll build a life together, some other place. We’ll leave here, carefully. Mix in with the many who flee these gods and head for other cities.”
She nodded; he could still taste her.
The love that had grown to be the comfort of every day in Jerusalem—waking up together, making love before dawn, holding each other at night and finding each other in the dark—peaceful, rested, calm—now surged like liquid fire that threatened to inundate him. “You are mine. We’ll be together.”
“Yes,” she said, and captured his lips, devoured his mouth until he groaned. Cheftu’s hands clenched her bottom, caressed her legs, then he pulled away, set her aside.
“We’ll survive. Trust me.”
“Don’t I always,” she muttered, just as the curtain fell behind him.
Four double hours later, the drums rolled. Chloe opened the bottle, the antidote for the nepenthe, that Ningal had given her, said a prayer, and swallowed the stuff. It tasted like she thought petroleum would—thick and bitter—it coated her throat and stomach like milk of magnesia. That’s what it felt like, and what she imagined.
Eight hours, now. Four double hours.
She’d committed Ningal’s instructions, the blueprint of the tomb, with the placement of the grave offerings, to her memory. Now, the antidote would help her protect that memory. Nepenthe would make dying easy for the women—they wouldn’t care what was happening or why. Chloe had to remember what was happening and why, and act accordingly. She licked her lips, sure to get all of her liquid protection.
The very air of Ur was rife with tension. The drums filled the air, assembling the stargazers, warning the people. They would bang again in two double hours.
The antidote’s aftertaste was awful, but Chloe didn’t dare try to wash it away. It’s your salvation, she told herself. Salvation, often, was bitter.
* * *
The citizens of Ur watched the sky in silence. The sun still shone, but beside it they could just discern the shape of the moon. Children clutched at their fathers and sons stood braced, daring the future, challenging the gods. A smothered hiccup or swallowed sob rose occasionally from the crowd, but there was nothing else.
The drums tolled, the enormous kettledrums that needed two drummers, as the procession moved across the temple grounds.
The wealth of Ur, in oxen-drawn carts—golden vessels, inlaid furniture, bejeweled weapons—the finest the commonwealth had to offer, rolled forward. A last bribe for the gods.
The women followed, the loveliest of Ur’s wives and sisters, mothers and daughters, clad in robes of the softest wool, with woven diadems, stone-studded collars, and gold hoop earrings. Beads of carnelian, lapis, agate, and malachite hung from their necks. Beaded belts with fringed ends fell close to their sandaled feet.
Above them all, seated for her final journey, was the ensi who gave her life for the people, for the commonwealth. Puabi’s diadem was a wreath of gold leaves and flowers with a hundr
ed narrow hoops hanging over her forehead. A spray of lapis blossoms arched over her head, and bobbed with every step.
The handsome priests and attendants wore the finest felted skirts, with gold woven sashes. Seals and cylinders had been left behind, for this was not their funeral; they were merely company. Their sacrifice was for all eternity. Not only leaving the sunshine for the gloom of Kur, but leaving behind their names and identities, to be buried as strangers.
The minutes clicked by as the procession passed.
The moon edged closer to the sun.
The shaft that led into the pit was lined with priests, their spears pointing toward the ground. As she passed into the earth, each woman was given a golden goblet. Rudi heard the rings on the women’s headdresses clink against each other.
The eclipse began; the moon nibbled a bite from the sun. The people squinted at the sky, or watched the reflection in huge pools set in the courtyard. The shadows on the ground were crescent-shaped, impressions of the gobbled-up sun. The procession sped up, the ground swallowing ten, then twenty, then forty—
Then the ensi.
Encircling the citizens of Ur, the sky took on an eerie violet color. The people whimpered. The pageant continued, as women progressed into the pit by sixty, then seventy, then five soldiers—
Rudi was astounded; the Khamite had actually done it. Given her life for the people. The stargazer’s eyes glassed with tears. May the gods bless the female named Chloe.
* * *
Chloe didn’t glance around; she didn’t dare. Nepenthe meant she was supposed to be blissed-out, unaware, unconcerned. I just happen to be rigid, too, she thought. The women who walked beside her moved calmly, evenly. Unlike them, Chloe wasn’t calm. But she was trusting. Cheftu was here. She would get out of this. He’d sworn it. Cheftu had never failed her.
“This isn’t some English playwright’s tragedy,” he’d told her in the giant’s temple. “No matter what you think has happened, don’t fear. You’ll be safe, we’ll be together, we’ll make a new life.”
She thought of the thousands of historians who would be thrilled to see this; protoliterate man, in action. But she doubted very seriously that any of them would actually trade places with her at that moment.
The women and soldiers and servants progressed down a long, steep tunnel, dark except for the torches, then down a ramp and into the main chamber. As she had been instructed, each woman paused in the doorway and dipped her cup in the copper caldron, then moved in an orderly fashion, into the room. The lutenists played, no one spoke.
Twilight in Babylon Page 24