As the dancers swirled and clapped their hands, as their tanned legs flashed before him and they smiled over their shoulders at him, promising whatever he desired, he recalled the heady prophesies of Lucifer. Earth had been shackled to his desires. All who had dared stand against him, now lay prostrate or had hidden themselves far away at Mount Ararat.
Nimrod frowned at the thought. Noah yet remained. Perhaps a team of assassins should pay a visit to the seven hundred year old patriarch.
The Singers shouted his name, and the piping grew wilder.
Lust grew as the lascivious dance enflamed his passions. With godlike pretensions came godlike appetites. Lucifer had promised him dark secrets and unlimited power—if he had the will to complete the metamorphosis that had begun when he had long ago devoured the dragon’s heart. First shackle the Earth and then the Celestial Realm would beckon. The Stairway to Heaven was no idle term. If while upon the Tower he dared channel the united meditations of all people into himself, then he could achieve apotheosis.
Apotheosis was the transformation of a man into a god. Lucifer had told him how to achieve it. At first, Nimrod had distrusted the Light Bearer—there remained a reservation or two still. He wondered if the chief of the fallen angels played him false. But those doubts had primarily been before the battle, before he’d wondered if Noah would show up as once he had at the fields outside of Festival to display the power of Jehovah.
“Jehovah has grown afraid,” whispered Lucifer. “He marshals the hosts of Heaven not to attack us, but to defend the ramparts of his Celestial Domain. You are not aware, perhaps, how vitally important your actions are here on Earth, how Heaven reverberates with them. When the Tower is complete, when you link our realms together, then we will be able to pour into you the forces needed to finalize your metamorphosis.”
Nimrod knew Lucifer hadn’t told him everything and that there were pitfalls. But was he not the Mighty Hunter, one like a god? Let any being, man, devil or angel, underestimate him at their peril. Nimrod felt the change. He knew that he could become a god. In that respect, Lucifer had given him the truth!
These heady thoughts were like wine, making him drunk on the possibilities. He stood, and he clapped in time to the tune.
Minos sat on a stool, his nimble fingers playing reed pipes that thrust out of his mouth. The poet’s eyes glowed and his dark hair was in disarray as his head bobbed and wove. He jumped up, kicking his legs and dancing with the Singers, twirling, playing and seeming to laugh at them even as he caused the girls to dance faster and faster.
“Play, Pan, play!” shouted Nimrod.
The piping was like a whip and a drug. It drove the Singers to ecstasy, and in their frenzy, they shed their garments until Nimrod himself leapt among them, choosing which of them would know this day his fierce embrace.
Later…when he returned to the throne room, a trumpet pealed and a warrior announced the approach of his mother Deborah.
As Nimrod lounged upon the throne, he adjusted his leopard skin cloak.
Deborah wore a white gown as befitted her religious station, and she wore a veil. She surprised him by kneeling, bowing and waiting as one in prayer.
“Rise, Mother. Sit on this stool by my feet.”
He had ordered the bodyguards outside and had forbidden Semiramis or any of her maidens to loiter in the hidden halls behind the throne.
His mother sat quietly, folding her hands in her lap, awaiting his pleasure.
Nimrod wished his father could be as pliant. “I appreciate your promptness,” he said.
“I left the instant your messenger arrived. Your man Uruk was kind enough to give me refreshments as I waited in the antechamber.” She eyed him. “This may seem odd, but while I waited it seemed as if music played here. It wasn’t a stately melody, but sensual and unbridled as if debauchery took place. What could account for such a bizarre manifestation? I knew that you couldn’t be within. No son, no matter how exalted, could keep his mother waiting when he’d summoned her so urgently, or at last kept her waiting for the mere purpose of indulging his baser appetites. I thus suspect that I had an auditory vision, but for the life of me I cannot understand its significance.”
The impassiveness of his features never changed. His mother was pliant, but only to a degree.
“How is Grandmother Rahab?” he asked. “Has she adjusted to her new life?”
His mother’s eyes seemed to burn. Then she dropped her stare, becoming demure. “Your Grandmother Rahab worries about Ham, and she wonders what goes on in the palace. I’m careful no one tells her.”
Nimrod laughed, not in a pleasant way, but in an ugly manner, like a hyena that has come upon a cripple gazelle.
“I have no desire to anger the Mighty Hunter,” his mother said sardonically. “But someone has to warn you. I gave you birth, and from my breasts you fed and I was the one who taught you to walk. Perhaps as importantly, I am loath to sit back and watch as Semiramis topples you from power.”
“What does asking about Grandmother Rahab have to do with my wife?”
“Do you believe because you don’t hear them that rumors and secret whispers don’t swirl around you?”
He shrugged.
“No. I don’t believe you’re indifferent. Otherwise, you wouldn’t hide in the palace. I suspect a king who truly didn’t care about what his subjects thought would copulate like a dog in the street instead of in his chambers.”
Anger blazed in his eyes.
His mother dropped her gaze. “I know. I shouldn’t have said that. No one can tell you anything anymore without risking your rage. If you want a mother’s advice…”
“Go on.”
“Nimrod, there is no one like you. You have often proven that. Yet now you gamble unnecessarily. If you wish to turn the Singers into your private harem, that’s your own affair. But don’t wave it in Semiramis’s face. Send her far away, perhaps to Nineveh, maybe even as far away as the fires of Sheol.”
He laughed.
“Once you adored her and spent time with her. Now Semiramis burns with jealousy and will find some way to stop you from rutting with the Singers.”
Nimrod banged the arm of his throne. “Enough!”
“I know. You think you’re invincible. You think you have a solemn pact with the gods. But the gods hate a man who reaches too high. They search out ways to humble him, usually with disastrous results for him and his kin.”
“Has Semiramis done something to upset you?”
“I am your mother. I fear for you. Study her and watch her reactions, watch how she watches you. Don’t you realize that she’s sick with fury at what you do?”
“Nonsense.”
“Do you even sleep with Semiramis anymore?”
For a moment, he wondered if danger did lurk in Semiramis’s dark heart. He smiled. Without him, Semiramis would fall from power. So he wondered what had driven his mother to plot against his wife. Then it became obvious. His mother jockeyed for position. He was the sun, they the creatures who derived their sustenance from him. “I shall consider your words,” he said.
She shook her head. “Oh, Nimrod, I wish I could make you understand. I fear that the ancient disease of hubris has already grown too strong.”
“I don’t agree. I need help. Yours. It’s why I summoned you. Grandmother is said to love Hilda and that the feelings are returned. Convince grandmother to convince Hilda to become a priestess of Ishtar.”
“I don’t believe it. I come to warn you against Semiramis and you give me a task that will ensure your wife’s most bitter hatred. Don’t you know that Semiramis has troubled feelings regarding Hilda? She used to be the girl’s mother.”
“Her stepmother,” Nimrod said.
“You can’t sleep with the mother and then the daughter, or even with the stepdaughter. It isn’t right.”
He scowled. “I haven’t said anything about—”
“Spare me your assurances. When you speak about Hilda the lust in your eyes becomes ove
rpowering. If you wish her that much, bring her into the palace and have your way with her. Why flaunt this in front of everyone? But most importantly why flaunt it in front of Semiramis?”
“Have a care, Mother.”
Deborah once again dipped her head.
“You think I do whatever I please. But that isn’t so. I need the sons of Canaan and Canaan himself. To rape Hilda at my leisure…no, I must work within the trappings of authority. But I will have Hilda. One way or another, she will be mine. Until apotheosis, perhaps even afterward, I will keep feathers smoothed.”
“Why not apply that policy to your wife?”
He glanced at his cheetah. The big cat slept. Perhaps it would be wise to watch Semiramis. If his mother had hoped to plant a seed of suspicion in him, then she had succeeded.
“Will you talk to grandmother for me?”
Deborah studied him, nodded.
Nimrod smiled, rising, taking his mother’s hands. Then he guided her to the door.
4.
I’ve become like Cain, Gilgamesh told himself, a rootless wanderer, with no place to call my own.
It wasn’t technically true. He was still the governor of Erech. Yet he seldom set foot in the most southern city. Instead, as Nimrod’s herald and as the king’s eyes and ears, he went from city to city, from place to place. He didn’t ride a donkey or a chariot or go by boat. He ran through the wilds with his hounds and with his black lance in his fist. For hours every day, the pad of his feet and the panting of dogs and the sight of passing grasses or leaf-waving bushes gave him the solitude to think.
Opis grew worse, not better. Whenever they were alone, her eyes turned wild like a deer in the presence of a wolf. She flinched even if he happened to brush her. For a long time, he was compassionate and understanding. Then one night after a tiring journey, he became angry and laid hands on her, saying this foolishness had gone on long enough. She shrieked and fled the house, leaving him feeling like a scoundrel and a ruffian. The next day, he began the trek to Babel.
He loved Opis, and he despaired for her. But he had no idea how to achieve a cure.
Lean and wind-burned, darkened by the sun, his leathers dirt-stained and sweat-soaked and his stamina bordering on the legendary, he arrived in Babel. He felt constricted in the great city. Babel had turned into a beehive, with large mud-brick houses and people packed onto narrow lanes. Above them like some evil behemoth watched the Tower. Squat, dominating, monumental, it dwarfed the city, a colossus among pygmies and a symbol of unquenchable power. At its awe-inspiring pinnacle, workers fitted lapis lazuli tiles onto the temple or substitute tiles of green-blue faience.
Gilgamesh noticed a new addition in the plaza, statues of Nimrod and Semiramis.
He spied Uruk and accompanying warriors. He was Uruk the Resplendent, with a bronze helmet with red-dyed eagle’s feathers sticking up. Like an ape, he shouldered people out of the way.
Near the statute of Semiramis, they met.
Uruk nodded. “I trust your wife is fine,” he said, as he nudged Thebes.
The brazenness surprised Gilgamesh. He opened his mouth in disbelief.
“You know,” said Thebes, “little Opis has always reminded me of a gazelle. Quivering, excitable, liable to make a dash for freedom but squealing when caught and moaning in the face of a predator.”
Tanned and wind-burned though he was, Gilgamesh paled with fury. To stop his hand from shaking, he clutched the dagger-hilt at his side.
“Careful, boys,” Uruk said. “Gilgamesh is as bloodthirsty as a hawk, and he can strike as fast. If he makes a move for me, skewer him. The king will understand.”
Thebes, Zimri, Obed and the others stepped nearer. Gilgamesh wondered if perhaps they might strike first and say later that he had tried to kill Uruk. So he turned, with his cloak swirling, and strode from them as they laughed.
That evening, Gilgamesh paid his respects at the palace.
“Sit a while,” Nimrod said. “Let us talk of old times.”
That lasted all of a half-hour. Minos entered and whispered into the king’s ear. A rutting look like a boar overcame the Mighty Hunter and he rattled off instructions to Gilgamesh before following Minos.
Gilgamesh ignored a summons from Semiramis. The next morning he trekked north to Akkad, relaying a message to the governor, handing over a packet of clay tablets.
He hunted two days with Akkad’s governor, and he chanced while in the city to run into Patriarch Shem. A brick wall surrounded the village, while a two-story palace and temple stood in the town center, just like in Erech. Otherwise, single story brick squares, homes, set on short, dusty lanes, made up the community.
A shepherd herded his small flock through the lanes, and guard dogs used to tackle lions barked from a nearby enclosure. Shem and several others still openly adhered to Jehovah-worship. Nimrod considered such as troublemakers and he had split them between Erech, Akkad and Calneh. Babel itself the king wished to keep pure, he said, for religious reasons. It had something to do with a coming celebration.
Guardians of the king’s peace keep watch on Shem. The massive hounds that barked at the sheep were in Akkad primarily because of the patriarch. If Shem tried to escape, Mighty Men were to release the hounds.
Gilgamesh stood by a wooden trough. He set his foot on the side and tightened one of his sandals. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Shem. The old man was dark-bearded. There wasn’t a white hair on him. Yet Shem seemed haggard, worried, like one who carried a secret burden. His robe had seen better days and he carried a shepherd’s crook. It might help drive off one big hound, but not a pack.
Shem turned away from the hounds. With an upraised hand, he shielded his eyes from the sun and then noticed Gilgamesh watching him. A smile changed the old man’s features. It creased his face. In a sure stride, he approached the water trough.
“Greetings, Herald.”
Gilgamesh dipped his head as he took his foot off the trough.
“You just came from Babel?” Shem asked.
“Two days ago, sir.”
“If men were weapons I’d call you a javelin, Herald. You seem ready to fly wherever swiftly and surely. They say you can run for days without becoming weary.”
“I get weary, believe me.”
“What is the secret to long-distance running?”
“Constant practice. I hope you merely ask out of curiosity.”
Shem squinted. “How close is the Tower to completion?”
“It is complete.”
“They have finished the temple then?” Shem asked.
“Not quite.”
The patriarch eyed him. “You’re not like the others.”
“Which others?”
The survivor of the Flood chewed his lower lip. Finally, he patted Gilgamesh on the shoulder and wandered away.
The conversation bothered Gilgamesh. He wondered if he should report it to Shem’s guardians. Probably. Shem sounded like a man ready to run, which seemed silly. Two hundred-year-old men didn’t run. Yet Shem seemed capable of it. The hounds, Gilgamesh told himself, would stop any foolish notions. Shem knew no one outran such brutes. Gilgamesh smiled to himself. The idea of Shem running was ridiculous.
The next day, as Gilgamesh began the trek back to Babel, he thought about the conversation. He thought about an old patriarch bound to a city, with big hounds ready to rend him to pieces. He thought about Opis and that Semiramis had summoned him. Of course, he hadn’t gone to her. Uruk and his cronies, he thought also upon them, and that Nimrod had little time for him but much time for his special Singers. Why had Semiramis summoned him? Was it rude of him not to have shown up? Perhaps if the king couldn’t or wouldn’t help him against Uruk, perhaps the queen would. Too, it wasn’t wise to spurn a queen’s summons, not unless the king was securely behind you. A man needed someone in court as benefactor.
The longer he pondered these things, the surer Gilgamesh became. So when he jogged through Babel’s Lion Gate two days later, he found
Semiramis’s most trustworthy Singer and said he would see the queen if she still desired it.
He washed, borrowed fine garments from his Grandfather Put and spoke with Semiramis that evening in a small chamber within the palace. Candles flickered, two maidens attended them and they ate sparingly of spiced eel and honey-soaked bread, sipping date palm wine. After the dishes were cleared, Semiramis told the maidens they could retire. It left the two of them alone in the small, rather cozy chamber. The play of candlelight on Semiramis’s face was startling and heart pounding.
A soft rap came at the door.
Semiramis frowned and Gilgamesh nearly flew out of his chair.
One of the maidens peered into the room. “Lady, I’m sorry to interrupt, but what shall I do if the king summons you?”
“Perhaps it’s time for me to go,” Gilgamesh said.
Semiramis shook her head, and she told the girl, “Wait down the hall for messengers. If you see one or the king, run here and knock on the door.”
“Yes, Lady,” the maiden said, softly closing the door.
Semiramis smiled. The play of candlelight made it a stunning thing. “You mustn’t leave yet, my brave Hunter. You’ve hardly touched your wine, and I chose it just for you.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” Gilgamesh said, picking up the chalice.
For an hour, they reminisced. Semiramis poured more wine and her eyes lingered on him.
“You seem like you did then,” she said. “Oh, there are a few wrinkles at the corners of your eyes, and there is a quickness to you that seems positively deadly. Yet you’re unlike the other Mighty Men, those who bask in their positions and grow with a ponderousness of authority. Their minds have become dull, while you…Gilgamesh, tragedy fills you. Nothing has ever come easily for you. Doggedness and determination are your trademarks, and that has left you keen and perceptive. You understand when others hurt. Like I hurt, Gilgamesh. Oh yes, does that surprise you?”
It did. He sipped wine and looked into her dark eyes. “You’re as beautiful as ever,” he said, and he glanced at his goblet, wondering if she had drugged it.
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