The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  But the race of men would have died away long ago if their sorrows could hold them forever, and so it happens that, when at last it is healed and ready, the mind is called back to itself by the small, thin voice of some trivial emergency. It was thus with me when, the fourth morning of our flight from my brother’s wrath, the sky lightened to reveal that our gufa had disappeared.

  It was a common enough sort of catastrophe. As she is wont to do at that time of year, when the snows in the northern mountains have already begun to melt, the river had risen during the night—this we could see plainly, for her shore was now within three or four paces of our cold campfire—and, silent as the hand of death, had carried away with it our little reed raft.

  Perhaps I had fallen asleep without knowing it, or perhaps I had been too distracted in my mind to notice, but this turn of our fortunes was as much a surprise to me as to Kephalos.

  “We shall have to walk,” I said, perhaps a little startled by the sound of my own voice. “If we follow the river we must come to a village, or perhaps a farmhouse, where we can purchase horses. I assume, my friend, that you were wise enough to provide us with money?”

  I smiled at him, but he only stared at me as if at a conjuring trick. I almost laughed out loud, for suddenly I felt the return of hope and life. We were marooned in the midst of Esarhaddon’s realm, where my life was forfeit should I be recognized and taken, but this was merely one more difficulty to be overcome, which was, after all, no more than the business of living. I had almost forgotten. I was glad that the gufa had been carried off, for now I remembered that I had blood in my veins and not river water.

  “Money, Lord? What. . ?”

  And then I did laugh, and then Kephalos, slapping his thighs with relief, saw the joke and laughed with me.

  “Yes, Lord, plenty of money—all the money in the world!”

  And we laughed and laughed, rich men stranded on a muddy riverbank.

  . . . . .

  Even though we stood on the river’s western shore, I had but to glance about me to know where we were. I had passed this way many times, a soldier in the king’s army on the way to Khalule or Babylon or some other place where men left their bones to bleach white in the sun. The Tigris has a different look after she is joined by the Lower Zab, as if somehow she has grown lazy on her journey south, as if she misses the sight of the mountains she is leaving behind and does not care how sluggishly she creeps along towards the lands of Akkad and of Sumer, mud-brown and flat as a threshing floor for as far as the eye can carry.

  “Yesterday, did we pass a city by the left hand? Did it have walls of red-painted brick, and were the watchtowers close together like vine stakes?”

  “Yes, Lord—an hour or two after midday.”

  “Then we have left Ekallate behind already.” I looked down-river, with my left hand shading my eyes against the rising sun. “It is well. The garrison there is full of soldiers impressed from Borsippa and Dilbat, and they think they have found their champion in Esarhaddon. I would not care to hazard showing my face there, but in Birtu we will be safer.”

  “Soldiers are soldiers—I do not see. . .”

  Kephalos made a despairing gesture, as if he thought I must still be unsteady in my brain to speak of safety under the eyes of the king’s army. I could not blame him, yet safety is always a relative matter.

  “I know the commander,” I answered. “I do not believe he would betray us. It is best not to tempt him, for in times like these all Esarhaddon’s servants are anxious to prove their new loyalty, but Zerutu Bel was always an honorable man. At least in Birtu we can buy whatever we need. And, if my brother has seen fit to keep his word, we are still a day or two ahead of the riders from Nineveh.”

  “How far to Birtu then, Lord?”

  “Two days’ march, if we set a good pace.”

  “All of that, and on a few dates rattling around in an empty bag?” My former slave sat down on the pile of reeds that had only lately been his bed and covered his face with his hands. “Two days’ march, and I a man of education and culture—Kephalos of Naxos, sometime physician to the royal house of Assyria! May the gods curse the hour that tied my destiny to that of a dust-stained soldier.”

  For several minutes he would not be consoled, nor could I induce him to begin our journey on foot, but he continued as he was, chewing his nervous way through our depleted supply of dates. It was only when they were almost gone that, having breakfasted himself into a better humor, he consented to rise.

  “Well, if it must be, then it must,” he said, stretching himself like an overfed cat. “I expect to die of exhaustion before nightfall.”

  Kephalos did not die, of exhaustion or anything else, but neither did we set a good pace and reach Birtu within two days. For this the blame is as much mine as his for, if he was fat and unaccustomed to the rigors of a forced march, I had spent most of the past month in a cage in the royal dungeons, waiting for my brother the king to decide what to do about me. By sundown there were blisters on my feet as well, and I imagined, as I plastered them with the river mud to take away the soreness, that perhaps I had crippled myself for life.

  Still, when the dawn came and we awoke to a spring morning that still felt cold enough to be winter, it was better to be moving than to stand still. And in an hour, when the stiffness had at last left our joints and we could feel the heat of exercise in our bodies, for a while even Kephalos stopped complaining.

  It was late afternoon of the third day, the sixth since our flight from Nineveh, when finally, with weary limbs and empty bellies, we came within sight of Birtu, a market town hosting a small garrison of soldiers, with mud walls that were hardly more than a formality—no enemy army that had penetrated so deeply into the homeland of Ashur would have been stopped by them, but it had been over four hundred years since one had even tried. In the evening, just at dusk, we passed under the main gate, in a crowd of city folk and foreign traders and farmers with their goats and their oxcarts so that the guards in their watchtowers probably did not notice so much as our existence.

  “Let us find a tavern,” I said, “where we can buy a basin of hot water and space on their floor for a sleeping mat.”

  “Yes, and where we can eat fresh-killed goat and drink wine, and where the harlots are pretty.” Kephalos smiled in anticipation. “I doubt if tonight I could do any woman justice, but there will be tomorrow—and it will give me something agreeable to think about while I grow bloated on food and drink.”

  “Better if the harlots are not pretty. Better a humble place where even common soldiers would be ashamed to go. I have no wish to run afoul of some old campaigner who would know me by sight.”

  “Rest assured, Lord. Your servant, as always, considers your good above all else and has hit upon a contrivance which will prevent any such unfortunate reunions.”

  He smiled, seemingly unwilling to enlarge upon his plans, and touched my shoulder to guide me into a side street—Kephalos had a nose for such places of resort; we had not walked a hundred paces before he found as pleasant a wineshop as ever I had seen, even in Nineveh.

  As we entered, our legs covered with dirt, brushing the dust of many days’ travel from our garments, the mistress of the house was less than welcoming. A foreigner from the look of her—my own guess was that she had been born in Musri or Tabal and brought here as a slave by some caravan, for her face had the sullen cast one sees in those races—she was well past her youth and wore no veil, but the corner of a shawl covered her hair to show that she was or had once been some man’s concubine and must therefore be respected over the tavern girls carrying wine and food to men who felt free to caress them in any manner they liked. She crossed her arms over her huge bosom and regarded us from beneath heavy, lowered eyebrows, as if prepared to bar a pair of obvious vagabonds like us from intruding any further on her hospitality or the freshly swept tiles of her entranceway.

  But Kephalos, who understood every refinement of this sort of negotiation, was undismayed.
He merely took his hand from a secret pocket in the bosom of his tunic and allowed a shower of tiny silver coins to fall through his fingers to the floor below. In an instant the woman was on her knees making her obeisance before this mighty lord who, for reasons best understood by himself, chose to be disguised as a beggar and, at the same time, gathering up his bounty with a single deft movement of her right hand.

  “A clean room, woman,” he said, in Aramaic—so his conjecture about her origins had been close to my own—“and hot water for my servant and I to bathe in, and fresh clothes, and food and such wine as can be had in this doghole. Are we to be kept waiting forever?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency—I mean, no!” She scrambled to her feet and immediately took Kephalos by the arm, leading him through a curtained doorway as delicately as if he were an invalid as well as rich. I, largely ignored, was left to follow if I would.

  A few minutes later, stripped naked and lying on a pair of thick, sweet-smelling reed mats, we were sponging our faces while four giggling harlots in flimsy linen tunics busied themselves with rubbing fragrant oil into our backs and limbs. There was a pitcher of cold Lebanese wine on the floor between us and I could already detect the scent of cooking meat.

  “I have a razor in my bag,” Kephalos said, inclining his head toward me confidentially—why I cannot imagine, since he spoke in Greek, which certainly these women had never heard before in their lives. “That is my contrivance. We will shave off our beards. A man is unrecognizable without his beard and, since a smooth face is not the fashion here, everyone will take us for foreigners. In my case, of course, it will be no more than the truth, but they will believe it just as quickly of you—do not take offense, Master, but the fact is, half Greek as you are, you have not truly the look of an Assyrian.”

  One of the harlots, all smiles and dimples, a chubby little thing who was massaging Kephalos’ massive rump, tittered as if he had made a joke. He reached back and pinched her knee and she laughed all the louder.

  “You see, Lord? It is a great protection to be a foreigner.”

  “Yes—I can see that plainly.”

  “Then it is settled about the beards, though I shall hate to part with mine. It was ever a great attraction for the women, but perhaps I have reached the age when I should begin to grow indifferent to such things.”

  While he was thus resigning himself, our hostess entered with a bowl of pomegranates, red as blood, and behind her a servant carried a large plate heaped with chunks of roasted lamb on a bed of millet. She smiled at Kephalos, giving the impression she would have found him a tasty enough dish by himself, and, after waving away the dimpled girl, herself squatted down on the floor beside him to stroke his hair with the tips of her heavy, ring-laden fingers. These attentions seemed to please Kephalos.

  “Your Eminence must forgive our poor house for misjudging appearances and not seeing the lord beneath the muddy rags. Your Eminence met with some misadventure?”

  “We were set upon by robbers who stole our horses and pack animals,” he replied, rolling over onto his back and thus displaying, in the size of his erect manhood, that such comforts as her “poor house” could provide had not been lost on him. “They were as numberless as flies in summer, the coarse, cowardly devils. It was nothing except our stout resistance that kept them from stripping us of our lives—and discovering, when they searched my corpse, that they had in fact missed the greater share of their spoils.”

  “The brave man is safe in any danger.” She knelt down and lowered her mouth to kiss him upon the brow. “You honor us, Eminence. All that we have is yours. My name is Kupapiyas, should you have need of me. I was born in the Land of Hatti, where women are taught what value must be put on a lord’s comfort.”

  So—at least I had been correct on the one point, for the kings of Hatti had ruled in Musri and Tabal for as long as men could remember.

  “Do you enjoy much custom from the garrison, Lady?” I asked.

  It was the first time she had heard my voice, and the sound of it did not seem to please. Kupapiyas of Hatti twisted her head to look at me, her eyes narrowing as if she fancied herself insulted in being addressed by one as low as myself.

  “My servant is doubtless thinking that we will need horses,” Kephalos added quickly, intervening on my behalf. “Perhaps, since we are strangers here, you could tell us whether the commander would regard it as an affront if we approached him on the matter. I have heard men mention the name of one Zerutu Bel. . .”

  “The rab abru? Hah!”

  She sat up suddenly, and her great backside settled on the floor to spread out like a split grain sack.

  “You will need to go farther than you might find convenient to do business with him—his throat was cut by command of the king in Nineveh and his body left outside the walls to be eaten by dogs. That was nearly a month ago. There is a new rab abru now, a rogue named Dinanu, who would sell you his mother if you wanted her. Speak with him if you have need of horses.”

  . . . . .

  I cannot claim it was not an unpleasant shock to hear of the death of Zerutu Bel. He had not been numbered among the rebels at Khanirabbat, nor, so far as I know, had he had any hand in the conspiracies of my royal brothers Arad Malik and Nabusharusur, but it seemed that mere innocence was no protection in the reign of Esarhaddon. His throat cut and his corpse left to the dogs—that a brave man and loyal soldier should suffer such a death at the hands of his own king was as shameful a thing as I could imagine.

  Yet why should I have been surprised? I too had kept faith with Esarhaddon—and with far greater provocation to contest his right to our father’s throne than could have heated the imagination of the rab abru of Birtu—yet I was now a fugitive, a man whose life was forfeit even to the meanest of my brother’s subjects. Had I been fool enough to suppose that Esarhaddon’s wrath would reach down no lower than myself?

  Zerutu Bel was a skeleton which the crows were picking clean outside the walls of Birtu. To the king in Nineveh my head was worth its weight in silver shekels, and every soldier in the garrison would know it. There was no one here whom I could trust as a man of honor—not if the reward for honor was the fate of Zerutu Bel.

  Kephalos and I must be off as soon as possible.

  The next morning was a market day, so I was up early, early enough that the mistress of the house, Kupapiyas of Hatti, was still snoring quietly next to Kephalos. I washed my face in a basin of water—last night, in conformity with his plan, my wily servant and I had played barber to one another, and now it felt strange to be rubbing my hands over a naked chin.

  I heard a grunt behind me and saw that Kephalos too had roused himself. He sat up, loudly cleared his throat, and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips—he too, when he felt the smooth flesh of his jaw under his hands, seemed startled.

  There had been a girl on my own sleeping mat last night. She woke quickly enough and with a bright smile, as if mightily pleased with herself and all the world, inquired of me if our eminences would care for breakfast. I sent her off in search of raw figs, bread and beer.

  “That one will not be so agile,” Kephalos said, pointing back towards his sleeping mat after the girl had gone. I could believe him. Kupapiyas, with her backside rising like a mountain range and her thick cheek pressed against the floor, never stirred. “I put something in her wine at dinner. It was not only courteous but also wise of me to go into her last night. The thoughts that find their way into the mind of a spurned woman are dark, and ours is not a situation that allows us to invite much scrutiny. Yet I did not anticipate finding her companionship so amusing that I would wish very much of it. Look at her, dreaming of youth and beauty—as ugly and mean-tempered as a brood sow. What is it in me, I wonder, that such women find so fatally attractive, even without my fine, handsome beard?”

  “Let us be gone from this place, Kephalos—I feel danger.”

  It was a moment before the lover of Kupapiyas could be summoned back from the pleasure of his own reflections, b
ut at last he fixed me with a frowning stare, as if I had suggested something indecent.

  “This haste is most unseemly, Lord. We have been many days exposed to all manner of hardships—we need to recover ourselves.”

  “Kephalos, we are in the midst of a garrison of soldiers, and their commander is a dog who begs scraps from Esarhaddon’s table.”

  “Yes, but we are safe enough within these four walls. . .”

  “These are the walls of a wineshop, dolt! Soldiers come to wine-shops, to drink and to gossip with the harlots. Do you imagine we can remain undetected for long?”

  “Yes but, Master—a day. One single day? I am tired. My bones ache, and I have need of a little comfort!”

  He was begging me. His eyes pleaded for that one day, almost as if he would die without it. And had he not saved me in Nineveh? Had he not stayed behind to rescue his ruined lord when he could so easily have fled to safety? And did I not owe him this small thing?

  “One day then. And we leave tomorrow morning, as soon as they open the gate.”

  “Yes—yes! I will prepare everything against tomorrow morning. You will be safe enough if you stay inside this room. I will do everything. I will purchase the horses. . .”

  “You will do nothing of the sort. Kephalos—what do you know of horses? Some farmer will sell you his broken-winded old mare, and you will pride yourself on your guile, thinking you have robbed him. No, it will not do. I will purchase the horses.”

  “As you wish,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders, happy enough, I think, to have carried his main point. “I will attend to the provisions, and I need to find a few items for my medicine box. The horses will be left to your more expert eye, but perhaps it would be well if they remained your one task outside this room—no one will know me in Birtu, but the Lord Tiglath. . .”