The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  “What will happen if you drink more? Will you grow wrathful and beat your women, or will you begin weeping over the sorrows of your youth, or will you merely be sick into the river and have to be carried snoring to your sleeping mat? I have seen my father do all these things, but I had not expected them from you. It seems that all men, the mighty and the low, are just alike.”

  I turned to her with anger, but when I met her eyes, large and knowing, no more afraid of me than if I were a kitten baring its claws, my anger vanished and I began to laugh. Suddenly I left much better, although nothing had altered. Life was still barren, but it no longer seemed to matter so very much.

  “Selana,” I said, when at last I had recaptured my voice, “you must tell me when the Festival of Maia comes, that six days after I may purchase you a slave of your own for a birthday present. I will find you a girl three or four years old, who can torment you as you do me.”

  “I still find if difficult to understand that a Greek would have to be told when comes the Festival of Maia.”

  She smiled, having apparently forgiven me—and why should she not, since she still retained custody of my wine jar?

  “I have told you that I am not a Greek.”

  “A duck does not bray like a donkey. Neither do its jaws bear teeth. You look and sound Greek, therefore how can you not be Greek?”

  “My mother was born in Athens, but I was born in my father’s house, by the River Tigris in the Land of Ashur. It is a long way from here.”

  “And what does that make you?”

  “An Assyrian,” I said—the word sounded strange on my tongue. “As was my father, so am I.”

  “Do not burden your heart with the past, my son,” he had said—my kingly father, the Lord Sennacherib, once ruler of the bright world.

  “Yet you live among Greeks as one of them. Perhaps at last you will become a Greek. Or will you go back someday and become an Assyrian again?”

  “For me, to go back is to embrace death.”

  She shook her head, as if she had caught me in a lie. As if to find me thus false made her sad.

  “I see my Lord Tiglath chooses not to answer,” she said.

  . . . . .

  Two days later, at the hour before sunset, we arrived in Memphis.

  I can only assume that Kephalos had lookouts posted downriver, for he was waiting for me at the docks, surrounded by a crowd of servants who were busy strewing flower petals into the water in token of greeting.

  I hardly recognized him at first, for he had shaved both his head and beard and his eyes were outlined in black paint after the Egyptian fashion. As the barge pulled up he made a low bow and shouted something, yet I could not hear him over the noise of drums.

  It seemed that the barge, with all its luxury, had been but a foretaste of my reception—there could not have been less than a hundred souls assembled there on the wharf. As soon as I stepped ashore, horns let out a deafening roar as if to mark the end of the world. Kephalos, dressed like a great lord, with a heavy gold necklace pressing against his bosom, prostrated himself before me and embraced my ankles, and then I was conducted to a sedan chair, canopied with ostrich feathers and covered with hammered silver so that it hurt my eyes to look at it. When I had sat down four slave women began to wash my feet with scented water, after which we set off to another blare of horns, Kephalos himself assuming the place of one of my bearers—in a purely symbolic fashion, to be sure, by taking up a cord attached to the end of one of the carrying poles.

  I was carried through the city in no less state than if I had been Pharaoh, a progress that required over an hour to complete and left me feeling extremely foolish.

  “There will be a banquet tomorrow night,” Kephalos said, having conducted me to a room where dinner was set out for us. “Everyone of any importance in the city will be there, including the governor himself, for, as you know, wealth attracts curiosity as quickly as spilled honey does wasps. It was from the governor, by the way, that I had the barge. I paid him almost as much as the thing must have cost to begin with, but he is in great need of money and it is always worth while to have friends with influence.”

  So Prodikos had not been far wrong. I was not in the least surprised, so perhaps Selana was right and I was becoming a Greek myself.

  “Eat, My Lord,” Kephalos went on, waving his hand over the table, which he had furnished with his usual opulence. “You are still lean from the desert and need to gain more flesh. If the food appears strange to you, know that the cook is an Egyptian and I can do nothing with him. They are a curious people, fastidious and prejudiced, but if we are to live among them we must accept some measure of hardship.”

  Yes—without doubt Kephalos was right to speak of hardship. The wine was potent and sweet and every course of the meal delicious. We were attended by eight serving women, their eyes black and smiling and their naked bodies gleaming with oil. I dwelt in a palace, surrounded by every comfort and pleasure, and I was rich. Life in Egypt surely would be an ordeal.

  “By the way, Lord, you would do well to adopt this fashion,” he announced, running his hand over his freshly shaved head. “It is unnatural I know, but the Egyptians will suffer no one to be different from themselves. Even a prince they think no better than a dog if he does not make himself like them. I will send a barber to you in the morning.”

  “As you think best, Kephalos, and while I assume one disguise, perhaps I might as well assume another. I think it will not profit me much to be a prince in this land.”

  “My Lord wishes to live as a private man then?” he asked, raising his eyebrows as if the idea had taken him by surprise. “Very well—this is doubtless wise, since it is close to my own thoughts. I have let it be understood that you are a rich Greek who has quarreled with his family and for this reason chooses to dwell abroad. It is only a little at variance with the truth and thus will offend no one’s honor.”

  There was a small plate of figs in front of him. He picked one up and examined it, holding it delicately with his fingertips. Then he set it back down and seemed to forget all about it.

  “You have grown cautious, Prince,” he said, in an altered voice. “Has anything happened since we parted in Naukratis?”

  “Nothing, my friend. I am only conscious of having enemies and wish to be prudent.”

  “Was it prudence, then, that prompted you to acquire the little bronze-haired slave girl?”

  I had known Kephalos most of my life, and through all the shifts of fortune which had accompanied it, and yet never had I seen such an expression on his face. Was he angry or annoyed, or merely amused? I was not meant to know—I was not sure he knew himself. This was not merely my wily servant who concealed his purposes, for whom guile was as natural as breathing—I would have been familiar enough with him. He smiled, yet there was a tightness to that smile that made it like a mask. He was hidden behind it. I did not recognize him.

  “It is a question who acquired whom,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders as if I could dismiss the matter thus easily. “And whether she is a slave or a freedwoman is also a debatable point—I tried, believe me, to send her on her way, at liberty and with silver in her purse, but she insists she is my property and will not leave.”

  “Then it is even worse than I had feared.” Kephalos rested his hands upon his thighs, frowning.

  “Why do you attach such importance to this child? She makes herself useful and has wisdom enough to stay out of the way.”

  “And do you think she will always be content to ‘stay out of the way’?” he asked, raising his eyes to peer into my face as if he suspected my brains had gone softer than a rotten apple. “And do you think it is the child which concerns me? She will be a woman soon enough, and perhaps, Dread Lord, you have not noticed the way she looks at you. Have not women brought enough misery into your life but that you must store them up for the future like jars of wine? Besides, do not imagine I am so naive as not to grasp why you suffer her presence near you. Has the resemblanc
e escaped you? Hers is the most dangerous claim any woman can make on any man—you look into her face and see your mother’s.”

  I was as surprised as if he had struck me. Why I know not, for what he said was plain enough. It was simply that I had never framed it thus to myself before.

  “Alas, I am the most wretched of men, since my master is a blind fool. Had you hidden it from yourself, then?”

  It had gone beyond a jest, for there was real anguish in his voice. He made a gesture of hopeless dismissal.

  “This house, as you perhaps have noticed, is well supplied with women. I know your tastes in such matters, Lord, and have seen to it that you will find nothing wanting. A round brown belly and a pair of firm breasts—or, better yet, a proper harem full of such—will sate your appetites and leave your heart untroubled. Let me drive this child from among us before she is old enough to be more to you than merely a shadow from the past.”

  “This I cannot allow, Kephalos. She has a claim to my protection which I am not at liberty to ignore. Leave her as she is.”

  “I feared as much—it shall be as your will commands, My Lord.”

  . . . . .

  The house that Kephalos had purchased was on the outskirts of the city, some distance from the river but supplied with water by a system of irrigation canals that would have made the farmers of my native land cringe with envy. My private quarters occupied several rooms but could only be entered through two doors, one of which allowed access from the house itself—in the antechamber behind this Enkidu slept—and the other opened onto a private walled garden.

  The garden was a great blessing, for the house was full of women, eight of whom had no other duties but to attend upon me as servants and concubines. Women under such circumstances, when all compete for the attention of one man, become restless and, finally, something of a nuisance. By forbidding them the garden I was able to preserve my tranquillity.

  Whether it was willful mischief or, as he later claimed, a wholly excusable misconstruction concerning my intentions, Kephalos at first placed Selana among this private garrison of harlots. The first morning I went to wash myself I found her at the bathing pool, quite naked but with her hair most cunningly arranged and her scrawny little body gleaming with scented oil—the other women seemed to have made something of a pet of her and she appeared most satisfied with herself.

  I was less pleased and drove her out with a good thrashing and the excellent advice that she had better not expect to grow up in my house as a lazy slut of a whore. I gave instructions that she should be given employment in the kitchen. A few days later I went there to see her and at first she would not even speak to me.

  “Go ahead and rut on your fat Egyptian cows,” she said at last, weeping hot tears of anger and mortification. “If such women amuse you, then I suppose there is nothing more to be said—if they can open their legs wide enough to receive a man they think they have mastered all the arts of pleasing. All they ever talk about is how best to remove the hair from their bodies and what shape to cut their nails. I am surprised you do not fall asleep over them out of pure boredom.”

  “Then do not lament so bitterly that I have taken you from among them. You are right to disdain the life of a concubine. I hope some more respectable destiny awaits you.”

  “I do not wish to be some dung farmer’s wife!”

  I left her there to master the craft of plucking quail, troubled in my mind as to what would become of her who seemed suited neither for the one life nor the other.

  But if Selana was not pleased with her apprenticeship to the kitchen, at least Kephalos was. Afterwards, he seemed to have fewer difficulties reconciling himself to the new situation.

  “Yes—let her clean fish,” he said, with a venom which by then had almost ceased to surprise me. “Let her come to stink of poultry guts, and may her hands grow as hard as flint from scouring the floor. This once, Master, you have shown wisdom.”

  And then he went on to describe to me his arrangements for the forthcoming banquet.

  I had been a soldier in the Land of Ashur, and that not so long since that I had not spent most of my life up to that point in the company of soldiers. My father, though a king, had also been a soldier, like most of the nobles of his court in Nineveh, and soldiers, as everyone knows, are somewhat unpolished in their amusements—garrison banquets are rowdy affairs, with much drunkenness and noise and occasional assaults upon the entertainers. Thus it may be said, and not without justice, that I was little accustomed to refined company. I must own that the society of Memphis took me by surprise.

  The great banqueting hall of my new home held perhaps as many as two hundred people, and Kephalos seemed to have invited about that number of guests. In keeping with my place as host, I went around to all the couches and tables to introduce myself with a few sentences of halting Egyptian, and more often than not I found myself being answered in flawless Greek.

  I had also not expected so many ladies to be present, nor for them to be so forward in their manners—many held out their hands to me, expecting to be kissed upon the palm or the inside of the wrist, a familiarity from which any respectable eastern woman would shrink with something like horror. Yet the ladies of Memphis were prepared to flirt in the most shameful ways, and this directly under the eyes of their, apparently, indifferent husbands.

  “My Lord Tiglath could make us wish all our men had been born foreigners,” one of them told me, punctuating the thought with a forced giggle. My own mother was no older, but no consideration of the dignity belonging to age could prevent this lady from smirking like a girl. “Such rough, strong fingers—you must sit here next to me and relate all the history of your life.”

  The gentleman beside her kept staring off into space as if he chose not to hear anything his wife said. I thought it wisest not to accept the invitation.

  “Does the climate of our country agree with you?” another asked. “I hope it has not had a dispiriting effect.” She smiled, and ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip in a most provocative manner, such that I found myself wondering, Are all the women of Egypt harlots, lifting their skirts for any stranger who happens by?

  Yet there is no denying that the presence of so many ladies has a softening effect upon men’s manners. No one attempted to mount any of my serving women and, while many became drunk, they did so without riot, slipping back on their couches in quiet insensibility. Until experience taught me that the Egyptians always conducted themselves thus, I was convinced my banquet could not but have been a failure.

  I cannot speak for other cities, but at least in Memphis it is not the custom that an invitation to dine binds anyone to a fixed schedule. Hospitality is a relaxed affair, and guests arrive when they will, are fed when they arrive, and then depart when it suits them. Throughout the evening I was obliged to welcome new guests, who occasionally seemed surprised that I would take the trouble. It was thus well past the fourth hour after sunset when Lord Senefru appeared at my door, accompanied by his wife, the Lady Nodjmanefer.

  The Lord Senefru, who was perhaps forty years of age when I first met him, was a man of wealth and a member of a family that could trace its origins back to the first Seti, the great warrior Pharaoh of Egypt. He was also reputed to enjoy immense influence with Nekau, Prince of Memphis and Saïs, although he played no formal role in government. In appearance he was tall and thin to the point of uneasiness, with large, handsome black eyes which never seemed to rest. He hardly ever smiled, and he had the look of one who takes pleasure in nothing. I had heard him called a vain man, and I could well believe it—not vain in his dress or of his possessions or style of life, although he lived like a man of rank, but eaten up with pride for his ancient lineage, his position in the world, and his own intelligence, which was of a very high order. He was also vain of his wife, who was as beautiful a woman as I had ever beheld.

  I must now speak of the Lady Nodjmanefer, although even after all this time the thought of her still gives me pain. I close
my eyes to see her the way she was that first evening, and I know what a fool I must have been not to have anticipated everything that happened after, for her great beauty seemed to carry with it a sense of sadness, as if she knew somehow that her life must be short and full of sorrow.

  “My Lord Tiglath, I present my wife.”

  She was her husband’s niece as well as his consort—the Egyptians have no scruples about such alliances, their kings frequently marrying their own sisters and even daughters—and I suppose she was a year or two older than twenty.

  She was a sight to take the breath from under a man’s ribs—if he be not dead as the earth he must be stirred by her. She was small, hardly taller than a child, yet she possessed a woman’s body, with a waist I could enclose in my hands and high, round, perfect breasts. Her mother’s mother, she told me once, almost as if it were a secret, had come as a bride from Lydia, which perhaps explained why Nodjmanefer so little resembled the other women of Egypt. The Egyptians are a dark race, but her skin, flawless as water, was almost the color of gold and appeared to glow from within, as if she burned—yet it did not, for her flesh was cool. Her face was what a sculptor might see in his dreams, with high cheekbones and a delicate pink lips. Her eyes, almond-shaped and seeming always to catch the light, were as green as the sea.

  She touched the tips of her fingers to her bosom and bowed to me, and Senefru led her away. I yet remember the smell of her perfume as it lingered in the still air.

  I could not keep my eyes from her. Throughout the evening my glance would steal in her direction, but she seemed always occupied with her husband and his friends and never had a look to spare for me. The Lord Senefru and his lady stayed for a few hours and then departed. I did not have a chance to speak to them again. I never even heard the sound of her voice.

  The evening was otherwise a dull affair. Kephalos had done all things admirably; everything ran smoothly and the food and wine were excellent. The musicians played well and the dancers moved their comely, well-oiled bodies in perfect time. My guests, I think, were pleased enough, but I was bored almost beyond endurance.