The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  “That is rather like the viper’s warning against the lion. Who is fool enough to trust Nekau?”

  “Nevertheless, why does a priest send an envoy, as if he would treat with me as an equal? Was he not Pharaoh’s subject? Then he is mine now and should prostrate himself like a slave and not imagine he can bargain with me for terms.”

  “He was never Pharaoh’s subject in more than name, brother. You are master where Pharaoh was master, but Upper Egypt is a different place. There Mentumehet rules as the Pharaohs have not ruled in the north for four hundred years.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you should go.” Esarhaddon smiled fiercely, as he did when he imagined he was a great king before whom all the world trembled like a reed. “Perhaps you should take a great army there and teach this priest obedience.”

  “Pharaoh had an army—he never went. Perhaps there was a reason why not.”

  “You are afraid?”

  “I am cautious. You have conquered a rich land, and I know of nothing in the south which is worth hazarding the wealth of the Delta. If you like, I will go to Thebes. But I will take only a hundred soldiers, enough to support the dignity of one who speaks with the Lord of Ashur’s voice. We will see what Mentumehet answers when I tell him he has a new master.”

  My embassy to the Prophet of Amun had to wait, however, for the next night, after a banquet of conspicuous debauchery, Esarhaddon woke up feverish and nauseated and went out into the palace garden to empty his guts, thinking this would make him feel better. It did not—once he started he could not seem to stop retching. When his vomit began showing streaks of blood, his physicians grew alarmed for his life and sent for me.

  As soon as I saw him I knew that he was dangerously ill. He was sweating heavily and his face was the color of dead grass.

  “By the Sixty Great Gods, I feel sick,” he said, grasping my hand when I sat down beside his bed. “My bowels feel like they are full of maggots.”

  “You look dreadful.”

  He managed to smile thinly. “That is why I love to have you near me, brother,” he murmured. “You always have something comforting to say.”

  Then he was seized with another fit of retching. I held his head in my lap and tried to force a little water down him whenever he could catch his breath. After a time he grew calmer and, at last, fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

  “I think, My Lord, it is perhaps simply a consequence of over indulgence,” said Menuas, the physician I had last seen massaging the Lady Naq’ia’s feet, and who, unique among his colleagues, remained reasonably calm. “The lord king is, as you know, an intemperate man, and the food and wine of this country are strange to him.”

  “You don’t think there is any chance he has been poisoned?”

  “Poisoned?” He looked genuinely surprised at the suggestion. “I think not, My Lord—except if he ate a piece of tainted fish or something of the sort. I see no human agency in this.”

  For all that his eyes glittered fearfully, which seemed to be something over which he had no more control than a man does over the shape of his ears, the Urartian, I had the impression, was humoring me, as if, were it not for my rank, he might have laughed in my face for advancing such an idea. Nevertheless, I did not find myself able to share his faith in the innocence of mankind.

  Half an hour later, Esarhaddon woke. He was frightened and almost delirious, casting his eyes about like a lost child.

  “Tiglath?” he cried weakly. When he found my hand again he was calmer. “Don’t let them kill me, Tiglath. These fools will kill me if they have the chance—promise you won’t let them.”

  “I promise.”

  I stayed beside my brother, watching him drift in and out of consciousness, until morning, when two of his senior physicians presented themselves like a delegation. The rest stayed in the back of the room, and I noticed that Menuas held himself a little apart from them.

  “My Lord, we think. . . that is, we are of the opinion. . .”

  “Yes? What?”

  They exchanged a worried glance, as if their confidence had begun to falter, and I had a sickening suspicion I knew why.

  “Yes? What?”

  “The king, we feel sure, has offended some local demon. Perhaps if he were bled, and then sacrifice were made. . .”

  I looked at my brother’s face. His lips worked silently as he slept, and his mouth was almost gray. I drew my sword and laid it across my lap.

  “If you wish to make sacrifice, that is your affair,” I said. “But if blood is to be spilled, it will not be the king’s. Do I make myself clear?”

  “My Lord. . .”

  “Get out.”

  I let my hand drop back down to the hilt of my sword, and they bowed themselves out of my presence.

  Menuas, I noticed, dared raise his eyes before he left, and even nodded slightly, as if to signal his approval.

  Then I sent for Esarhaddon’s new Hittite slave woman.

  “Do you dream of a life of luxury in the king’s harem?” I asked her. “Then go make a cooking fire in the garden and brew up a pot of thin millet gruel. My lord must have something with which to keep his stomach lined. Have a care how you make it and be sure the water is clean, for if the king dies I will cut your throat myself.”

  She understood that I meant it—I could see the fear in her eyes, so I had no anxiety about her—and an hour later, when Esarhaddon was awake again, I could offer him breakfast.

  “What is this stuff?” he asked. “It’s disgusting.”

  “They feed it to babies. Just eat it, and save your strength.”

  Suddenly he laughed.

  “I am always one or two steps behind you, aren’t I, Tiglath,” he said. “You are wounded in battle, and the best I can do is to get sick and vomit my guts out. You collect scars and are the admiration of the world, and I will die in my bed, puking like a dog that’s been feeding on rotten meat.”

  “You won’t die,” I told him.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  And he did not die, for all that the local demons were deprived of their blood sacrifice. Kephalos, who, though a scoundrel, was a skilled physician, always said, “When the gods mean to kill a man, they kill him. Otherwise, they do not interfere much in our infirmities, so prayers are of little help, and physicians, alas, are not much better. If you are troubled in your stomach, the best thing you can do is to stay quiet and eat simple, bland food. That, and a little water, will do you more good than all the supplications to all the gods in heaven.”

  By following this recipe I was able by the third day to see Esarhaddon sitting up in bed and bellowing for wine.

  “Go to Thebes,” he said. “I am recovered.”

  “You must give me your promise that you will mind your diet and keep your bowels clear.”

  “I promise. And I have told my physicians that you will hang their corpses from the city walls if I die—that, I think, is more to the point.”

  He laughed at this, and I thought, Perhaps it was merely his own intemperance. In Egypt, one sees conspiracies everywhere.

  May my dead brother’s ghost forgive me such confident folly.

  . . . . .

  Thebes is nearly a hundred beru from Memphis. Moreover, it is upriver and the Nile has a strong current. I had Pharaoh’s own barge at my disposal, which was a hundred cubits long and had a huge sail of reed matting, yet in the heat of summer there is hardly a stirring of wind. Even with a crew of fifty oarsmen, we had a tedious journey lasting more than twenty days.

  Mentumehet met me at the dock. He wore only a pleated linen skirt and a heavy necklace of enameled gold—only the lacquered shepherd’s crook he held in his right hand suggested his office—but he was nonetheless an impressive figure. He was tall and, unlike most priests in this country, slender, the ideal image of a prince as they like to appear in their public monuments. Hi
s handsome face was as impassive as if it had been carved from red granite. Only his eyes seemed truly alive, full of dark fire, as restless as those of a predatory animal. I sensed at once that this was a dangerous man, a man whose real life was lived buried within himself, a man at once unpredictable and capable of anything.

  During my stay in Thebes the Prophet saw that I was lavishly entertained—as only a man can who himself cares nothing for lavish entertainments—and he personally took me on a tour of the great temple of Karnak. What I remember most vividly from that place were the huge statues of the Pharaohs, gods themselves now and more majestic than any god, and the wall paintings showing the wars they had fought in Asia. Horemhab and Rameses and Seti and Tuthmosis—names that were spoken with respect even as far away as the Land of Ashur. This was what Mentumehet had wished me to see, this reminder that Egypt had not always been a crippled snake.

  “It has been over two thousand years since the kings of Thebes sailed down the Nile to conquer the land all the way to the sea,” he said. “They made themselves Pharaoh and wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, but they had their beginnings here.

  “Since then we have had twenty-five dynasties of Pharaohs—some, in recent centuries, have been foreigners, but they have honored the old gods of Thebes and ruled in their names. So it will go on until the end of time, for Egypt belongs to its gods or it belongs to no one.

  “You lived in Memphis while you were among us, did you not?” He turned to me and smiled his thin, faintly menacing smile. “Memphis is not Egypt. Memphis is a brothel. This is Egypt.”

  He pointed back to the fresco of Rameses overcoming the Hittites at Kedesh—I did not have the bad manners to point out to him how much less decisive the actual battle had been.

  “This is Egypt,” he repeated. “And that.”

  His eyes moved to the opposite wall, and to the massive double door in its center, a door as tall as five men and covered with gold, before which priests prostrated themselves as they went by. I realized suddenly that whatever lay behind it must be at the very center of this vast complex, its secret heart.

  “All the power of this land is behind that door,” he said, in the manner of one stating a fact. “That is the sanctuary of Amun, King of the Gods, whose will is fate. What is Pharaoh before him? What is the Lord Esarhaddon?”

  And he believed it—I could read as much in his face. It was all nonsense, temple incense clouding a priest’s brains until he begins to have faith in his own magic, but, looking at him, I half believed it myself. I knew then that Mentumehet was that most dangerous of all enemies, the man who has no doubts.

  Whatever else, I thought, I must never allow my poor superstitious brother to meet this man. The spell he would weave around Esarhaddon. . .

  “I will make my submission to your king,” he went on tonelessly, as if he had lost interest in the subject. “I will send him gifts of gold and treasure and women—I hear he has a taste for women—and I will make no objection if he makes himself Pharaoh or names someone else to rule in his place. Yet it is best if he understands that if he threatens the ancient order of things, the gods will put might into the hands of some great man who will sweep him away. It may be Taharqa, or it may be another, but it will happen.”

  . . . . .

  The royal barge, when I left Thebes, was loaded with booty. And I had promised nothing beyond what Esarhaddon and I had agreed to in advance: that Mentumehet should be confirmed as lord of Upper Egypt, subject only to his obedience in all matters touching our interests and the regular payment of tribute. This, after all, was the way our ancestors had always governed their empire—leave the actual administration in the hands of local rulers who could be trusted. Mentumehet could not be trusted, but neither could anyone else.

  Yet this was still the safest course. Mentumehet, if pressed, could raise an army of a hundred thousand men in a matter of days. And these would not be Libyan mercenaries fighting for pay, but Egyptians prepared to die for the honor of their ancient gods. Such a force could be crushed, but not easily. Upper Egypt was like a cobra sunning itself on a warm rock, best left in peace.

  It was all too easy, I thought. What disaster would come from our having pushed our way into this land of spendthrift nobles and mad priests? What revenge would be visited upon us?

  Upon returning to Memphis I was a little surprised to see that Esarhaddon still did not look well. He was up and active, but there was something. . .

  I told the king all that had happened. He did not display much interest. Then I showed him the chests of treasure, the presents of rare art and the dusty-skinned women with melting eyes that the Prophet of Amun had sent as offerings to his new lord. Esarhaddon, who delighted in all such toys, was very pleased.

  “You are wise and cunning, brother,” he said. “You conquer cities with nothing but your smooth tongue.”

  And then he grinned, and I knew he would tell me something I did not wish to hear.

  “What would you think if I made Prince Nekau the new lord of Egypt? I know that you do not like him, and that he is weak and corrupt and hated by nearly everyone, but for these very reasons he will depend all the more on us. What think you? Will he not do very well as Pharaoh?”

  I felt something cold in my bowels, like an intimation of death, yet I smiled and shook my head, for I had lost all hope.

  “And why, brother,” I asked him, “do you imagine it can make any difference?”

  XLV

  After five months in Memphis, even Esarhaddon was ready to go home. We would leave a garrison of forty thousand men there, and the force at Sha-amelie, which had kept our foothold in the Delta through the three years since the first Egyptian campaign, would be brought up to strength.

  Would these be enough to hold the country? It seemed doubtful, particularly if Taharqa decided to gather another army and push up from the south, but Esarhaddon really had no choice. He had stripped the northern borders bare to fight this war, and peace there hung on one man’s word to another. Khshathrita was not immortal, and neither was I. The homeland had to be properly defended.

  But we did not allow such anxious thoughts to mar the joy of our triumphant departure from the land of Egypt. We had come out of the desert like a tribe of nomadic marauders, but we would leave as conquerors, carried down the Nile on Pharaoh’s own troop barges. The men of Ashur are not good sailors, yet no one complained of this journey by water—no one looked forward with much enthusiasm to a second march through the Wilderness of Sin.

  This was really Esarhaddon’s first good look at the nation he had won with his sword, and he was bent on enjoying it, and on memorializing his own glory. In every city we entered, after the local nobles had abased themselves before the king and offered him entertainment and tribute, he insisted on placing in every temple of Amun an image of the Lord Ashur, inscribed with his own name and his boast of having subdued his enemies by grace of the god’s favor. At the time I thought this behavior a most childish display of vanity and an unwise, pointless provocation—I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the Egyptians took these idols down as soon as we had departed and threw them in the river. I confess, may his ghost forgive me, I had no inkling that my brother might have some other motive for these acts of devotion.

  And for the rest, as we were carried along by the Nile’s current, he would look out over the green fields of his new realm and his face would glow with gratified pride. Sometimes the peasants, walking along the riverbank, would catch sight of the royal barge and fall to their knees, and this really pleased him.

  I even persuaded Esarhaddon to stop at Naukratis by suggesting that the Greeks might, in exchange for certain trade concessions, be prepared to arrange a loan for Prince Nekau’s new government—Pharaoh, it seemed, had had the foresight to move his treasury to Napata, his capital in exile on the southern border and well out of reach, and the prince, ever the despair of his creditors, was as usual embarrassed for funds. Such a loan, I suggested, would save
us the ill feeling among the Egyptians that must inevitably be aroused if our soldiers were used to collect new taxes. The king liked this idea, since it solved a problem and cost him nothing, so he gave me his blessing to see what I could arrange.

  The docks were crowded when we landed, for Greeks and Egyptians alike had thought it wise to greet their new master with enthusiasm. Esarhaddon, when he stepped ashore to receive the people’s homage, was the center of attention—no one paid the slightest heed when, a few minutes later, one of his staff officers quietly slipped away.

  The city had changed very little in the years I had been gone. Only I had changed. I was no longer a fugitive now, but a conqueror. Yet this perhaps was merely an appearance. Where before it had felt strange to me to be a Greek among Greeks, now I wore the uniform of a rab shaqe in the army of Ashur as if it were a disguise. Since I was a child, friends and enemies alike had sometimes mocked me as a foreigner, calling me “the Ionian,” yet until I was forced to flee my own land I had never known a doubt of who I was. I was Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib—did not that make me a man of Ashur? Exile had taught me there was another self.

  Never more than as I walked the streets of Naukratis that day, in the eyes of all who saw me the very image of an Assyrian, had I felt more divided within my own soul. Perhaps I had been too many years away from home ever truly to go back.

  I found the home of my old acquaintance Glaukon. He was not there—doubtless he was on the docks, welcoming the king—but I knew he would be back soon enough. I told his servants, who did not know me and were understandably frightened of a strange foreign soldier, that I had come to see their master on a question of business and that I would wait. They brought me a cup of wine and disappeared.

  An hour passed, and then two, and then Glaukon returned. There was more silver in his beard than I remembered, but otherwise he was little different. I was a stranger to him. He greeted me with the worried eyes of a man who fears trouble.