The Assyrian Read online

  “I don’t see why.” I answered back, perhaps a little too loudly—for part of me knew even then that there was something dangerous about my feelings for Esharhamat. “Just because she is queen, I don’t see why we can’t go on loving each other. What should it matter to Ashurnadinshum?”

  “Tiglath, my brother, for all that you are a clever Ionian, by the god’s will there never was born so great a fool.”

  . . . . .

  As with the approach of a thunderstorm, as the time for parting drew nearer, the air in the house of women seemed to grow heavy and hard to breathe. Bag Teshub became ever more anxious and seemed to whirl with business as he prepared us for our final recitations, and those of the king’s wives and concubines who had sons of leaving age withdrew into the silence of their own hearts. And Naq’ia, as she watched me from the fountain’s edge, smiled as if she knew all the secrets of my future life.

  At last, when my mother could no longer restrain her tears in front of me, she gathered me in her arms, covering my head with the heavy bronze curtain of her hair, and wept as if she were to lose me to death. It was the first time I tasted fear.

  “You will see, my little prince.” she said in between her sobbing. “You will see how the god of this land protects you from your enemies. The god’s mark upon you will see you through every danger—you will see. You will see.”

  “What enemies could I have in my father’s house?” I asked. It seemed suddenly an important question.

  “None from whom the greatness of your destiny cannot protect you. You need be afraid of no one.”

  And when I looked into her eyes, flooded with tears, I knew at once that she did not credit her own brave words and my heart quailed within me.

  “We will not be parted long, Merope. When I am a great general and high in the king’s favor, I will win you out of this place.”

  My mother smiled, as if she believed me.

  When I left my mother’s arms my one thought was to find Esharhamat, for my mind was troubled. She was sitting beneath the linden tree, as if waiting there, but there was no comfort to be gained from her because the contagion of dread had found its way even to little Esharhamat.

  “I will never see you again,” she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper. “I will be walled up in Ashurnadinshum’s house of women and you will forget me. When you leave this garden you will no longer love me.”

  They were strange words—I could not imagine what she meant, nor, I suspect, could she. But some foreboding had reached her, child that she was, and she was filled with helpless terror. I was but nine years old, she even less, and we sat there together beneath the great tree’s spreading branches as the future appeared before us like the iron bars of a cage.

  The next day, in the presence of the Lord Sinahiusur, the king’s brother who served at his right hand as turtanu, commander of the royal army and the crown’s most trusted and powerful servant, stood four of us: myself, Esarhaddon, Nabusharusur, and a boy named Belushezib, the child of a concubine despised even more than my own mother, since she was the half wild wife of one of the mountain men of the east, captured by the Lord Sennacherib on the field of battle, where her man lay slaughtered — it was not even certain whose child he was, the king’s or the dead Mede’s. There we all waited before old Bag Teshub to be heard as we each read aloud the daggerlike writing from the clay tablets. It was the last moment we would be schoolboys together. Today, for good or ill, we became men.

  Bag Teshub, I suspect to display his prowess as a teacher, gave me a tablet in the tongue of Sumer—it was a simple prayer to Enlil, an ancient god, the guardian of the nether world. I read it haltingly, but the turtanu Sinahiusur, resplendent in his tunic embroidered with blue and green and shot through with silver, nodded his head as he stroked his black beard in approval. Of the others’ recitations I remember nothing, except Esarhaddon’s remark as we were dismissed.

  “I read well enough to make sense of a dispatch.” he said. “And what more does a soldier need? It will do.”

  We four little boys, our tasks as children behind us, were led away by Bag Teshub and the Lord Sinahiusur, down a corridor we had never walked before, through a door that I had never seen open, and into the hard light of the outside. This was the moment of parting. The turtanu stood with his hands on Esarhaddon’s shoulders, for Esarhaddon was the son of the king’s second lawful wife—not like me, whose mother was merely one more among the royal women—and thus he had already been selected from among us. But as the Lord Sinahiusur held my brother under his hands, his eyes were all the time on my face. He seemed intent upon carrying away in his mind my indelible image. What his thoughts might have been I had no notion. He never spoke.

  “Come, my children,” Bag Teshub murmured, looking away from Esarhaddon as if the sight of him troubled his conscience. “Come now—you are all to be scribes. Your lives will be here in the palace of the king. Great things perhaps await you.”

  My disappointment in that moment was the sharpest emotion I had yet experienced. So I was not to be a soldier after all. For me there were to be no conquests, no glory. I would pass my days copying tablets. In my heart I cursed the old eunuch for distinguishing me before the king’s turtanu—I was naive enough to imagine that was the cause of my unhappy fate. I had forgotten the half smiles of the Lady Naq’ia.

  “Come this way.” he went on, his voice piping. “The moment has come for your—your initiation.”

  While the turtanu led my brother Esarhaddon away, we three were conducted to a vast courtyard far off from the house of women. There four men in the vestments of priests awaited us, their sleeves rolled up to reveal the heavy bulging muscles of their arms and their faces set as if they cherished some special anger against boys of our age. I will remember the expression on their faces all of my life. I have seen it many times since, but that was the first.

  We hung back, we three. We were afraid and tried to hide ourselves behind Bag Teshub’s skirts. But even he, in this place, was not our friend.

  “Start with this one.” he said, his voice strangely altered. He grabbed Belushezib by the shoulder and thrust him forward. Belushezib did not stand on his dignity as a king’s son—he let out a scream of terror as two of the priests grasped his arms, twisting them cruelly as they marched him to a low stone altar in the center of the courtyard.

  In late summer we children wore nothing except thin linen robes and loincloths. These the priests removed from Belushezib’s body as roughly as they might have ripped the skin from a rabbit. The boy kept screaming the whole time, as if he really were being flayed alive.

  At first I understood very little of what was taking place. I saw two of the priests holding Belushezib down upon the altar stone by his arms and legs while another, carrying a leather cord in his hands, stepped forward and made a loop with it around Bclushezib’s private parts, choking off the scrotum as he pulled the cord tight. It was all done in the calmest, most workmanlike manner, as if they were cooks in the king’s kitchen dressing a sheep for the night’s banquet. Nabusharusur and I watched in horror as the fourth priest produced a knife with a curved blade and sliced open the scrotum, letting its bloody contents spill out over Belushezib’s legs. I thought the air would shatter with his shriek of terror and pain.

  And then, of course, everything was plain to me.

  “How dare they?” I thought. “How dare they do such a thing?” But they did dare, and as I felt Bag Teshub’s hand on my shoulder I knew that I was next.

  I looked up into his beardless face—he was smiling at me. The skin around his neck was loose and jiggled when he moved. He was fat and strengthless, and he had been the old king’s brother.

  Suddenly I understood why my mother had been so afraid, and why Naq’ia had smiled.

  Yes, of course. Esarhaddon was not here. He was safe, should the throne come to him. And I was here, about to have my manhood stripped away from me before it had even begun.

  And Bag Teshub could smile.


  “No—not to me.”

  Whether I actually spoke these words I know not, but they filled my mind. My father was the king, and they would not do this to me.

  They had finished with Belushezib. One of them took a torch, dripping with burning pitch, and seared closed his wound. He screamed yet once more, but no one paid any heed. They were already turning their eyes to me.

  “Go on, Tiglath,” Bag Teshub whispered. “It is over in a moment. Show them what a brave boy you are.”

  He gave me a gentle push forward. The priests were content to wait for me. The one with the curved knife balanced it in the palm of his hand, almost playfully. I took a step, then another, then another. I hardly knew what I was doing.

  I would have been a warrior, and a warrior tells himself he is not afraid of suffering and death. I was not afraid of the pain—and I hardly knew what death was. But this shameful dishonor. . . No, it must not be allowed to happen.

  I knew what I had to do.

  They were far from expecting resistance. I approached them meekly, my eyes upon the ground, like the boy that they thought me to be. The one with the knife was closest to me, his back to the altar stone. He was so sure he had me in his power it was almost like an invitation.

  I was only a boy, but my mother had taught me to be agile and quick. I shuffled my feet as I approached him. I kept my eyes down.

  Then, at the last moment, when he began to reach out his hand to me. I rushed at him with all the sudden force I could command. It was enough—I hit him just above the knees, striking hard with the palms of my hands, and he rocked back, losing his balance. He fell backward over the altar and, as I had expected, allowed the knife to slip from his grasp.

  It fell clattering to the stone floor. While they all recovered from their surprise I had just time to scoop it up as I ran to one of the pillars that supported the arcade around the far end of the courtyard. I ran like a deer, my heart pounding within me. I did not stop until I had that massive granite pillar at my back. I turned, the knife in my hand, to face my tormentors.

  “I am Tiglath Ashur!” I shouted I was half mad with fear, but it was mingled with a strange exultation such as I had never known. “My father is Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth, King of Kings! Come near me at your peril!”

  For an instant there was only silence. I could even hear the faint whispering of the wind overhead. For that instant I thought I might really have won.

  But then I was answered with laughter, laughter that boomed like thunder, like the laughter of the god Ashur himself. How dare they? I was so filled with wrath that I wished to shed tears until I saw that it was not the priests who were laughing. They had forgotten my existence. They were on their knees, their races pressed against the dusty stones.

  And then I saw them, across the courtyard, in the shadow of the arcade, two men. I strained my eyes to see clearly and, as if to oblige me, they stepped out into the sunlight.

  One of them I knew. He was the turtanu Sinahiusur, the king’s brother; he stood silent and majestic as before, wise and heroic.

  But I hardly had eyes for him. I was looking at his companion, he who had dared to laugh at me, who laughed still. His tunic was covered with gold. I thought I was in the presence of a god.

  He gestured toward me with his arm, his lips still smiling.

  “Bag Teshub—Uncle.” he said. “This is but a boy, though he roars like a lion, eh? Take the knife from him.”

  Bag Teshub picked himself up from the stones and came toward me, bowing even as he walked.

  “Give me the knife, Tiglath. We are not in the schoolroom now. This is the—augh!”

  He had come too close. The knife struck out and cut him across the hand so that red blood spattered his arm and rolled to the ground. I waved my little weapon threateningly and he jumped back and out of danger. And the thundering laughter sounded again.

  “He is as he styles himself, eh, brother?” the golden man said, turning a little toward Sinahiusur. “This one has the bowels of a prince, eh?—yes? I am convinced, so let it be as you think best. He shall be spared the knife.”

  Sinahiusur said nothing. He merely placed his right hand upon his breast and bowed. And then he turned his eyes to me.

  “Bow down, Tiglath Ashur,” he said, in a voice like the stroke of an ax. “Bow down before the king thy father.”

  My knees became as water and I fell to the stone floor, touching it with my forehead I was in the presence of the god’s chosen one, and my mind was clouded with awe. It was Sennacherib who stood before me, whom I myself had named Lord of the Earth.

  “Come to me, boy,” he said, his voice all gentleness. “Come and let me see you.”

  In all my life I had never yet seen the king my father, and now I stood before him. He rested his hands upon my shoulders and my eyes clouded with tears.

  “Do not be afraid, my son. Have a lion’s heart and I will make you great in the land of Ashur. How is that, eh? Better?”

  There was a slight sound. It was Bag Teshub, his bleeding hand wrapped in a scrap of linen, clearing his throat.

  Yes—what is it, Uncle?”

  “What of the other, Dread Lord?”

  Because, of course, we had forgotten all about Nabusharusur. He stood in the shadow of a pillar as if he wished to disappear altogether. I do not know what I felt for him in that moment; perhaps my heart was too glutted to feel anything more.

  “Yes, of course.” The king’s face went hard, though his hand still rested lightly enough on my shoulders. “I think one lion is enough for this day, eh? Fulfill your task, Uncle.”

  The priests were quick this time. They gave Nabusharusur no chance to resist but lifted him from the ground by his arms and legs. He screamed, he filled the air with his shrill voice, but in an instant he was upon the altar stone and the cruel knife had begun its work.

  “No, do not turn away, my son,” the king said, laying his hand upon my cheek so that I could not. “Learn to be a man and shrink not from pain and blood.”

  And so it was that in my ninth year I learned what it meant to become a man of Ashur.

  Chapter 2

  Sinahiusur was a pious man, a respecter of omens. He had remembered the child who was born the night the great Sargon died, and thus it was that the god’s mark which I bore was my deliverance, as my mother had said it would be. So I was sent to the house of war after all, and the king my father’s eyes were upon me. “I will make you great in the Land of Ashur,” he had said. I was to have all the world could offer, it seemed.

  And in the house of war I found Esarhaddon.

  His eyes met mine at the door of the royal barrack, whither I had been conducted after receiving the king’s blessing and parting from him. It was evening and Esarhaddon was still in his leather breastplate, polishing his new sword as he sat on his sleeping roll. He glanced up at the sound of footsteps and, even in the flickering yellow light of the oil lamp that rested on the floor, I could see the mingling of surprise and joy in his face.

  “By the sixty great gods, is it really you, Tiglath?”

  He sprang to his feet and came rushing toward me, the sword still in his hand as if he planned to run me through merely as a friendly demonstration. In an instant our arms were around each other’s necks, and I will never know how he kept from cutting off my head.

  “So it is you, in your own flesh, and not some deceiving gallu called up by Zaqar, Lord of Dreams? I thought you were going to the tablet house to be a mud scratcher with the others.”

  “I was very nearly rendered fit for nothing else,” I said, and then I told him of what had happened. He did not seem surprised, and the fate of Belushezib and Nabusharusur moved him not at all. Would he have felt the same had it been my simtu to go under the gelding knife? Would he have smiled smugly then and spoken bland words about the god’s will? I will never know. But when I described how I had sliced open old Bag Teshub’s hand he threw back his head and laughed.

  “Did you really do
it, Tiglath? By Adad’s thunder, I wish I had been there to hear him howl! Tiglath, my brave brother, I will love you onto death for every drop you spilled of the old maiden’s blood. And so you really saw the king?”

  “Yes, and he put his hands upon me and called me ‘my son.’”

  “Then you are blessed. Remember your poor brother when the king has made you shaknu of Babylonia and the black headed people feel your foot upon their necks like Sargon come back to life.”

  This made him laugh all over again—it was mere excess of good spirits, for Esarhaddon was possessed of a loving heart.

  “What is it like in this place?” I asked, looking around me with a curiosity I did not trouble to disguise, for the royal barrack had been my dream no less than my brother’s.

  “What is it like in this place?” Esarhaddon put his arm over my shoulder and led me inside the tiny room we were to share for the next four years. “‘This place.’ as you call it, brother, is the temple of glory.”

  . . . . .

  How shall I speak of the house of war, in which Esarhaddon and I filled such exalted stations? In my time there I learned how to ride a horse and drive a chariot, how to fight with the sword, the dagger, the bow, and the javelin. I learned the forms of military courtesy. I learned tactics. I learned discipline and the leadership of men. And, most important of all, I learned arrogance.

  I learned that I was a prince of Ashur, that all the peoples of the world were but dust under the feet of the unconquerable armies I was destined to lead. I learned that I had every right to be pleased with myself and contemptuous of all others because I would be a soldier and my father was the king. This was a most necessary lesson, since arrogance is the sole parent of both daring and cruelty, and without these no wars have been won since the first turning of the sky.

  We men of Ashur are farmers. We harvest our barley and our vines. Our lives are bound up with the soil and the life giving water which are both gifts of the great Tigris River. But our land is flat and offers us no protection from the marauders of the eastern mountains, and it is poor in metal. Gold is from Egypt. Silver is from the Bulghar Maden, north of the Cilician Gates. A nation may manage without these but not without copper, which must come from Haldia, and even Cyprus. Our tin is mined in the north, beyond Lake Urumia, and our iron from the southern shore of the Black Sea. All of these places lie outside the plains where our first fathers set up their brick huts and worshiped the god from whom we took our name. Thus, because men envied us our rich harvest and because weapons are not made from mud and river reeds, we became warriors and spread the glory of Ashur to the four corners of the world.