The Blood Star (75 page)

And the tavern itself seemed empty. Where was
the smell of woodsmoke as the landlord’s wife made breakfast? Where
were the footfalls of the household slaves, and the chatter of
ceaseless quarreling that is part of every tavern’s life? Had the
world died around us as we slept?

I was not the only one who had noticed it.
Selana had fallen asleep again, but I saw the light from the
doorway darken as Enkidu stepped soundlessly into the room. He was
dressed, and he carried his ax in his hand.

He motioned for me to stand and attend, and
then pointed back the way he had come. I saw at once what he meant,
for the stairway was as silent as if it led down into the bowels of
the earth.

Our rooms were in the back of the house, so
the only window looked out upon an alley, which was also deserted.
The only way to discover what had happened was to go out into the
street.

I went back to my sleeping mat and held
Selana’s foot until she woke up.

“What is. . ?”

And then she heard it—the silence.

“Get dressed,” I told her. “Be quick.”

By the time I had buckled on my sword, she
was ready. We made our careful way down the stairs. The tavern door
stood open. I had only to go outside.

And there they waited. It looked as if the
whole city had risen from their beds to keep this vigil outside the
tavern door. They filled the street in every direction. Common
soldiers, merchants and craftsmen, porters and harlots and
dirt-smeared farming folk, great and humble together, men and
women, even children, standing in perfect stillness. I could not
help but wonder how long they had been there.

The instant I appeared they knelt. In their
hundreds they went down on their knees before me, in waves, like
the sea parting. Their eyes never left my face as they paid me this
silent homage.

They have remembered me, I thought. After
seven years I come among them as a nameless traveler, and still
they know me. How in one lifetime shall I ever merit such an
honor?

XXXIV

There is no sound on earth stranger than the
silence of a multitude. I stood in the doorway of the tavern, the
focus of a thousand wills, as if by that single act I had answered
the dearest wish of their hearts. I did not speak—they did not wish
me to speak. There was no place for words.

I do not know how long we continued thus, and
at last I became aware that Enkidu and Selana were standing behind
me.

“What do they want, Lord?” she asked, in a
voice that was no more than a breath. “They make me afraid.”

“They make me afraid as well,” I answered.
“Just not in the same way.”

I made a gesture with my hand, holding it out
and turning the palm up, and the people of Rasappa knew they had
permission to rise. They came to their feet slowly, as if their
joints had grown stiff, yet even now they did not break their
silence.

“Selana, put on your veil—now. Enkidu, fetch
the horses.”

We were suffered to go. The crowds did not
hinder us but stood aside, and Enkidu crossed over to the stable
and came back leading our three horses by the bridles.

All the way to the city gates, the streets
were filled with people. They made way for us and knelt in
silence.

“Why do they not speak?”

I turned back to Selana, who, out of some
instinctive caution, rode a little behind me, and smiled.

“I can only guess,” I said. “Perhaps they do
not know that Esarhaddon has recalled me from exile. If this is so,
then to speak would be to defy the king’s sentence against me, and
they would not insult the king. They honor me in the only way left
to them.”

Neither of us spoke again until the city was
far behind us—until we no longer felt those hundreds of eyes on our
backs.

“Is it because you are a prince? Who are you
to them?”

I did not answer. Instead, I thought of
Tabshar Sin, my second father, my old
rab shaqe
, who had
taken a raw boy and made him into a soldier. What had he said?
“You are praised all the more because you are not
Esarhaddon.”

I noticed, with some irritation, that Selana
had once more removed her veil.

Five days later, we crossed a pass through
the Sinjar Mountains and looked down to see the Tigris, Mother of
Rivers. When I wet my mouth with her waters, I wondered how I had
lived these seven years without dying of thirst.

On the second morning after we crossed the
river we found the boundary stone bearing the winged disk of Ashur
that meant I was now passing across my own land. We would sleep
that night at Three Lions.

At that season of the year the village
people, my own tenants, were already busy with their first harvest.
We rode through fields where the wheat was waist-high—it seemed as
if my own lands had remained untouched by the famine and drought I
had seen elsewhere—and as we passed men and women would look up at
us from their labor and their eyes would grow wide with speechless
wonder.

And then the cry would break from their
throats—“The Lord Tiglath has come back, the lord is home
again!”—and they would gather around, reaching up to touch me that
they could confirm to themselves that I was a living man and not a
spirit let loose into the daylight. And then the men would offer me
their beer jars, as if they thought that a journey as long as mine,
all the way back from the earth’s end, must have been a thirsty
business.

“Shall we send a runner to inform the
overseer, Lord?”

I laughed and shook my head. “If I know Tahu
Ishtar, he is probably already well aware of my presence. I hope I
will find him well.”

“He is dead, Lord—he died two years ago. He
broke his neck when his horse threw him.”

The news came as an unpleasant shock, which
must have shown itself in my face because quite suddenly the man
seemed embarrassed, as if he had revealed a secret.

“His son is overseer now,” he went on, after
only the briefest pause. “Qurdi.”

“Yes—of course.”

“Shall we send him word, Lord?”

“No.”

We rode on. Tahu Ishtar had been an able
overseer and a man of dignity. To be respected by such a man as his
master was an honor, and I had felt it as such. Now he had vanished
into the emptiness of death. The world was forever diminished.

We reached the farmhouse just an hour or so
before dark. As we approached I saw that a small crowd of house
servants were already waiting to greet us. Among them was Qurdi,
along with his wife and their six children. I noticed that Naiba’s
belly was round with a seventh—she was even more beautiful now than
the last time I had seen her, and she seemed happy. Perhaps that
was why. When our eyes met she blushed and lowered her gaze.

Qurdi, his staff of office in his hand,
bowed. Then everyone else bowed, as if they had been waiting for
his signal. Qurdi’s beard was quite full now and he had acquired
something of Tahu Ishtar’s bearing. The first time I had seen him
he was no more than a boy, to be lifted up with one arm to ride
behind his father.

His obeisance made, he smiled with pleasure,
showing strong white teeth.

“Welcome, Lord—welcome home!”

I slid off my horse and took his hand. “It is
good to be home,”

I answered. “And from what I can see, you
have served me well as overseer, as I would have expected from your
father’s son.”

I felt a tug and looked down to behold Naiba
knealing down to kiss the hem of my tunic. I tried to lift her up
again, but she took my hand and pressed it against her
forehead.

“My lord, my lord,” she cried, her voice
trailing off into a sob. I risked a quick glance at Qurdi to see
how he took this display, but there was a grin on his lips and his
eyes shone with obvious pride in his wife.

“A fresh-killed goat is already on the fire,
Lord,” he said. “And the stones are well heated in the sweating
house.”

After I had greeted each of the servants in
turn—most of them had been trained by my mother and were old
acquaintances—all I wanted to do was to clean off the dust of my
long journey. The first breath of steam from the sweating house was
like the perfume from an orchard that is in flower.

“Who is the woman?” Selana asked, as she
scrubbed my back with the green leaves of a tree branch. Enkidu,
crouched naked in a corner of the tiny building, looked as if he
wished himself somewhere else.

“She was formerly my concubine,” I answered,
seeing no reason to lie. “I took her as booty when once I made war
against the tribes of the eastern mountains. In time she came to
love the boy Qurdi, so I gave her to him as his wife.”

I was sitting on a stool, and she put her
hands on my shoulders and leaned around to look at my face.

“You tolerated this insult?”

“What insult?”

“That she should raise her eyes to another
man while you still took her to your sleeping mat?”

“A woman cannot help where she loves, no more
than can a man. I was not touched in the matter, not even in my
vanity, so why speak of an insult?” I shrugged. “Selana, for all
that you were born free, you have retained the outlook of a slave.
She wished to be his wife—why should I make her life a misery by
denying her this?”

“You had grown weary of her.”

“No. I did not want to be the cause of her
suffering.”

She asked me no more questions about Naiba,
but what conjectures she formed on her own I cannot answer for.

That night at dinner I drank no wine, only
the beer that had been brewed out of my own grain. I ate alone, and
the woman who served me had been one of my mother’s favorites.

“How long ago did your mistress die?” I asked
her, for I wished to hear of Merope.

“Nearly three years ago, Lord,” she answered,
shaking her head as the tears welled at the recollection. I do not
doubt that her grief was real, for my mother had been an easy woman
to love. “I remember it well, for it was the winter after the king
first returned from campaigning in the west—I am not likely to
forget that.”

“Why?”

“Why, Lord?” She looked into my face as if
she thought I must be having a jest at her expense. “Because that
was the first time he came here. I had never expected to live to
serve bread and beer to the king!”

“He came here?” I could hardly believe
it.

“Oh yes—twice that autumn. He came to see the
Lady Merope. To bring her the news.”

“What news?”

“That he had seen you during his travels,
Lord. That you were still alive.”

I cannot describe the effect these words had
on me. That Esarhaddon should have delayed his triumph in Nineveh
to stop here and bring a few words of comfort to my mother was a
kindness I would not have expected of him.

“You say he came twice?”

“Yes. He traveled up from Nineveh with only a
light escort and stayed for three days. He hunted during the days
and took supper with my lady in the evenings—they would talk far
into the night. . . Do not grieve, My Lord, for she lived each day
expecting your return and died quietly in her sleep.”

“Leave me now, Shulmunaid.”

I stayed up a long time that night, with no
company but a wine jar and the soft light from the brazier fire. My
mother was the gentlest spirit I had ever known, and she had died
without her only son there to close her eyes. I was not the one to
blame for this, yet I felt as if I had wronged her. She was buried,
I knew, under the floor of that very room, according to the
practice of my own people, yet had I been here I could have burned
her body first and sealed up her bones in a silver urn. Did her
soul rest quietly in this foreign earth, so far from her home? I
could only hope.

The next morning I came outside and found
Qurdi waiting for me.

“Will it please my Lord to ride out with his
servant and look over the condition of the estate?” he asked, as
with his right hand he made a sweeping gesture that seemed to take
in even the mountains in the distance. “I have a horse ready for
you.”

My overseer was still a young man, no more
than four or five and twenty years old, and there was a twinkle of
mischief in his eye as he spoke. I wondered what he could be
about.

We walked over to the stable, and even before
Qurdi opened the door I could hear the sound of hooves beating
against a stall gate.

Ghost! I thought. But no, it was not
possible. I had ridden Ghost during my campaign against the Medes,
and that had been ten years ago. A horse, even such a one as my
Ghost, does not live so long as that and still break down the stall
gate of a morning.

And yet the fine silver stallion I found
inside might have been he, by some magic returned to youth and
strength. The only difference my eye could find was the absence of
the crescent-shaped scars on his chest, put there by the hooves of
the Lord Daiaukka’s horse when we fought our death duel, and Ghost,
braver than his master, had refused to accept defeat and saved my
life. This was not Ghost, but it might have been.

“His foal,” Qurdi announced, running his hand
over the stallion’s neck to quiet him. “Ghost was found dead in his
pasture last year, and we buried him as if he had been a man, with
offerings of wine, because we knew you honored him—but he left this
behind.”

“He is fine,” I said, filled with wonder, for
such a horse is nobler than any man.

“And ready for campaign!” My overseer
grinned, as if this jest had been kept in waiting for me. “The king
had him brought to the royal stables in Nineveh to be trained up as
a war stallion. He was sent back twenty days ago—that is how we
knew you would be home soon. He answers to his sire’s name.”

“Ghost,” I whispered, for I felt choked with
emotion. I reached out to him and the horse accepted the touch of
my hand. If Esarhaddon had studied to please me, he had found the
right instrument. “Yes, by all means—let us ride out and look over
the condition of the estate!”