The Blood Star (95 page)

“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. His
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.