The Blood Star (41 page)

She swept up the purse and disappeared,
perhaps before I could change my mind. I had to pour my own wine,
as it turned out, but by then it no longer tasted so evil and I was
able to manage an enthusiastic start on breakfast.

I felt better, and not only in my head and
bowels. Perhaps that was more Selana’s doing than the wine’s, for
she had the trick of reminding me that life was not all misery and
darkness.

And one’s affairs never seem as hopeless in
the morning as they did the night before. I had other friends than
Glaukon among the Greeks of Naukratis. I would consult with them—at
the very least they might be able to tell me something of this
deliberately mysterious Ahab of Jerusalem. If the man was to
impoverish me, I owed it to myself better to make his
acquaintance.

The day’s inquiries, however, left me much as
I had begun. No one was prepared to lend Nekau, Prince of Memphis
and Saïs, the price of so much as a single measure of wheat.

“Tiglath, you are a fool if you imagine he
will spend any of what you give him to buy bread for the poor or
peace in his own realms. It will all go to harlots and luxury, see
if it does not. Pharaoh is wise to topple him, and his people will
be the better for it.”

“His people will not be the better for
starving to death, or for being gutted by Pharaoh’s Libyan
soldiers. And I will guarantee that the money is spent wisely—you
may count on me to have enough sense for that.”

“Nevertheless, if it is Pharaoh’s purpose
that in Memphis they starve or perish by the sword, you will find
no one here in Naukratis willing to oppose it.”

Questions about Ahab of Jerusalem were just
as fruitless.

“His is not a name I have heard, but it is
possible he may be in earnest. The Hebrews are a nation of
poverty-stricken goatherds who understand nothing of statecraft or
commerce.”

This seemed to settle the matter. All doors
were closed to me save one, and behind that one lay a threatening
darkness.

Still, I had no choice but to open it—how
could I not?

Enkidu and I went back to the tavern, and I
shut myself in my room to lock out the din of Selana’s quarrel with
the landlord’s wife, which gave indications of having been
simmering through the full length of the day. Even among the
Egyptians, normally the most placid of races, the heat was
beginning to fray tempers.

About an hour after sunset, Khonsmose made
his customary apologetic entrance. This evening, however, he seemed
unusually satisfied with life—he was smiling like a felon who,
having confessed his crimes and repented of them, has been
pardoned, given Pharaoh’s bounty, and once more finds himself
turned loose upon the bright world.

“Your Honor will be pleased to give his
instructions concerning dinner?” he asked, even making so bold as
to smile.

“Nothing,” I said. “Only wine—I am expecting
a guest.”

He appeared not to hear me but continued to
stand there, grinning, in an apparent stupor of bliss.

“Are you quite well, my friend?” I finally
felt compelled to ask.

“Yes, very well, Your Honor, I and my wife
both.”

“I am delighted to hear it—and everything
prospers between you, I trust?”

He nodded vigorously, not at all taken aback
by such a question, delighted to have found someone to whom he
could confide the secret of his felicity.

“Yes, Your Honor. My wife makes me the
happiest of men.”

Looking at him, I could well believe it. So
it appeared that someone at least had profited from the distresses
of the previous night.

“Good. Then when the foreigner who was here
yesterday comes again, will you bring him to me at once?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Still he remained, regarding me
expectantly—was he waiting to render me a more complete account of
his felicity? Perhaps a detailed history? I could very well imagine
it all for myself.

“Well then. . . Please give your wife my most
sincere respects.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

We continued in silence for several seconds
more, and then at last Khonsmose seemed to recall something.

“If Your Honor will excuse. . ?”

“Yes, yes. . .” I dismissed him with a wave,
watching him disappear through the doorway. In the end his wife
would make his life a misery, but perhaps he already knew
that—perhaps, today at least, he did not care. It was possible to
envy him. I did not envy him his wife, but the fact that he loved
her.

My mind kept returning to Nodjmanefer and the
child she carried in her womb. I had a son already, at home in
Nineveh, but I could never acknowledge him—his mother was lady of
the palace, so the king my brother must be his father. I had never
even seen him.

But there would be no one to stop me from
owning this child as mine. I would take mother and child both and
find someplace where we offended no one by being together. I was
now eight and twenty years old, no longer young but still vigorous,
and I would find a means of supporting those who depended on
me.

I would have a chance at real happiness. Was
that not worth the surrender of all my wealth? It seemed so to
me.

Then perhaps I would no longer envy Khonsmose
the tavern keeper, with his pretty wife.

Several hours had passed before I raised my
eyes and saw the face of Ahab of Jerusalem, who smiled at me as a
cat might at a mouse. This time I did offer him wine.

“My patron has considered the matter,” he
said, almost without preamble. He sat before me, motionless, his
hands hidden in the long sleeves of his dark-brown tunic. “He is
prepared to loan the full five million emmer, but the additional
two million must fetch a return of four million when the whole
amount falls due.”

“So at the end of a year Prince Nekau will
owe nine million emmer. It is a considerable sum.”

I paused and took a sip of wine, as if the
matter did not concern me. In fact, it hardly did, for why should I
care if the prince defaulted on nine million rather than five?

“My own liability, however, must be limited
to the sums presently deposited in my name with merchants both here
and in Sidon,” I continued, smiling. “That includes virtually all
my wealth, but you cannot extract from me what I do not have, and I
will not tolerate that my family and household should be sold into
slavery for no better reason than to reconcile your patron to
having struck an unprofitable bargain.”

“My patron will agree to this. After all, he
is a reasonable man and would have no motive to avenge himself upon
you.”

“Where money is involved, men are very rarely
reasonable.”

He nodded, as if he appreciated my point. I
had the sense, however, that profit and loss were not really the
issues here, for Ahab’s patron must certainly have understood that
he could not emerge from these dealings the winner. I could only
assume that statecraft, and not wealth, was the object of this
contract, that what was being bought with five million emmer was
not the chance at nine million in a year’s time but a claim on the
future of Egypt.

Yet, as it seemed to me, these were not my
concerns. In a year, I would be far away. I should have been
wiser.

“How do you wish the five million?” he asked,
as if he were a shopkeeper taking an order. “In silver or in grain?
My patron has access to large stores of wheat and millet and can
give you an excellent price—three million bushels, delivered to the
docks at Memphis within ten days.”

“Very well then, I will take the grain.”

“Then would you be prepared to put your seal
to the undertaking tonight? My patron is prepared to meet you this
very hour.”

“Yes—of course.”

It was not until we were standing that I
noticed he had not touched his wine.

At the door of the tavern we met Enkidu. Ahab
of Jerusalem glanced at him, shook his head, and then turned back
to me.

“You will understand, My Lord Tiglath Ashur,
that these are sensitive matters,” he said, with a faint shrug. “My
patron takes a considerable risk of. . . shall we say,
embarrassment, if his involvement becomes known in Tanis. His
position, his very life might be put in jeopardy. What I am trying
to say is, he will not tolerate a witness at your meeting—not even
a mute beast such as yours.”

I smiled, a mirthless grin.

“You are fortunate you speak in Aramaic, my
friend. He is mute, but he is far from a beast. Yet I will tell him
to stay behind.”

I did, and Enkidu fixed me with his cold blue
eyes, as if to say, you are a great fool to trust your life out of
my keeping.

The hour of midnight was just past. The
streets of Naukratis, which at other times were crowded with
people, were now almost empty. We could hear our own footfalls as
we walked together through the maze of little alleyways that led
toward the river. Ahab of Jerusalem offered no directions, save to
touch my arm now and then when we reached a turning. I had thought
I knew the city well, but very soon I lost my way in the
darkness.

As was usual on warm summer nights in the
Delta, the mists were heavy. The very walls of the buildings
appeared to sweat. I could not see the stars. Common noises, the
yapping of a stray dog or the frogs croaking on the muddy
riverbanks, sounded distant and muffled. On such nights the world
seemed slightly blurred, as if the everyday solidity of existence
had given place to phantoms. As in a dream, it seemed impossible to
be sure of anything.

Thus I was prepared to believe myself
mistaken when I began to suspect that someone was following us.

But even this is making the impression more
precise than it was. I had no clear sense that there was one man,
or three, or five. And he—or they—were perhaps not so much
following as staying abreast of us, and always just out of reach.
It was all very vague. What I saw or heard, or thought I heard, was
always so at the edge of my consciousness as to be only a little
more than nothing at all. It was simply that we no longer had the
night to ourselves, that someone—or more than one—was there because
we were there.

Did Ahab know? Had he known from the
beginning, and did he know because he had planned it thus? Did they
intend any harm, these companions of the darkness, or were they
simply another precaution of Ahab’s mysterious patron?

And did they even exist? I had no confidence
about anything.

At last we reached a warehouse, a crude
wooden building, simply boards nailed over a frame. It was perhaps
slightly larger than the main room of the tavern where I was
living, and the door stood open.

Ahab motioned for me to enter first.

There was an oil lamp hanging by a chain from
the ceiling, but otherwise the warehouse was nearly empty, with
only a few bales of canvas resting against one wall. The lamp was
burning—otherwise the appearance of the place suggested no one had
been here for many months.

When he were both inside, Ahab closed the
door and slid the crossbar shut. He reached behind one of the
canvas bales and withdrew a sword. I knew at once that he intended
to kill me.

“What is this about?” I asked, turning to
face him, strangely calm, almost as if I had expected something of
the sort—almost as if I welcomed it.

“It is about your death, Prince,” replied the
man who had called himself Ahab of Jerusalem but who spoke now in
Akkadian, in the accents of Babylon. “It is about the debt you owe
to Marduk for having defiled his temple and his city. It is about
the hatred of one royal brother for another. And do not think to
cry out, for no one will hear except my own men, who are outside
guarding our privacy.”

His mouth was stretched into a tight grin, a
ghastly thing that distorted his face into a mask of hatred. He
waved his sword in the air, as if he wanted me to admire the way it
caught the light. He held it in his left hand and I noticed that he
grasped it in a peculiar, clumsy grip, as if at some time he had
injured his hand. Probably I had not yet fully realized my danger,
for I was still placid enough to notice such things.

And, of course, this was the man I had seen
in Memphis, on the day of Pharaoh’s procession. How was it I had
not recognized him before this?

I carried no weapon of my own, nor had I
since leaving Memphis—somehow, in Naukratis, it had seemed a trifle
foolish. Perhaps it had been. Perhaps, had I not come unarmed,
Ahab’s shadowy followers, now suddenly so real, would already have
killed me in ambush. As it was, he seemed content to do the work
himself.

“Then I take it your ‘patron’ will not be
coming.”

It sounded almost like a jest, but I wanted
to keep him talking. If only to give me time to think.

“My patron waits in Nineveh for the return of
your head—I am free to leave the body where it falls, but I cannot
return without the head. I have sworn I would not.”

“Sworn?”

“Yes.” The grin stretched a shade tighter.
“Does it surprise you? I took an oath—we all did. All five of
us.”

“An oath? To whom?”

“To Marduk. To the Sixty Great Gods of Akkad
and Sumer. To the true king. We sealed it with our blood, with the
sharp blade of the sacred knife. But what does that matter now? I
will be the one to return to Nineveh with your head wrapped in a
cloak, and there I will receive my reward. I, and no other—the
god’s servant, Mushussu.”

The five eagles, each dripping blood from the
stump of a missing talon. The prophecy was fulfilled and its
meaning revealed. But, as usual, too late.

Mushussu—I should have known.

There were no more than three or four paces
between us, and suddenly he cut at the air with his sword, missing
me by the width of a few fingers. I jumped back out of the way,
which was what he wanted. He wasn’t yet ready to kill me.