Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (28 page)

           
‘I wonder if you may have a point
there?’ said Lord Gibil.

 
          
‘Wow,
its tusks were something else!’

 
          
‘I
should feel like a positive invalid,’ said Aunty, ‘if 1 couldn’t ride to hounds
for months - to compare small things with large. Indeed, it’s a considerable sacrifice
on my part to be stuck here in town so long; though the two events merit it -
Marduk’s marriage and my niece’s - so I submit to duty without murmur.’

 
          
‘Maybe
I could just lay off hunting for a week, Dad?’ Lady Gibil sighed. ‘Son .. . how
shall I put this? . . . Even the most virile buck can’t perform miracles. The
doe must be receptive within; in her womb. Even then, nothing is guaranteed.
It’s a fact of nature.’

           
‘Dad told me there was gonna be
drugs to help her along. The astrologer fixed the wedding night, didn’t he?
She’s supposed to be on heat.’

 
          
‘Perhaps,’
suggested Ningal-Damekin, with a rare display of diplomacy (or maybe she was
only itching to hear hunting tales), ‘Muzi might tell us about the elephant?’

 
          
Muzi
launched into a long, tall tale of derring-do out in the wild-game reservations
to the south-east, where Indian elephants roamed free, where prides of lions
roared amid herds of deer and goats.

 
          
Thessany
hung on his every word.

 
          
Four
days later over breakfast, to Ningal-Damekin’s displeasure, Thessany announced
that she was going for a coracle ride on the Euphrates that morning,
accompanied by her personal slave. She had dreamt a dream, she declared, of
flowing water and round boats and a baby boy nestling in her arms; then she had
found herself in a desert, and the boy in her arms had become a girl. Obviously
a jaunt on the river would help irrigate her fertility.

           
‘A dream?’ sneered her aunt. ‘Who
cares about dreams? You might drown.’

 
          
‘My
slave swims strongly.’

 
          
‘Huh.
Would he rescue you - or himself?’

 
          
Alex,
now much recovered thanks to the cook’s back- salve, was serving at table; he
felt moved to say, ‘Madam, I would rescue Mistress Thessany if it cost me my
life.’

 
          
Thessany
glanced at him with an eyebrow raised, then said to her aunt, ‘You see?’

 
          
‘Trust
the word of a slave, who recently was whipped? Somebody else should accompany
you. That slave is also a
man,
Thessany, not a eunuch.’

 
          
‘How
dare you imply . . .’

 
          
‘I
imply nothing. I merely point out.’

 
          
‘At
the moment I am having my period, Aunt.’

 
          
‘Ah!’

 
          
‘Ah,
indeed. In another week Marduk is wed. A week later, I’m to be wed, in the
middle of my month. Are you quite satisfied? Or do you wish to inspect me?’
‘Nothing was further from my mind. But maybe that’s the reason why you dream of
flowing liquid?’ ‘The point of the dream was whether I should bear a boy or a
girl. To do my very best for husband, father, and God, I shall take a
nauseating spin on the river.’ ‘You must have a proper bodyguard.’

           
‘The slave will carry a knife.’

 
          
‘The
slave? What incredible folly!’

 
          
‘Not
at all. I’m sure the slave doesn’t wish to be impaled for treachery. Besides,
Aunt, I’m quite accustomed to finding my own way round the city. You, from the
country, are not. The city probably seems more dangerous to you than it is. It
isn’t really risky at all.’

 
          
*
* *

 
 
          
‘Are
you really having your period?’ asked Alex as they walked riverwards; which was
hardly any distance at all from Scribe Street.

 
          
Thessany
nodded. ‘Father checked up on my cycle months ago.’

 
          
‘Why
did you insist I have a knife?’

 
          
‘Who
knows what scrapes we might get into? You can always scrape better with a
blade.’

 
          
They
soon reached and crossed the river road, and descended a flight of steps to the
quay. A few coracles were tied up, unloading food and wine. A gloomy tunnel led
in under the road towards some bazaar.

 
          
Thessany
explained: ‘This is the southernmost tunnel. It leads up to Giguna Street. The
trade tunnels are all quite short and I’ve pried into each one. None connects
with our tunnel. Ah, there’s our boat.’

 
          
A
single-donkey coracle, bobbing by a bollard. The moke’s master, and the boat’s,
was swarthy with droopy moustaches; Hispanic. He dragged the craft tight
against the quay so that they could board.

 
          
‘You
have the anchor?’ asked Thessany. The owner shifted a sack aside. ‘Right, I
want you to keep as close to this bank as you can.’

 
          
The
boatman cast off. The coracle began to drift along, bumping against the
quayside, trying to whirl about. The man heaved on a steering oar, put his
vessel a few cubits into the stream, and hauled to control its urge to rotate.
The donkey observed phlegmatically, shifting its hooves from time to time.
Maybe the straw boat seemed like a mobile stable, and it was totally indifferent
to the river.

 
          
The
waters weren’t as murky as Alex had expected; or hoped. Visibility was about
four cubits. A few sizable fish - maybe tench - idled along, gulping little
snacks of sewage.

 
          
Soon
they were approaching the riverside tower which served as exclamation mark to
the city wall. Shading the water with her hand, Thessany peered keenly down;
Alex less keenly. Something loomed below.

 
          
‘Anchor!’

 
          
The
boatmen tossed the drag-anchor over the side, which was currently the stern.
Shuddering to a halt, the boat tried to pirouette; held steady.

 
          
‘Down
there! It’s the top of a brick arch. Can’t see the bottom of it. Can you?’

 
          
‘It’s
deep,’ said Alex.

 
          
‘Yes;
the first hundred cubits of the tunnel might be flooded.’

 
          
‘Unless
the opening slopes steeply.’ Alex preferred to suggest so, and have her refute
him, rather than the other way about.

 
          
‘No
reason why it should! There it is; but you’d be a drowned rat. Up anchor,
boatman! Onward. Land us at the Borsippa Ferry.’

 
          
The
donkey brayed deafeningly. A guard glared down from the tower, then saluted
derisively. Hastily the boatman poked the beast in the chest with a stick. The
moke jerked backwards against the edge of the coracle. It arched its tail; a
torrent of amber piss descended into the Euphrates.

 
          
Some
distance past Nebuchadnezzar’s outer wall and the great New Canal which left
the river just beyond, they landed at the ferry stage. The Borsippa Road ran
right to the water’s edge, then continued on the far bank. Bridging the
intervening flood was a rope along which a ferry was hauled by hand.

 
          
Thessany
paid the boatman. Alex handed her ashore, and the coracle spun away southwards.
They strolled back along the road which would turn into Scribe Street once it
passed through the inner wall,

           
Thessany humming to herself
light-heartedly amidst the fields of beans. When they reached the wooden bridge
which spanned the New Canal, she leaned on the rail. A coracle laden with
baskets of excrement was being poled inland.

 
          
After
a while she spoke: ‘As a slave with the sign of the lion on you, you ought to
be able to sneak up into that gallery without undue bother. Musicians will be
playing; they’ll provide cover. You slip the scroll into the
tekhne
contraption, press a button at
the appropriate moment, and lo!
Mene
mene tekel upharsin
.’

 
          
‘Who?’

 
          
‘Old
Hebrew curse; often chanted by a rabbi on the quayside. “God hath thy number,
and thy game is up. You’re more of a lightweight than you think, Daddy-o. Thy
power will be spread around.” Free translation. It’s a nuisance you had to be
branded as well as tattooed. That marks you out from other slaves.’

 
          
‘That’s
funny. I thought it was a nuisance too.’

 
          
Laughing,
she slipped a hand into his. ‘Try to be invisible. Afterwards just abandon the
scroll and skedaddle. Nobody will enquire too strenuously how it got there;
not right away. Everyone will be too busy covering their asses.’ Her hand
squeezed his. ‘Alex, I do wish it was your baby that I’d be blessed with,
instead of that oaf’s. I wonder, I do wonder! I’ll probably be as fertile on
the night
before
my wedding. You’ve
already had some practice, unlike the mighty hunter.’

 
          
Spectres
of dire danger flitted through Alex’s mind. ‘But. . .’

 
          
‘Don’t
worry about Aunt Damekin. I’ll make sure she’s snoozing drunkenly. I promise I
won’t cry out and alert the house. If you like, you can gag me. Though I’d
prefer not. And I won’t claw your back. You can tie my hands; though I’d rather
you didn’t.’

           
‘We don’t want this to look like a
rape, do we?’

 
          
‘It
won’t look like anything to anybody. It’ll be our secret, yours and mine.’

 
          
‘How
about when the baby’s born with my face?’

 
          
‘Oh,
I’m sure it won’t have a lion tattoo on its cheek! Joking apart, the baby isn’t
likely to resemble you strikingly. Babies are all squashed and blurry and
blobby for ages.’

 
          
‘Not
if the baby is cut from you.’

 
          
‘I
want your child, Alex.’ She removed her hand; a gang of peasants were
approaching from the ferry. ‘I want you as my lover, Alex, my only real lover.
I’m not playing a game; not now. Well, I
am
playing a game - but I want you to play it with me! Will you?’ ‘I’m surprised
you can like me well enough after your analysis of my character, first time I
visited your room.’

 
          
‘Oh,
that. I was grooming you. I wanted you to respond to me. Probably I was mostly
talking about myself. One says all sort of things at times. Words become a
story, a fable. I’m saying none of this now just to enthuse you about the
scroll scheme. I fear for you. I hurt for you. Ishtar has wed us to one another.
Oh, there I go again! But I mean it.’

 
          
‘Maybe
you do, as well. I... I want you too.’

 
          
‘Good,
that’s settled. We’ll do it. And Alex, we’ll
love
doing it. I think you’d better walk a pace or two behind me,
for appearance’s sake. We must still look like mistress and slave. But I’ll be
a different sort of mistress to you, come my wedding eve. And thereafter,
whenever Muzi’s busy mutilating elephants.’

 
          
They
walked on, with Alex lagging behind watching her hips move, till they came to
the Borsippa Gate and passed through into the throng of Babylon beyond. Rather
to his surprise Alex felt radiant, sane, and happy. Some kind of cloud had
lifted from his life.

           
At the junction of
Scribe Street
with
Zababa Street
, he spied Gupta walking through the crowd.