I, the Sun Read online

  “Have you seen your wife?”

  “No, nor do I intend to.” We had been in Arinna three days.

  “You had better.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Let me make that an order, from your commander.”

  “Do I have to let you determine my personal life, too?”

  “Until you can determine mine, my lord prince.”

  “You cannot order me to lie with her.”

  “I would not even think of it. Just talk to her.”

  “Do you want me to move up there? To Daduhepa’s? Your wife has lost her love for me.” It was not just me. It was me and a namra girl I had with me. Kuwatna-ziti’s wife had wrinkled up her nose in disapproval, stamping around, putting dirt in the girl’s food, lecturing me on the meaning of the word “Hittite.”

  Kuwatna-ziti barked a laugh. “You worry about your women, I will see to mine.” Eyes narrowed, he pulled me by the club until my face was close to his. “I want you to promise me that you will try to reach an accommodation with Daduhepa. You’re here for three days more, then back to Samuha – if all goes well. In times like these, any move is precipitate. We do not know what Tuthaliyas wants. It is imperative that I be able to trust my back to the Arinnians. Talk to her. Be civilized. Leave that namra bitch with me. If I hear that you took her up there, or even mentioned her to Daduhepa, I will beat you so that you cannot sit down until New Year. I can still do it.”

  I had been intending exactly that: to take the namra. I dared not leave her to Kuwatna-ziti’s wife, had been hesitant to even come up to the hill. Though the Shepherd had lectured me repeatedly about the little namra; saying that I was smitten with her, I did not believe it. Still, she was a problem. In the end I took her over to one of my men and left her happily engaged in what she did best, then I drove alone up to Daduhepa’s.

  I found the servants slow to obey a master they had never seen, and by the time I had been ushered into a cedar bower to await my wife, I was furious.

  She came with a train of attendants, whom I tried to dismiss to no avail.

  “Tasmisarri,” said my jeweled wife, palms on her belly, “this is my house and these are my women and you will not order them about.” Her complexion was clear and flushed, her eyes sparkled. She minced to a bench and sat herself down with a beatific smile.

  By that time I was standing over her, my hands grappling the air, “Why did you not tell me?” I bellowed like the Shepherd; one of the women who floated about her squeaked. “Get them out of here!”

  With a slight pursing of her lips, she murmured to her woman and they were gone.

  I sat down on the far side of the bench from her and stared at the crust of dirt on my sandals. “Why did you not tell me?”

  No answer.

  “Are you well? Does it hurt? Some get sick –”

  “I am fine, thank you. To what do I owe this unexpected visit, my lord?”

  “We will name him Arnuwandas,” I said.

  “We will not name him anything. I will name him, or her, as the case may be. What do you want, Tasmisarri? I have heard that your time is well taken up.”

  I squirmed on the bench, not looking at her. “I want to make some kind of truce with you, for my son’s sake.”

  “Go away.”

  “You cannot withhold him from me. If a woman sends a man away, she must give him his children. It is you who care how things look. How will this look? You cannot so shame us both.”

  “I shame you; impossible. Go back to your Gasgaean harlot.”

  “She’s not Gasgaean.”

  “Do you think I care what she is? Get out, go on.”

  She rained blows on me with her little fists, until I held them away from me, then started to cry.

  I sent word to Kuwatna-ziti to write me when he wanted me, and to one of my men to keep the little namra in his charge, and spent two days with my wife.

  On the third day, ‘Kuwatna-ziti sent for me. By the time I arrived at his estate I felt that I had returned, unscathed from a war. But my feeling of well-being lasted only a moment. “Guess what lurks within,” said the Shepherd.

  “Sixteen harlots, a pig roasting, a –

  “Muwatalli the Elder.”

  “I thought Tuthaliyas was coming himself.”

  “Well, he did not. How went it with the princess?”

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  “I? Never considered it.”

  “You mean you never considered telling me. Does my mother know?”

  “I believe she might,” said Kuwatna-ziti absently, as we entered the main house, which had escaped pillage for a hundred years; a cool, dark place of old woodwork mixed with modern terracing, with rooms growing progressively larger and, more irregular as each level gave way to the next, until we turned down a pillared hall to the court around which the estate curled.

  Muwatalli the Elder sprawled by a tiny pond, the sun glinting off his bald pate. My little namra was just coming with a pitcher from the kitchens.

  “I forgot to tell you, I had her sent back up here. If you are angry, I will make a settling with you over her,” said Kuwatna-ziti in a low voice.

  “For yourself? I thought you did not like her.”

  “For my wife, to teach her a lesson. Are you displeased?”

  “No, take her as your own, whenever you like.” I touched his arm. “The hatred Muwatalli has for me is rivaled only by Kantuzilis’.”

  “I know. Be at ease, keep your temper, do not say anything he might twist to your disadvantage.”

  Then my little namra saw us, hurrying with a soft, delighted cry to me, and there was no more time for caution or plot.

  I disengaged her, bidding her await me in my rooms. By then Kuwatna-ziti was already drinking to the foremost among the Great Ones of Hattusas, my uncle, the elder Muwatalli, the prince. His pig’s eyes followed the little namra into the house, then fastened on me as I squatted by Kuwatna-ziti’s side and took up a drink. “Ah, Tasmisarri,” my uncle said. “We have heard such glowing reports of you that scarcely any at court can believe them. Tell me how Kuwatna-ziti worked such magic.” Even his fingers were swathed in rolls of fat.

  “You had best ask him that.”

  “That’s an odd scar – is that the famous mark of the Storm God?”

  “So some say. I fell down a hill in the dark, nothing more.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Kuwatna-ziti said, “I hope the Great King is well. We had heard he would come himself.”

  “The Tabarna is not well, and you know it. Do not play with me, Shepherd.”

  I had not known it, but did not want to evince interest.

  “I am just trying to find out what you want, Muwatalli. We leave for Samuha tomorrow –”

  I stared covertly at Kuwatna-ziti, wondering why he would speak so.

  “By my leave, you go, or not at all,” said the elder Muwatalli.

  “Of course, Muwatalli, my lord, of course. But are we not all of one mind? Samuha needs supervision if we are to hold her over the winter.”

  “Civilized people do not make war in winter. Will your men not balk at staying in the field?”

  “Those who are there now will stay, if we set an example and stay ourselves.”

  “I have orders to bring the prince back to Hattusas,” he said flatly.

  I measured the jump to the nearest roof.

  “Can you tell me why, my lord? He has a good start with the men; pulling him out for the winter will make him less effective in the spring.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Muwatalli slowly, pinching his lower lip. “We have heard about your young protégé’s success. But that is not my concern. Here – this is why I have come up here, and it might explain. I just follow orders.” Only he laughed.

  The tablet, once extracted from its envelope of baked clay, would doubtless tell us what Muwatalli was pretending he did not know.

  He and Kuwatna-ziti sparred awhile, making swords of innuendos, u
ntil at last the Great One rose and stretched, saying that if someone would send the little namra to his rooms he would be much pleased, and waddled into the house, leaving us to open the message from the Tabarna in private.

  “He is not getting my woman.”

  “It is her virtue or yours, Tasmisarri.”

  “What does that say?”

  “It says that the Old Boar requires your presence, what do you think?”

  “I think I am about to be adjudged in contempt of a royal order – I am not going.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the king is sick, and has asked me to deliver you to him. But consider: the Hayasaean enemy and the Gasgaean tribes sleep in each other’s camps. Tuthaliyas has his back up. There is nothing better than outward threat to heal inner discord. Now, if you do not want to give the namra to Muwatalli, then, for your own good, I will buy her from you or fight you for her, and I will give her to him.”

  “You do not know him!”

  “One namra does not matter, Tasmi!”

  He was wrong. She did matter, and the loss of her haunted my sleep a long time – her screams rang in my dreams. Kuwatna-ziti apologized to me, pale and drawn from what he had seen in Muwatalli’s rooms. I did not go in there, just gathered my things together to take to Hattusas. Never again did I trust Kuwatna-ziti’s judgment above my own.

  CHAPTER 3

  In Hattusas, the joyous days spent with the army receded like a daydream, for I was Tasmisarri once more. Taller, seasoned, sprouting hair on my chest, with a plumed helmet marking me as the Shepherd’s, a high-born wife, and a child on the way, I could not understand why no one saw the change in me.

  By the evening of our first day in the city, I had acquired a number of abrasions and needed a change of clothes, this last coming about over the taunt that my parents were brother and sister after I had withstood all lesser insults.

  Kuwatna-ziti gritted his teeth, saying that he did not blame me: if they would see nothing but the past there was nothing else to give them.

  But insight had visited me while I scrapped in the streets: Kuwatna-ziti had made a fool of me. I was wroth. I thought of my command, of those men who had so energetically accepted me among them. What Kuwatna-ziti’s troops had seen in me, was what they hoped I might become – what he had enlisted their aid to help make me. And I, who had never known comradeship, had not wondered why a green youth who was not yet blooded could demand obedience and respect from those veterans and get it. He had ‘princed’ me with his men, and I had flown so eagerly into the trap my pinfeathers fluttered.

  But Hattusas recalled me to myself. She is the most unforgiving of cities, the coldest of mistresses. Full of soldiers back from the wars and farmers trading their harvests, her streets ran with sheep and cattle and the markets overflowed into the town. The Festival of Haste was a week away; the air snapped with laughter and the coming of the cold.

  Journeying here had not been pleasant. The Shepherd, for all his astute words, was uneasy, and Muwatalli loomed always in my sight. He had offered to pay for the namra, so Kuwatna-ziti told me, but the Shepherd had refused, making a gift of her to him in my name.

  “She cost you nothing,” he had said to my stare. “Nothing at all,” I had agreed, and laid the whip to the greys.

  We had hoped to rid ourselves of Muwatalli by going directly to the palace and announcing ourselves. There I saw that the gigantic pillared hall would be finished by first frost.

  We were in that open, colonnaded corridor flanked with Meshedi on one side and pages on the other, called the bodyguard’s court. At the end of this way of bodies was the old halentuwa-house. Within its cypress walls were the throne, an offering table, a burning fire on the hearth, and the Great King, Tuthaliyas.

  “Has he come out yet?”

  “No.’’

  “He’s probably still in the seraglio.”

  That was possible, I thought as the Shepherd and I stood listening to the crowd, but not very likely. The halentuwa-house, from which the king traditionally emerges to perform official functions, is attached to the residential palace; but the Great King loathed women.

  “All the Great Ones are in the city, so I’ve heard,” said Kuwatna-ziti very low. We made our way toward the doorway through which the king would emerge, and as we did so, the curtains in the windows were drawn up. It was early morning. We had not slept or even changed, and Kuwatna-ziti’s army woolens were dun colored with dust.

  “Half of them are here now,” I muttered back, deciding that I was better off walking on the Shepherd’s left, toward the pages, than his right where, as we moved up the line, Meshedi touched their weapons, straightening perceptibly when they recognized me.

  Muwatalli had been hurried off by a tight-lipped commander of ten when we passed through the gatehouse.

  As a murmur ran through the crowd and the Great King emerged from the darkness – flanked by priests and men of the Golden Lance, preceded by a scribe – my mother swept down upon us, the congealing crowd parting for her.

  “Tasmi! Little one!” She threw herself into my arms. I held her, resting my chin on the top of her head, while my sister stared, straight-browed and appraising, at Kuwatna-ziti.

  “Asmunikal, how can you carry all those clothes around?” I stepped back. Under a stiff cape worked with silver thread, she was wrapped thrice in fine colored woolens; her piled hair was pinned with copper.

  Soon the priest’s droning gave way to Tuthaliyas’ reedy voice, lauding the noble warriors just returned to the city. He did not look badly indisposed, save that his skin seemed yellowish, but I put that down to the early hour and his sobriety.

  My mother had my hand and would not release it. She was introducing my sister – who looked like I did at her age, all hands and feet – to Kuwatna-ziti. He was his most ingratiating self with her, treating her as if she had breasts.

  While Asmunikal whispered to me of her pride in me and my wife, and of her plans for our child, the Great King began to hear grievances. A lord had found some other lord with his main wife, and demanded the death penalty for both. Tuthaliyas scratched his ear, careful not to dislodge the blunt-tipped conical cap he wore when dispensing judgment, and made the merciful decision: death to both. The cuckolded noble smiled grimly and bowed himself back through the crowd.

  My mother had hold of Kuwatna-ziti’s hand, too, and pulled him close.

  “Great Shepherd, my lord,” she whispered in that voice which always waxed sensual when about her machinations, “have you seen the commander Himuili?”

  “My lady, I have just this morning arrived, and hardly shaken Muwatalli’s companionable surveillance.”

  “Stay away from that snake!” hissed my mother so loud the man in front turned around. “Stay away. And keep Tasmi clear of him.”

  “As you say, my lady,” said Kuwatna-ziti, pained, and put his lips to her ear.

  “You have grown,” I said to my sister.

  “And you. You’re getting hairy. But you are not any cleaner. I heard you have been killing the enemy. And doing other things to them.”

  “Your teeth are crooked,” I observed. She stuck out her tongue. She was dressed the double of her mother, and her bare arm stuck out gawky from the stiff finery.

  “I was hoping Kuwatna-ziti would have taught you to wear clothes.”

  The army has a choice of dress; I was there in a regulation uniform, one which included a cloak but did not include a tunic, only a belted kilt wrapped round the loins, whose oblique edge, folded in front of the body, bore the Tabarna’s device and rank stripes. I made a lewd comment with my hand, gave her a look she knew well. She flushed and pulled on our mother’s arm.

  I continued to stand there, while Asmunikal shushed my sister and ignored us both, deeply involved with Kuwatna-ziti. The empty scabbard, the slot on my belt where my Hattian war axe usually rested, discomfited me, in the crowd of my fellow lords. Even the puny weight of a dirk would have bee
n welcome, but in Hattusas I was, as I have said, Tasmisarri, and I had been relieved of my weapons. They had not stripped Kuwatna-ziti of his arms.

  We waited through the whole day without being granted audience with the Sun of Hatti, though he certainly saw us. Near sundown Kantuzilis, the Pale One, made a show of seeing me, complete with long, slow malicious grin. Muwatalli, beside him, broke out laughing.

  But the laugh died on his lips when the young commander, Himuili, in a military maneuver of wondrous inventiveness, separated Kuwatna-ziti from Asmunikal and my sister, and, one arm over my shoulder, extracted us with consummate skill from the audience chamber by a series of introductions and reunions that ended only when we stood between the inner and outer palace gates and I had my weapons returned to me.

  Our shadows were long, their edges fuzzy, climbing the new wall of plastered mud brick that ringed the residential palace. These new, winged, doubled gates were too narrow for chariots; I wondered what Tuthaliyas had had in mind when he built them.

  “Shepherd, let us go find a tavern,” suggested Himuili, in an odd voice.

  “My lord, what is going on?” said Kuwatna-ziti.

  Himuili looked pointedly at me. I recalled that time he and Kuwatna-ziti had walked away from the circle of relatives in which I was trapped. I looked steadily back at him. The man had never laid a hand on me, but had never aided me either.

  “You’ll not see the King for a day or two. I have the roster. Why not go on down to my house in the lower city? I have business with the Shepherd.”

  So did I go off on my own, starting at the Blue Ram where I had first been with Kuwatna-ziti, ending in the streets. When I pounded on the gate of Himuili’s modest town lodgings, the sky was getting light.

  The man who opened it did so with blade in hand, and he was fully awake. He stared uncertainly at my disheveled appearance, and sent someone to find out from Kuwatna-ziti whether I should be admitted or not.

  Leaning on the doorpost, I glared at him wordlessly, half-drunk, truculent, my hackles yet up from brawling. The only thing in my mind was to let Kuwatna-ziti know that I knew how he had princed me before his men. The marshal who had called me ‘the Shepherd’s pup’ had found out the pup had teeth – I had made him eat garbage; but it was I who came away with a bad taste in my mouth.