Read Online The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild - Free Book Online Page A

in her arms
could I feel any happiness? For a great time we did not speak. We
could not speak. Our tongues were frozen.
    “My Lathikadas, my fine boy, you have grown,”
she said at last. She held me a little away from her that she might
see that it was true, and yes, I was her fine boy—I could see it in
her eyes, blue like my own. Her fine boy. Better that, I felt, than
rab shaqe. I straightened up and smiled and let her fill her sight
with me.
    “You have grown, yes. You are almost a man
now.” She smiled back, but there was a misery in her smile, as if
she were measuring the distance that yawned between us. “Tell me,
tell me everything that has happened to you. Do you like being a
soldier? Is it all that you dreamed it would be in the house of
war?”
    What was it that I read in her face in that
instant? Did she dread to hear me say that I loved my barrack and
my horses and all the cruel implements of battle? Did she fear that
that new idol might have replaced her in my heart? Or did she long
to know of my happiness there, that she might believe the sacrifice
of losing me had been worth all that she had to pay for it in
anguish and loneliness? I did not know. A child cannot know these
things, for he understands no happiness or misery but his own, and
yet I sensed in that moment that mine was not the power to ease her
sufferings but only, if I spoke the wrong word, to burden her with
more.
    “Oh. Merope,” I said, holding her face
between my hands, “would that you could see the glory of it, that
you could see me there! You would not be ashamed to call me your
son.”
    I told her everything, about Tabshar Sin, who
had but one hand, and my Greek slave, about my prowess with the
javelin, about Esarhaddon’s skill in wrestling, and the chariots
that threw up curtains of dust behind their burning wheels and the
sunlight flashing off the weapons during sword practice. I wearied
my tongue now. The words poured out of me like water at flood time,
and she was content to listen and admire and be still. It was not
wrong to speak of these things. It was of these that she seemed
most eager to hear, for she understood that she had not lost me to
them. That I was free set her free as well, for she was still in my
heart.
    But when I asked after her and the house of
women, she was silent and evasive.
    “Oh, my son—it is much the same.” Her eyes
turned aside from me. The fountain waters still laugh like naughty
children. Do you remember the fountain, Lathikadas? And the little
gazelle? He is grown now, and they took him away. . .”
    “And what of Esharhamat, Mother? Is she still
so pretty? Does she ever ask about me?”
    It was an innocent enough question, but my
mother covered my mouth with her hands as if I had uttered some
terrible curse that would come back to fall upon my head.
    “You must never speak of her, my son. You
must forget her. You must forget that she exists.”
    She held me to her again and, although she
did not weep, I knew she was wretched. Young as I was, I could not
guess why.
    “Forget us both, and go on to be a great
man.”
    “Now go,” she said suddenly, releasing me
with a push. “You are mine no longer, my Lathikadas. Go back to
your father—you are his now. You belong to him and his god. Forget
me and be happy.”
    I did not think I could bear it. The moment
of parting was almost upon us, and this time I understood how
completely I was to lose her. The tears started in my eyes. I
thought my heart would crack within my breast.
    “I will ransom you free from the house of
women, Mother,” I said, hardly able to speak. I held her arms as if
without them I might sink into the earth. “You will see. The king
is pleased with me. I will win you away from this. I will never
forget you.”
    The door behind us opened a little wider, and
I saw the eunuch who was waiting to take my mother back to her
golden cage. The sobbing rose in my throat as if through its own
will.
    But Merope was already on her