Servant of the Bones (11 page)

“ ‘So it depends then on what I do?’ I repeated the question. ‘Or your will, Lord, has your will already been decided?’

“Cyrus laughed, with crinkling cheerful eyes. He had the vigor of kings all right, and not yet the total madness. He was too young and he’d been drinking up the blood of Asia. He was full of strength. Full of victory. ‘You speak boldly,’ he said to me generously. ‘You look with a bold eye. You are your father’s eldest, aren’t you?’

“ ‘For the three days required,’ said one of the priests, ‘he must be very strong. To be bold is part of it.’

“ ‘Put another chair at this table,’ I said, ‘with your permission, My Lord King Cyrus, and My Lords, King Nabonidus and Lord Belshazzar. Put it here at the end.’

“ ‘Why, for whom?’ asked Cyrus politely.

“ ‘For Marduk,’ I said. ‘For my god who is with me.’

“ ‘Our god is not at the beck and call of you!’ roared the High Priest. ‘He won’t come down off the altar for you! You have never seen our god, not really, you are a lying Jew, you are—’

“ ‘Close your mouth, Master,’ said Remath in a small voice. ‘He has seen the god and he has spoken with him and the god has smiled at him, and if he invites the god to this chair, the god is most likely to come.’

“Cyrus smiled and shook his head. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this is truly a marvelous city. I am going to love Babylon. I wouldn’t hurt a stone of such a place. Ah, Babylon.’

“I might have laughed at that, at his wiliness, his disrespect for the elders and the old priests, his ruthlessness and his wit. But I was past laughing. I looked at the light of the lamps and I thought, ‘I am going to die.’

“A hand touched mine. It was vaporous. No one could see it. But it was Marduk. He had taken this chair to my left; invisible, transparent, golden, and vital. My father sat to my right and my father just put his hands up to his face and cried and cried.

“He cried like a child. He cried.

“Cyrus looked with patience and compassion at my father.

“ ‘Let’s get on with it,’ said the High Priest.

“ ‘Yes,’ said Enoch, ‘let’s get on with it now!’

“ ‘For these men, these elders, these priests, this prophetess, get stools for them to be comfortable,’ said Cyrus amiably and cheerfully. He smiled at me. ‘We are all in this together.’

“I turned to look at Marduk. ‘Are we?’

“They all watched me in silence speaking to my invisible god.

“ ‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ said Marduk. ‘I love you too much to make a mistake, and I have no right answers.’

“ ‘Stay then.’

“ ‘Throughout,’ he said.

“The stools and chairs were quickly brought in and the Elders allowed in very casual fashion to sit all about us and this conquering Persian King, this monarch who had driven the Greeks crazy all over the world and now wanted our city and had everything we had but the city.

“Only the priest Remath remained standing, at a distance against a gilded column. The High Priest had told him to leave, but he had ignored this command and apparently been forgotten. He was watching me and my father, and then I realized that he could see Marduk. Not so clearly. But he could see him. Remath moved his position slightly so that he could see all three of us, going to a farther column behind Cyrus where Cyrus’s soldiers, by the way, stood poised to become butchers. And there Remath stared at the seemingly empty chair with cold and conniving eyes, and he looked at me.”

W
ell, my lord, what do you want of me?’ I asked. ‘Why am I, a Hebrew scribe, so important so suddenly?’

“ ‘Listen, child,’ said Cyrus. ‘I want Babylon without a siege, I want it without a death. I want it the way I have taken the Greek cities when they have been smart enough to let me do it. I don’t want ashes behind me and ruins galore! I don’t come with a torch, and a bag for loot, a thief. I will not rape your city and deport your populations. On the contrary, I will send home to Jerusalem all of you, with the blessing to build your own temple.’

“Enoch now stood up and laid down before us a scroll. I reached for it, and read it. It was a proclamation freeing all the Hebrews to go home. Jerusalem would be under Cyrus’s benevolent protection.

“ ‘He is the Messiah,’ said Enoch to me. And what a change of tone from the old man. Now that Cyrus the Great was talking to me, my own prophet was talking to me. Now, by Messiah he meant ‘anointed one.’ Later on the Christians made a big deal of this word, but that’s all it meant then. But still, it was a strong word.

“ ‘Add to that proclamation,’ said Cyrus, ‘gold, gold beyond your imagining,’ he said, ‘and permission to take all that you possess with you, to reclaim your vineyards, your lands, and be loyal to a powerful empire that will let you build your Temple to Yahweh.’

“I looked at Marduk. Marduk sighed. ‘He’s speaking the
truth, that’s all I can tell you. He’s going to conquer one way or another.’

“ ‘I can trust him, then?’ I asked my god.

“Everyone was shocked. ‘Yes,’ said Marduk, ‘but to what degree…keep listening. You have something they want, your life, there may be a way, who knows, for you yet to escape with it.’

“ ‘Ah no,’ cried Asenath, ‘God Marduk, you are wrong. There is but one path for him to escape and he should take it for it is better than life itself.’

“I realized she could see him, at least partially, and hear his words.

“He turned to her. ‘Let him be the judge. Death may be better than what you have in store for him.’

“Cyrus watched all this in amazement. Then he looked at the priests gathered all around, the High Priest of Marduk, and the wily Remath standing over by the pillar.

“ ‘I need the blessing of your god,’ said Cyrus, ‘you are right, you are more than right,’ he said humbly, but also rather cleverly, since this was just what these priests wanted to hear.

“ ‘You see, Azriel,’ said Cyrus, ‘it’s this simple. The priesthood is strong. The temple is strong. Your god, if he sits with us, and I must confess I am prepared to worship him, is strong. And they can turn the city of Babylon against me. All the rest of Babylonia, I hold, but this is the jewel, this is the Gate of Heaven.’

“ ‘But how could you hold all the rest!’ I said. ‘Our cities are safe and secure. We knew you were coming, but someone is always coming.’

“ ‘He’s telling you the truth,’ said Nabonidus, and when he spoke all eyes turned to him. He wasn’t addled or stupid. Just very old and tired. ‘The cities are taken, every one has collapsed into Cyrus’s arms. The fire-signal towers have all fallen to him, and the signals being sent are sent by Cyrus’s men, to lull Babylon, but the cities are fallen and the signals are false.’

“ ‘Look,’ said Cyrus, ‘I’ll send back to those cities all the gods which have been sent here for refuge. I want your temples to thrive. Don’t you see? I want to embrace you! I didn’t
lay waste Ephesus or Miletus! They are Greek cities still and their philosophers are arguing in the agora. I want Babylonia in my embrace, not her destruction.’

“He then turned sharply and stared at the ‘empty’ chair. ‘But your god Marduk must take my hand,’ he said, ‘if I am to conquer this city without fire. And then I shall send home all the gods of Babylonia as I promised.’

“Marduk, unseen by him, only listened to him and said nothing. But the High Priest lost his temper. ‘There is no god in that chair! Our god is neglected by our king and has gone into a deep sleep from which no one can wake him.’

“ ‘Look,’ I said, ‘why call me into this? What have I to do with it? You have right here in Esagila the statue of Marduk that you need for the procession. You ride with him on the great wagon, and you hold his hand, and he holds your hand and you are King of Babylon. If the priests will let you take the statue, what’s it to do with me? Have you heard some rumor, Majesty, that I can control the god or turn him against you? You need a golden idol for your work! It’s there, over there in the chapel.’

“ ‘No, my son,’ said Cyrus, ‘all that might have worked just fine if you had had a procession year after year with the god, and if the people had seen the golden idol, as you call him, and they had cheered him and your King Nabonidus, but those processions were not held, and the precious statue is not going to enter into any procession with me now, even if I wanted it to. What I need is the ceremony as it was done of old.’

“A chill passed through me. Marduk looked at me and said, ‘I know little of what he is talking about, but all spirits see far, and I see horror for you. Don’t speak. Just wait.’

“Meantime the priests were in a commotion. They had brought in on a bier a great heap of something, which was draped in linen and, now bringing it near to our table, with several torchbearers, they drew away the linen and we all gasped at what we saw.

“It was the processional statue and it was broken, and out of its rotted inside stuck bones which appeared to be those of a man, rotted, too, and half the skull showed where the thick
gold-plated enamel had turned to dirt, and the whole mess lay a disgrace and an insult.

“The High Priest glowered at me. He folded his arms. ‘Did you do this, Hebrew?’ he asked. ‘Did you cause Marduk to leave the statue! To leave this city? Was it you rather than our King here whom we have so accused?’

“I understood a great deal in a moment. I looked at my god who sat staring coldly at the heap of ruin.

“ ‘Are those your bones, my Lord?’ I asked Marduk.

“ ‘No,’ he said, ‘and I only vaguely remember when they were put there. The spirit of that young one was weak, and I vanquished it and continued my reign. Perhaps it invigorated me that I was to be replaced?
I don’t know
, Azriel! Remember, those are the wisest words I have for you. I don’t know. Now they mean to put
you
in my place, that much we both know.’

“ ‘What do you want, Lord?’ I asked Marduk.

“ ‘For you not to be hurt, Azriel,’ he said. ‘But do you want to become what I am? Do you want your bones encased three hundred years in that! Until it then crumbles and another young man must be lured for the sacrifice? But let me get to your point.’ He leaned towards me.

“ ‘I forget how large your heart is, Azriel. You ask for my sake. I can tell you this, I can come and go as I wish. I banished the last replacement with a wave of my arm, and back into the fog he went. For a mortal man to be murdered in this fancy way does not necessarily make him either a god or a strong spirit.’ He shrugged. ‘Think of yourself and yourself only. What I am is…is what you know.’ Then the sadness of his face shocked me. ‘I don’t want you to die!’ he whispered.

“The High Priest could stand this dialogue no longer. He couldn’t see or hear Marduk. He was sputtering with fury. But Asenath was hearing it all and looking from me to the god with great curiosity, and Remath the sly one wouldn’t give himself away, but he knew something sat in the empty chair. He knew it. He understood something of what it said also.

“ ‘You’re speaking of a statue of gold,’ my father spoke up. ‘You can’t make a statue of gold without my son?’ he asked.

“ ‘The bones are the bones of the god!’ declared the High Priest. This is why our city is as it is, why we need the Persian deliverer. The god is old, the bones are rotten, the statue will not stand, and there must be a new god.’

“ ‘But the statue in the High Sanctuary?’ my father asked, which was a childish question.

“ ‘That can’t be carried through the streets,’ said the priests. That’s a mere hunk of—’

“ ‘Metal!’ said the prophet Enoch with a cruel smile.

“ ‘You are wasting time,’ said Cyrus. ‘The ceremony has to be done in the old way,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Explain to him, Priests, don’t just stand there. Explain. And you, my brave Azriel, what does Marduk say to you?’

“It was old white-haired Asenath who spoke up, stamping the floor first with her serpent staff to let everybody know they had better shut up for her. ‘The god says he will go or stay as he pleases, that the bones inside the statue do not matter to him, they are not his bones, that’s what he says!’ Then she looked directly at Marduk, ‘Well, isn’t that what you say, you miserable little god who trembles in the light of Yahweh!’

“The Priests were thoroughly confused. Were they to defend the honor of their Marduk, who wasn’t even supposed to be there?

“ ‘Look, my boy,’ said Cyrus, ‘become the god. Walk in the procession. You will be delicately covered in gold, though the old formula seems somehow to be…missing?’ He cast a glance at the High Priest. ‘You will be alive beneath the covering. You must live long enough to hold my hand, and to raise your other hand to your subjects. And you will live the three days it will take to fight off the forces of chaos, and then return here with me to the Courtyard of Esagila, where I shall be proclaimed King by you. We shall do it faster if we can think of some way to make that acceptable.’

“ ‘Alive, covered with gold.’ I was amazed. ‘And then?’

“Asenath spoke up. ‘By then the gold will have hardened and you will be dead. You will see and hear for a while, but you will die inside, and when they see that your eyes are
rotting, they will take out your eyes and replace them with jeweled eyes, and the statue of Marduk will be your shroud.’

“My father put his face in his hands and then looked up. ‘I never saw it done in the old way,’ he said quietly. ‘But my father’s father saw it once, or so he said. And the poison in the gold is what will kill you. You’ll die slowly as the gold penetrates, as it reaches your heart and lungs, and then…as they say, you will at last be at peace.’

“ ‘This,’ said Asenath, ‘after you have been carried the full length of the Processional Way, gold and gleaming, raising your hand, even taming your head ever so slightly as the thick coating gets harder and harder.’

“ ‘And for this!’ said Enoch. ‘We will return to Jerusalem, all of us, including those in prison, and we will have the means to build the Lord God’s Temple again according to the measurement of King Solomon.’

“ ‘I see,’ I said. ‘So in the old days, it was a real man! And when the statue finally crumbles . . . ’

“ ‘You blaspheme!’ said the High Priest. ‘Those are the bones of Marduk.’