Servant of the Bones

" 'Get away from me-Enoch and all your tribe. I forgive you your rash words. Your God is faceless and merciless. But I call down the wind now to scatter you all!'

"And the wind came. The wind came with huge ferocity over the rooftops, lifted off the desert and filled with sand. The gold figure of Marduk suddenly grew immense before me, but I knew now this was illusion, for it was paling, and as I stood looking up at him, he exploded into a shower of gold, and the people went completely wild.

"Everyone ran. Panic drove them. What they had seen drove them. What they had heard and, if nothing else, the wind salted with sand drove them.

"Only I stood there, my brothers now rushing to my side, and the prophet, Enoch, laughing, just laughing and throwing out his arms! Then he bore down on me, shoving my father to one side with his staff. He gave me the evil eye! He looked at me and he said, 'You will pay for eating the food of the false gods. You will pay! You will pay.' And he spat at me, and reached down for the sand that was gathered and threw it at me. My brothers begged him to stop, but he laughed, and he said, 'You will pay.'

"I got furious, truly furious. My happy nature left me. I felt the first anger that would soon become common to me after my death. I leant forward and I said,

" 'Call on Yahweh to stop this sandstorm, you fool!' and then my brothers literally dragged me away.

"A host of devoted elders rushed out to shelter Enoch and they picked him up and carried him away like a madman thrashing and screaming and gradually, gradually ... as we ran to the shelter of our own house, the wind died away."

5

I was almost sick by the time we reached the house. My brothers were carrying me. And outside the gate, what should we see? "First were two of the other prophets, the more quiet ones who merely echoed the old words of Jeremiah sent from Egypt, and with them an old woman whom everyone feared and despised. Her name was Asenath, and she was one of our tribe but she was a necromancer, everybody knew, and such things were forbidden, whether the great King Saul had ever called up Samuel with the Witch of Endor or not.

"Also, everybody went to her for help from time to time. So you know, it wasn't so great to see her outside our gate, but she had known my mother and my grandparents, and she wasn't the enemy, just someone with an unsavory reputation who could mix up poisons to kill people and potions to make people fall in love.

"She had straggling hair, very white, and eyes which had turned a perfect brighter blue with age, rather than pale, and a withered long face and a great triumphant expression, and she wore all scarlet, defiant scarlet, silks all over her, as if she were some Egyptian whore or something, and she carried a crooked staff, with a snake on the end of it, not so unlike the staffs of the prophets, and she said to me:

" 'Azriel, you come to me. Or you let me in.'

"By this time all the household was in the courtyard inside screaming and yelling at her to get away from our house, old witch, and my brothers told her to go, but to my surprise my father said, 'Come inside, Asenath, come inside.'

"Next I remember lying on my bed, and listening to people talk.

My brothers wanted to know how in the hell I had gotten into this, and how could I believe this demon was Marduk when he was obviously a demon, and why had I not told them that I was conversing with other gods! My sisters kept saying, 'Oh, leave him alone,' and for a moment I thought I saw the ghost of my mother, but this might have been a dream.

"All the uncles and elders were gathered in the long rooms of the scriptoria which flanked the courtyard for half its distance ... it was quite big, as I told you. And I didn't know where my father was.

"At last, he sent for me, and my brother propped me up, and got me on my feet and took me to him. I didn't like the door through which we passed. This was a small antechamber off the chamber of the ancestors, that is, the little room in which earlier Assyrians and Akkadians of this very house had buried their dead. This little room was part of their old pagan worship and we had never cleaned the paintings of priests and priestesses and ancestors of other people off the walls. Superstition stopped us, and after all, heathens that they were, their bones lay under the floor.

"There were three chairs in the room, simple chairs, you know the kind, of leather and crossed painted legs, but they were our very finest, and also there were three lamp stands, and in each the wick was burning the olive oil brightly, so the room had a splendid but frightening look.

"Old Asenath sat in one chair, and my father in the other, and they were whispering, which they stopped when I came in. I sat down in the free chair, and my brothers left us, and there we were among painted Assyrians, in the flicker of these lamps, in an airless place. I closed my eyes. I opened them. I deliberately tried to see the dead. I tried to see them as I had seen them when Marduk was with me. And for a moment I did. I saw them as wraiths throughout the room, sort of shuffling and mumbling and pointing, and then I shook my head and said, 'Be gone.'

"Asenath, who had a very young voice for such an old hag, laughed at me.

" 'You learnt your imperial ways from the great god Marduk, didn't you?'

"Silence from me.

"Then she said, 'What? Won't you own up to your loyalty to your god in your father's presence? It doesn't surprise. You think you are the first Hebrew who has worshipped the Babylonian gods? The hills around Jerusalem are filled with altars where Hebrews still worship pagan gods.'

" 'Which means what, old woman?' I said, surprised at my own anger and impatience. 'Get to the point. What do you have to say to me?'

" 'Nothing to you. It's all said to your father. You make your choice. You make it. Ten years since the Festival has been celebrated but many, many more years since the true miracle of the Festival has been brought about. And the old priests; they know how to do it; but they don't know everything; and for this, this which I hold here'-and she drew a cumbersome package out of her garments-'they would give me anything and. they will.'

"I looked at it. It was an ancient Sumerian clay envelope which meant that the ancient Sumerian tablet was untouched inside. It had never been tampered with. I could see that.

" 'What do I want with that? What do I care about the true miracle of the Festival?' I said.

"My father motioned for me to be quiet.

"She put the clay envelope with its secret tablet hidden inside it into my father's hands. 'Hide it here with the bones of the Assyrians,' she said. She laughed. 'And remember what I said, they will give you Jerusalem for it! Do as I say! They've already sent for me. They don't know clearly even how to mix the gold without me. I will help them, but when they demand the tablet of me, it will be safe with you.'