The Sun at Twilight by N.L. Holmes

Author:N.L. Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: N.L. Holmes
Published: 2021-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Puduhepa hovered over her son’s bed, murmuring tremulous prayers to Iyarri, Lord of the Bow, sender of plague. No, lord, no; don’t let this be anything serious. Just some passing indisposition such as we all suffer from time to time. She had sent for the Old Women and all the physicians in Hattusha, even written away for some from Kizzuwatna, for if the healers of her homeland were not as eminent as those of Mizri, still, they were far better than the local ones. She had also charged Mahhuzzi with a message for the Great King of Mizri: “Send us your best doctor.”

After the king had collapsed in the council room, she had dismissed the assembled lords, called for servants to carry him to his chamber, and hustled after him. He had vomited in the courtyard and again as soon as they had him in bed. Now he lay there as unmoving and flat as a plank, his face whiter than the linen, his brows crumpled against the pain. Oh, son, she thought in an agony of fear. You never show you are hurting. If you can’t control it now, you must be sick indeed, my poor, poor little Tashmi-sharrumma.

He groaned. The tawananna massaged his temples and the bony ridge marked by his eyebrows. She knew he sometimes had headaches, but she didn’t know what was wrong now. He wasn’t exactly unconscious, but he was clearly dwelling in some remote land of private suffering.

She saw that his hair was already graying at the temples, and her heart constricted with sorrow.

In time, the court doctors arrived, established their altars at his bedside. They offered him water, but he threw it up. The king writhed and shivered until his teeth clattered.

The Old Women came in and began their rituals in the corner of his chamber. Incense began to rise.

The queen came, too, but Puduhepa drove her out. “We don’t know what he has. Keep the baby away.”

Ellat-gula craned her neck to see her husband, but what she saw seemed to frighten her. She cried out a prayer to Gula, the Babylonian healing goddess. “My poor Sun!” Her voice was mournful, as if he had already become a god. “I will write for good Babylonian doctors; they are the best. I want to see Tashmi-sharrumma.”

She never pronounces his name quite right. For some reason, this irritated Puduhepa disproportionately. She barked back, “No, he may have the plague. And no Babylonian doctors, do you hear?”

“They are the best. You’re going to kill him with these people who know nothing. I want to see him,” Ellat-gula declared angrily, and the tawananna remembered her daughter-in-law was far from the meek little foreign bride she had expected.

“He needs to rest. I’m his mother, and I say he is to have no visitors until we know what he has.”

“Well, I am his wife, and I want to see him.” They confronted each other nose to nose, two diminutive women contending the long body of the prostrate man.

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