Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2012

Assignment in Clay by Donald Moffitt

The scribe Nabu-zir was weary after a long day transcribing temple receipts for the monthly god-offerings. The New Year festival was less than a half-moon away, and the flood of grain and other produce had gotten ahead of the overworked staff in the temple’s scriptorium. So when Lu-innana, the temple’s deputy administrator, had offered temporary jobs to him and a few other outside scribes, Nabu-zir had reluctantly agreed to sign on until after the festival. The kickback to Lu-innana was relatively modest compared to what was demanded by some of the other temple officials, and besides, Nabu-zir needed the work.

But he wasn’t happy to see Lu-innana standing in his doorway at this late hour, when the light was beginning to fade and he still had a rapidly drying stack of clay tablets to get through.

“What brings you here at this hour, Lu-innana?” he said without getting up.

Lu-innana didn’t answer immediately. He was distracted by the sight of Nabu-zir’s serving woman, Nindada, as she tried to slip past him and out the door. But she wasn’t quick enough, and he was able to get in his customary grab at her before she was able to escape.

“The temple should never have sold her,” he sighed. “How much do you want for her, Nabu-zir?”

“I’ve told you before that she’s not for sale,” Nabu-zir said snappishly. “She’s a free woman, and her manumission is written in clay.”

Lu-innana shook his head. “You’re a hopeless do-gooder, Nabu-zir.”

“Did you have something to say, or did you come here to moon over Nindada?”

Lu-innana gave another sigh and got down to business. “I have one more job for you, Nabu-zir.”

“Can it wait till tomorrow?” Nabu-zir grumbled.

“Kings don’t wait.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The lugal himself, the divine Shulgi, has sent for you. He wants to dictate something.”

“This wasn’t part of our agreement. Hasn’t he got scribes of his own?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get paid. He asked specifically for you. He remembers your discretion in that delicate matter involving the letter to the lugal of Larsa, when he demoted him to ensi — a mere governor. He said, ‘get me that public scribe who sits in the courtyard of the moon god. He is a scribe whose hand moves in accordance with one’s mouth.’ ”

“Too delicate a matter to risk temple gossip, is it? So you don’t know what it’s about?”

That stung. He saw Lu-innana’s jaw tighten.

“It’s a poem,” Lu-innana blurted before he could stop himself, and immediately closed his mouth.

“A poem?” Nabu-zir said incredulously.

“And why not? Everyone knows that the great Shulgi is a patron of the arts, as well as a protector of the poor, a builder of public works, the lawgiver who carried on the work of his father, Ur-nammu,and the brilliant general who drove the Akkadians from power and restored Ur to its former glory.”

“As well as being a half god,” Nabu-zir said dryly.

“Be careful, Nabu-zir. You’ll get yourself in trouble again.”

“Oh? Do you plan to report me to the chief inspector for disrespect, Lu-innana? He’s too busy counting his silver. And so are you, aren’t you? Have you yet handed over a third of your bribe from me and the other scribes?”

Lu-innana ignored that and said piously, “His divinity was proclaimed at his birth by his father, the great Ur-nammu.”

“We all know the story. I’ve transcribed enough copies of the official proclamation myself. Ur-nammu fathered him in a dalliance with the moon goddess herself, and so Shulgi is half divine, a god. I’ve also made many copies of the story of how Ur-nammu was found as a baby drifting down the Euphrates in a reed basket. The populace loves that one. But as we know very well, Ur-Nammu ascended the throne by deposing King Utuhegal, who had foolishly entrusted him with the governorship of Ur. And Shulgi walked into the job through his father’s preference for him over his brothers. His very name — ‘strong young man’ — reflects his father’s affection for him. A good thing for Ur that he turned out to be a brilliant general like his father, else we’d be under the thumb of some barbarian chieftain of one of the border tribes.”

“We’re wasting time. The divine Shulgi has the impatience of all the other gods.”

Nabu-zir gave a grunt of resignation. He got to his feet and gathered a small kit together: a bundle of spare reeds, his whittling knives, and a wooden scraping knife. The tub of wet clay was still half full. “Here, you can help me carry the tub,” he said.

“What, am I a porter?” Lu-innana said. “We can borrow a tub of clay from the scriptorium.”

It was a long walk from Nabu-zir’s modest house in the crowded waterfront district to the vast ziggurat enclosure in the city’s heart. But the oppressive heat of day was beginning to give way to the cool of evening. The sun god, Utu-shamash, was perched on the horizon, about to descend to the underworld for his nightly journey, and though there was still daylight, the shopkeepers along the banks of the inner canal were already beginning to light torches in front of their mud brick hovels in hopes of squeezing another hour’s worth of business out of the day.

The towering ziggurat could be seen from anywhere in Ur — could be seen from miles across the flood plain between the rivers in fact, and as Nabu-zir and Lu-innana grew nearer, the close-packed dwellings began to give way to more substantial houses of burnt brick, with high walls and forbidding gates.

Puffing alongside Nabu-zir, Lu-innana stopped to catch his breath and mop his brow. “You walk too fast, Nabu-zir,” he complained. “How do you keep up such a pace when you’re skinny as a starving donkey?”

“Take heart, Lu-innana, we’re halfway there. There’s the Great Music Hall just ahead at the corner. I see they’re just letting out. A little late for them.”

“Impious rowdies! Nothing but songs with double meanings and monkey jokes! They’re taking advantage of the crowd’s excitement in the days leading up to the New Year rites.”

“Relax, Lu-innana. Even the gods like to laugh.”

The streets were getting wide enough to accommodate donkey carts, but not wide enough for one cart to pass another. Pedestrians squeezed by as best they could. A crowd of noisy schoolchildren, just getting out of one of the tablet houses after a long day of being bullied by their teachers, darted in and out of the traffic, earning shouted reprimands from passersby.

Farther on, a scruffy storyteller reciting the familiar tale of Gilgamesh was flattened against a wall where a recessed doorway provided a little space for his listeners and allowed people to get by. Nabu-zir and Lu-innana were briefly impeded by a crowd of customers at an open-air eating shop offering a quick meal of onions, cucumbers, and fried fish, but with a little apologetic jostling they were able to break through the jam.

As they drew closer to the ziggurat precincts with its public buildings, Nabu-zir could hear a jingle of armor and the sound of marching feet. They broke through the maze of houses and found themselves in a paved plaza where a phalanx of marching spearmen was being drilled by one of Shulgi’s young officers. They were all equipped with identical copper-tipped spears, leather helmets, and sturdy boots, supplied at the king’s expense.

“On their way to the frontier to hold back the Martu or the Elamites, no doubt,” Lu-innana said with approval. “Now that the divine Shulgi has organized the citizenry, Sumer will never be under foreign sway again. Why do you not join, Nabu-zir, and demonstrate your patriotism?”

“I’ll leave that to the younger bloods who are eager to show their mettle,” Nabu-zir said. “The militia won’t want me. As you pointed out, I’m too old and skinny.”

They crossed the plaza, dodging the tightly closed ranks of the marching men, who didn’t seem at all inclined to slow down for them, and found themselves at the outer gates of the ziggurat enclosure. Then they had to thread their way through a steady traffic of supplicants bringing their New Year offerings to Nana-sin — sturdy farmers shouldering sacks of grain or well-to-do citizens leading overburdened donkeys with more substantial offerings.

The temple grounds were a city in itself, with palaces for the higher officials, humbler quarters for the slaves who worked in the temple’s factories, and storehouses and shrines for the various gods. Looming directly ahead was the great ziggurat, with its ramps and stepped terraces, built high enough to meet the gods halfway. At the top was the shrine to Nana-sin, the moon god himself, where Shulgi, as the incarnation of the fertility god Dumuzi, would consummate his annual marriage to the goddess Innana in the person of the high priestess, and so insure Ur’s safety and prosperity for the coming year.

“We’ll stop at the scriptorium first,” Lu-innana said.

The temple scribes were working late at this season, and would work later still. The long room was smoky from the torches, bundles of oil-soaked reeds, that had already been lit. Several of the scribes, red-eyed from their labors, looked up from their work and called out greetings to Nabu-zir, no doubt wondering what had brought him here.

The head scribe, a fussy little man with a bald head and an overfancy flounced skirt, hurried over to greet them. He gave Nabu-zir a wary look, and addressed himself to Lu-innana.

“What service can I do, agrig?” he said, using the formal title that acknowledged Lu-innana’s status as an overseer of scribes.

“Oh, nothing to worry you, Iddin-sin. We just need to borrow a tub of clay.”

“Certainly, certainly.” The little man turned his head and called, “Nana-palil, come over here a minute.”

One of the scribes got up and approached at a reluctant saunter that was almost insolent in its slowness. He was dressed more elaborately than the other scribes, who mostly wore a simple skirt that left the torso bare. This one outdid his supervisor, in a tufted wool skirt with many overlaying petals and a length that draped over one shoulder to cover his chest, like a garment that a woman — at least a free woman — might wear.

“The agrig and the estimable Nabu-zir need a tub of clay,” the supervisor said. “Yours is still almost full. You can share a tub with Ishmi. He’s lagging behind too, so there should be enough clay to last till it’s time to quench the torches.”

Nana-palil shot his supervisor a look of pure fury, but said nothing. Nabu-zir suddenly realized that this must be the royal scribe he had been brought here to replace, and that the man bitterly resented being temporarily assigned to the scriptorium to work with scribes of inferior rank.

He also surmised that Iddin-sin was goading the young man on purpose, in hopes of prompting some outburst that would provide a hint as to what Nabu-zir’s confidential assignment for the king might be.

But Nana-palil either didn’t know anything or he wasn’t talking. He stood in sullen silence, making no move to obey.

Nabu-zir didn’t want to humiliate the man further. He didn’t need an enemy.

He glanced at Lu-innana, who immediately took his meaning and called out to the scriptorium’s hulking porter, “Here, fellow, don’t just stand there like a lump. Go fetch the tub and come with us.” He gave the head scribe a curt nod and said, “Thank you for your assistance, Iddin-sin. I shall tell the king that you and Nana-palil have given all due cooperation.”

He nudged Nabu-zir and said, “Come, we mustn’t keep his divinity waiting.” They headed for the doorway, the porter lumbering along behind them with the tub of clay.

Before they could exit, their way was blocked by an arriving party, four or five men attending a magnificently robed personage with a gold headband and armlets, who Nabu-zir recognized as the high priest, Enannatum-sin. The sanga, the temple administrator, was with him, as well as the nu-banda, the chief inspector, accompanied as usual by a couple of his thugs.

Lu-innana stepped deferentially aside, tugging Nabu-zir along with him. But the high priest didn’t sweep by with his attendants as expected. Instead, he fixed Lu-innana with a cold eye and said, “I was told that you had arrived with your pet scribe, Lu-inanna. When you didn’t show up at the king’s chambers in the House of the Mountain, I thought I might find you here.”

Lu-inanna started to reply, but the high priest cut him off and turned to Nabu-zir. “You, fellow, Nabu-zir, you’re that pesky scribe who keeps writing petitions to the lugal on behalf of insolent farmers who have a quarrel with the temple’s tax collectors. What mischief are you up to now?”

“No mischief, supreme Sanga-mahhu,” Nabu-zir said carefully. “I am here at the king’s request.”

An alarm buzzed in his head like a swarm of bees. Why had the high priest bothered to find out his name? And why had he been watching for his arrival?

The how was another matter. The nu-banda had spies everywhere. It was not a good thing to attract his attention.

As if to reinforce that thought, the nu-banda scowled at him. Nabu-zir tried not to let that unsettle him. The nu-banda, he told himself, was only trying to toady to his chief.

“And what does the Shulgi want you to do?” the high priest demanded.

“To write a tablet,” Nabu-zir said, risking insolence.

“A tablet about what?” the high priest fired back.

“That I do not know.”

The high priest turned back to Lu-inanna in a cold fury. “The king already has a personal scribe not in the employ of the temple,” he said. “What is so secret that he has to bring in a scribe from the marketplace, a common dub-sar, to write a tablet for him?”

“I swear I don’t know, Sanga-mahhu,” Lu-inanna said in a trembling voice. “He told me nothing. Said only to hold my tongue. Some affair of state, I presume.”

It was brave of Lu-inanna to hold back the fact that it was about a poem, Nabu-zir thought. The high priest was a dangerous man to cross. But it would have been even more dangerous to violate the confidences of a king. He began to wonder what he had gotten himself into.

The high priest glared, but Nabu-zir could see that he was struggling with some of the same thoughts.

“When a king orders silence, it is not for a mere temple administrator like you to breech his confidences,” Enannatum-sin said grudgingly. “But I warn you, Lu-inanna, you are beholden to the temple, and if the king is cooking up another one of his plaguey decrees to usurp the powers of the priesthood, you will not escape your share of responsibility.”

Nabu-zir understood now. It was all about power and money. It had started with Shulgi’s father, Ur-nammu, and now the temple establishment, grown rich and corrupt over the years, was locked in a struggle with a reformist priest-king who had taken control of the reins.

The high priest whirled on him. “And that goes for you, dub-sar! Do not meddle in affairs that are above you!”

“I am only here as the king’s hand, to write a tablet so that the king’s voice may be preserved on clay. The words are the king’s.”

The high priest treated him to a final scowl, and stormed out of the scriptorium with the nu-banda and the rest of his entourage.

Lu-inanna gave Nabu-zir a sickly smile, but did not dare to speak. After waiting long enough to give the priestly retinue a safe head start, they set out for the king’s residence in the House of the Mountain.

Shulgi’s palace was located just past a small temple dedicated to Ea, the sky god, who had appointed the moon god the guardian of Ur, across an expanse of brick pavement that bore Shulgi’s name on every brick. It seemed unguarded, but when they passed through the gate to the outer courtyard, they found themselves in a narrow passageway where guards armed with bronze axes stood at intervals in shallow niches. Shulgi had learned his lessons well from Ur’s many conquerors and usurpers. A party of armed men could not storm the palace, but would have to pass between two walls, where the hidden axemen could dispatch them one or two at a time.

The plan was repeated at the inner court. An axeman at one of the turns recognized Nabu-zir as they passed, and called out, “Nabu-zir, do you know me? I am Padu, son of Idi-narum. You wrote my marriage contract and spoke to the girl’s father when I was too heavy of mouth to do it myself.”

Lu-inanna hurried Nabu-zir past. Nabu-zir grinned maliciously at him and said, “So much for your secrecy, Lu-inanna. It will be all over the place by morning.”

Once inside, they passed through a public room with a raised throne that was currently unoccupied. This was where Shulgi conducted his official business. Emphasizing his priestly role was a frieze showing Shulgi pouring a libation for a seated moon god, and a model of the crescent-shaped ship in which the moon god crossed the heavens.

Beyond the public rooms was a domestic area with many smaller rooms spaced along a winding passage that constituted a second line of defense. It was awkward going for Nabu-zir, who was toting the tub of clay by himself now. Servants bustled back and forth on their various errands, squeezing past them with their trays or utensils. The aroma of a roasting sheep came from a kitchen somewhere.

“He has a workroom down at the end,” Lu-inanna informed him.

They found Shulgi in a small, unpretentious chamber at the end, scratching out what looked like some sort of architectural plan on a flattened sheet of wet clay. Nabu-zir could see incised marks in the margins that were probably measurements or instructions for the builders.

Shulgi saw him looking, and laughed. “Yes, Nabu-zir, I can read and write, though not with anything like your finesse. My father sent me to scribe school when I was a boy, like any son of a merchant, so that I would be able to deal with practical matters directly and without delay, and not always have to rely on scribes like yourself.”

Nabu-zir set down the cumbersome tub with a grunt of relief. Emboldened by the king’s matter-of-fact manner, he said, “If I’d known you had a tub of wet clay waiting for me, great lugal, I wouldn’t have lugged this one all the way across town.”

Lu-innana looked shocked, but Shulgi only laughed again. He said pointedly, “Thank you for doing this little errand for me, Lu-inanna. I will not require your further presence.”

Lu-inanna backed out awkwardly, attempting a half bow at the same time. Shulgi appeared to have forgotten him before he was halfway to the door.

He turned to Nabu-zir. “Then you must be hot and thirsty, Nabu-zir. Let us drink beer together and enjoy a happy liver before we begin.”

He gestured toward the clay vat he had been drinking from while he worked. There were no gold straws, like the ones that Nabu-zir’s richer clients liked to impress people with. The king drew a couple of ordinary marsh reeds from the bundle he had been using to write with and handed one over to Nabu-zir. Together they bent the reeds for drinking and leaned companionably over the vat of beer, their heads almost bumping. Nabu-zir poked his straw through the scum of barley husks and other brewing debris floating on top, and tried to act as though he shared a beer with a king every day.

When he was slaked, Nabu-zir leaned back and took the opportunity to study Shulgi covertly. The king hadn’t changed much since the last time he had seen him up close. In the nineteenth year of his reign, the year that had already been given the name “the year the citizens of Ur were organized as spearmen,” Shulgi still retained the look and the force of his youth. He had taken nine wives so far, though his father had contented himself with one wife and given her the title nin-bada — great lady.

“Shall we get to work, Nabu-zir?” Shulgi said.

Nabu-zir dutifully scooped up a handful of wet clay and patted and smoothed it into the shape of a small tablet to fit his palm. He chose the sharpest reed from the kit he had brought with him, so that the marks he incised would be clean and elegant, as befitted a king; he had never forgotten his first childhood lessons at scribe school, when he had defaced hundreds of practice tablets and endured dozens of beatings before he had been allowed to impress actual characters made from the individual wedge-shaped marks.

Shulgi cleared his throat and said, “It’s a love song, so you must choose words carefully so that they will not sound graceless if they are spoken in Akkadian.”

Nabu-zir nodded. In the years when the Akkadian overlords had ruled Ur, they had adopted Sumerian wedge-writing and had otherwise been civilized by their subjects. The same wedge-writing in words with the same meaning could be read either way, but would sound different depending on which language was used.

“I suggest that I make two copies then, one for each language,” he said. “But I did not bring my Sumerian-Akkadian dictionary with me; it numbers more than thirty tablets. May I take my first tablet home with me so that the second tablet will be more appropriate for an Akkadian reader?”

Shulgi thought that over. “Yes, but you must bring both tablets back tomorrow. I will trust your discretion, Nabu-zir.”

Nabu-zir’s head was churning. A love song? With the New Year rites approaching? It would have to be the traditional love song from the god Dumuzi to the goddess Inanna, which Shulgi would present to the high priestess. The high priestess would then present her own song, an erotic one in which Inanna would be explicit about her intimate attentions to her bridegroom, Dumuzi.

But in that case, why the secrecy? The text of such songs was common knowledge, often sold in the bazaar. And why the Akkadian copy? The Akkadians had their own names for the gods — Ishtar for Inanna, for one. A double copy wouldn’t work.

There was no time to sort it out. Shulgi had started dictating. Nabu-zir’s reed stylus flew over the blank tablet as if it had a mind of its own.

“. My sweet maid who favored me, who fondled me,

“Who gave me her caresses,

“My sweet maid who is favored of limb,

“Let me place my hand on that sweet place...”

Nabu-zir’s ears burned as the king continued. As the poem progressed, he saw that it was in the form of the vulgar songs heard in the Great Music Hall, with two four-line stanzas followed by a six-line stanza, two more four-liners and a final stanza of six lines. This was no dalliance between gods. It was an earthly love song, the song of a man who had made a fool of himself.

The copy in Akkadian could mean only one thing. Shulgi’s mistress was an Akkadian woman, one of those leftover aristocrats who still hung on in Ur, a cosmopolitan city more to their taste than the rude comforts that Akkad had to offer.

It would be a terrible scandal if it got out. The Akkadians were tolerated but not loved, and the memory of their rule still stung. Shulgi’s unfaithfulness would not bother his queen, the current nin-bada. She was used to relinquishing him each New Year in the public ceremony, and no doubt inured to his escapades throughout the year. But for him to be unfaithful to the goddess so close to the night of no moon was another matter. That was what sent Dumuzi to the underworld in the first place. Dumuzi’s resurrection was essential. Ur’s survival depended on it. If the gang around the high priest got wind of his indiscretion, they could use it to discredit Shulgi with the populace and win back some of the power that Shulgi and his father had taken from them.

But it was futile to reflect on such matters now. Nabu-zir continued to write automatically. It was dark by the time Shulgi finished. He had paused only once, to call for a servant to bring in an oil lamp for Nabu-zir.

Shulgi yawned and took a long draught of beer. Nabu-zir said, “Do you wish me to read it back, lord?”

“What? No. You’d only echo back what I said and the way I said it. Bring me back your Akkadian translation tomorrow, and we’ll go through it together.”

Nabu-zir gathered up his writing materials and quickly fashioned a temporary clay envelope for the still-soft tablet. The envelope would protect the tablet’s surface for the walk home, and also keep it from prying eyes.

“Don’t you wish to take your tub of clay?” the king asked in a tired attempt at humor.

“I’ll leave it for the scriptorium,” Nabu-zir said.

When he left the palace, he found Lu-inanna waiting outside. There was enough light left to see by; there was still half a moon in the sky, enough to cast pale shadows over the plaza. Lu-inanna fell in step beside him and sneaked a covetous look at the clay envelope.

“Is that it?” he said.

“Lu-inanna, you are like the cat who was curious about what was in the crocodile’s mouth, and, unfortunately for him, found out,” Nabu-zir said, quoting the old proverb.

Lu-inanna quickened his step to keep up with him. “I can see that the lugal did not put his seal on the envelope,” he persisted. “It would be no great thing to open it and close it up again, with no one the wiser.”

“I already know what’s in it,” Nabu-zir said.

He lengthened his stride and left Lu-innana puffing far behind him. Before long the wheezing deputy administrator vanished from sight. At the gates to the sacred grounds, Nabu-zir found a watchman setting off on his nightly rounds and followed in his wake, both for the protection an armed man might give him and the light from his torch. But when the man reached the boundary of his assigned territory he turned back and Nabu-zir was left to face the darkness alone.

He was in the poor district now, familiar territory to him. He followed the banks of the canal as best he could, with the water and the dark shapes of moored boats on one side of him and the blank mud brick walls of the houses on the other. After a while he had a feeling that he was being followed. He turned around several times, but failed to catch anybody. Once he thought he saw a dim shape dart into a side alley, but the shape did not reappear, at least not any of the times he stopped to look behind him.

He wondered if it might have been Lu-inanna, but dismissed that thought. The deputy administrator knew where he lived, and didn’t have to go skulking after him. And he certainly didn’t have the courage to waylay him, no matter how curious he might be.

By the time he reached his own district at the boat basin, he decided that he’d been imagining things. He was among people who knew him, and nothing was going to happen, not with the tavern across the alley spilling light and noise from its open doorway, and drunken patrons staggering in and out. He’d send Nindada across for a pitcher of beer and have his supper.

She was waiting for him, looking worried. “Your dinner is cold, lord,” she scolded, “but there are embers in the hearth, and I can warm it for you. I have a fine fish from the canal that a fisherman, one of your clients, brought, and I’ve already sacrificed a portion to Enki, the fish god, so you don’t have to worry about a libation. I prepared it with onions and barley and lentils the way you like it.”

“Have you eaten yourself, Nindada?”

“You needn’t be concerned, I’ve had quite enough. As the saying goes, ‘Hand and hand a man’s house is built. Stomach and stomach a man’s house is destroyed.’ ”

After he had eaten, he looked around for a place to hide the clay envelope. He didn’t have much choice. His house was sparsely furnished, and the walls bare of anything but a few hangings. Of course there were all those shelves and stacks of tablets, including the dictionary and the precious copy of the tale of Gilgamesh in twenty numbered volumes, and he briefly considered hiding the king’s poem among them, with the thought that sometimes an object could escape notice by being hidden in plain sight. But in this case, it seemed too risky. An intruder looking for whatever the king had dictated would probably go straightaway to his collection of tablets, and one with no markings on the clay envelope would be too obvious. Likewise, he eliminated the chest where he kept his few valuable possessions as being too likely a target.

Then he had an inspiration. In the scanty larder next to the hearth was an unopened sack of grain, his weekly ration as a citizen of Ur. The cord that tied the neck was still sealed with the thumbnail-sized button of clay that bore the temple’s certification of the weight of the sack’s contents, as the law required.

Even better for his purposes was the fact that Nindada had left her five-mina weight next to the sack, ready to use when the sack was opened. It was in the form of a stone carving of a duck, with the inscription: certified by shulgi, the mighty male, king of ur — part of Shulgi’s campaign to regulate weights and measures.

Working quickly, knowing he was breaking the law, he broke the seal and undid the cord. He buried the clay envelope in the center of the barley, where its contours would not show. Then he fashioned a small button of clay, and with a sharp reed of small diameter, forged a passable imitation of the inscription.

He retied the cord and buried its ends in the soft clay. In an hour it would be hard. He rocked back on his heels and studied his work with satisfaction. Only another scribe would be likely to detect it.

He looked up and saw Nindada standing in the doorway. He didn’t know how long she’d been there. She bit her lip and left without saying anything.

Nabu-zir picked up the seal he had breached and crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger. He tossed the resulting crumbs of clay onto the hearth and mixed them with the ashes there, making the evidence disappear. Destroying the seal was not a crime, but the forgery was. He didn’t want to think about the penalty for that.

He slept fitfully, with dreams of demons of the night pursuing him. When he heard sounds from the outer room, he thought at first that they were part of the dream.

He sat up and listened. Somebody was out there, and being careless. He heard the unmistakable sound of a tablet falling to the floor and shattering. Sudden anger replaced fear. He looked around the room for something he might use as a cudgel. His eye lit on Nindada’s broom, leaning against the wall next to the doorway. It was almost as if she’d left it there for him; she always put her household utensils away when she was through with them.

He tiptoed across the room and grasped the broom at its center of balance just above the bundle of twigs at the end.

He stepped through the doorway and saw in the semidarkness the outline of a man rifling through the larder. The little lamp the man had brought with him, hardly more than a saucer with a wick floating in it, was resting on the hearth. He’d just ripped the sack of barley open and was removing the clay envelope from it.

Nabu-zir stepped forward and swung the broom handle. He caught the intruder on the collarbone, and hoped he’d broken it. But the man gave a yelp of pain and danced away from him. The next thing Nabu-zir knew, the man had a knife in his hand and was rushing him.

He took a step backward and tripped over a jar that was lying there. He found himself on his back with the man straddling him and raising the knife to plunge it into him.

Nabu-zir’s flailing hand found something heavy on the floor beside him. It was the stone duck that Nindada had left next to the sack of barley.

He swung the duck with all his might. It struck his assailant on the side of the head with a sickening crunch. The knife clattered to the floor, and the man followed, limp as a votive offering on the altar.

Nabu-zir extricated himself from under the body and stood up shakily. In moments, Nindada was in the room with a stone oil lamp. “Lord, are you all right?” she said.

“I’m not dead,” he said. “Let’s have a look at him.”

Together they bent over the body while she held the flickering lamp high. The man’s head was crushed, and there was no doubt that he was now explaining himself to the seven judges of the underworld.

Nabu-zir’s eyes went to the man’s elaborate flounced skirt and the carnelian and lapis jewelry, then to the contorted face, still angry in death.

“A rich man,” Nindada whispered.

“No, but he wanted to imitate one. He’s the king’s scribe.”

Nindada could not suppress a cry. She stood trembling beside him. “What will you do, lord?” she said.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I will not be bound over by the judges of the Assembly. The circumstances are clear.” He quoted from Ur-nammu’s law: “ ‘The penalty for trespass by day is a fine; for trespass by night, death.’ “ He glanced at the knife. “Not to mention the penalty for attempted murder.”

She shivered. “When big men are involved, the law is a joke.”

“You’re a cheeky man to stand there and tell me that you’ve killed my scribe,” Shulgi said. “And a brave one, to dare to do so. But I always knew that about you, Nabu-zir. That’s why I trusted you with my little assignment.”

“You would have been told about it within a day in any case, mighty king,” Nabu-zir said. “There will be many feet rushing to bear the news.”

“No doubt.” Shulgi scowled. “The high priest and his crowd. The nu-banda and his spies. Every little temple sycophant, brimming over with glee, hoping that the king’s secrets will spill out in the wake of this revelation.” He thought a moment and added, “Including your prying friend, Lu-inanna.”

“I don’t think so, great lugal. “I’ve told you how he stood up to the high priest, though he was quaking in his boots. He’s guilty of curiosity, nothing more.”

“The man knew nothing anyway, except that your assignment somehow involved a poem. And even that was a lucky guess that, mongoose that he is, he somehow ferreted out of me.”

Nabu-zir had to laugh, despite his precarious position. He knew the proverb Shulgi was thinking of. “If there is any food around, the mongoose consumes it,” he quoted.

Shulgi frowned. “It’s no laughing matter, Nabu-zir. Where do things stand now?”

“I brought in the patrol at first daylight. They saw the situation immediately — the knife, the broken door seal, the ransacked larder and disarranged tablets, and put it down to simple burglary and a burglar caught in the act.”

“The tablet, Nabu-zir, the tablet!”

“I put my seal on the envelope and hid it among the tablets in my library before summoning the patrol. There was no reason to mention it.”

Shulgi nodded. “Good. What then?”

“I waited till they’d chewed over the facts and reached their conclusion, then informed them that I knew the man, that he was a disaffected scribe in the temple scriptorium who had a grudge against me for his demotion. Your lugalship’s name did not come up. It fit their conceptions, and they put the attempted murder down to jealousy.”

“Again, good. Go on.”

“There will be a hearing before the Assembly’s judges, but it will just be a formality, and there will be no reason to put it before a citizens’ jury. I’m bound to testify, of course, and it will come out that Nana-palil had once served as one of your own scribes, but things will have simmered down by then, and if anything it will only serve to reinforce jealousy as the motive for attempted murder.”

“You’ve done well, Nabu-zir. But know that I cannot intervene at the preliminary hearing or at a full Assembly trial, if there should be one. I’m bound to obey my own laws and the laws of my father regarding the independence of the judiciary. Three of the judges on the panel are creatures of the temple, hostile to me, and with things as touchy as they are right now, I did not even dare to veto their appointment.”

“I understand, lord.”

“Now to important matters. Do you have the Akkadian translation?”

“Right here, lord. I went to work on it right away as soon as I got rid of the patrol.”

“And your Sumerian original?”

Nabu-zir handed it over. “I had to fashion a new clay envelope for it.”

Shulgi put the original aside as if it didn’t matter anymore, and broke the envelope of the Akkadian copy. He scanned it, his lips moving, a small smile on his face. When he finished, he looked up at Nabu-zir. “You are a scribe who is a scribe indeed,” he said.

Nabu-zir did not know how to reply to that, so he said nothing.

The smile disappeared from Shulgi’s face. “You’ve formed a number of conclusions, haven’t you, Nabu-zir? How could you not.”

“Please, lord, I’m just a simple tablet writer,” Nabu-zir said nervously. “The affairs of the mighty are none of my business.”

Shulgi’s eyes were still on Nabu-zir’s face, but he spoke as if to himself. “A king is still a man, isn’t he? He may love as a man, for himself, and not just as a duty he performs for the state.”

He sat there with a face made of stone. After a while Nabu-zir saw that he had been forgotten, and he tiptoed quietly out of the workroom.

“The question is,” Nabu-zir said, “who put him up to it? Was it you?”

Lu-inanna almost dropped the pitcher of beer Nindada had brought him from the tavern across the way. “Me, Nabu-zir? Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because the high priest put you up to it, to keep his own hands clean.”

“You’re crazy. The high priest has his own henchman, the nu-banda, to do his dirty work. He doesn’t need to drag a deputy administrator into it. Besides, that misbegotten scribe, Nana-palil, was quite capable of acting on his own. You saw how he hated you.”

“Yes, enough to want to murder me. But he was looking for that tablet — the one you were so curious about.”

“I was curious, I admit. But not enough to risk my neck. If anybody egged the fellow on to sniff out the king’s secrets, it was the nu-banda, at the high priest’s behest. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s engineered a political murder and found a way to cover it up. There was that case last year of the caravan master who was supposed to have been robbed and murdered by fellow merchants. A dupe was found to take the blame, but he died mysteriously before he could be tried. Then the man’s daughter disappeared and it was put about that she’d run off with a slave.”

He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I happen to know that the daughter was raped by the shesh-gal, the chief temple director, and it was hushed up. But the father got the truth out of her, and was preparing to demand the penalties under the law, shesh-gal or not. You know the penalties?”

Nabu-zir took a thoughtful sip of beer. “I do indeed. The father was entitled to rape the shesh-gal’s daughter and deliver her to be prostituted. Further, the shesh-gal would have to deliver the bride price in silver, though the father could then marry off his daughter to anyone he wished.”

“Exactly. That could not be. So the troublesome plaintiff was found beside the trail, half eaten by dogs. His donkeys and the merchandise they carried began to appear at various markets. But the daughter’s body was never found. Nor the body of the slave she was supposed to have run off with. And the shesh-gal is still molesting virgins.”

“What are you trying to say, Lu-inanna?”

“To be careful, Nabu-zir. You are an ant in the way of a wagon wheel.”

It took Nabu-zir a good hour to get rid of Lu-inanna. After he left, Nindada came to him, looking troubled. “I don’t trust that man,” she said.

“Nor do I.”

She faced him hesitantly, her eyes not quite meeting his. He could see that she had something to tell him, but didn’t know how to go about it.

“What is it, Nindada?” he said.

“I’m sorry, lord, I didn’t want to say anything while he was here. He’ll know by evening, though. Everybody will.”

“Know what?”

“They were talking about it in the tavern. Gossip and rumors always begin there. The beer lady, Huda, encourages it. It’s good for business.”

He said patiently, “Tell me, Nindada. Don’t be afraid.”

“Forgive me, lord. The Akkadian lady is dead. Murdered, they said. And that a tablet with your seal on it was found with the body.”

“What do you know about an Akkadian lady?” he said sharply.

She was almost in tears. “I wasn’t prying, lord. But I can put two bricks together. I know that toad, Lu-inanna, took you to see the king two days ago. He boasted about it. And I know that the next day you were working on a tablet with your Akkadian dictionary. I don’t know what the tablet said, but I saw you hide it in a sack of grain and put a false seal on the envelope. And I know that the man who tried to kill you was looking for it. It must be very valuable. Lord, I am afraid.”

He pondered a moment. “And did this Akkadian lady have a name?”

“Huda knew all about her. Her name was Ninlilhatsina. The wife of a diplomat. Her husband was called back to Kish six months ago. Huda said she was loose with her favors.”

“You and this Huda must be very thick.”

“We were weavers together in the temple factory. She’s still a slave. But her master let her have her own business. She’s very good at it. She makes a lot of money for him.”

“I see.”

“I know what you’re thinking. Yes, she tried to worm information out of me. Did I know what a tablet sealed with your imprint might have been doing there? What was in it? But I didn’t tell her anything. You must believe me.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Nindada,” he reassured her. “I know that your tongue doesn’t run away like a donkey without a bridle.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thank you, lord. But other tongues do.”

They came for Nabu-zir the next morning, two helmeted patrolmen with short spears. He knew both of them from the court. “You must come with us, Nabu-zir,” one of them said apologetically.

“Do you have a warrant then, Nergal-kan?” Nabu-zir said.

The man handed over a small oval tablet and Nabu-zir scanned it quickly, noting the cylinder seal impressions of the three judges who had signed it. It was a hasty job, with sloppy reedsmanship and many misspellings, the typical work of a court hack.

His lips tightened. Only one of the three signing judges was a Shulgi appointee — a stalwart in the army of zealous young reformers brought in to uphold the king’s code of laws protecting widows, orphans, and the poor.

He handed the tablet back and said mildly, “It seems to be in order. Shall we go?” He didn’t look back, but he could feel Nindada watching from the doorway.

The Citizens’ Assembly was as crowded and noisy as usual. The floor was swarming with people who had brought lawsuits and those who were defending against them, together with all their witnesses and supporters. But the greater part of the crowd was composed of idlers, people with nothing better to do, who had wandered in to be entertained by the proceedings. That was a risky thing because at any moment they might be called upon to serve as jurors, if a full council of the citizenry was needed.

There were nine judges in attendance today. They were enthroned on a long, raised platform at the rear of the assembly, trying to work despite the noise around them. They were just finishing up a case. One of them looked up and saw Nabu-zir entering with the two patrolmen, and beckoned them to approach.

The judge Nabu-zir knew to be a Shulgi appointee greeted him first, before any of the other judges could speak. He was a young man named Jashu-el, a rising star who had been the military commander in Lagash until Shulgi had recalled him.

“Thank you for coming, Nabu-zir. We are used to seeing you here to testify for someone else, not to testify for yourself. It seems we have a small matter to clear up. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Not so fast, Jashu-el,” said another judge, a camel of a man named Ishi-adad, who Nabu-zir knew to be a familiar of the shesh-gal and a taker of bribes. “There are many questions to be asked.”

Nabu-zir’s heart sank. The inquiry might go on for an hour or more, and at the end of it there was the ever-present danger that it might become a full-blown trial that would have to be settled by the full assembly. That would be a disaster. The assembly would have to reach almost full unanimity, with every fool and beer shop windbag holding forth.

“We do not tolerate murder in Ur, even of our foreign residents, Nabu-zir,” the hostile judge began without preamble. “A highborn lady named Ninlilhatsina was found stabbed to death in the Akkadian district yesterday morning, and we are looking into it.”

“I do not know this lady,” Nabu-zir said steadily.

“And yet a tablet with your seal on it was found next to the body.”

“May I see the tablet?” Nabu-zir said.

Ishi-adad handed the tablet to one of the patrolmen, who gave it to Nabu-zir.

“That is my seal, yes. The tablet seems to be a love poem. I write many such tablets for the lovesick young swains who come to see me. I charge them a fourth of a mina. Grand ladies do not come to the courtyard of Nana-sin where I ply my trade.”

“That settles it, Ishi-adad,” young Jashu-el said quickly. “We must look for a disappointed lover.”

“Not so fast, Jashu-el” Ishi-adad said. He turned back to Nabu-zir. “And who was this man you wrote the tablet for?”

“Just a man, like any other, dizzy with love. He dictated the poem to me. They always compare themselves to Dumuzi and their lover to Inanna — the love that defeats the underworld.”

“And where were you yesterday morning?”

“Plying my trade, as usual.”

“Do you have a witness?”

Jashu-el broke in: “This has gone far enough. Nabu-zir is here to testify about the attempt on his own life.”

Ishi-adad gave him a heavy-lidded stare. “That’s another matter.” He turned the stare on Nabu-zir. “What did you have against the king’s scribe?”

Nabu-zir gave him stare for stare. “It’s the other way around, Ishi-adad. The man broke into my house to rob and kill me. The patrol was satisfied as to that. They put it down to professional jealousy.”

There was murmuring from the other judges. Nabu-zir tried to estimate how many were with Jashu-el and how many with Ishi-adad, but couldn’t tell which way it was going.

Ishi-adad’s voice rose. “Killing the king’s scribe is a serious matter! It’s become a public scandal! Did you go on the next morning to rob and kill the Akkadian lady you wrote the tablet for? You knew she was rich, didn’t you?”

The spat on the judges’ platform was starting to attract the attention of some of the idlers on the fringes of the drifting crowd. Some of them were edging closer to hear more. Many of them recognized Nabu-zir, and had heard the delicious gossip that was circulating in Ur.

Jashu-el tried again to intervene, but only made matters worse. “Nabu-zir must be allowed time to round up witnesses!” he shouted against the rising noise.

Then the noise rose still more, and heads were turning toward the assembly entrance. Nabu-zir looked back across his shoulder and saw Nindada and the tavern lady, Huda, coming through. Nobody would recognize Nindada, but Huda was a fixture in Ur. She was a large, formidable woman. She had a firm grip on the arm of a frightened-looking little man, and was prodding him toward the judges’ platform. The buzzing crowd parted to let them through.

“Who is this?” Ishi-adad said, his face flushed with anger.

“This is my serving woman, Nindada,” Nabu-zir said equably. “She will be a witness for the fact that I was working as usual at the time of the murder. And it appears that she has brought another witness with her.”

Nindada’s face was full of apology that Nabu-zir knew she didn’t feel. “I’m sorry, lord,” she said. “I know it isn’t my place. But it’s said in the neighborhood that the lady who was murdered was found with a tablet written by you that someone had given her. And Huda thinks this man may know something about it.”

The large woman pushed the scruffy little man forward, gripping his arm tightly enough to make him wince. She didn’t need to introduce herself. Voices could be heard from the crowd calling, “Huda, look, it’s Huda!” and “Huda, you tell them!”

“This little weasel is Kidin-sin,” Huda said. “He’s one of my patrons, and he has something to say, don’t you, Kidin?”

She squeezed his arm hard enough to make him yelp. He was staggering drunk, though it was still morning, and probably the grip on his arm was helping to keep him upright.

“Please, Huda,” he said. Nabu-zir could see that, drunk as the little man was, he was frightened of something other than Huda.

“Kidin-sin likes to talk, especially when he has a crowd around him and they’re buying him beer. Go ahead, Kidin. Don’t be shy.”

“They’ll kill me,” he said. “They told me to keep my mouth shut.”

Jashu-el saw an opportunity to turn things around, and he took it. “He who knows about a murder and says nothing is guilty of murder himself,” he said sternly. “That is Ur-nammu’s law. Speak, or be delivered to the executioner.”

Nabu-zir knew that what Jashu-el had said was not strictly true, and so did Ishi-adad, who opened his mouth to object, but then decided not to contradict his young opponent when he saw how the temper of the crowd was turning.

Huda weighed in with a stentorian voice calculated to carry to the far reaches of the hall. “This misbegotten son of a monkey sweeps courtyards in the Akkadian quarter when he’s sober enough. He’d sell himself as a slave for the price of a pitcher of beer, except that no one would want him as part of their household because he smells so bad. Go on, little dung heap, answer the judge.”

The little man cringed. “I recognized him right away because he drinks at Huda’s when he has the money. They call him Az the Bear, because he’s a dangerous man to cross. He robs the caravans when they’re out of sight of the city walls, and it’s whispered that he killed that caravan master who tried to sue the temple director, the shesh-gal, last year. In the back alleys they say that he does the nu-banda’s dirty work for him, the deeds that must be done in the dark.”

He stopped, and Nabu-zir could see that he was trembling.

“Go on,” Huda said.

The little man dropped his voice to a whisper, but it could be heard because the hall had fallen silent.

“The Bear usually works alone, but this time he was with the nu-banda himself. They went right by me without noticing me. Nobody ever does. The nu-banda seemed very excited, like a man possessed by wind demons. They broke the door seal and pushed their way inside. They stayed only a short while, and when they came out, the Az had blood on his hand and arm. Then they noticed me, and I feared for my life. The Az had his hand on the hilt of a knife he had tucked in the waist of his skirt. But they were in a frenzy to get away and I suppose they decided that a nobody like me wasn’t worth killing, and they left after warning me to hold my tongue.”

“Calumny!” Ishi-adad shouted. There was spittle at the corner of his mouth. He fixed the little man with a sour gaze and said, “Know that the penalty for accusing someone of murder is death, unless the accusation can be proved! And to accuse the nu-banda himself of murder is an offense so heinous that the whole weight of the temple will fall on your head!”

“Do not threaten witnesses, Ishi-adad,” Jashu-el said. “Nobody has accused the nu-banda of murder. Yet.”

The silence in the hall had been replaced by a buzzing that grew louder. The judges were whispering among themselves, too, and after a bit, Jashu-el put his head together with them. But Ishi-adad held himself aloof, calculating eyes flicking over the crowd.

The judges had reached some sort of conclusion, though a few of them didn’t look happy about it. The senior of them, a stodgy, self-important man who behind his back was called by the nickname Gu-gaz, “the stalk that bends with the wind,” cleared his throat and said, “We will order the patrol to find and arrest this Az the Bear.” He did not mention the nu-banda.

A noisy eruption on the assembly floor followed. In the resulting chaos, with excited people babbling at one another and the usual gossips running off to spread the news, a squad of spearmen was somehow assembled for an immediate foray into the city’s back alleys.

Nabu-zir seemed to have been forgotten. He nodded at Nindada, and together they made their way unnoticed through the seething crowd.

“What will happen to Huda?” she said when they were outside.

“She’ll land on her feet,” he said. “She’s not actually a witness to anything, and they won’t want to pursue it with her, but I wouldn’t give a stale fig for the little sweeper’s chances.”

“The Bear is dead,” Lu-inanna said. “Killed while resisting arrest, according to the nu-banda. Dead men tell no tales, and the case is closed.”

He was sipping beer from the pitcher that Nindada had brought from Huda’s tavern. She had somehow managed to stay out of Lu-inanna’s reach while setting it next to him.

Nabu-zir took a swallow from his own pitcher. “I would have thought that the patrol would have gotten to him first,” he said.

“The busybodies wasted no time getting to the nu-banda,” Lu-inanna said. “He asserted his authority in cases affecting the security of Ur. But he didn’t explain what a civil murder had to do with the safety of the state.”

“Nor will he,” Nabu-zir said. “The high priest won’t want to open that door, even if it might give him some advantage in the temple’s war with Shulgi.”

Lu-inanna nodded. “This is not for anyone else’s ears, Nabu-zir, but we’re going to have a new nu-banda. The high priest is going to appoint our friend to a post in Nippur, where he’ll be safely out of sight. He’ll take his posse of thugs with him. The gods help the people of Nippur!”

“And the little sweeper?”

“The nu-banda says he can’t be found.”

“He’s already been found, no doubt. By the crocodiles.”

Lu-innana looked at him slyly. “Now that I’ve told you the temple’s secrets, you can confess, Nabu-zir. What exactly was in the tablet you wrote for the king?”

“As you guessed, Lu-inanna, it was a poem. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

“Come now, my friend. What’s the harm?”

“Enough harm’s been done already. I’d guess that the Az killed the lady in a blind rage when she wouldn’t talk. We know that her body was badly beaten when it was found. The nu-banda must have been beside himself when the tablet he’d been told was so important turned out to be a simple poem. He thought it was supposed to be some affair of state. The lady’s husband, after all, was a diplomat from a former enemy of Ur. But the nu-banda, though he’s supposed to be a priest like all of you officials who are growing fat at the ziggurat, is a man of no culture. He saw only that the lines were arranged in the form of a poem. When he lost control of the situation and the lady was dead, he left the tablet behind, thinking it was of no importance.”

“And your seal was on it.”

“Stop prying, Lu-inanna. You are stepping on the toes of a king. You should be grateful that I kept your name out of it. You owe me a favor.”

“And so does the high priest, when all’s said and done. And he knows it. I’m being rewarded for keeping my mouth shut by getting a favored place in the New Year procession. What reward do you claim?”

“I’ll be content with fair payment for the next job I do for the ziggurat,” Nabu-zir said dryly. “Perhaps you could forgo your commission.”

It was the day of no moon at the New Year, and the courtyard of the moon god was crowded with what seemed to be half the population of Ur. The other half was crammed wherever they would fit inside the walled ziggurat precincts.

Nabu-zir and Nindada had found a spot that gave them a good view of the winding ramps that led to the shrine at the top of the ziggurat. The priestly procession was about to start, and there was excited chatter all around them.

A portly man with beer on his breath squeezed past them to get closer to the spectacle. “Excuse me, brother,” he said. “Do you think Dumuzi has been reborn yet?”

“Undoubtedly,” Nabu-zir said solemnly. “Nana-sin has delivered him from the underworld by now, and the entu, the avatar of Innana, awaits him on her couch with perfumed loins.”

“Look, here come the priests!” a woman shouted, her voice cracking with emotion.

A parade of naked men, bearing the sacred offerings, had turned the corner and were climbing in single file up the first ramp. Nabu-zir strained his eyes and located Lu-inanna among them. The deputy administrator was laboring under the weight of what seemed to be a tray of honey cakes.

“There’s your admirer,” he said, nudging Nindada.

She giggled, an uncharacteristic lapse for her, then caught herself. “He looks silly without his clothes. Those chubby hips, the sagging belly.”

“He’s been helping himself to too many of the god’s honey cakes,” Nabu-zir said.

The priests were at the second tier by now. They could be heard chanting a hymn to Innana. The portly man turned around and said, “The sacred marriage is going well, don’t you think?”

“Yes, indeed,” Nabu-zir said.

“Soon the earth will reawaken, the crops will grow, and Ur will have another prosperous year.”

“More than a year, let us hope,” Nabu-zir said, remaining determinedly secular. “With luck, the divine Shulgi’s reign has many more years to go, and he and his sons will continue to fend off the barbarian darkness.”

But the portly man had already turned around and was inflicting pieties on the woman whose emotions had overwhelmed her.

Nabu-zir turned to Nindada and said, “You should be pleased with yourself, Nindada. Your deed will never be written in clay, but you may have saved the throne of a king.”

She looked alarmed, then lowered her eyes and said, “I only went to the tavern across the alley to talk to a friend.”

Copyright © 2012 Donald Moffitt