Eight hours, full across the mouth of the estuary, and we were at Eridu, the first city. This is where the king of the gods put up the first temple, when the Anunnaki descended from Heaven.
“Welcome to Eridu,” said Enki as he lifted me onto the quay, his face close to mine, his hard hands gripping my ribs.
My grandfather was put on his litter. I followed on behind on a donkey, with Enki’s chief minister, Isimud, walking next to me, one hand on my bridle. Isimud kept his hard eyes turned away from me. Four soldiers, carrying between them my basket of lions, followed on behind.
The people of Eridu lined the paved road from the royal wharf up towards the city. They dipped their knees and tipped their faces as our procession passed by, but here or there I caught the flash of an eye as my donkey picked its way past.
* * *
Enki gave me a small set of rooms in the Palace of the Aquifer, looking out over the lakes and marshes to the north. It was small but each room was a gem, exquisitely painted with peacocks and pomegranate trees. One room contained a copper bath big enough for me to sit up to my neck in.
On that first afternoon two girls came, eyes down, with water, soap and towels for me. My chests of clothes arrived. The lions fell asleep in their basket.
And then it was only me, sitting on my bed.
Absolutely and truly alone, for the first time in my life.
I went to stand by the bedroom window. It was a small rectangular window, with neat wooden shutters, each hooked back against the inside walls. In the far distance, I could see three canoes, black lines cutting across the marshlands. If I stood on tiptoe and looked down, I could see a neat roof of square red tiles, and a large clay-brick wall beyond. I shut my eyes, searching in my mind’s eye for my parents, but I could only tell that they were east of me, and far away.
For a while I watched a luminous praying mantis, very green, her head so elegant, sitting quietly upon one wooden shutter. I had not seen one, up close, since one morning in Ur, with Amnut.
Tears began to tumble from my eyes. For Amnut. For my mother, angry as I was with her. And for myself, and how lost I felt.
A knock at the door. I knew his pull now: Enki.
He had changed into an undyed smock, with a thin crimson rope tied around his waist, and a crimson cloak thrown over.
“Inanna, I thought you would like to see the palace.”
“I would love to!” I had only been alone half an hour, and yet I felt so relieved I could have kissed him.
“Shall we bring the lions?” he said. “I could carry one, if you carry the other.”
“Oh, yes!” I forgot, in the moment, even to feel nervous of him.
He swept us along the corridor. Long, thin rugs ran along the clay-brick floor; the walls were plastered and painted, white ceilings overhead. The corridor floor undulated a little, rising and then falling, as we made our way along it.
“The palace is so old,” Enki said. “Over time it’s started to sag a little. But I love it still. You know this is the first building of any significance that we built here. Really it is the oldest building on Earth, at least of any note.”
“It is much bigger than our palace in Ur.”
“We all lived here, you know, in the first days. The place was thick with Anunnaki. We acted like a family then, although it is hard to believe now.”
We turned right, and then left through wide cedar doors into a long hall. The floor was covered in huge wool carpets, all brilliant with colour. “I have collected these from all over the world,” he said. “These really, well, you will not find finer weaving anywhere on earth. This one here is from the high steppes.” We stood together and looked down at a crimson and blue rug, shot through with white. “Come and see this, though.”
We went through another set of doors, and in another long hall there were dozens of tables and upon them clay pots of extraordinary colours, patterns and sheens.
“This one is my favourite,” he said.
It was a small marble table, held up by a ram fashioned from gold and lapis lazuli. The ram had its front hooves up on a small, golden huluppu tree.
“I adore it,” I said.
“Yes, it’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
He led me up to huge oak doors that opened out onto a grand terrace. The Palace of the Aquifer was made of the same neat bricks as the rest of the city, but here they were laid down so wonderfully and thoughtfully that each space and each new view felt like a gift. “It’s a pleasure just to be in this building,” I said to him.
“Yes!” he said. “That’s what I intended.”
Outside on the terrace the wind had a bite to it, but he took me over to the western side of the balcony to look down at the city. From high you could see the city houses were laid out in squares, with an open courtyard in the middle that you could never have guessed at from the narrow streets. Many had shallow stone pools in these secret places, and little gardens of palms.
“That way, to the west, there is good farmland, but then, if you go far enough, desert.” He swung around and pointed north. “That way marshes, vast marshes. We hunt boar there, and hippo, sometimes crocodiles. Also sometimes we hunt the men there. They are a dangerous people. Then if you go far, far to the north, you get to Uruk, where my father An rules. And then east of here is the finest farmland in the world, and the river.”
“And Ur beyond.”
“Yes, your blessed Ur! Now I am going to show you your favourite place in the palace.”
I laughed. “How can you when I do not know what it is yet?”
“I know already what it will be.”
We went back past the tables and the rugs, left down a long flight of stairs, and then out through more wide doors. “Not far,” he said.
He led me across a damp and muddy courtyard to a high brick wall with a small blue door in it. Enki opened this little door, and let me go through first.
“Oh,” I said.
It was a green heaven, thick with trees and flowers, cut through with paths like green tunnels. At the heart of it, in the green shade, was a mosaic-bottomed pool, set about with stone benches. We put down the lions and they at once made their way into the shallow water, one brave paw at a time.
“Oh,” I said again. “My favourite place in the palace.”
“It’s yours,” he said. “You can spend as much time here as you like. And I tell you it is much more glorious in the summer; it is a haven.”
“Thank you, Grandfather,” I said.
He stood looking at me with his head tipped to one side. “Inanna, I know you are going to miss your mother and father very much.”
“Perhaps less than you might think,” I said.
“Ah. I do not think that will last. So, I say to you now, if you want to see them, tell me, and we will make an expedition of it. We can be there and back in two days if you really need to see them.”
“Thank you, Grandfather,” I said again, and against my better judgement, I felt a rush of gratitude towards him.
* * *
Every night Enki brought the palace together for a grand dinner, and his love of these huge occasions, never waning, drew us all into the dance of the court. Sometimes we ate outside, if it was warm enough, but often we ate in his grand dining hall, decorated all around with the captured chest plates of his enemies, and the heads of giraffes, leopards and zebra, killed in the hunt and stuffed.
From the first night I was put to sit at his left hand. As the plates came round, he served me food from each. Leeks in butter, grilled lamb, boiled greens with lemon juice and salt, all perfectly cooked.
“When will I meet him?” I said.
Enki looked sweetly baffled for a moment. “Who?” he said, leaning an ear to me.
“Your son Dumuzi,” I said. “Who I’m to marry.”
“Ah!” He sat up straight and ate a piece of lamb. “He’s away. He’ll be back soon.”
I had seen Enki always open and smiling; now he was neither.
* * *
It is strange to say now, but in those first weeks in Eridu, Enki was my best friend, and my lions our shared passion. I had no set servants: it was rarely the same girl who dressed me two days in a row. Dumuzi, my husband to be, was away, his absence unexplained. My relatives gave me a wide berth. I knew they were out there; I felt their pull as they moved around the city. But no word came to me from them. I had no occupation, no temple of my own.
All I had was my lions and our magical garden to play in, and almost every day, I had Enki. I was wary of him; how could I not be? Yet I learned to look forward to him arriving at my door.
Who had been his friend before me? I could not work it out. His current wife, a water goddess, was the child of a mortal priestess, although the melam ran in her. She was beautiful, you could not say otherwise, yet she seemed like a stranger to him.
Enki seemed to have all the room in the world for me.
My lions were lionesses, and I named them Crocus and Saffron. “Pretty names,” Enki said. “For two very deadly creatures.”
The lions constantly scratched me and nipped me, until they grew big enough to be more careful of me. I did not like the pain, but I liked to watch how quickly my hands and shins healed.
“What a strange child you are,” Enki said. “But I remember doing the same, you know, when I was young: watching myself heal, being interested in it.”
Crocus and Saffron slept with me in my bed. If you have not slept with lions, then I recommend it: they are excellent, civilised bed mates, never stirring too early, or taking up too much space.
Everywhere we went, Enki would let the lions ramble along behind us.
I said: “I’m worried that they might hurt someone, even if only in play.”
He laughed. “These are not my first lions. As long as you take them very early from their mother, and hand raise them, and then include them in everything, then normally you are all right.”
First thing in the morning, Enki would meet in private with his sukkal Isimud. I had heard that Isimud was a son of Enki, by a kitchen girl; certainly they were very close. But after that, whatever Enki’s business, in the fields, on the canals, in the treasury, in the markets, in temple, my lions and I would be there, trailing after him. “It is a pleasure to teach you the business of this land,” he said. “It is a long time since I had a young Anunnaki underfoot.”
My lions loved him. After me, he was their most beloved. Enki fed them meat from his plate and gave them collars studded with carnelians. “My beautiful, terrifying girls,” he said, and then he would wink at me, to show me that he meant to include me in that.
* * *
An invitation came on a small clay tablet, carried to me by a servant on a tray.
Ninhursag, Enki’s former wife, was inviting me to come and drink tea with her. Ninhursag had been my mother’s stepmother, after my maternal grandmother died in Heaven, and I knew that Ninhursag had been very kind to my mother. But this was also the famous Ninhursag from the stories, Ninhursag of the Anunnaki. Whose girls Enki had punished by raping them.
I said to Enki: “Ninhursag has invited me to her compound.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes.”
“Then go,” he said. “You are not my prisoner here.”
He ruffled my hair. “Go. I will not be angry. Just come home with some stories and make me laugh later.”
“Who should I ask to take me?”
“Ask Isimud. He will be happy to take you.”
* * *
Isimud, Enki’s chief minister, the holy sukkal, who commanded the army of Eridu, did not seem happy to take me. All the same, he did it. A phalanx of his personal guard paced out in front of us through the cobbled streets, and I brought along my lions on long leather leads. I had not been outside the palace without Enki, and our expedition, down streets lined with clay-brick houses, had the thrill of an adventure.
Ninhursag lived in a separate compound from the palace; she had her own temple there. In the stories they said Ninhursag had tried to leave Enki, and in return he had meted out brutal violence against her and her girls. Now she stayed in the city, but never came to court. They taught her story in Enki’s temples, as a lesson for all the wives.
As we made our way up to the compound gates, servants came rushing to open the woven-willow gates. Inside there was a lush garden of lemon, fig and pomegranate trees, cascading flowering bushes, bougainvillea. Strange palms that I did not recognise, and stone-lined pools of orange fish. The compound servants led us along a cobbled stone path through the vegetation, and then there was Ninhursag, sitting in a chair in the shade, her feet tucked under a blanket. She was dressed in dark grey: her colour.
Ninhursag said to Isimud: “For decency’s sake, perhaps you and your killers could wait in the street.”
Isimud only stood there, his face impossible to read.
“Go on, Isimud,” I said. “You can wait outside for me.”
I thought for a moment that he might hit me.
But instead he gestured to his men and retreated.
* * *
So here was Ninhursag.
I recognised her from the temple paintings, but she was very changed. I had never seen a god look old before. Ninhursag’s dark skin was criss-crossed with lines, like a fishnet, and her long hair was white, and very bright, against the dark grey velvet of her dress.
“I loved your mother,” she said, gesturing for me to sit. “I was sorry to see her go, and I am unhappy how rarely she comes back. But I am happy that she has got away from Enki.”
“All hail him,” I said.
Ninhursag waved the hail away. “I wish I could go and see her, but I am not allowed out now, lest anyone see me and work out that the Anunnaki are not quite as immortal as we are meant to be. I would have liked to have come and seen you, too, after you were born, and to have helped your mother then.”
The tea came, and we were quiet until the man had gone.
“Anyway,” she said, “I am glad to meet you at last, the famous hostage.”
“I’m glad to meet you too,” I said, absorbing the word “hostage”.
“You should know he has taken all my mees. He said he would kill the children otherwise. So, I cannot protect you from him. But we have herbs here, the right medicines. I can help you keep pregnancy at bay.”
“Thank you, goddess, but I have no need of protection.”
“Inanna, I have invited you to give you these herbs.” She looked over her shoulder, and a priestess came forwards with a small parcel, wrapped up in linen, and tied neatly in string. This I accepted, not knowing what else to do.
“You put a pinch of it in your tea, or in your water, first thing in the mornings. It will stop the babies sticking to you. Anunnaki babies don’t tend to stick for long, but believe me, you will not enjoy miscarrying them.”
I looked down at the parcel in my lap. Might it be poison?
“Tell me about yourself, little goddess.”
“I am a goddess of love,” I said. I put my hands onto my parcel.
“I never thought I would see another Anunnaki, a new one,” she said. “Not here in this realm. This ghastly world is brighter for you, Inanna. Will you try to stay alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then take the herbs.”
* * *
At dinner that evening, without preface, Enki leaned in close to me and said: “You know those girls aren’t my daughters. Ninhursag’s girls. We found we could not breed together in this realm, and although I did raise them as my children, they were fathered by other men. Everyone says I raped my daughters, but it’s a lie. I had sex with her daughters, to punish them and to punish her, but I did it in temple; it was all proper. And I did it to keep this family together.”
He gave me a look then, out of the side of his eye, that for the first time made me truly afraid of him.
I am a goddess of love, I said to myself, breathing in deep. A goddess of love.
“You look very stupid when you look like that,” Enki said.
I shut my mouth and said nothing.
I think then he was sorry for snapping at me.
“Inanna, you must understand how young you seem to me. It is difficult for me to take young people seriously. But I should try harder, now we have a young Anunnaki. I will try harder, I promise.”
* * *
Every evening after dinner, I would go back to Enki’s rooms, part of his inner circle. He would sit in his sheepskin-covered chair, right in front of the fire, and the chosen few would sit in a half-circle around him. These half gods and high priests were his most favoured courtiers: the men who ran his city for him. But he always kept a cosy leather chair for me, on his left-hand side. He told funny stories. He talked about the secrets of the gods, about their battles on Earth, and when he was drunk, he would talk about them all arriving here in Eridu, or even about their time in Heaven.
“Do you know the story of my brother Enlil, and his wife Ninlil?” he said that night. “Of when they first met, in Heaven?”
We were six of us in his rooms, but the question was directed at me.
“I only know he first saw her beside a stream, and fell at once in love with her.”
Enki bent his head to the right, and to the left, his mouth turned down. “That’s sort of true. What your parents and the temple texts have missed out from that, though, is that Ninlil was six years old.”
“I did not know that.”
He laughed. “Six years old, and my brother conceived such a lust for her that he kidnapped her, then and there. And brought down the fury of the girl’s family upon us, then and forever more. These days Enlil is too good to sit at my table, but it was not always so.”
He raised a wine glass to us. “To the sky gods in the north,” he said. “And their foul predilections!”
That we all laughed at.
Oh, how he made me laugh at first, big open laughs. I felt I had not laughed for an age, until Enki brought it out of me.
At the end of the night, it was often just the two of us beside the fire.
“What did you think of Ninhursag?” he said that night.
“I thought she looked old, for a god.”
“Yes.” He leaned over to kiss the lion that was sprawling out of my lap. “Do you feel in danger here, little moonbeam?”
“No.”
He stood up, took the cubs up by the scruffs of their necks, and put them out in the corridor.
“I’ve got a new game I would like to play with you,” he said.
“What is it, Grandfather?” I kept my hands soft in my lap.
“Come into my bedroom and I will show you,” he said.
For some long moments, we looked at each other.
“What are you thinking?” he said, his leopard eyes gleaming in the firelight.
“That I am a goddess of love,” I said.
I lifted my chin to him, to show that I was not afraid.
“Come and love me, then,” he said, and put out his hand to me.