In the morning, Enki came into my rooms and sat down on my bed, one of his knees touching my leg. “Do you know what is happening, Inanna?”
“No,” I said. “No one will say a word to me.”
His smell was so familiar to me: of olive soap, and so clean and warm. He pushed back my hair from my forehead with one strong hand, and put his leopard eyes very close to mine.
“Your mother has stolen from me,” he said. “What do you know about that?”
“Nothing. But I do not think it can be true, that she would do anything to cross you.”
“All the same, she has,” he said. “In fact, she has killed me, although I am not yet dead. She has murdered me. So what you do now is very important, Inanna. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
Servants went in and out when he was gone. They tidied up my things, and brought me water. No one spoke to me when I asked about my mother and father.
I shut my eyes and tried to focus on them. I could sense my father clearly. He seemed to be moving away from me. Towards Ur. Could he have left without coming to see me? Or was he being taken away against his will?
My mother I could barely get a feel of, and what I felt made no sense. It seemed as if she was below me. Far below me. But how could that be? There was only the big state room beneath my set of rooms, and below that nothing. I knew the palace well enough to know that. And why was she so faint?
In the evening, women came to dress me for dinner, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I was led onto the terrace and I was seated next to Dumuzi, my new husband, although he kept his cheek turned from me. There was no sign of my mother or father.
I sat and ate, barley soup and soft cheese, some plums. No one spoke to me, but the talk of court flowed all around, as if this was any other supper in the palace. Enki, sitting opposite me, seemed cheerful enough.
“You look very holy in that saffron,” he said. “I know it is your brother’s colour, but it suits you well.”
I pulled out my mouth into something like a smile. “You are too kind to me, my lord.”
Far below me, the thing that might be my mother seemed to be growing fainter.
* * *
My husband and I travelled north to Uruk on a fleet of barges, the men rowing hard against the river. We pushed our way into a head wind, and the sails upon the masts stayed furled.
The sails had been dyed purple: that would be our colour now.
All our possessions were heaped up on the decks of the first barge. We newly-weds travelled behind on Enki’s Barge of Heaven, which I had first stepped onto on the day he took me from Ur. “He’s not letting us keep it,” Dumuzi said. “But it makes a nice show, does it not?”
Behind us came eight military barges loaded with soldiers and their mounts. It was the morning after my fourteenth birthday, although the day had gone unmarked.
The sky above us beat thick with swifts and swallows as we sailed.
Dumuzi and I sat on wooden chairs upon the foredeck, a purple shade fluttering over us in the spring breeze. Dumuzi had a rack of new mees on each arm.
My husband seemed newly energised. He was the most cheerful I had ever seen him. “You know An and Lugalbanda have run Uruk for three hundred years,” said Dumuzi.
I said nothing. Those were the days when I said nothing.
“But now it ends,” said Dumuzi. He cast a glance at me, fanning himself. “Ugh,” he said. “This sulking. Your mother is safe. She’s a hostage. As you were a hostage. What is the value in a dead hostage?”
He said nothing about my father.
The fields went by, and the peasants kneeled as the barges passed, and the day grew unseasonably hot. I sat with my eyes on Dumuzi’s arms, looking at his new mees. Was one of them my mother’s mee of peace?
The thought grew in me as the leagues went by, and the sweat ran down my back, that my mother might in truth be dead, and although I kept my head held high, tears slipped down my cheeks.
“Look,” said Dumuzi. “You didn’t ask for this. My sister didn’t ask for this. And I didn’t ask for this. Do you think I asked for this?”
I said nothing.
“This is our job now. To hold Uruk for my father. To keep the sky gods from coming south. That’s our job now. And if you want to keep your mother safe, you need to take that seriously. You need to think about the sky gods.”
I didn’t say anything, but I dried my eyes on my dress. It did cheer me a little, in truth, to think about the sky gods, just as my husband had suggested. To think about the king of the sky gods, my grandfather Enlil, who had gone to war once against his brother Enki, and might do so again.
* * *
Eight days on the Euphrates and then the river Warka, and then early on the ninth day, around a sweeping bend, a vast shape on the left-hand bank. I thought, Oh, it is a cloudbank resting on the Earth. But then the mist cleared, and the sun picked out the ramparts in gold.
Here it was: Uruk. A golden block upon the green.
The city at the heart of the world.
* * *
I stood for the approach, my hands pressed together against my chest, my bare feet apart on the cedar deck.
Closer and closer, the shudder of the oars shivering out across the river, and the walls before us resolving from the work of great giants into only countless tiny clay bricks, each fashioned by mortal hands.
We slid past reeds and lush pastures, past a small boy holding a donkey, and watching us open mouthed. Only at the last moment did I understand that there was a gap in the city walls, and that we were going to sail straight into Uruk.
“Oh!” I said, despite myself.
“Glorious, isn’t it,” my husband said, coming to stand beside me, with a real smile on his face.
* * *
Huge crowds had gathered for the coming of Inanna, daughter of the moon gods, and the shepherd king Dumuzi, son of Enki, by some mortal no one had heard of. God-born but not very sacred.
I was lifted down onto the White Quay, and a servant rearranged my dress as I stood there, my arms held out limp while she worked. I looked around reflexively for my lions, but of course they were not there.
“Inanna, look,” Dumuzi said, looking very young for a moment. “It’s Lugalbanda’s boy. The soldier. You know, the one Akka took hostage.”
I looked up towards the city and there he was. Standing above the kneeling crowds, on the wall at the end of the quay, with a leather-covered helmet under his arm. There he was. Sweaty and dusty, his hair damp in the sun, looking straight at me.
Just the sight of him.
Oh, my insides.
Oh, my outsides.
Oh, my heart.
There he was.
The son of Lugalbanda.
Hero of the north.
There you were.
Gilgamesh.