Bronze Summer

37

Milaqa took Kurunta’s arm, and led him out to the crowded street. He claimed to be able to find the way, and he blundered through the high-walled alleys, dragging Milaqa behind him.

It turned out not to be far to the man’s home — or what had been his home, one of another row of cramped houses. But there was nobody here who recognised Kurunta, and one woman threatened to stone them if this ‘criminal’ did not go away, and criminal he must be or else he would not have suffered such a terrible punishment.

‘It’s all different,’ Kurunta wailed.

Milaqa said, ‘You’ve been away a long time. I’ve seen it myself. You had children, yes?’

‘Yes, two youngsters and an older boy who was almost grown-’

‘Perhaps your wife moved away. Perhaps she went to live with family.’ What she wasn’t saying out loud was, perhaps she found another man. ‘We can ask. Find out where she has gone.’

‘No, no-’

‘Or is there somebody else you can go to? A brother or sister — your parents, even-’

‘Take me to the archive.’

‘The what?’

‘Where I worked. Please. Take me there.’

The archive was not far, and Kurunta was able to find his way from his home quite efficiently.

Under a small surface building, the bulk of the archive was kept underground, in a kind of cellar entered by a series of steps. The store itself was an expansive room lit by smoky oil lamps and divided into three parallel corridors by wooden shelves supported by stone pillars. On the shelves were clay tablets heaped in stacks, or leaning against each other like drunks in a Scambles tavern. The air was dry and smelled of the dusty clay, and the tang of burning oil.

Kurunta walked in confidently. He seemed to know his way around with precision. He made straight for a shelf, but his mutilated arms made it impossible for him to handle a tablet. Milaqa picked out a tablet at random, and let him trap it between his forearms. He held it up before his face. It was roughly square, small enough to hold in one hand, and covered with angular pocks and scrapes. Kurunta breathed in deeply. ‘Ah! The scent of dry clay. Now I’m home.’

Milaqa glanced around. ‘There must be thousands of tablets here — the place is huge.’

‘But this little archive would be lost in the great palace chambers. Five vast libraries — tens of thousands of tablets — all of them devoted to recording the feats of our great kings. A wonderful place. Can you read this, child?’

She took the tablet from him. She recognised the writing style, the speech of the Hatti rendered in the symbols of the old civilisations of the east. ‘I’m afraid not-’

‘Father?’

Milaqa turned. A young man in a plain tunic was coming down the stair.

Kurunta twisted his head blindly. ‘ Attalli? My son? Is that you? What are you doing here?’

The boy, no older than sixteen, looked bewildered. ‘Well, I work here now… I thought you were dead. We all did.’

‘Not dead, not at all. And where else would I be but with my beloved tablets? Oh, come to me, boy, come to your father.’ He held out his mutilated arms, and turned his eyeless face to the boy.

For a heartbeat it seemed Attalli, horrified at the sight, could not move. Then he rushed forward and embraced his father.

Kurunta turned, seeking Milaqa. ‘Do you still have that tablet? Read to me, boy. Oh, please, just a little. Just to prove the Spider was wrong…’

The boy took the tablet from Milaqa, and began to read, hesitantly. ‘ ‘‘This is to record my great victory, my promotion to chief archivist.’’ ’

‘Ha! Somebody is a boaster.’

‘ ‘‘I achieved this with the support of the gods Ashur, Enlil, and Shamash, and the Goddess Ishtar. With their divine aid I smashed my enemies as did the Great King Tudhaliya…’’ ’