Twilight in Babylon

by Suzanne Frank

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance; Science Fiction Romance; Time Travel Romance

Synopsis

Separated from the man she loves, Chloe Kingsley finds herself alone in Mesopotamia, haunted by memories and driven to survive. Here, in a land where upheavals in the heavens and a flood on earth portend catastrophe for mankind, the rulers demand an appeasement - a beautiful young woman to placate the gods.

Release date: March 5, 2013

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 483

Sample

Fire! Fire!”

Cheftu could see smoke billowing upward from the city wall. A bad day for a fire; last night’s rain would cause the limestone to crack and explode as the heat expanded it. There was no way to avoid that danger; in Jerusalem all the houses were made of limestone.

His house even, was made of limestone.

The plume of smoke was gray against the spring-afternoon sky. It seemed to stab at the breast of heaven from the outer wall of the city. The fire must be on the outer wall.

His home was on the outer wall.

Cheftu hastened his steps. He should anyway; Chloe would be overjoyed they were leaving the city. Cheftu had just been made ambassador to Egypt. He climbed up to the highest point of his walk. From this position, he could see the fields. Everyone was out today, planting the terraced sides of the valley.

He wound around another corner as he walked down to his house.

“Is anyone inside?” the voices of concerned neighbors echoed out to him.

“He works for the king. She’s usually here. Just a wife, you know. Barren, poor thing.”

He worked for the king; Chloe was usually at home. His wife—barren.

Cheftu took the last steps two at a time, up and around another corner, across the courtyard, and up and around again.

The wooden door was black with smoke.

His wooden door was black with smoke.

“Chloe!” he shouted. Cheftu covered his face, then kicked the door open. The heat seared through his sandal. “Bring water,” he yelled at the two old women. He ran inside.

He was lost in the gray heat; where was the kitchen? The sleeping platform? “Chloe?” he shouted. “Chloe!” Wind funneled from the back window through the hallway, and fueled the fire. Cheftu dropped to his hands and knees and felt around for her. Limestone popped, and the fire’s roar became stronger. Heat singed his skin. He smelled burning hair. “Chloe,” he coughed out.

An arm.

A lifeless arm.

He shook her; her skin was rippled and blistered. Black smoke unfurled through the window. Fire crackled behind him. He dragged Chloe’s body over his shoulder and back, then ran for the window, hunched over and coughing. He threw her out onto the narrow walkway, then clambered after her.

His neighbors sluiced down their homes.

Cheftu coughed, gasped for air, and spat black phlegm on the white stone. He turned to look at Chloe. His physician’s glance was quick and conclusive: burns to 70 percent of her body. A head wound, sticky with blood, staining the stone with red.

He wrapped the remains of his kilt around her head, but it didn’t change the facts. She would die, very soon.

Her chest fell in labored breaths. There was no part of her untouched by fire, no inch not black and oozing, burned and bloody.

The first block of limestone exploded, sending shards flying into the air. Cheftu shielded Chloe’s body as he pulled her around a ledge. She was beyond his help. Beyond all but the Almighty’s assistance. He looked up. A beautiful day; how could this be the day that Chloe would die?

Above him the sun shone golden on the walled city of Jerusalem, this spring equinox, this twenty-third of March. The designated temple grounds with their caverns of—

“There is one thing, chérie,” he whispered to his unconscious bride. “One way to save you, if God shows His mercy.” He gathered her in his arms and ran to the edge of the outer wall, then up the walkway, up the hill, up the plateau, ever leading up. To God.

Fabric walls shielded the space, and a gold-encrusted tabernacle graced the center of the flat-topped hill. Priests must be close by, but Cheftu knew the grounds better than they. A wooden trapdoor concealed an entrance to the tunnels beneath the Temple Mount, but Cheftu found it. Opened it and stepped down inside with Chloe.

It slammed shut above him.

Sealing him inside the catacombs.

Pain stabbed at his body, but he ignored it. Engorged blisters on his arms and legs, what felt like deafness in the cool silence of this cavern, were nothing to him. “It’s been so long since we’ve been here, chérie,” he said to her. Years since they had chosen to stay in this place, to make Jerusalem home. A mistake, he knew now. Cheftu swallowed painfully. Thank God she still breathed. Raspy, but alive.

He adjusted her head on his shoulder to straighten her neck. Cheftu leaned against a smooth-carved wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the night all around him. “I don’t remember where the chamber is,” he said. He began to discern the shadows of archways and passages. “But we can find it.”

For hours he walked, looking into every room, following the warren of walkways, ending back on himself again and again. The wound on her head had scabbed over, but all the other wounds had gotten worse. He’d never felt so helpless, so powerless. It was divine will, what happened next.

She hadn’t murmured; it hurt him to speak. Blinded by the sweat of his efforts, he sagged against the wall. “Bon Dieu,” he whispered.

When he opened his eyes later, the halls were filled with a faint blue glow. It bounced off the limestone walls until the whole space looked as though it were submerged in tropical, paradisical waters.

Cheftu staggered to his feet and picked up Chloe. Heart pounding, he searched for the source of light. “We found it, chérie.”

The archway glowed, a familiar fire. Safe. A healing flame. He laid Chloe’s body beneath it. She still inhaled and exhaled, but barely.

“I know it is not the correct time,” he whispered to the One he believed listened. “You have set times and appointments in place, and abide by them.” He looked into the face of his beloved wife. She must have hit her head, fallen, and somehow started the fire. With her as its fodder. A terrible accident; a slap from the hand of fate.

“I don’t ask special compensation because I think I am a good man. I ask because I know you are a good God. You love this woman far more than I, in mortal flesh, can.” He looked at her body. Ruined. “She still has so much to give. Let her live, let her find purpose.” His voice broke. “Let her know matchless love.”

Nothing happened.

“Give her another chance. Give her life.”

The blue light of the chamber continued to flicker, glittering along the sides of the true Ark of the Covenant—hidden there to protect the people from its terrifying power—the curved ceilings of limestone, but there was no roar of wind, no mighty thundering voice. Cheftu spun when he heard the scamper of claws. A rat watched him inquisitively, upright on its hind legs, the reflection in its glassy eyes, blue.

Chloe’s breath caught.

It stopped.

Cheftu watched her, waited, his hand on her ravaged chest. It didn’t move. He closed his eyes, his head bowed. Almost of their own volition, his lips moved. “Thy will be done.”

It seemed his heart should stop also, but it plodded on for moments and minutes and quarters and halves and an hour. He remembered the first time he’d seen her, green eyes flashing with excitement and life. Chloe, named for the freshness of a green field. How vibrant she was, springtime every day. Even in the past years when sorrow had licked away at her until he feared there would be nothing left.

No child, no family, no career, no passion.

I’m so sorry, he thought. I lost focus. Each day your eyes were rimmed with red from weeping was a day I knew I had failed you. I couldn’t get you pregnant, I couldn’t get you a career, I couldn’t get you to be happy. Then I stopped trying. Forgive me. I wasted our days. Inside him, he felt a crack, a gap inside, and he knew that nothing mattered anymore. Chloe was gone; he would stay here until he was gone, too.

Her chest seemed to sink.

He opened his eyes.

Before him her body was melting into clay.

He reached to close her eyes, but a green fire sprang from them. Cheftu ducked away.

The wax and dust of her flesh and the fire of her soul danced and swirled in the blue light until all that was left of Chloe Bennett Kingsley Champollion was a scrap of bloodstained wool, a melted wedding band, and a shocked, charred, hopeful husband.

The stargazer felt her breath catch in her breast as she watched the flocks in the night sky move. The star of Inana, which burned on the edge of the horizon, bright enough to be seen by day, glowed purple tonight. With trembling hands, the woman consulted the chart she’d been working on for years, now. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” she muttered to the stillness of the night.

Before her eyes, the moon took on a reddish hue.

She alone stood on this flat rooftop, overlooking the commonwealth of Ur. A few torches burned in their holders in the streets below, lighting the way for those too besotted with drink to see clearly, but it was so late that even the guards snored softly now.

Her chart was simple enough; as Shinar, the plain between the two rivers, was divided into four quadrants, so was the chart. Action in the night sky revealed which section of the plain had need of fear. She craned her neck back, then turned to the chart and counted: Sumer, in the south; Elam in the east; Amurru north; and Akkad, west.

She watched intently as the shadow on the moon passed. If it moved from west to east, it foretold bad luck for Sumer.

As the minutes ticked by, the moon’s redness shifted—from west to east.

She covered her mouth, so as not to strengthen the demons by voicing her thoughts. With a quick prayer to her personal god for fortitude, she turned to the other chart she was composing—a diagram of the flocks in the sky.

This was far more complicated, a division of 360 slivers that comprised the whole of the heavens. Each twelve slivers completed a house, and each of the houses had its champion symbol that rose and fell according to the seasons and the wishes of the gods.

“This isn’t usual either,” she muttered, peering at the tablet and leaning back to look into the sky.

The Hired Man of spring was visiting the house of the Goatfish of winter. Somehow, for a moment, the skies were pretending it was the season of rains and chill.

Quickly, she consulted the stars for the powers of Ur. The largest star was for the lugal and en, the leaders of war and commerce. It hung as fat and orange as a fruit, well out of harm’s way. The moon was a token of affection from the god Sin to his bride on earth, the ensi. It was still red. Not a good sign for the ensi.

As she watched, a star streamed down from the heavens in a bold arc that seemed to drop it in the river, just outside of Ur. The fiery blue streak faded in the sky; it had fallen from the north, through the house of the Tails. Rudi shivered from the cool of the evening and shivered again, for she watched the movements of the gods when clay creatures were to be at rest.

She gathered her tablets and charts and slipped down the stairs.

The council would have her head for not predicting the blood moon—so she certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the star, though its portents were clear.

Trouble came from the north, trouble that would be water-borne.

And trouble came from the skies.

*      *     *

The marsh girl bobbed in the water and squinted through the darkness to see if anyone else had survived the massive rush of water. She was wary of hitting her head, and afraid to make noise, which would anger the gods. Above her the stars seemed close enough to use as a ladder. One came crashing down. It’s not going to hit me, she thought. Stars don’t fall on humans.

But something did hit the marsh girl. She sank, through a black, seemingly endless tunnel. Down through bath-warm water, down through the earth, into the very soil she planted and sowed. I’m going to Kur, she thought. I’ll eat dust and live in shadow for eternity. My service to the gods is over.

The Crone of Ninhursag had predicted that because the marsh girl had been born after two battles of darkness—when the moon hid its face—the marsh girl had two destinies. The marsh girl had twice as much of a task on earth as most people, and twice as much responsibility. “For you,” the black-eyed crone had said, “you will live two lives.” But now the marsh girl felt blood coursing down the side of her face, and closed her eyes. The Crone of Ninhursag was wrong. She was going to die. Her life had been solitary and counted for nothing.

She missed the fire of blue that surged beneath the water and enveloped her body.

A fire of blue that bore a remarkable likeness to the marsh girl, a DNA match that was exacting, despite the five millennia that separated the two. A fire of blue, born of another eclipse, another birth date, her other destiny.

Two lives that were preordained to meet and intertwine, for they were the same.

Infused with new energy, the marsh girl kicked and fought away from the darkness, away from the earth, up to the day’s light. Long grass wrapped around her ankles, but she wrenched free. Her lungs about to burst, she broke through the surface of the water and gasped for air.

She looked, turned around, and looked again.

The whole world was water.

Blue sky mirrored blue water from east to west and north to south. Everything was placid, blue and the same.

“Sacred dung,” she whispered to herself.

Propelled by her arms and legs, her head swinging back and forth like a creature in search of prey, she pushed herself farther through the water. Still she saw nothing but more water. Maybe those tufts of green meant something. She started toward them. Things in the water grabbed at her hands and reached for her feet.

A long brown shape slithered by, and she held her breath, aware it meant danger. She continued toward the sprigs of green. The sun reflected off the water’s surface to blind her. Gnats and biting flies attacked her face and arms. When she reached up to brush them off her head, she discovered her head was bleeding. “Sacred dung,” she said again, though she didn’t know why.

Though dung was sacred—it was fuel for cooking and night heat and useful in poultices and medicaments—when she had ever acknowledged this aloud, she didn’t know. The sentiment she felt when she said it was more of amazement and a little bit of shock than anything worshipful. As though the meaning were lost in the translation.

What was translation? What did that mean?

Her arms were tired; her legs, too. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her tailed wool kilt and the bangles she’d been given by the Harrapan traders. She reached the green. They were popular, crowded with birds. She grabbed the fronds and realized they were palms. The crowns of palms.

The waters were at the tops of trees.

Using the last of her strength, she climbed on top of the palms, scaring away birds, stomping the fronds, and perching gingerly on the crown of the tree. All of Shinar was water. No huts, no water buffaloes, no guf or mashuf boats disturbed the surface.

Where were the other humans? Had her village been so loud the gods drowned the humans again, like they had in the Deluge of generations before? She pressed her lips together, so not to cry out. Her mother used to warn her as she and her siblings played along the marsh to be quiet, or the gods would grow weary of humanity and silence it.

She put a hand to her mouth to hold back the shrieks she felt building inside. Yet if I’m the only one left, what does it matter if I scream? The sense of loss was staggering, but she couldn’t remember whom she’d lost. A face, indistinct, was in her mind, but it had eyes like she’d never seen before. Eyes like her bangles. Gold eyes.

She clapped a hand over her eyes. Was she thinking of a god? Why would she think of a god? Why would a god come to her? She was no one, with no influence, no power. She peeked through her fingers. No sheep either.

Somehow this seemed a much more serious concern than a god’s eyes. And easier to understand. The flock was gone, which meant the goat was, too. And her fields. Her vegetable garden. How she had slaved, carving out the straight irrigation channels, making sure they flowed freely, clean of silt and salt. No leeks and onions, or peas. And forget about barley, about beer.

She suddenly tasted it, heavy with spices and sweetness, rolling over her tongue. She loved beer. It was the best early in the day, when the sun just started across the sky, the air was cool to her skin, and the beer was warming to her belly.

She cradled her stomach for a moment, then looked down at herself. For some reason her body, though healthy and strong, seemed repulsive to her. Hairy. She looked at her legs, lightly furred with black. Hair was good. If she slicked bitumen over it, she was protected from biting bugs. Her womanhood was safe. Her arms, the heat of her armpits, covered. The hair of her head served as a gown at night, to allure and seduce her mate.

Golden eyes.

The pang was back. Missing.

Better to think of beer. It was concrete and useful.

She adjusted her position in the tree, sitting on her legs so the spikes of date branches didn’t poke her, and looked at the water. It was hard to remember what the village had looked like, where anything had been.

Where were the trees I’m sitting on, she thought. Which clump were they? Her mind was blank as a slab of clay. If her village was gone, were the neighboring villages gone also? She craned around, waved away birds who tried to steal her spot, and looked for anything familiar. She’d never been outside her village, only as far as the common grazing grounds. Only the Harrapan traders and the Crone of Ninhursag had come to her village, brought news of a world outside.

Had there been a village on the other side of hers? She tried to visualize the size of her village and fields and grazing grounds, then another village, fields and grazing grounds beside it, and a third village beyond. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember her own village clearly. Just impressions.

Reed huts, and a warm dung fire. The squishiness of the ground that indicated it was time to put down new matting so the marsh didn’t seep up through the floor. The lowing of the water buffalo before they slept. The blackness of the sky, when the gods held meetings. The summer, when the gods had feasts and poured heavenly wine on the fields.

Her head was aching, and she reached up to rub it. Then she remembered the sore and stopped. She didn’t even have mud to put on her sore, because there was no ground. That made her angry. She glared at the sky. “This was stupid of them,” she told the chamber keeper of the gods. “If we are supposed to serve them, then drowning us means they won’t get served. Then they’ll have no one to complain to except themselves.”

The chamber keeper didn’t speak. Of course, she didn’t have a sheep to slaughter for its liver, or an exorcist to read the liver, so she would never know if the chamber keeper responded.

“The waters have to go down,” she said, liking the sound of her voice against the blue sky and blue water. “A flood can’t last long.” Birds that usually landed in the marshes would be along in the afternoon. If she could catch one, she could eat. Pigeons, who sought the greening fields, were especially good, and they would be too tired to fly away.

She tore green dates off one of the branches—she couldn’t eat them, she’d get sick—then bent the branch back and forth while the sun moved higher in the sky. Finally, it broke off. Careful to spit any of it out, she peeled the edges of the wood back with her teeth and fingernails, sawing the end against the fronds to make it sharp for stabbing and cutting. When she got thirsty, she lapped at the water around her.

Flood water wasn’t salty, at least not much.

As the sun lowered, she watched for birds. But the only place for them to stop was her treetop. Reluctantly, she slipped into the warm water with the branch between her teeth and waited for a fat pigeon. When one finally came and plopped down for a rest, she leaped on it. The bird tried to fly away, but she stabbed its neck with her branch. Piece by piece, she plucked its feathers, then stabbed at it to get the blood out. It was the only taboo that couldn’t be broken: Never eat anything with blood, and never spill blood unless to eat.

She didn’t remember when she’d heard those words, but she knew they were true. It was the only restriction given by the god above gods after the Deluge. She wiped at the bird with palm fronds, sloshed water through it to get it as clean as she could, then tore into it with her teeth.

It would be better cooked, but she didn’t have any dung or tinder. Besides, she was hungry. She threw the carcass onto the treetop beside her and watched the bigger birds, the desert birds, tear at it. She watched them through her fingers, to keep her eyes protected so they couldn’t blind her, then eat her, too.

As the sky was painted by the gods, and the god Shamash went away, she saw the animal carcasses float by. Onagers and oxen, their legs raised to the heat, their bodies swollen from the day’s sun, passed by like rafts on the current of the water. Water tinted with lavender and pink, gold and orange.

Twilight.

This was the assurance of the gods: One day ended and another began. The girl knew if she saw twilight, then after a period of darkness, day would come back. The sun god Shamash, the gods of water and wind and soil, would rise to flog and command their slaves who worked the Plain of Shinar. The twilight was a promise, an assurance. There was comfort, even if she was the only one left. Since she saw twilight, the sun would rise tomorrow. Drawing her hair over her shoulders, she put her head down on her arms and slept.

*      *     *

Three days later, the waters had receded down the trunk of the palm tree. Debris had begun to show up on the face of the waters. Swollen bodies and faces she didn’t remember. Bits of huts. And, finally, the skin of a guf boat. Without the outer rim, it did her no good to find the bottom, but still she took the skin, wrung it out, and draped it over the newly emerged palms to dry.

On the fifth day, she set off through the waters, looking for useful things. The outlines of islands and levees began to peer through the water. By twilight of the sixth day she had found cloth to tie around her at night, a bone knife to kill birds and fish with, and an oar.

In two more days, the marsh had become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, the water had been poisoned by the rotting remains, and salt had dried on the tree trunks. The water was also shallow enough to walk through, to spy crocodiles before they saw her, and to see the ground on which she trod.

Nothing was left of Shinar; it was wiped clean. She hadn’t seen another live animal or person. She’d seen hundreds of corpses. The crocodiles were dining well. If she were the only human left, then she would walk on until she came to the south sea. If she weren’t, then maybe there would be people on the south sea. The Harrapan traders said they stayed there, and on the island Dilmun.

In Dilmun, they said, there were tall trees with soft and solid leaves, not like fronds of date palms. They also had orchards, where fruit other than dates grew on the trees. The ground was dry, like Shinar in summertime, but it didn’t crack. It had just enough wet and just enough dry to stay green all year. The air smelled good, and the trees were made of incense. The girl would go to Dilmun, see if it existed. Maybe the Harrapan would take her in. She was good with sheep, and she wouldn’t drink too much beer.

So she tied the animal skin up into a knot and put it on her head, threw the cloth for a cloak on her back, and clasped her knife in her hand, then set off south. South was the direction that the rivers, when they stayed in their beds, flowed. Marsh birds were plentiful, and fish swam in the shallows. She didn’t have fire, but she ate well.

The sun was hot on her body, and eventually she found mud and covered her skin so the mosquitoes wouldn’t bite. She watched for crocodiles as she walked, and stopped walking when the sun went to sleep. At night she made noise, to frighten the hungry hyenas away. When she could, she climbed up the rough bark of a palm tree and stayed in the fronds, safe enough to sleep in.

The vision of the god with the golden eyes faded in her mind. She talked to herself, nonsense words, like a child’s. These words comforted her, but had no meaning. “Mimi. Home. Love. Chef. Tu. God.” Her tongue didn’t fit around them easily, and they had no meaning, but they made her feel good. The gods hadn’t found her yet; and she was still the only one left.

Baaing woke her in the night; a sheep, as lost as she was. She called to it, then heard another. They ran out of the marshes toward the tree where she stayed. Behind them she saw eyes that glowed with hunger and teeth that were bared. She scampered down the trunk and swung out at the predators with her oar. She made contact, and they ran crying into the night. “It’s okay,” she told the trembling sheep. “You’re safe. You’re found.” They cuddled next to her, against the palm tree, and she slept warmly for the first time.

When she woke in the day, it was there.

“That must be Dilmun,” she said to the sheep. Far to the south, an island rose up. Part of it was red. She gathered her belongings, herded the sheep, and walked faster. All day long the red island hovered on the edge of the world. By night it had grown.

So had her flock. Now she walked with seven sheep, two lambs, and a gamboling goat. No sign of other humans yet, but the sheep were glad for her company. She sang to them and spoke her nonsense words, and they bleated happily as they grazed.

Dilmun got larger.

The river was almost completely in its bed now, and she saw irrigation channels and canals cut through the greening fields. Winter barley; in its second irrigation. For barley to grow as big as the gods allowed, it must have four irrigations. On the last, it would add another tenth of its size. The river hadn’t overflowed here; the humans, if there were any left, would not starve.

Her flock continued to grow; she watched over them during the night from her perch in a tree. In the dawn, from her high roost, she saw Dilmun. It must be Dilmun, for nothing else could be so beautiful. Green fields surrounded it, and trees, tall like date palms, but with different leaves, grew in neat rows. As though it were a giant vegetable garden.

The island, with a tall center in blocks of blue and green and red and yellow, rose up into the sky. Little white boxes and blocks clustered around it, like a peafowl with her chicks. The girl crawled down the palm tree, washed the mud off her face and hands, tied the cloth around her womanhood, then folded up the animal skin and balanced it on her head.

With the knife slipped into her waist sash, she walked down to Dilmun, the oar her goad. Common grazing fields stretched out from the gate to the city. The walls were taller than palm trees, and painted blue and yellow. The rest was left the ocher color of clay. She’d never seen anything so impressive, never imagined it. It was no wonder Ziusudra lived here. The gods visited here. After the sheep had fed she looked for a toll taker, for she was sure there would be a charge. Water wasn’t free. But she didn’t see one. Squaring her shoulders and straightening the parcel on her head, she marched her flock to the open gate set within a deep, shadowy archway.

“Welcome to Ur, welcome, welcome,” a man cried from the shade. “You must be a survivor of the flood. Come in, come in. It’s dry here, safe.”

She had never seen a man such as he was, in the clothes he wore! His beard was long and white, and his head was covered in a gold basket. White cloth, finer than any felt or wool she’d ever seen, edged with gold, draped over his shoulder and around his chest. His eyes were big and black, his teeth white. When he breathed in her face, it was sweet-smelling—like the breath of the Harrapan. “Welcome to Ur,” he said to her. “Welcome, female. You are a wealthy one. How do the gods call you?”

A few other people stepped closer around her, and she crouched, ready to run. The sheep bleated and jostled, the goat nipped at the bearded one’s sash, but he pushed him away. “It’s safe, female.”

“Ningal, she has a sore on her head,” someone behind her said.

She put her hand to where the mud and blood had dried on her head, the sore.

“Does it hurt?” the bearded man asked.

“Do you need to sell your sheep?”

“Let’s have a look,” someone else said, and pulled at her animal skin.

She spun on them with a hiss. The sheep scattered.

“A wild thing.”

She called the sheep to her, beckoned the goat away from the arched gate.

“Be at peace. She’s obviously from the hills.”

“The plain,” she said, walking back to them. Her words were the same as theirs.

“You are from the plain? Shinar?”

“Shinar! Yes, in truth. My village.”

“Flooded out.”

“How did you survive?”

“Were there other survivors?”

“What is your name?”

“Where was your village?”

They surrounded her, with long beards and basket hats. All men, whose words were the same as hers, but whose voices sounded harsh and demanding.

“Dilmun,” she said.

They fell silent. “What did you say?” one of them asked. His cloak was white like the others, but where theirs were gold, his was red. He was younger, too, probably not older than… than… she couldn’t remember. None of it made se