Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
23
To Catch the Conscience of the King
MY TRAVELS do not always take me to the best places. I sailed for the Americas with Columbus in 1492, when what I should have done was hide out a century and gone to England. I completely missed the Bard of Avon. I have read all his plays and have even sponsored and acted in some of them. I am quite the theatrical patron.
I fancy myself treading the boards and declaring “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king!” Of course, I’d have written the scene a little differently. There were better plays in the Greek repertoire for his purpose than The Murder of Gonzago. But they were preserved in the infinity room and I found later that no other copies had survived intact. I always bless my collection and my many librarians for maintaining it.
I traveled around Mesopotamia for several years, never actually finding my one-time home. Nebuchadnezzar’s heirs were neither as strong nor as wise as the old man and they began to lose control of the empire. I saw the armies of Egypt and Persia both amassing for an attack. Belshazzar subdued the Egyptians, but by that time, Cyrus the Great had asserted himself over the Medes and united all of Persia. It looked bleak for Neb’s grandson, so I returned to Babylon to introduce myself at court. I thought perhaps I could help the struggling monarch and prevent a bloodbath in Babylon. I didn’t claim to be the same Bob who had served his grandfather for some forty years. I’d been gone from Babylon for twenty years and was sure I was forgotten. I returned as merely another Bob who made his home in the Jewish Quarter.
And it was there that I heard word of a rebellion fomenting. I knew that would be disastrous for the Jews, even if they were successful. The army of the Persians would simply put them in chains as rebellious subjects. Belshazzar managed to reach an agreement with Cyrus and paid tribute as a subject king, but knowing the greed of kings, I could tell that would not last long. I wandered the Quarter and into the countryside, trying to at least keep the locals peaceful. It seemed like an impossible task.
Until I saw the army approaching.
Led by the great general Darius, the Persians were headed to Babylon and Belshazzar was by no means prepared. I rushed back to the city and had to sneak in because the gates were closed. I knew, however, where the pump was concealed that fed water to the gardens and I entered the city there. I rushed to the palace to find Belshazzar was holding a big party and was completely in ignorance of the approaching army. What a twit! How could his soldiers possibly not spread the alarm? The Persians were in sight from the battlements.
I rushed to the doors of the banquet room, but was denied admittance. While standing outside, waiting for another opportunity, an old woman came by. She looked at me strangely as she led a group of people carrying golden plates and goblets to the chamber.
“I know you,” she said.
“I don’t know, honored one,” I answered. “Have we met?”
“The night you took the maidens from the harem, I was with Nebuchadnezzar, the youngest of his consummated wives. I wanted to go as well, but he said I had a special role to play in the future. Now our great grandson, Belshazzar, is following the path of Nebuchadnezzar and will end up eating grass,” she said.
“I fear he will never have the opportunity for such a feast. I am trying to warn him,” I said. “The Persian army approaches.”
“I will do my best to get you admittance.”
She and the group of servants, wives, and concubines entered the room and I shook my head. I knew where some of those plates came from and even the Jews allowed only their priests to touch them. Still, I stewed outside the chamber, running once to the tower to see how near the armies had come. What I saw chilled me. The guards on the ramparts were all asleep.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” a voice said beside me. I turned to see My Lady Goddess next to me.
“Is this part of the great contest the gods were having?” I asked.
“Yes. They have decided to support the claim of the god of the Jews. Belshazzar shall die.”
“I need to get back to the banquet and warn him.”
“It will make no difference,” she said. “His days are numbered and his kingdom will be divided. Go if you will and tell him this.” The goddess faded away from my sight and I shoved at my cock to get it down. Even in the direst of circumstances, Aphrodite has that effect on me. I ran to the banquet hall again.
Just as I arrived, the doors burst open and the old woman beckoned to me.
“My Lord and King,” she announced as we entered the banquet hall. “Here is a man who can tell you what this means. I present Bob!” the queen grandmother said.
“Come in here, Bob. If you can tell me what this means, I will give you riches untold and make you the third most powerful man in the kingdom!” He pointed at a wall where four words were scrawled. “A hand appeared and wrote those words. Are they in your language?”
“Keep your gold and appointments, oh, King,” I growled. “They will do no man here any good by morning.” I looked at the words and shuddered. “Mene mene tekel upharsin. This is the judgment of the gods, for whom you show no respect and do not fear. Numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided. Your days have been numbered and the days of your kingdom have been set by the gods. You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Your kingdom will fall and be divided among the victors. These are the words on the wall and their meaning.”
Aphrodite’s warning was fresh in my mind and the interpretation of the words was clear. The king was shocked.
“Clear the dishes and return them to the altars of their gods!” he shouted. “Bring me gold and all my concubines. Bob, you are a great man and spokesman for the gods. I give you all the gold I have in the palace and all the virgins in my harem. Here is the badge of office that will open any door in my kingdom. Here. Have a glass of wine, too.”
“Your Majesty, there is no time for rewards and celebration. The Persians are at the gates and Lethe has come upon all your guards. There is nothing more you can do.”
The king’s concubines began filing into the room as his guests fled. I could hear the trumpets outside and knew they were all too late. I opened a portal to the infinity room and took all the concubines who would go through. I was amazed to find that most were carrying books, scrolls, or tablets. I shouldered the bag and headed to the garden. This would be where I faced the new ruler of Babylon.
That night, the king and all his remaining household were put to the sword as the Persian army swept the city. The Jewish Quarter was spared.
Darius himself came in the company of several soldiers to look upon the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. He spied me sitting by the pool and had me brought before him.
“Who are you?” he demanded. I’d taken the time to put on nice but not wealthy robes.
“I am Bob, the builder of this pool and keeper of the garden. I welcome your majesty to a place of peace and contentment, known throughout the world,” I said. Yes, I told him I was Bob the Builder. I said it first.
“It looks like your work is finished here,” Darius said. He was preening a bit after I addressed him as ‘Majesty.’ Cyrus was still on the throne of Persia. Darius was married to his daughter.
“I bring you greetings, conqueror. Greetings from the gods of Olympus, the gods of the Sumerians and Chaldeans, and the god of the Jews. They have blessed your conquest and ordained your future and set you on the throne in Babylon. You shall inherit the throne of Persia and all the world will bow down to you.”
“That’s heady stuff,” he said. “I think there are several empty apartments in the palace just now. Choose one for yourself and I will talk to you again presently.”
And that quickly, I had changed from a servant of Babylon to a servant of Persia.
I won’t dwell on Darius. He had to lie and kill his way to the Persian throne. Even at the decision time, when he and the other six generals lined up to see who would become king…
Now this is funny when you think about it. They decided they would line up on their horses facing the sunrise and the first horse that neighed as the sun rose would indicate the rider who would be the new king. Well, Darius had a good and loyal groom who rubbed his hands through the sex of a mare that Darius’ stallion was known to favor. Just as the sun rose, the groom held his hand up to the horse’s nostrils and the excited horse neighed to find his mare. Darius became king based on the sex drive of a horse!
I managed to spend most of my time in my rooms at the palace and didn’t socialize with most people. I spent my nights in the infinity room, getting to know all the new members of my harem. Many, I placed with single men we had collected in one way and another. A few found their way to my bed. I had noticed Belshazzar’s concubines all carrying books and scrolls and tablets when they stepped through the gateway. It turned out that when the old woman hurried to bring the virgin concubines to me, she routed them through the king’s study and they simply grabbed as many books as they could carry and came through the portal. They had no idea what was in the books, only that they were to carry as many as possible. Nimia summoned as many librarians as she could to meet the concubines and take the books to the library. That was where a few of the concubines went, too. We had a lot of single librarians.
When Darius got back from Persia as the new king, he had some rather stupid advisors with him who filled his head with idiocy. That was where some of the trouble started. While he was gone, I had been commissioned to find the brightest and best youths in the country and train them to become advisors to the king and administrators of his kingdom. Of course, some of the boys I found were Jews and they showed great promise. But Darius’ advisors convinced him that he should decree that for thirty days no one was to pray to any god but him. Stupidity comes in multiples. It was a trap for the Jews and especially for the boys I’d located. And, of course, one of them was caught and brought before the king who could do nothing but agree to throw the boy into a den of lions and seal it up. I was able to slip into the den with the boy without being seen and managed a quiet spell to put the lions to sleep.
In the morning, Darius opened the stone in front of the den and called Daniel out of it. As soon as the way was clear, I woke up the lions and slipped out. Darius was so furious at having been betrayed by his advisors that he had them all gathered up, along with their families, and thrown into the lions’ den which was then sealed. We can only assume that the lions feasted for many days. The den was never opened.
“What am I supposed to do, Bob?” Darius asked. He was a good man at heart but tended to put too much faith in his advisors. With the bulk of them now gone, he turned to me for advice.
“My King, the last king of the Jews was released from prison upon the death of Nebuchadnezzar II, nearly twenty-five years ago. Yet the people have remained in exile in Babylon. There is no longer a purpose for confining them here for sixty years or more. You have seen how their god favors them. Why not appoint a new sub-king over them and let them return to Judea? This will make you a great man in their eyes and one to whom they owe more loyalty than exiled subjects would,” I suggested.
“Bob, that is an excellent solution to the Jewish problem. I’ll just shuffle them back to their own land and we won’t need to deal with them again,” Darius said, slapping his hands together. “But, Bob, what about the boys you’ve been training as my advisors? They have proven to be the most capable of the lot. Is there a way I can keep them here?”
“I’ll talk to them. Giving the Jews their freedom does not mean the entire million of them in the Jewish Quarter will return to the waste that Nebuchadnezzar made of Jerusalem. But even having half of that number migrate away from Babylon will make the remaining citizens grateful.” I’d used the term ‘citizens’ hoping Darius would get the hint to consider the exiles who remained in Babylon citizens of the nation. Certainly, he would want those who returned to Jerusalem to consider themselves citizens as that would encourage their loyalty to him. He figured it out and drafted a decree that allowed the Jews to leave Babylon and go back to Judea. When he returned the holy implements of the temple to the priests to take back to Jerusalem, he cemented his relationship as a friend of the Jews. And over the coming years, there was a steady migration of the Jews out of Babylon.
Not all, by any means. Many of the residents of the Jewish Quarter were very young when they arrived in Babylon or were born there. Jerusalem held no immediate interest for them. Many did return, following the priests and the temple accoutrements, but many were content with their life in Babylon.
Darius often called upon me to discuss building projects that he was constantly starting. As many Jews as left Babylon, even more migrants from other parts of the empire arrived there. It was a thriving commercial center and soon made the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. So, I wasn’t surprised to be summoned to him.
“Bob, it’s come to my attention that you have a good eye for women. I don’t know where you keep your women, but I know you have more than one beautiful and well-comported young woman who will always do your bidding.”
I was immediately on my guard. I’d been careless in exposing any of my women to the king, but some had desired to return to Babylon to pursue other interests, or simply to let friends know they were okay. I’d managed to perfect the spell to prevent them from telling anyone about the infinity room without making them mute. It turned out that the proper spell had nothing to do with speaking—the problem I’d had with Chione.
“I’m not concerned with that, Bob,” he said to my relief. “What I’m concerned with is that my son Xerxes has come of age and should be finding women of his own. I’d like you to take on the task of finding a starter set for his harem. Like any ruler, he should have a variety of women that connect him to the various nations he rules over.” He lowered his voice. “And Bob, they shouldn’t all be Jewish. But one or two would be okay.”
“I understand, Your Majesty. I will endeavor to seek out the best candidates for him to choose from.”
I knew that I couldn’t simply grab women and shove them in the young man’s path. The position required me to travel to various subjugated kingdoms and negotiate the arrangements for a hostage concubine. During this time, I also sought a bride for the young man. It was a good job and the women were impressed that I could offer such pleasant accommodations on the journey to Babylon. All came along willingly.
But the bride I chose for him came from the Jewish Quarter. I’d nearly wooed her for myself, but her father was a leader in the local community and I didn’t want to deal with losing another wife because she couldn’t accept my harem. When I presented her to Xerxes, he was smitten. It was almost as if the concubines I had brought him didn’t exist. For a while. Of course, he was a boy/man with a wide range of pussy to sample. I tried to present them to him one at a time over a number of months that stretched into years. But no matter what pussy he was screwing at the moment, Esther remained his favored wife.
It seems that idiots advising the king abound. Darius died and Xerxes came to the throne. He moved the capital to Susa, farther east near Persepolis, where Darius was buried and had intended to move the capital. I was beginning to feel old again and bored with governing a province. Besides, I’d had quite enough of ‘The Greats.’ So, I contrived my own death and returned as a much younger man, content to wander in the countryside continuing my search for a quiet place to go into the infinity room for a few years and enjoy my growing harem.
About three years into his reign, Xerxes gave his official signet ring to an aide, making him the most powerful man in the land. That man had an axe to grind against the Jews and signed a decree on behalf of the king that all the Jews should be killed on the thirteenth day of the last month of the year. When I heard the edict, I headed toward Susa, but by the time I got there, the crisis had passed, thanks to the queen. She outwitted the advisor and turned the tables on him so that he was put to death and the Jews killed close to seventy-five thousand men throughout the empire.
Xerxes loved his queen but the intrigues had been more than he wanted to deal with, so he left administration of the kingdom in the hands of his new advisor (a Jew), and raised an army to invade Greece. Well, I’d been on my way to Greece anyway, and had made my way almost as far north as Troy. So I tagged along providing logistics for a branch of his navy. I'll get to talking about that later. He was successful in his invasion, conquering all the way down to the isthmus of Corinth. Then the invasion fell apart. Phillip of Macedon came riding to the rescue of Greece and drove Xerxes back. I stayed.
You see, I discovered something miraculous in Greece: Theatre!
My first experience of the famous Greek theatre at the Festival of Dionysus was all it took to make me a devoted follower. I attended a play and it was beautiful. It was actually a whole day of plays at a festival. I went back the next day to watch three more tragedies and a satyr play.
Actors, wearing elevated boots, costumes, and masks, strode about the stage, declaiming the part of a historic figure and reciting an event. They were accompanied by a chorus of actors who would explain what was happening between scenes, using dances and poetry. It was marvelous and I immediately wanted to be a part of it!
I found out who controlled the casting and selection of plays, and went at once to see what I must do to become a thespian. Well, the bastard had all kinds of hoops one had to hop through in order to become one of his actors. Most of them had to do with paying him in either gold, wine, or women. I happened to be very good with all three and was soon added to his ‘stable’ of actors.
We read and performed nearly everything written over a span of fifty years. Not all the performances were public, but the archon had to see all the plays submitted in order to select the ones that would be performed in the annual competition. By that time, a playwright had to submit three tragedies and a satyr to the contest. The best known of the playwrights was Sophocles, but there were many others. I submitted a few plays of my own. I had enough Greeks in my harem that I could dictate a play in the infinity room and someone would write it down. That way, I never actually had to learn to read and write Greek.
My plays were never chosen for the competition, but I was mentored by some fine professionals. What I really wanted to do was direct.
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