A Coalition of Lions

Page 2

“They make me think of that boy we saw in Septem, when you made us change ships a day early,” I said to Priamos, sitting at my right hand. “Do you remember the child servant on the yacht berthed next to ours, that they led on board by his bound wrists?”
“Except these creatures strain against their bonds,” Priamos answered, “and that boy did not.”
“I would.”
Priamos touched the side of my hand, briefly, as he had done at the time. “You would.” His dark, narrow face seemed all sharpness and severity behind his pointed black beard, but I knew that his serious frown hid humor and kindness. He was only a little older than I. “I would, too, Princess.”
“And they make me think of my aunt.” But everything made me think of Morgause. “She kept a menagerie of exotic creatures, all bound and caged.”
At my left, Kidane, the counselor who had once been Medraut’s host, held out his hands in a gesture of peace and welcome. “Be at ease, Princess Goewin,” he said. “A death sentence is a chilling burden, and must be especially so for one who is scarcely past girlhood. How unfortunate that a thing so harmless as a pet monkey should remind you of your flight. Try to be at ease. You are safe, here, for a time.”
All the events of the cold, sad spring just past had led me to this meeting with Constantine, yet the only thing I could think of was my aunt. And what I kept thinking about was not the vicious cruelty she had inflicted on my brothers, nor the harm she wished on me, but with what desperation she battled the men around her who sought to keep her power for their own, who strove to hold her helpless.
There was a sudden commotion among the monkeys, as four or five of them scampered toward a single point on the other side of the big fountain. The rest stretched out at the limit of their gold chains, screeching with jealous longing. A small person of about six years stood camouflaged among the palms, holding out his hands to the monkeys. In this land of dark-skinned people, his hair was a shocking white-gold blaze, nearly as pale as that of an albino. I stared at him and bit my lip, my heart twisting within me. He had my elder brother’s hair.
Kidane stood up and turned around, gazing toward the clustering monkeys.
“Oh, that wretched child,” he said. “He has been told not to feed these creatures.” Kidane strode around the fountain. “Telemakos! Give me that. Come away now, or I will see to it you do not leave the house for a week.”
Kidane came back to us, with a branch of dates in one hand and the child led cruelly by the ear in the other. The small boy bore this abuse stoically, his lips pressed together in a tight, thin line, his eyes narrowed in contained anger.
“I thought you were in council all this week, Grandfather,” he protested. “No one else minds if I feed them.”
“They mind the havoc it creates.” Kidane released the child’s ear and gripped him by the shoulder, as if he expected his grandson to try to slip away from him suddenly.
The boy was neatly slender, foxlike in his movements. His skin was the deep gold-brown of baked bread or roasted wheat. And his hair, his hair: it was thick as carded wool and white as sea foam, like a bundle of bleached raw silk. It was Medraut’s hair.
Kidane spoke quietly and severely to him in Latin: “How unseemly! Questioning me before a guest, and she the princess of Britain! Speak Latin so that the princess can understand.”
The child ducked his head in apology. He spoke in Latin, but only to repeat what he had said in Ethiopic: “Why are you not in council, Grandfather?”
“The bala heg does not meet until this afternoon. You are an embarrassment,” said Kidane. “Stand still, bow properly, and be introduced. Princess Goewin, this is Telemakos Meder. He is the issue of my daughter Turunesh and our former British ambassador, as you may guess. He takes his second name from his father: Ras Meder, Prince Meder, is how Medraut’s son thinks of him.” He pushed the child forward.
“Telemakos, this is the Princess Goewin, who arrived in the city this morning. She is daughter to Artos the dragon, the high king of Britain. She will be the queen of her own country when she goes home, though she is dressed humbly enough for traveling; and she also happens to be your aunt. You must treat her with appropriate respect.”
Telemakos bowed low at my feet, on his knees, with his forehead just touching the ground. His movements were all light and quick and efficient. No one had ever bent before me so submissively.
“Welcome, lady, welcome to Aksum,” Telemakos said demurely. “I am your servant.”
“Look up,” I commanded him, because I was wild to see his eyes again. “Look at my face a moment.”
He raised his head. His eyes were blue, such a deep familiar blue, like slate or smoke. His skin was the color of ale or cider, his front teeth were missing, he was very little; but by heaven, he looked like Medraut.
He asked me abruptly, “Why are you my aunt?”
“I am your father’s sister,” I answered.
“Oh,” Telemakos said, and looked me up and down before lowering his eyes again, still on his knees. He glanced at his grandfather. “You said she is a princess.”
“Your father was a prince. We have told you that. Ras Priamos is a prince, also,” Kidane hinted.
Telemakos lowered his head again. It was not so deep a bow as he had made to me; but I sensed that there was more sincerity, or at any rate more intensity, in this reverence. “Peace to you, Ras Priamos,” he said. “I remember you.”
“You cannot be old enough to remember me,” said Priamos. He had left Aksum nearly a year ago.
“I do remember you. I remember the parade, after the war in Himyar, when you led your beaten warriors through the cathedral square.”
Telemakos spoke with deep and unfeigned devotion.
“I was little, but I won’t ever forget, my lord. Your uncle the emperor called you anbessa, his lion. Your warriors stood so silent, holding their spears upside down, their clothes all bloody. And you were naked to the waist to show how sorry you were. The emperor took your sword back, and hit your shoulders and face with its flat side because you had lost the battle, but he called you lionheart.”
Priamos went very still. I had seen him unhappy before: quiet and frowning when my father’s estate was under attack, and choked with stoppered emotion when he had to tell me of Lleu’s death; and quiet again, but acting with determined purpose to get me aboard a different ship, when he had suspected I was being tracked by a spy of Cynric’s or my aunt’s. Priamos was always quiet when he was disturbed. But I had never seen him this still. His brow was so heavy that he always seemed to scowl, even when he was calm, and it could have meant nothing; except he was so still.
I had known of his army’s defeat, but he had kept his personal failure closely guarded. I looked away, at the fountain, at the chattering monkeys, so I should not seem to notice the shameful scars on his soul stripped bare like this.
Priamos said at last, “My uncle only called me by my name.”
“Lionheart,” Telemakos insisted. “Priamos Anbessa, he called you.”
“We are all called Anbessa, I and my brothers and sisters. My father’s name was Anbessa, and we are called Anbessa after him, as you are called Meder.”
“Lion—”
Kidane cleared his throat ominously. Telemakos swallowed, and contained himself. He managed to say, “Welcome, most noble prince, welcome to your homeland.”
“Get off your knees,” Priamos said gently.
Telemakos moved to sit at my feet, and winningly clasped one of my hands between his own small, brown ones. “Stay with us, Princess Goewin,” he said. He said to me: “‘Greetings, stranger! Here in our house you’ll find a royal welcome. Have supper first, then tell us what you need.’” I stared down at his bowed head. He was reciting from Homer’s Odyssey.
His grandfather did not recognize it. “That is the most polite string of words you have ever uttered,” Kidane remarked.
Priamos burst into his rare, sweet and merry laughter, like a child. “What a gifted grandson you have!” he exclaimed. “The young charmer! He’s quoting his namesake, Odysseus’s son Telemakos. Greeting you with winged words, Princess! Those are Telemakos’s first words to the goddess Athena.”
“I know.” I spoke softly.
“I meant it, though,” Telemakos said, unabashed. “Will you stay in my grandfather’s house in Aksum, Princess Goewin, and become my mother’s friend, as your brother did?”
Kidane had already made me this offer, but coming from Telemakos it suddenly made my throat close up and my eyes swim. I had come four thousand miles, in fear of my life, hoping to find sanctuary among strangers; and instead here I was offered a home by my brother’s son, as he sat at my feet clasping my hand in his, greeting me as a goddess.
“Thank you,” I answered. “Yes, I would delight to stay in your house.”
“That is all right, isn’t it, Grandfather?”
“For the moment,” Kidane told him. “The princess may decide to stay in the palace, after she meets the viceroy. She is to be married to Constantine.”
“Today?”
Kidane laughed. “Not today. Next year, when they return to Britain. The monsoon is beginning; they cannot travel until winter is over, and even then they may postpone their journey until the Red Sea winds blow in their favor. Now go away, if you are going to ask impertinent questions.”
“I will be polite. Let me get my animals, and I will come and wait with you.” Telemakos scrambled to his feet again.
“My Noah’s Flood animals,” he explained over his shoulder, in case any of us thought he might mean the colobus monkeys he had been illegally feeding.
Kidane settled by me, lowering himself onto the wide stone lip of the fountain as though his grandson’s high spirits weighed too heavily on his shoulders for his body to endure. He laid the date branch at his side and smoothed flat the embroidered edges of his white robe. I asked quickly, under my breath, “Did Medraut know about Telemakos?”
“He did not. He left us many months before the child was born.”
Telemakos returned with a canvas satchel slung over his shoulder. He knelt before me again and began to take a series of lovely wooden figurines from his bag; these he ranged across the floor at my feet.
Priamos said, “Look at those animals!”
Telemakos glanced up and gave a respectful nod. “Pass them up here,” Priamos directed. “The princess has never seen creatures like these. You will have to teach her their names, so we can take her hunting when the rains end.”
“I don’t know the Latin,” Telemakos said.
“Latin’s no use to anyone,” said Priamos. He had been trained as an interpreter. He was not boastful, but he was given to flaunting his gift for languages. He had spent the long hours aboard ship telling me stories in his native Ethiopic and in Greek, the common language of the Red Sea, that I might learn a little of his speech before arriving in his homeland. “Use Greek or Ethiopic.”