A Coalition of Lions

Page 20

I looked toward Abreha’s arriving retinue and saw, crowned and frowning, the coin’s opposite face.
I thought I must be hallucinating. I glanced back at Priamos, and then again at the approaching suzerain who must be Abreha. It was no trick of the light. They were form and opposite, reflections of each other. They were made in each other’s image.
It was not his kinship with Abreha that made everyone distrust Priamos so; it was not his tenuous alliance with Abreha after the battle that ended the war in Himyar. It was his face.
Priamos looks like Abreha: he must be like Abreha.
Abreha’s party drew near and came to a halt before us. Abreha dismounted and gave his reins to an attendant. He even moved like Priamos; he walked with the same lanky grace. When he came before Wazeb and slowly lay down on his chest in a profound reverence at the young emperor’s feet, it was with the same sincere courtesy that Priamos affected, when he was being courteous.
“You may kneel,” said Wazeb, and Abreha rose to his knees. Priamos stood tense at Wazeb’s back, glaring as though he disapproved of the whole expedition.
“Gebre Meskal,” said Abreha, “Your Highness, I am your servant. I would like to offer you a formal tribute from the state of Himyar, to be granted annually, in return for recognition of our independence.”
“In what name do you offer this?”
“In my own,” said Abreha, “as najashi, that is the Arabic for negus; as najashi over Himyar, Saba, Hadramawt, and over all their Arabs of the Coastal Plain and the Highlands.”
“I accept your fealty,” said Wazeb, “and will not insist on those lands being named in my title.”
The blade of Medraut’s spear caught a glancing ray of the fading sunlight as he shifted his grip on the shaft. I tore my gaze from Abreha to look at Medraut, and saw that despite his blank expression his face was a river of tears.
There was no adder, as there had been at Camlan. The kings would treat in fair exchange, the warriors could hang up their shields. There would be no battle.
“I have already sent a shipment of myrrh to Adulis in anticipation of this agreement,” said Abreha. “We have had an abundant year.”
“Your harvests are ever abundant,” said Wazeb. “What is it the Romans say? Ras Priamos, remind me of the old Roman name for the Himyar.”
“Arabia Felix,” Priamos answered faintly. “Arabia in fertility, O prosperous Arabia.”
“O fortunate Arabia,” said Abreha.
“Princess Goewin,” Abreha said to me in Latin, “I would like a British representative in Sana, our capital.”
I sat alone in the evening, close to the camp fires; Turunesh was singing good night to Telemakos. Abreha knelt before me and kissed my hand.
“May I sit with you?” he said, and I moved aside to make room for him on the carpet. He sat down, cross-legged. A young servant handed goblets to each of us and poured honey wine from an earthen flask.
“Wait,” Abreha said, and put out a hand to stop me drinking. He sipped his wine before I did, in formal courtesy, as though he were tasting it for poison. He let the warning hand fall then, and raised his cup to me.
“Your health and good fortune.”
He tilted his head to avoid meeting my eyes, as Priamos did, as though they were identical clay mannequins cast from a single mold, one a bit more worn than the other.
“I am agog to hear of the war in Himyar from the man who ended it,” I said. “All who marched with Priamos speak reverently of your mercy.”
“I do not think of myself as merciful,” Abreha said. “I have fought too many battles and killed too many men, and will again if driven to it.”
Even their voices were alike.
Abreha turned and handed his drink to the cup bearer, and placed his hands on his knees. He sat there, still and at ease, and I could almost believe it was Priamos waiting for me to speak.
“I do not understand,” I said slowly, “why Caleb did not inspire the same loyalty in you as he did in Priamos. He trained you as his translator, did he not? What difference was there in his treatment of you?”
“My loyalty lies with Himyar,” Abreha said, “not with any man.”
“I understand that. But how did your loyalty change?”
“I cannot speak for Priamos,” Abreha answered quietly. “I became the man I am because I saw what Caleb did to Mikael, my father’s eldest son.”
His voice fell so low that I could barely hear him.
“Mikael was younger than Gebre Meskal is now when the command came for him to be put in chains like a bond servant at auction. I was no bigger than that bright fox kit of your brother’s get. I could remember no life before being sequestered; my brother Mikael was mother and father to me. After a week in irons Mikael had dislocated both his wrists, struggling to break free of the fetters. But even while they tried to mend him they kept him bound above the elbows.”
I had seen those crippled, twisted hands.
“Why was it done?” I whispered.
“He had tried to escape Debra Damo. He was Candake’s eldest son, rival to Caleb’s sons by lineage. No other reason that I know.”
Abreha coughed, and turned his face away. “Pah, I cannot speak of Mikael. It makes me sick to think of him.”
He stared at the flames.
“Mother of God, how I have hated being made to war against my brothers! The day our father died, Caleb began pulling his nephews out of imprisonment and training them to send against me. Hector was murdered before I ever met him. His mutinous officers imagined I would thank them for it.”
Abreha reached for his cup again.
“The men that slew Hector I sent back to Aksum. Caleb may have punished them himself. I would not accept their fealty, though they pledged to serve me.”
I did not mean to judge him. But I heard myself ask coldly, “How did you bring yourself to put Priamos in chains when you took him in battle?”
Abreha swirled his wine in its cup, gazing down into its depths, and for some while did not answer. Then he said seriously, “Let me tell you, Princess, what I saw when my young brother was brought before me, stripped and bruised and bound, after a pointless slaughter of young life that he had initiated in Caleb’s name.”
Abreha looked up, but his gaze was still directed at the fire and not at me.
“I saw myself.”
I murmured, “You are very like.”
“I did not know who he was, Princess. My first thought was that it must be some kind of sorcery. You cannot imagine. He had not slept for two days; he had just learned how his dearest companion had been betrayed and murdered; he had himself been clubbed senseless with a blunt spear at the end of his battle. And there are fifteen years between us, but when he was dragged before me it was as though I were a boy again and staring at myself in a glass. My officers had prepared him for this meeting, and he obeyed when they made him lie prostrate at my feet: naked, my arms chained behind my back—”
As though amazed at his mistake, Abreha slapped the carpet at his side so that the dust flew in the firelight. “Behind his back,” Abreha corrected. “His arms chained behind his back.
“I saw myself, Princess,” he repeated. “I saw myself on the verge of manhood and obeying my king unquestioningly, instead of doubting both his wisdom and his authority. I saw myself barely more than a boy and already utterly defeated by grief and failure, instead of expecting fulfilled ambition. I saw myself forced to lie on my face in the dust before an enemy I had no hope of besting.”
Abreha drew a long breath to steady himself, as I had seen Priamos do a thousand times.
“I told him to stand up. And I covered him with my cloak. He ate with me that night and slept in my tent. He was too tired to consider that my kindness might cast him as a collaborator when he returned to Aksum.”
“But you must have considered it!” I exclaimed, then sighed, and put down my cup. I bent against my knees with my head in my arms, trying to understand how this man whom I liked and admired could have used Priamos so heartlessly, when it was more than I could bear to be denied his companionship.
Abreha said, “I felt that Caleb had saved Priamos to send me at the last, to be his final, surest weapon against me.”
He sipped at his wine again. “By the saints, the boy was trained as a linguist. ‘Speak Arabic if you like,’ he told me. ‘You do not need to translate; I am fluent in fourteen languages.’ What madman would make a general of such a one, and risk splitting open a head he had carefully crammed with fourteen languages? All I can believe is that when Caleb first saw how like me the boy was, he changed his mind about how Priamos should best serve him.”
“But that is not statesmanship!” I burst out.
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Trickery, gambling, delusion, I don’t know. What sheer lunacy, to wager the future of your empire on a boy’s face!”
“Is it any more lunatic than to wager it on the head of your newborn infant son?” said Abreha. “Or that of your nephew? Is that not how your father chose his heirs?”
I could make no answer. I had done that, too.
“I did consider how unfavorable a light my kindness would cast over Priamos,” Abreha acknowledged. “Caleb meant to use him as a weapon against me. How better to destroy a sword without breaking it, than to blunt its edge? No man in Caleb’s court would trust Priamos, after the battle at al-Muza. Though Caleb did, still; he sent Priamos to Britain.”
“It was not meant as exile,” I interrupted, defensive of my kingdom, and of Priamos.
“Indeed not. It was an important appointment, and I think it was bitterly contested. But four thousand miles is a safe distance. As you know.”
The najashi smiled. It was the same joyous, childlike smile that Priamos so rarely gave. You serpent, I thought, you are more manipulative than Caleb himself, or Medraut, or even Morgause—there was no one I knew who could so coldly and consciously exploit a young life he or she claimed to hold dear.
No one but myself, whispered my conscience, and I could not bring blame against him.
Once more Abreha handed his cup to the young servant. I saw that he carried himself with a serenity and gravity that Priamos lacked.
“I will send you an ambassador,” I said. “At least, I will see to it that Constantine sends you one.” I rose to my feet. “Will you excuse me now?”
He rose with me. “With pleasure. And I hope we may speak again, soon, of lighter and happier matters.” He bowed his head to me and kissed my hand again.
“With pleasure,” I echoed. “Good night to you, najashi, King of Himyar. May God bless your renewed alliance with Aksum.”
Constantine was waiting for me beyond the firelight; he may have been lurking there all through my conversation with Abreha. He bowed and said, “If you will not come home with me as my queen, at least let me escort you to your tent.”
I gave him my arm and said nothing.
“I do not understand how you choose your companions,” Constantine said.
“I am Britain’s ambassador,” I said. “Did you not also share polite conversation with the king of Himyar, when you were in my place?”