A Coalition of Lions

Page 6

“That is the new issue in bronze. I used my own tin in the minting of them. I have not enjoyed my tenure here,” Constantine confessed. “But I serve as I am able. I think I have done some little good as Ella Amida.”
“Why do you call yourself Ella Amida?”
“It was the title of the reigning negus when Constantine the Great was emperor of Rome, two hundred years ago, when Rome and Aksum became Christian.”
Constantine leaned across the table toward me. “Goewin, I meant what I said this morning. I think we should get married now. It would simplify a great deal, and it would set me free of the Aksumite regency.”
“I am not handing over my father’s kingdom so easily,” I answered.
Constantine paused. Then he took my hand and held it clasped lightly between us on the table, as he continued his gentle, obstinate persuasion. “Goewin, I shall not force you. And I don’t want to coerce you. But you have nothing without me. You have no following, no army, no great income—”
“Telemakos,” I interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“I have Telemakos,” I said. My voice sounded cold and calm in my own ears.
For several long moments he did not speak.
“What can you mean?” he said at last.
With my hand still clasped beneath Constantine’s, I let these words spill steady and quiet from some dark place in my heart:
“I have Telemakos. My father would not let the kingship pass to Medraut, not because he was illegitimate, but because he was the child of incest. Telemakos is removed from that. He is the son of the high king’s eldest son. Who would deny that he has a greater claim to the British throne than you, or even I?”
Constantine said in astonishment, “Telemakos is Aksumite!”
I leaned toward him so that we stared across the table into each other’s eyes. I held his gaze. “You are British,” I said, “and no one questions your place on the Aksumite throne. What makes you think anyone will question Telemakos in Britain? He is the high king’s grandson. I am his daughter. Who are you?”
“Is that a challenge?”
“You may take it as one,” I said.
Constantine stood up and paced to the window. There was a bowl of small white highland roses sitting on the sill. He stood there a long time, still, looking down at the roses.
He said at last, “Have you a plan that goes with your posturing threat?”
“You let me choose Britain’s king myself, regardless of our marriage,” I answered straightaway. “Or I take Telemakos to Britain as high king in waiting, and sever our alliance with Aksum’s viceroy.”
“You can’t do that,” Constantine snapped. “My wealth comes through my father, and I do not need the high king’s benediction to gift Aksum with it.”
“What you do as a private citizen is your own concern. You will have no military support from your king, no treaty, no royal sanction, no ambassador.”
“You fled Britain because Morgause wanted you dead. What will stop her from killing both you and your child minion?”
I answered through clenched teeth.
“He’s her grandson.”
Constantine suddenly picked up the roses and dropped the bowl out the window. I heard the crack of ceramic on the ground outside.
“Excuse me,” Constantine said. “I have much to attend to this morning.”
“I, too,” I said. “I want to speak with my ambassador. Where can I find Priamos?”
“He is in council with the bala heg. They will be in session until dark, and again tomorrow. Come back in two days, if you want to see him.” He paced to the door. “You will not mind if I leave you here to finish on your own.”
CHAPTER IV
Accounting
COME BACK IN TWO days. Tell me another, I thought in fury, sitting alone over the remains of the breakfast. I pushed back my chair and stood up. The young man who had been waiting on us came forward politely. “May I guide you somewhere?”
I thought hard, then said in precise and careful Ethiopic, “I need to find the emperor’s linguist.”
Halen, the afa negus or “mouth of the king,” held the position that Priamos had been trained to fill. He had been Priamos’s tutor once. I had to wait for him, of course, as I had to wait for everyone, but after an hour or so he came to meet me in the Golden Court.
“How can I help you, Princess?” Halen asked in polite Latin. “Have you need of an interpreter? I cannot leave this palace, but I can make you a recommendation.”
“I want your recommendation,” I answered, “but not in the way you mean. Listen. You are not forbidden to talk to Priamos, are you? When will you see him next?”
“He did invite me to lunch with him in his room,” Halen answered mildly.
“May I join you?”
“He was so evil-tempered a companion yestereve that I would not advise it,” Halen said wryly, and I suddenly liked him.
“So am I, of late. No one will notice.”
“Then meet me here again this noon, Princess.”
Halen escorted me at midday to Priamos’s chamber.
The room was small, but comfortably and even luxuriously furnished, high up and with a breathtaking view of the city and the distant Simien Mountains. Neither door nor window was barred, but there were guards posted outside. Halen and I stood waiting while one of these went in to announce us. As the soldier entered the room I saw that Priamos was deeply asleep, lying fully clothed, with his forearm flung across his eyes to block out the light.
“Wait—” I began, but too late, for the guard had already awakened him, and impassively moved to take up his station again.
Halen stood back, and Priamos greeted me alone.
“Peace to you, Princess,” he said, and rose to his feet. “Come in.”
I took his hands and answered, “You’ve been lost.”
We stood and stood, both of us staring down at our clasped hands. The sun-browned skin of my own seemed fair and pale with Priamos’s earth-dark fingers closed around them. His bony wrists were crossed with little scars that I had never noticed before, smooth and faintly shining, like the marks of burns or abrasions.
“Halen,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder.
Priamos looked up. His tutor stood in the doorway. Priamos turned away from me and gestured to a chair.
“Come in, sir.”
“I’ll go now, Priamos,” Halen said, speaking in Latin still. “Be good to the princess.”
He turned away and left. The guards stood impassively, unblinking.
“Please, sit. Eat, if you like.”
On the low table by the couch a tray of food had been set, still covered with a cotton cloth but no longer steaming. Beside it was a basket of fresh fruit. None of it had been touched.
“But it’s yours,” I said.
“I will not eat,” Priamos said. “I only have an hour.”
He had been asleep. What meeting could be so important or exhausting that he set aside food for an hour’s sleep?
“What have they been doing with you?” I could not keep the anger from my voice.
“I have been standing in interview since dawn this morning, and from noon to dusk yesterday as well. It leaves me with no appetite.”
“What interview?”
“Please do sit,” he said dispiritedly, with a glance at the open door where the guards waited. He was furnished with every comfort but had no privacy, and he did not want anyone to think he was being discourteous to his foreign and royal guest.
So I sat, while Priamos remained on his feet as though he were my butler.
“Constantine told me you are in council with the bala heg.”
“Yes. We are discussing the resolution of my appointment in Britain.”
“For two solid days?”
“I left so much undone,” Priamos said, and moved to gaze out the high window. “I am not able to account for anything that was entrusted to me.”
“You have accounted for me,” I said, but stopped. I had seen with what gratitude Constantine had welcomed him. “What have you left undone?” I asked instead.
Priamos spoke as though reciting, still gazing out the window.
“There was a shipment of your tin from Dumnonia, that I was to deliver here. There was the shipment that was lost last year, for which I was to arrange repayment or replacement. There was your father’s man who had resigned his post as envoy to Justinian, the Roman emperor, and Caleb bid me urge Artos to appoint someone to fill his place, as your Roman envoy is our nearest link to Britain. I had brought with me to Britain an ark filled with coins in silver and bronze, which Artos wanted to circulate, a trove worth as much as another boatload of tin, and I have no idea what happened to it…”
He stopped to draw breath.
“Nothing has happened to it,” I said. “After Camlan it was moved into the copper mines for safekeeping, with all the other treasury. Do you remember Caius, my father’s steward? He has charge of it.”
Priamos turned to me. “Thank you, Princess,” he said. “That will be a help this afternoon.”
“Must they see you this afternoon yet? What more can there be?”
“It has surprised me how much there is. All little things I have forgotten, what has happened to the presents I brought with me for Artos, what could Artos suggest that Caleb give you as a wedding gift. Caleb’s miserable lions, I am accountable for them. Horses, Artos was to send some of his horses here, and samples of their shoes, and the queen of queens had asked for more of that liqueur you make of those little sour plums…”
“Sloes.”
“Yes. And this afternoon I am to report to Ella Amida the present state of Britain.”
“Ella Amida. You mean Constantine…” I spoke slowly. “Has he been questioning you all this time?”
“Oh, indeed not. He steps in and out. He is very busy. He has set aside much to spare this afternoon for me…” Priamos drew another long breath. “Nothing has been raised that I could not have foreseen if I had thought about it—”
(If he had thought about anything during our voyage other than satisfying my demands to learn Ethiopic, or ensuring I was not ambushed by Saxon spies.)
“Yet I fear it will not end till Constantine has seen me stripped and flogged in the Cathedral Square.”
“I do not understand why he should so distrust you.”
“Because I am so like Abreha. We were both trained as translators, favored by Caleb. And because Abreha himself killed Caleb’s eldest son, Aryat. Do you see? Everyone fears that Abreha’s brother will betray Aryat’s brother in the same way, that I will bring harm to Wazeb. Constantine is not alone in his distrust. It is not the first time I have been taxed with my failure in Himyar.”
Priamos sighed. “Yet so much of this present trial seems so trivial. I have offered my own lands and estate in payment for the lost imports. But I cannot believe that my life and career are to end in ignominy because I—” He choked, breathless. “Because I failed to send half a dozen jars of wine to my gluttonous mother!”