I thought of Priamos’s introduction to his uncle: Solomon walks among us in your wisdom. “Please excuse me,” I muttered, trying to pull my thoughts together, still on my knees.
“I sent Artos my lions to seal our coalition,” Caleb said gently. “I was not going to leave them for the viceroy Ella Amida; he has no right to them. And Wazeb will have to find his own.”
Then Caleb addressed Medraut in Ethiopic. “Ras Meder, will you stay with us while Britannia tells her story?”
It was dusk now, and two of the novices came by with torches that they fixed in the ground just outside the tent. An evening wind stirred across the amba, bringing with it the sound of a single voice chanting from some unseen place on the plateau. The full moon came blazing forth as I spoke, so bright you could see colors in the dark. The torches were eclipsed.
Caleb said, when I had told him all, “So in effect you would agree to marry Constantine, if he allowed you to choose Britain’s king yourself? Whom then would you choose, Britannia?”
His manner of addressing me was unnerving, but made clear the serious formality of his questions. I glanced at my brother and held open a hand toward him. “My father’s eldest son still lives,” I said.
“He no longer speaks, though,” Caleb pointed out, and asked suddenly, “Whom would you choose, Ras Meder?”
Medraut pointed to me, and Caleb chuckled.
Then the emperor motioned one of the attendants to his side and whispered to him. The boy went running off into the molten dark.
Caleb turned back to me. “Wait a moment for the child to return,” he said, “and I will show you something.”
We waited. The distant clear voice continued to sing.
And then the messenger came back. His hands seemed empty, but Caleb picked something small from his open palm.
“Have you ever seen an Aksumite gold piece?” the emperor asked me.
I thought of the brave sunburst on Constantine’s new coin. But that had been copper. “I don’t think so.”
“Here is one of mine,” said Caleb, and he held out a thin, bright coin. It winked more golden than rising moonlight as he passed it across to me. Its face showed the profile of a king wearing a heavy and elaborate tiered crown.
“Is this you?”
“The image is a symbol,” said Caleb, “not a close likeness. You will find a like portrait on hundreds of years of Aksumite coins. See, on the face is the king, royally robed and crowned, and here he bears the imperial fly whisk that scatters the enemy like insects. Now here—”
Caleb flipped the shining disc over on my palm. “On the reverse the king is no more than a man, the servant of the people, wearing only a head cloth.”
It was a simple counterpart to the king on its face. Three ribbons banded the head cloth in place, tiny stripes across his forehead. The delicate miniature contrasted sharply with the first figure: crown, no crown; king and mortal man; image and opposite.
“A king’s power may come from God, but he is not a god,” said Caleb. “When you do battle against Ella Amida, Britannia, are you battling the king he represents, or the man he is? What wrong has he done as a king? Look carefully at the other side of the coin.”
I sat silent as Medraut, and thought.
Constantine had arrested Priamos for abandoning a post he had, in fact, abandoned. Constantine had had Priamos punished for running riot in a palace that was held in stewardship for another, and Priamos had chosen the punishment himself. Constantine had placed a guard over me because I, a foreign princess barely past girlhood, was followed through the streets by a crowd of beggared soldiers. Constantine had found Telemakos lurking in his office and had turned him out with a slap on the head.
I stared down at the engraved face on the coin in my palm, modest in its shining head cloth, then turned it over. The crown glittered in the torchlight.
Constantine was not a kind man, but he was an excellent viceroy. I prized and valued kindness, but I knew it was not kindness that would repair my father’s war-torn kingdom.
I glanced at Medraut and remembered that he, too, had had a thundering argument with Constantine before half the imperial court when they first met, whatever that had been about.
“You know Constantine better than I do,” I murmured to my brother. “Would you give him your blessing as high king? Would you step down to him?”
Medraut bowed his head, then nodded once.
I laughed, a little hysterically. “Oh, God help me, I don’t know what to do. You are the man who would barter your kingdom for a cup of coffee!”
Caleb laughed also. “I think you have put your threat to Ella Amida the wrong way around, Britannia. Agree to make him king only if you may choose your own husband.”
The distant chanting stopped. The moon sailed high. I gazed down at the coin in my palm.
“I will make him king,” I said decisively, “if Priamos goes free and fully pardoned. Then Priamos may complete his commission in Britain as Constantine’s ambassador, though I dread having to mediate between them.”
I could not remember what Priamos looked like smiling; in my memory he wore a permanent frown. It made no difference. To speak his name made tears catch in the back of my throat.
“Priamos goes free,” I repeated firmly. “And Telemakos—”
Medraut placed his lean hand over mine where I held it open on my knee, lacing his long fingers between my own and locking the gold coin between our palms.
“Telemakos is blameless,” I said. “He is already free.”
“Your plan has a single flaw,” Caleb said.
“What flaw?”
“It leaves Wazeb with no British ambassador.”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
Medraut squeezed my hand. I saw that he was looking at me, a curious expression of fond admiration in his face. He let me go and softly touched the top of my head, as though he were blessing me.
I said calmly, I made myself sound as calm and serene as Turunesh: “We expected my twin brother Lleu, late prince of Britain, next in that position; so if Wazeb will accept it, I will stand in Lleu’s place.”
Caleb did not answer immediately. I remembered to lower my eyes, but held my head high, feeling the cloth of gold and the narrow crown weighing heavy on my hair.
“You are a child,” Caleb said. “You are a woman.”
I heard the paradox in his words before he did.
“There are no women allowed in Debra Damo,” I answered, “yet I am here.”
It was a place of paradox, Debra Damo, prison and sanctuary, a double-sided coin.
“Neither truth has ever prevented me from acting. Let me represent my kingdom in your capital as I represent it here, tonight.”
Then Caleb’s laughter rang across the high plateau.
“Done, Britannia.”
The night air was like coffee: sharp, dark, uplifting, strong with excitement. I breathed deeply of it and bowed my head before the emperor.
“Thank you, Highness,” I said. “I will serve as I am able.”
The emperor Ella Asbeha stood up. He beckoned me to rise also. “You will sleep here tonight,” he said, “but do not remove the head cloth while you are in this place. It is only my borrowed sovereignty that allows you here, and you may not stay more than this one night. Nor should you otherwise delay your return. Priamos will be suspected in your disappearance, and will be harshly used if anyone thinks he encouraged you to peril.”
I hissed sharply. How could I not have seen that? Placing me in harm’s way could be punishable as real treason, punishable by death.
“And he deserves better,” Caleb added, musing. “No other has been so adamant in his loyalty, or has been tested so severely. He is the best of Candake’s brood.”
Caleb paused, then finished lightly, “You will be given a room in the royal enclosure, where my nephews sleep. Ras Meder will show you the way. If I do not see you in the morning, Britannia, I wish you God’s speed and God’s blessing. I am sure you will serve both our kingdoms well.”
I could not sleep in the hard, bare, beautiful house that they called the royal enclosure. I lay awake and stiff all night, in the place where Priamos had passed his childhood, afraid that I would damage Caleb’s head cloth if I moved in my sleep while I wore it. In truth, there was no reason I could not have taken it off in the privacy of the room they gave me for the night; but Caleb had warned me to wear it, so I did. It felt like cloth of lead, not cloth of gold, by morning.
I saw no one in that house during the night, after Medraut left me alone. But as he led me out again in the morning, we passed three men. All three were dressed alike, in plain shammas of unbleached homespun, but the two younger men seemed to act as retainers for the third. He was my father’s age, perhaps slightly younger. He talked animatedly to his companions, or to himself, waving bent and twisted hands as he spoke. He was quoting scripture, I think, glibly and at great length. His wrists were all but ruined with arthritis. I thought he must be another veteran of the Himyar.
He fell abruptly silent when he saw me, then threw himself flat on his face on the stone floor at my feet.
I was stupid with lack of sleep. I had no idea what this could mean until Medraut lightly touched the head cloth that I still wore.
“Please stand up,” I said to the man at my feet, in Ethiopic.
He did, and held out his gnarled hands to me as if in supplication. With no idea of his intent, but moved by his severe deformity, I laid my hands in his. He could scarcely close his fingers around my own, but he lifted them closer to his face and stroked them as had the queen of queens, as though fascinated by them.
Then I saw that his crippled wrists were patterned with the same faint scars that marked Priamos. And though he no longer wore the chains that Priamos had spoken of, I knew that this was Mikael, Candake’s mad and tragic eldest son. How long had the arthritis been eating at his wrists to make them so misshapen, and did he still demand his serpent-slaying spear? He could never hold a spear, let alone throw it.
No one spoke any word as he looked at my hands. No one told me his name, or explained to him who I was. His companions and mine all stood alert and ready to restrain him should he seem to threaten me, but he was very gentle.
At once it occurred to me that his amazement was not to do with my pale skin.
He let my hands fall at last and rubbed his eyes.
“No one tells me a thing,” he said plaintively. “I hear nothing.”
Then he turned and walked away, still shaking his head. His calm companions followed him.
“Why was I never told that the emperor is a woman?” he complained, and went his way.
PART IV: FORGIVENESS
CHAPTER XII
All the Wealth of His House
MEDRAUT NEVER OPENED HIS mouth. He was a walled city with no gates, his spirit inaccessible, unworthy of his father’s kingdom, unworthy of the woman he deeply loved. But whatever other bonds he might shed like oiled cloth sheds rainwater, he could not resist Telemakos.
Medraut came back to Aksum with us. On the night of our return he wandered about Kidane’s mansion like a bewildered ghost, touching fabrics and ornaments, leaning out of windows, gazing up at the carved ibex and cheetah on the coffered ceiling. Telemakos shadowed him, as he had done all through our homeward journey. He held his father’s hand, or leaned insinuatingly against Medraut’s waist like an affectionate cat, chattering incessantly in a low voice. It was the exact way he talked to his wooden animals. You could hear what he was saying, if you listened carefully. He was filling in the missing conversation.