THE CARACAL
Down over the rugged road they went till hard by town they reached the stone-rimmed fountain running clear where the city people came and drew their water.
17:222–24
A FAINT SCENT OF sweat and frankincense woke Telemakos in the still, quiet midnight of his grandfather’s mansion, and made him sure that his father was home.
His father was never to be found when you looked for him. Medraut stayed away for weeks at a time hunting with the royal elephant herders, or hunting on his own; and if he was not in the Simien Mountains or the Great Valley, he spent his days sequestered in Abba Pantelewon, the monastery set in the hills above the city. When Medraut was at home—Telemakos was not sure his father considered Kidane’s house home, but that was where his wife and son lived—if Medraut was at home, he never said anything. Telemakos had never heard his father speak a single word aloud, except on one solitary, memorable occasion, when Medraut had cried out a warning, and had spoken his son’s name.
Telemakos was rather proud to be named for Odysseus’s son, though it was not lost on him that his name was his patient mother’s subtle reprimand to his wayward father. Medraut had been in Britain when Telemakos was born, and had not known of his son’s existence for the first six years of Telemakos’s life. Having Medraut as a father was much like having Odysseus as a father, Telemakos thought, and he sympathized deeply with his namesake. There seemed only a slender difference between not knowing if your father was alive and never hearing his voice. The best part of The Odyssey, Telemakos thought, was the contest at the end, where Odysseus reveals himself by stringing his own bow, which no one else can do, although Telemakos nearly manages it; and then together they destroy the men who have been laying waste to their estate and plotting Telemakos’s murder. How wonderful to be in league with your father like that, after nearly twenty years of hoping he was not already dead.
Telemakos climbed out of his own bed and felt his way through the sleeping house, as sure-footed and confident as if he were blind and always found his way by touch and smell and echo. As he had guessed, his mother was not alone in her bed. Telemakos wriggled in between his parents and pulled the blankets over him.
“Oh, not you, boy,” said Turunesh sleepily, because she was as jealous of his father’s attention as Telemakos, and had him to herself even less. She made room for Telemakos.
Telemakos lay still between his mother and father, savoring this moment when they were all three together and content, complete.
He dreamed that the lions were pretending to eat him. He was not afraid of them; he knew they were only playing. They took turns biting the top of his head. Their teeth closed tightly enough to sting his scalp, but not enough to break the skin. They were persistent, and Telemakos was beginning to be annoyed with the game, but he did not know how to get away from their teeth without hurting himself.
He woke, then; it was still dark. His parents were asleep. His scalp prickled. Telemakos reached up to touch his head and found his father’s hand tangled in his hair.
He tried to unthread the taut, strong fingers, but his hair was nearly as thick as his mother’s, and matted easily. It was a trial to Turunesh to keep it free of snarls. She liked it long, because it was so bright and so unusual and so like Medraut’s. Medraut had a firm handful, and his grip was like iron. When Telemakos tried to free himself, Medraut sighed in his sleep and tightened his hold so fiercely that Telemakos could not move his head.
“Ah, little bright one,” said Medraut in Latin, speaking low and clear. “What are you doing here?”
Telemakos lay frozen, his head trapped, so startled he was almost alarmed. Except for the shouted warning, Telemakos had never heard his father speak.
“Ras Meder?” he whispered, but he knew that Medraut was asleep, or he would not be talking. Telemakos spoke aloud. “Sir?”
Is he talking to me? Telemakos wondered, torn between delight and dread. Little one, he said, he must mean me. It did not strike Telemakos strange that Medraut spoke Latin, for it was still spoken throughout Britain, he knew, and Turunesh encouraged her half-British son to use it himself.
Medraut sighed again, his fingers still wound tight in Telemakos’s hair. Then he uttered a string of syllables in no language Telemakos had ever heard.
It was like being brushed across the back of the neck: it made his arms break out in gooseflesh. Telemakos was tempted to wake Medraut, only to have his familiar silent self back, and not this gibberish-spouting night creature. But Telemakos wanted to hear the voice again. When Medraut had shouted his son’s name, it had been a terrible sound of fear and warning. This was his real voice, low and deep and gentle, full of music.
Telemakos reached up once more to touch his father’s hand. Medraut spoke the same string of nonsense, the same sequence. Telemakos listened with all his being, trying to hold the shape of the sound in his mind. He mouthed the syllables over to himself so that he would remember them, as he had done with the words of the salt traders. Telemakos felt sure that whatever language his father spoke in his sleep, his aunt could interpret.
He lay awake and tense for a long time after that, his head imprisoned, repeating the impossible sentence and straining to hear anything else. But Medraut did not speak again. Telemakos did fall asleep at last, because when next he tried to move his head it was free, and the bright dawn was sneaking into the room, and he and his mother were alone in her bed.
Telemakos found Goewin packing her ambassador’s satchel. It was still early morning.
“Have you got anything exciting in there today?” Telemakos asked. She had once brought home a live cricket in a tiny house of carven ivory.
“Here are little amole,” Goewin said, and gave him a handful of miniature tablets of salt. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
“What are they for?”
“Money. Or soup.”
Telemakos laughed. “‘A rich man eats salt,’” he said, quoting his grandfather. He gave the tablets back to Goewin. “What does this mean?” he asked, and repeated what he had heard Medraut say.
Goewin packed the salt back in her bag and put it down. Then she stared at Telemakos. She did not answer, so he said it again.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Ras Meder said it in his sleep.”
Goewin had been startled when Telemakos repeated Medraut’s strange words, but she did not seem surprised when he told her his source. “Medraut has always talked in his sleep,” she said. “It’s why he usually spends the night in a hermit’s hole halfway up the cliff wall at Abba Pantelewon. He doesn’t like anyone to hear him. He would give away state secrets in his sleep, if he had any.”