“He’s dead now,” Telemakos stated frankly.
I hesitated. “He was wounded in the battle of Camlan,” I said. “He was wounded in body and spirit, and we lost him after we buried our father.”
Telemakos sank both hands deep in the dark fur of the lion skin, and stood silent. At last he pushed himself away from the wall and said evenly, “Look, here is my mother.”
Turunesh was older than Priamos and I, younger than Medraut. She stood tall and calm. Her hair was fixed in many tiny plaits that lay close against her scalp, following the curve of her head, then billowing loose at her neck in an ebony cloud. Telemakos went to stand close to her side, beneath her arm, and she held him against her.
“This is my mother, Turunesh Kidane,” said Telemakos.
She looked me up and down, taking in my travel-stained clothes and salt-spattered boots. “Peace to you, Princess Goewin,” she said, in accented Latin. “Peace to you, little sister. You’ve been lost.”
She held out her hand, and I took it. She touched my cheek to hers. I sighed.
“I am a disagreeable guest,” I said. “I bring only evil news, and I have just had a roaring quarrel with my fiancé before half the imperial court.”
“So did your brother, six years ago, when Constantine arrived.” Turunesh laughed, then stopped suddenly. She lifted her hand from her son’s shoulder to smooth down his thick, luminous hair. “Have you brought me news of Medraut?”
“I cannot tell—”
Again I hesitated. I hated what I would have to tell her. Throughout the last day I spent with Medraut he had not spoken a single word aloud.
Turunesh said gently, “It does not come as such a shock. I thought it must be so, or you would not have traveled alone. Tell me later, perhaps.”
I sighed again. “I mean, I truly cannot tell,” I said. “I do not know what happened to him. I think Medraut took his own life. I don’t know. He’s gone,”
I dropped Turunesh’s hand and knelt by her side, so that I was level with Telemakos. He turned his head toward me. He kept his eyes politely lowered, his expression quiet and still. I, too, touched his bright hair.
“I would never have seen him anyway,” Telemakos said.
“Ask Ferem to bring our supper in the garden,” his mother told him. “And then coffee. You may eat with us, child, if you do not talk, but straight to bed when the coffee is brought out. You’ve been playing with the emperor’s monkeys again, haven’t you? Go take a bath.”
Telemakos bowed his head, then turned quickly and ran past us into the house. I watched him go, my nephew.
We shared a meal without speaking. Darkness fell suddenly, and the butler Ferem lit lanterns that stood in standards about the garden. The night seemed full of little noises: the soft, wet pip-pip of the ornamental fish breathing at the surface of the granite pool at my back, the slight ripple of the water as they dived again; moths and lizards fluttering and jumping in the thatched awning above our heads, the rustle of wind in the leaves of the giant sycamores. I dreaded my morning meeting with Constantine.
Ferem cleared away the baskets that had held the flat injera bread, and set before Turunesh a tray heavy with strange equipment: a small burner, a round and tall-necked earthen jug, a mortar, pans, and tiny earthen cups. The butler put a hand on Telemakos’s shoulder, and the child stood up and let himself be led away to bed without protest.
I opened my mouth to ask, “What happens now?” and what came out was, “What happened in Himyar?”
“We were at war with them for seventeen years,” Turunesh answered. “Himyar has alternated as our enemy and our ally longer than Aksum has been Christian, three hundred years or more. When their king began persecuting the Aksumite Christians there, Caleb defeated him and made the region a protectorate under a native viceroy. But the Aksumite settlers did not like Caleb’s choice, so they threw the viceroy out and elected one of their own to take his place.”
“Abreha.”
“Yes.”
“Why was Abreha in Himyar?”
“Caleb had sent him as a translator.”
Have no trust in translators, I thought.
I asked aloud, “So then Caleb sent Priamos with an army to bring down Abreha?”
“Not at first. He sent his own son, Aryat, and Aryat was slain by Abreha. Then he sent Priamos’s elder brother, Hector. Hector’s force rebelled against him; he was very young. He was murdered by his own officers. Priamos’s army fought after Hector’s, and Abreha defeated him.”
It was strange to sit in the dark courtyard, both of us tight with grief, and calmly discuss a war that had ended three years ago.
“They struck a truce,” Turunesh finished. “Priamos was spared so that he might carry Abreha’s message back to the emperor Caleb.”
“Cynric used him in that exact way after Camlan,” I said. “He was the only one of my father’s men who knew anything of the Saxon tongue.”
“That will not help his reputation at all,” Turunesh commented, lighting the burner. “‘Have no trust in translators,’ Caleb used to say.”
She blew gently on the flames in the brazier.
“Now watch,” Turunesh said, straightening. “Let’s no longer speak of Himyar. I am going to make you coffee. We’ll drink in memory of your brother. He once told me he would give away a kingdom if it meant he might share another cup of coffee with me.”
I saw her smiling over the blue and yellow flames.
“What is it?”
“A mild stimulant. It grows wild on the highland hillsides; we roast and grind the seeds, then steep them to make a drink. Your brother hated it. But he liked the ceremony. Only a woman may make coffee. Watch.”
She was busy as she spoke, deftly sorting the seeds. They rattled musically against the earthen pan she held them in; the flames of the burner whiffled and leapt. I could not ever remember being so aware of the light, quiet sounds of a garden at night.
Perhaps because I was listening so intently, perhaps because the cool highland air and rustling sycamores and bitter scent of roasting coffee were so strange to me, I heard a thing Turunesh did not hear. Behind me, below the gentle breathing of the fish, I heard the gentle breathing of another small creature. Turunesh began to pulverize the seeds in the mortar. I lowered my head, slowly, and glanced sideways back over my arm.