“Bring her with you,” answered Goewin. “She likes going out.”
“I can’t carry her that far.”
“What rubbish. You carried fifteen pounds of trout the whole way back from the lake, didn’t you? Athena isn’t any heavier. Let me show you how to wrap the carrying cloth. It’s much easier to carry her on your hip than over your shoulder.”
V
LOAVES AND FISHES
IT WAS A SMALL battle to get the squirming, anxious baby to cooperate. Athena was interested in the fish. She kept trying to dive and grab at the basket while Goewin tried to tie her up. Goewin could not quite work out how to make the carrying cloth fit Telemakos, and he, awkwardly, could not hold Athena in place against his hip or tie the knots himself. But at last they got the baby fixed tightly against his left side, leaving free his right. Athena wound both hands into his hair.
“Help me, Goewin. Ai! Pull your own hair, you monster!” The baby’s hands were too close to his head for him to be able to see them. “I shall teach you to comb it for me, if you like it so much.”
Goewin, watching, suddenly laughed in delight.
“Now you know what it’s like,” she said. “That is just how I’ve spent the past seven months, little better off than you. Baby under one arm, trying to draw maps and make your soup and fold clean napkins with the other. You owe me, boy.” She tickled Athena beneath her chin and kissed her behind one ear. “You both owe me, owlet.”
They crossed the street together, Goewin carrying the fish and Telemakos carrying the baby. Goewin put down her basket to strike the bell at Gedar’s gate; the neighbor children opened to them. Their shabby clothes were clean, and bitter pride smoldered in the eyes of the two elder boys as they went down on their knees before Goewin. The youngest did not bow.
“Get up, Sabarat,” said Goewin. “And you, Japheth. I’ve told you before, you need not kneel to me. Is your mother in?”
“Mother and Father are both in,” said Sabarat, the eldest, with blank politeness. As far as Telemakos knew, Mrs. Gedar never went out, but Gedar was always trying to drum up business in the city’s markets; Sabarat, who was nearly a grown man now, usually went with him.
“How fortunate, we may all visit, then,” said Goewin. “You can carry this basket.”
“I beg you wait only a moment, Woyzaro Goewin, my lady ambassador,” apologized Sabarat. “Mother will want to serve you coffee, but I beg you let me announce you before you go in. Father is going to Himyar, and we are in an uproar of packing.”
“To Himyar!” Goewin said. “Are they still authorizing ships to leave the port in Adulis, then?”
Sabarat looked surprised. “More now than ever before. Don’t you hear such things from Counselor Kidane? Your quarantine is to be lifted at winter’s end. Father is going to travel to Himyar before the Long Rains begin, so that he may collect payment he has been due many years now, and be among the first let back in Aksum in the new year.”
“That will be hard on your mother, to be without him for a whole season.”
Sabarat gazed politely at his feet. “Oil of his olive groves used to light the alabaster palaces of Himyar,” Sabarat said, the bitterness flaring beneath the politeness, “as well as the New Palace here in the city. But now we don’t even know if those groves still exist.”
“I don’t know if my father’s kingdom still exists,” Goewin answered.
“My lady.” Sabarat heaved the basket of fish over his shoulder. “Forgive me.”
“If your father is planning to be first back in Aksum, perhaps I can persuade him to collect my mail on his way through Adulis. I long for news of my homeland. We are all weary of the quarantine.”
Sabarat took the basket up the podium stairs, which were swept clean as always. Mrs. Gedar was house proud. But the courtyard was littered with last year’s almond leaves, and the fountains were dry.
Japheth and little Eon both stood facing Telemakos now, watching with curiosity as Athena tried to hide in his shamma. She was shy; her everyday existence only included about five different faces. “Is that your sister?” Japheth asked. “Her hair is not so strange as yours, is it?”
“It is not,” Telemakos agreed. He had endured insults directed at his white hair and slate-blue eyes as long as he could remember.
“You are like a scorpion, carrying its young on its back,” said Japheth. Eon, used to the game of name-calling, sang out boldly: “Scorpion, scorpion, scorpion boy—run away, Japheth, the scorpion’s going to sting us!”
Athena lifted her head to watch this noisy performing creature. After a moment she pointed to the house, where the fish had disappeared, and babbled with incomprehensible concern about them.
“Little scorpion baby,” sang Eon to Athena. He made his hands into pincers, his fingers separated two and two together, and gently jabbed these claws into the firm, swaddled bump that was Athena’s body.
Telemakos’s heart went cold. Abruptly he lifted his single hand to fend off the attack. Eon’s nails raked his open palm.
Telemakos seized the little boy’s hand and jerked it back upon itself, and only Goewin’s cool fingers twined forcefully about his wrist kept him from trying to break Eon’s arm.
“Telemakos,” Goewin said softly at his ear. She shook Eon Gedar from Telemakos’s trembling grip. “Do not hurt this child.”
Japheth had caught his brother by the shoulders and now held him back, furiously scolding him while gasping apologies that were directed as much at Goewin as at Telemakos. Goewin spoke calmly in Telemakos’s ear, using his formal title like a whip.
“The correct apology is for you to make, Lij Telemakos.”
It meant “young prince.” Only the emperor used it with any frequency. It always sobered Telemakos to hear it spoken aloud.
He stood panting, his heart slowing again to its normal pace. His knees felt as though they had turned to water. He bent his head to Athena, holding her close, and brushed his flaming face against her coppery hair. After a moment Telemakos knelt before Gedar’s children with his head bowed.
“Stop making Eon scream, Japheth, the fault is mine.”
“Telemakos is bodyguard to his sister, you see,” Goewin commented coolly.
Then Sabarat came back to usher them in to coffee. Goewin helped Telemakos up with one hand supporting Athena, then offered her arm to him so that he might formally escort her into the house. She kept her cool fingers twined through his until he stopped shaking.