“Come away,” she repeated in Telemakos’s ear.
She let go of him, and they walked together soberly across the yard back toward the house.
“I’ll tell Kidane to have the next post sent to his office in the New Palace,” Goewin muttered, “and spare us all another such adventure.”
“What was it?”
Goewin voice went cold once more. “Don’t ask me again, Telemakos.”
Telemakos abandoned Athena to his mother and her maid for most of the morning, a thing he never did, so that he could shadow his grandfather like a ghost. Kidane led him from reception hall to study, back for a few minutes to Turunesh’s chamber and out to the garden, while Telemakos crept behind urns and wall hangings and potted palms, frantically hoping Kidane would drop some hint of what he and Goewin had seen in the little wicker box.
By afternoon Telemakos was exhausted by his own subterfuge. It was dull and nerve-racking all at once. How could I possibly have spent the first ten years of my life listening at doors? he wondered. There must be better ways to find out secrets.
He collected Athena and sat down with her on the wide dais in front of the house, rolling his mother’s empty bobbins down the steps. Turunesh rarely used them now, and the reels made fragile towers for Athena to knock down, if you balanced them carefully. Telemakos thought he could use this game to teach Athena to climb the stairs, but she refused to cooperate: she let Menelik fetch the bobbins for her.
She was sitting at the top of the stair and Telemakos at the bottom when the emperor Gebre Meskal himself walked across the forecourt, carrying in one hand a box identical to the one Goewin had thrown into the kitchen fire.
Telemakos went cold, then hot.
The emperor wore his customary plain white kilt and shamma, and the head cloth of gold-shot linen that was the mark of his sovereignty. His two ceremonial spear bearers stood at his back. Telemakos lay full length on the ground at the emperor’s feet, as his grandfather had taught him.
“Beloved Telemakos,” Gebre Meskal said, his firm voice gentle, “my young lion. You need not stand on ceremony in the privacy of your grandfather’s house. Come to your feet.” He knelt by Telemakos and held forth an open palm, which Telemakos took hesitantly. The emperor’s narrow hand was warm and dry, with a stern grip. Gebre Meskal raised Telemakos to his feet and released him.
“What game are you playing?” Gebre Meskal knelt again, and picked up a bobbin.
“We’re idling,” Telemakos answered. His attention, but not his gaze, was riveted on the box that the emperor held in his other hand. “Throw again, Athena. Show the emperor how his lion can fetch.”
She picked up a spindle in each hand and hurled them down the stairs. There was no force, no coordination, no aim behind her pitch, and the reels clattered slowly from granite step to granite step. One rolled on toward the spear bearers’ feet. The nearest guard batted at the reel with the butt end of his spear, pushing it teasingly just beyond Menelik’s reach, and the little lion chased wildly around his legs after it. The soldier laughed, and stamped his iron-strapped boots.
“Boy!” Athena wailed, startled by the noise. “Tena boy up—” In a panic to be close to Telemakos, she tried to climb down the stairs.
Telemakos had coached her well enough that she had the sense to turn around and make her way feetfirst. But then she could not see where she was going or where Telemakos was. Halfway down she stopped and wailed again pathetically, “Boy! Tena! Boy!” Telemakos vaulted up the steps and sat down beside her. She tried to climb into his lap.
“I can’t hold you on the stairs, Tena; be still.”
She stood tight against his side, clutching his hair.
“Sit down,” he hissed, embarrassed at all this to-do in front of Gebre Meskal. He managed to get her to release his head.
Gebre Meskal set down the bobbin, and his box, on the step below Athena.
“She calls you ‘Boy’?”
“It’s better than ‘Mama,’ which is what she calls Goewin and the maids and the cook and even poor Ferem. Any old body who takes care of her is ‘Mama.’ ‘Boy’ is special.”
Telemakos leaned forward and took a deep breath. The emperor’s package gave off the same faint dusty smell as Kidane’s had.
“What does she call her father?”
“Ras. Prince.”
The emperor nodded. “Of course.” Then he said to Athena directly, “What a pretty bracelet!” She shrank back, hiding her wrist between herself and Telemakos, gazing steadily at her sovereign with clear, solemn eyes. “Let me carry her in,” Gebre Meskal offered.
Telemakos did not think he would have made such an offer to anyone with two arms and did not like to insult the emperor by declining it. But he was afraid Athena would scream and shame them all.
“Do you forgive me, Majesty, she is no trouble to me.” Telemakos glanced over his shoulder. He had left her harness at the top of the stair. “Come on, Athena,” he said. “Up to your saddle, and I’ll carry you.”
“Let me get it for you,” said Gebre Meskal mildly.
He climbed the stairs past Telemakos.
Telemakos acted without thought. With his knee he knocked down the bobbin the emperor had been holding. It fell to the bottom of the steps, where Menelik raced after it around the guards’ feet again. For half a dozen seconds, the spear bearers were inattentive, and the emperor’s back was turned.
“Open that box,” Telemakos hissed in Athena’s ear, through the shining bronze cloud of her hair.
She lifted the lid willingly. They peered in together.
Athena cheeped and warbled, which was her way of saying bird. Telemakos drew in a sharp breath.
“Shut it,” he whispered.
His heart seemed to go cold and numb, the way it sometimes did in his dreams, as he lay bound and waiting to be tortured. This is a death threat, Goewin said.
Trapped by his own devious behavior, Telemakos now had to keep his face and voice perfectly composed as the spear bearers came to attention. He managed it. The emperor came down the stair with Athena’s carrier, and waited while Telemakos put it on. Telemakos’s fingers felt cold and numb, too.
Gebre Meskal picked up the evil little parcel and said seriously, “Is your aunt at home, Beloved One? I want to talk to her.”
When Telemakos answered, his voice did not shake. He marveled at his own steady detachment. “She’s in Grandfather’s study, opening her mail. I’ll take you in, Majesty.”