Constantine said in astonishment, “Telemakos is Aksumite!”
I leaned toward him so that we stared across the table into each other’s eyes. I held his gaze. “You are British,” I said, “and no one questions your place on the Aksumite throne. What makes you think anyone will question Telemakos in Britain? He is the high king’s grandson. I am his daughter. Who are you?”
“Is that a challenge?”
“You may take it as one,” I said.
Constantine stood up and paced to the window. There was a bowl of small white highland roses sitting on the sill. He stood there a long time, still, looking down at the roses.
He said at last, “Have you a plan that goes with your posturing threat?”
“You let me choose Britain’s king myself, regardless of our marriage,” I answered straightaway. “Or I take Telemakos to Britain as high king in waiting, and sever our alliance with Aksum’s viceroy.”
“You can’t do that,” Constantine snapped. “My wealth comes through my father, and I do not need the high king’s benediction to gift Aksum with it.”
“What you do as a private citizen is your own concern. You will have no military support from your king, no treaty, no royal sanction, no ambassador.”
“You fled Britain because Morgause wanted you dead. What will stop her from killing both you and your child minion?”
I answered through clenched teeth.
“He’s her grandson.”
Constantine suddenly picked up the roses and dropped the bowl out the window. I heard the crack of ceramic on the ground outside.
“Excuse me,” Constantine said. “I have much to attend to this morning.”
“I, too,” I said. “I want to speak with my ambassador. Where can I find Priamos?”
“He is in council with the bala heg. They will be in session until dark, and again tomorrow. Come back in two days, if you want to see him.” He paced to the door. “You will not mind if I leave you here to finish on your own.”
CHAPTER IV
Accounting
COME BACK IN TWO days. Tell me another, I thought in fury, sitting alone over the remains of the breakfast. I pushed back my chair and stood up. The young man who had been waiting on us came forward politely. “May I guide you somewhere?”
I thought hard, then said in precise and careful Ethiopic, “I need to find the emperor’s linguist.”
Halen, the afa negus or “mouth of the king,” held the position that Priamos had been trained to fill. He had been Priamos’s tutor once. I had to wait for him, of course, as I had to wait for everyone, but after an hour or so he came to meet me in the Golden Court.
“How can I help you, Princess?” Halen asked in polite Latin. “Have you need of an interpreter? I cannot leave this palace, but I can make you a recommendation.”
“I want your recommendation,” I answered, “but not in the way you mean. Listen. You are not forbidden to talk to Priamos, are you? When will you see him next?”
“He did invite me to lunch with him in his room,” Halen answered mildly.
“May I join you?”
“He was so evil-tempered a companion yestereve that I would not advise it,” Halen said wryly, and I suddenly liked him.
“So am I, of late. No one will notice.”
“Then meet me here again this noon, Princess.”
Halen escorted me at midday to Priamos’s chamber.
The room was small, but comfortably and even luxuriously furnished, high up and with a breathtaking view of the city and the distant Simien Mountains. Neither door nor window was barred, but there were guards posted outside. Halen and I stood waiting while one of these went in to announce us. As the soldier entered the room I saw that Priamos was deeply asleep, lying fully clothed, with his forearm flung across his eyes to block out the light.
“Wait—” I began, but too late, for the guard had already awakened him, and impassively moved to take up his station again.
Halen stood back, and Priamos greeted me alone.
“Peace to you, Princess,” he said, and rose to his feet. “Come in.”
I took his hands and answered, “You’ve been lost.”
We stood and stood, both of us staring down at our clasped hands. The sun-browned skin of my own seemed fair and pale with Priamos’s earth-dark fingers closed around them. His bony wrists were crossed with little scars that I had never noticed before, smooth and faintly shining, like the marks of burns or abrasions.
“Halen,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder.
Priamos looked up. His tutor stood in the doorway. Priamos turned away from me and gestured to a chair.
“Come in, sir.”
“I’ll go now, Priamos,” Halen said, speaking in Latin still. “Be good to the princess.”
He turned away and left. The guards stood impassively, unblinking.
“Please, sit. Eat, if you like.”
On the low table by the couch a tray of food had been set, still covered with a cotton cloth but no longer steaming. Beside it was a basket of fresh fruit. None of it had been touched.
“But it’s yours,” I said.
“I will not eat,” Priamos said. “I only have an hour.”
He had been asleep. What meeting could be so important or exhausting that he set aside food for an hour’s sleep?
“What have they been doing with you?” I could not keep the anger from my voice.
“I have been standing in interview since dawn this morning, and from noon to dusk yesterday as well. It leaves me with no appetite.”
“What interview?”
“Please do sit,” he said dispiritedly, with a glance at the open door where the guards waited. He was furnished with every comfort but had no privacy, and he did not want anyone to think he was being discourteous to his foreign and royal guest.
So I sat, while Priamos remained on his feet as though he were my butler.
“Constantine told me you are in council with the bala heg.”
“Yes. We are discussing the resolution of my appointment in Britain.”
“For two solid days?”
“I left so much undone,” Priamos said, and moved to gaze out the high window. “I am not able to account for anything that was entrusted to me.”
“You have accounted for me,” I said, but stopped. I had seen with what gratitude Constantine had welcomed him. “What have you left undone?” I asked instead.