She held the lamp high and turned to face the young British ambassador.
“Come, Medraut,” she said aloud. “I’ll light you to your room.”
PART I: SANCTUARY
CHAPTER I
Naming the Animals
SIX YEARS AFTER MEDRAUT returned to Britain, and a bare season after he and my twin brother Lleu nearly killed each other over which of them should be the high king’s heir, our father’s estate at Camlan was destroyed in a battle that began by accident.
Camlan shattered Medraut. He began the battle: he drew his sword to kill an adder at my father’s heel, and the host mustered by Cynric of the West Saxons fell on our own soldiers at the flash of light on metal. When sickness attacked the nearby village of Elder Field in the battle’s wake, and my mother waited on the stricken without stint until she, too, was killed by the fever, Medraut blamed himself for not relieving her. Then Medraut killed our father. Artos asked it of him, rather than lie waiting to die of his battle wounds. Before that final damning act of courage and mercy, Medraut had spent a day and most of a night limping on a broken knee through the frozen, bloody fields around Camlan, searching for Lleu. It was not three months since Lleu had kissed and forgiven him his last winter’s betrayal. Medraut would have given his own life to spare our brother’s. All he found of my twin after Camlan was the golden circlet Lleu had worn.
Then Medraut disappeared. He lost himself in the caves at Elder Field, where we buried my parents and cousins. When I discovered he was gone, I felt my way in panic down the tunnel that led beyond the crypt, beyond the reach of the little light burning at my father’s head, until I was afraid to go any farther. I stood there, calling and calling my elder brother, until I had to shut up because I suddenly so hated the sound of my own voice in that deep, quiet dark.
I and my father’s soldiers searched and waited for Medraut for a month. But then came the rumor that the Saxon lord Cynric had offered a bounty for me, and my father’s treacherous sister Morgause announced she would pay my weight in silver for proof that I was dead. I knew she meant it. I had seen the scars she left on Medraut, and he and I had spent half of the last summer battling to keep her from poisoning Lleu. Now only I stood between my aunt and her lost sovereignty. I panicked like a hunted doe. In fear and grief I turned my back on my own kingdom, with all the forethought and resolution of a gazelle flying before a crouching lioness.
I fled first to Father’s capital in Deva. In the garrison there waited confirmation of Cynric’s bride price; as his messenger he sent me Priamos Anbessa, my father’s African envoy. Priamos, too, had sought for Lleu after Camlan, and had found him torn with spear and ax, and was made prisoner with him. He sat awake with Lleu through the night before Lleu died. Cynric sent Priamos back to me bearing the news of my brother’s death, and the offer of Cynric’s protection and dowry if I agreed to marry one of his grandsons.
Seriously, quietly, my father’s dark ambassador from the Red Sea kingdom of Aksum delivered me his message from the Saxon lord, then offered me the sanctuary of his own empire.
As far back as I can remember there had always been an Aksumite ambassador in my father’s court, an aloof, reserved young man with skin the color of peat and eyes that never met your own. They saw to it that we received ivory and papyrus, salt and spices and emeralds from the lands of the Red Sea, and that my father sent their king tin and silver and wool in fair exchange. I knew I could trust Priamos’s offer. My cousin Constantine had long served in Aksum as our own ambassador there, in Medraut’s place. My father had named Constantine as my future husband, and as his heir after my brothers. If I traveled to Aksum I could call Constantine home myself. I let Priamos lead me.
Three months later I sat in the New Palace in the imperial city of Aksum, at the edge of the big fountain in the Golden Court, seeking sanctuary, and waiting an audience with Constantine.
It was Constantine who was making me wait. I found, on my arrival, that my cousin had somehow so ingratiated himself with the Aksumite emperor that Caleb had abdicated in Constantine’s favor. Constantine was no longer Britain’s ambassador to Aksum; he was now viceroy of Aksum. So although half my father’s soldiers had got in the habit of calling me queen of Britain since the high king’s death, I had to sit in the Golden Court and wait for my cousin to grant me an audience.
The Golden Court echoed with the sound of running water and the chattering of colobus monkeys. The monkeys were a strange and beautiful highland breed, with flowing white tails and long fur that draped about their shoulders in a black-and-white cape. They crouched on the floor and in the potted palm trees, tethered by slender gold chains fixed in the sides of the fountains. The sound of the water was soothing; the chattering of the monkeys was not. They shook their chains and screamed whenever anyone walked through the hall.
“They make me think of that boy we saw in Septem, when you made us change ships a day early,” I said to Priamos, sitting at my right hand. “Do you remember the child servant on the yacht berthed next to ours, that they led on board by his bound wrists?”
“Except these creatures strain against their bonds,” Priamos answered, “and that boy did not.”
“I would.”
Priamos touched the side of my hand, briefly, as he had done at the time. “You would.” His dark, narrow face seemed all sharpness and severity behind his pointed black beard, but I knew that his serious frown hid humor and kindness. He was only a little older than I. “I would, too, Princess.”
“And they make me think of my aunt.” But everything made me think of Morgause. “She kept a menagerie of exotic creatures, all bound and caged.”
At my left, Kidane, the counselor who had once been Medraut’s host, held out his hands in a gesture of peace and welcome. “Be at ease, Princess Goewin,” he said. “A death sentence is a chilling burden, and must be especially so for one who is scarcely past girlhood. How unfortunate that a thing so harmless as a pet monkey should remind you of your flight. Try to be at ease. You are safe, here, for a time.”
All the events of the cold, sad spring just past had led me to this meeting with Constantine, yet the only thing I could think of was my aunt. And what I kept thinking about was not the vicious cruelty she had inflicted on my brothers, nor the harm she wished on me, but with what desperation she battled the men around her who sought to keep her power for their own, who strove to hold her helpless.