It was the imperial head cloth of the negusa nagast, Caleb’s own. Medraut laid open its folds, spread the cloth between his hands, and held it up to me.
“So simple as that?” I whispered.
He shook his head, once, and held up a finger. Wait. He unwound the shawl from about my hair and unpinned my plaits so that they hung down my back, out of his way. Then he banded the golden cloth across my forehead, and tied it behind my head. When he had finished Medraut reached again into his leather bag, and this time brought out the simple circlet of gold that had been Lleu’s crown.
“Ai, my brother,” I whispered.
For a long moment Medraut bent over the slender gold band balanced gently between his hands, his shoulders hunched together tightly, as though he were being whipped.
“Oh, Medraut,” I said softly, “is there no way to heal you of Camlan?”
He shook his head. Then he raised the circlet to his lips and kissed it. He had failed his brother and killed his father, and there was nothing left in him for anyone else.
He looked up. He crowned me with my brother’s crown and beckoned me.
“What are you doing?”
He beckoned me again, patiently. I followed him out of the hut and along the rocky path to the foot of the amba.
“I am not allowed up—” I began.
Medraut touched the circle of gold over my brow, and the head cloth beneath it. He touched my lips gently to stop me talking.
The emperor’s head cloth would allow me passage.
CHAPTER XI
Debra Damo
“FIX YOUR GAZE ON the portal above,” the sentries advised me at the bottom of the cliff, as Medraut adjusted the leather sling around my waist.
Two dark faces waited for me at the portal, one aged and lined, one young and smooth. The men helped me onto the ledge that served as their gatehouse. I stood breathless with the view and the climb, as Telemakos must have done earlier, while I waited for Medraut to follow me.
Beyond the portal was a narrow passage of rough-cut slopes and stairs between steep walls of rock. At the summit of the tortuous climb the plateau opened to a world of its own, a city in the clouds, floating serene above the valley floor. Stone houses were scattered across the wide tableland, built in imitation of the great houses of the capital, with flat roofs and high walls enclosing them. The church there also was built of geometric blocks and tiers, and I recognized it from the Red Sea Itinerary.
We passed a small reservoir cut into the stone of the mountaintop, its edges green with moss. Higher up I could see the rim of another.
Here: ten years ago. Priamos and Hector were chained back to back in one of these, for giving a spear to their mad brother, Mikael. Mikael was still here, somewhere.
I walked resolutely at Medraut’s side, holding my crowned head as fixedly as a face on a coin.
Medraut took me to a thatched shelter in a sunny garden, where men worked and weeded companionably. There was a strong scent of herbs and goat hanging in the thin air. By and by one of the novices brought us some of the fried cakes of which Candake was so fond, and honey with them, and honey wine.
The sun was setting when Ella Asbeha joined us.
The emperor Caleb was a small, neat man, older than my father. His hair, like his sister’s, had gone white, and his beard was cropped close around his dark, lined face. He was dressed in the simple shamma of undecorated woven cloth that all the novices wore. And yet he was Aksum in all her many climates, from her salt basins to her clear and verdant highlands to her ice-capped peaks; grudging and forgiving, generous and unyielding, constant and unpredictable, all at once.
I thought, in that instant, that I was boldly presumptuous in pretending myself a queen only to trick an audience out of this imperial and holy man. God help me, what was I thinking in coming here, how would I ever come away from this beautiful and terrible place alive, with my soul and my mind and my freedom intact? I was ashamed to be sitting before Caleb wearing his borrowed head cloth, or even my brother’s crown. I lay with my face in my arms.
Caleb said to me, in my mother’s native dialect: “Britannia, there is no need for that. Not from you; and not here.”
I rose to my knees but could not make myself stand. I was a supplicant; it seemed appropriate.
“Are all you children of Artos so full of humility?” Caleb said, again in my mother’s tongue, and there was humor in his voice.
“Why did you send my father your lions?” I asked absurdly, like a sphinx posing a riddle.
Oh, he laughed and laughed, and even Medraut turned his face aside.
“Did you come from Britain to ask me this?”
I thought of Priamos’s introduction to his uncle: Solomon walks among us in your wisdom. “Please excuse me,” I muttered, trying to pull my thoughts together, still on my knees.
“I sent Artos my lions to seal our coalition,” Caleb said gently. “I was not going to leave them for the viceroy Ella Amida; he has no right to them. And Wazeb will have to find his own.”
Then Caleb addressed Medraut in Ethiopic. “Ras Meder, will you stay with us while Britannia tells her story?”
It was dusk now, and two of the novices came by with torches that they fixed in the ground just outside the tent. An evening wind stirred across the amba, bringing with it the sound of a single voice chanting from some unseen place on the plateau. The full moon came blazing forth as I spoke, so bright you could see colors in the dark. The torches were eclipsed.
Caleb said, when I had told him all, “So in effect you would agree to marry Constantine, if he allowed you to choose Britain’s king yourself? Whom then would you choose, Britannia?”
His manner of addressing me was unnerving, but made clear the serious formality of his questions. I glanced at my brother and held open a hand toward him. “My father’s eldest son still lives,” I said.
“He no longer speaks, though,” Caleb pointed out, and asked suddenly, “Whom would you choose, Ras Meder?”
Medraut pointed to me, and Caleb chuckled.
Then the emperor motioned one of the attendants to his side and whispered to him. The boy went running off into the molten dark.
Caleb turned back to me. “Wait a moment for the child to return,” he said, “and I will show you something.”
We waited. The distant clear voice continued to sing.
And then the messenger came back. His hands seemed empty, but Caleb picked something small from his open palm.