I thought I must be hallucinating. I glanced back at Priamos, and then again at the approaching suzerain who must be Abreha. It was no trick of the light. They were form and opposite, reflections of each other. They were made in each other’s image.
It was not his kinship with Abreha that made everyone distrust Priamos so; it was not his tenuous alliance with Abreha after the battle that ended the war in Himyar. It was his face.
Priamos looks like Abreha: he must be like Abreha.
Abreha’s party drew near and came to a halt before us. Abreha dismounted and gave his reins to an attendant. He even moved like Priamos; he walked with the same lanky grace. When he came before Wazeb and slowly lay down on his chest in a profound reverence at the young emperor’s feet, it was with the same sincere courtesy that Priamos affected, when he was being courteous.
“You may kneel,” said Wazeb, and Abreha rose to his knees. Priamos stood tense at Wazeb’s back, glaring as though he disapproved of the whole expedition.
“Gebre Meskal,” said Abreha, “Your Highness, I am your servant. I would like to offer you a formal tribute from the state of Himyar, to be granted annually, in return for recognition of our independence.”
“In what name do you offer this?”
“In my own,” said Abreha, “as najashi, that is the Arabic for negus; as najashi over Himyar, Saba, Hadramawt, and over all their Arabs of the Coastal Plain and the Highlands.”
“I accept your fealty,” said Wazeb, “and will not insist on those lands being named in my title.”
The blade of Medraut’s spear caught a glancing ray of the fading sunlight as he shifted his grip on the shaft. I tore my gaze from Abreha to look at Medraut, and saw that despite his blank expression his face was a river of tears.
There was no adder, as there had been at Camlan. The kings would treat in fair exchange, the warriors could hang up their shields. There would be no battle.
“I have already sent a shipment of myrrh to Adulis in anticipation of this agreement,” said Abreha. “We have had an abundant year.”
“Your harvests are ever abundant,” said Wazeb. “What is it the Romans say? Ras Priamos, remind me of the old Roman name for the Himyar.”
“Arabia Felix,” Priamos answered faintly. “Arabia in fertility, O prosperous Arabia.”
“O fortunate Arabia,” said Abreha.
“Princess Goewin,” Abreha said to me in Latin, “I would like a British representative in Sana, our capital.”
I sat alone in the evening, close to the camp fires; Turunesh was singing good night to Telemakos. Abreha knelt before me and kissed my hand.
“May I sit with you?” he said, and I moved aside to make room for him on the carpet. He sat down, cross-legged. A young servant handed goblets to each of us and poured honey wine from an earthen flask.
“Wait,” Abreha said, and put out a hand to stop me drinking. He sipped his wine before I did, in formal courtesy, as though he were tasting it for poison. He let the warning hand fall then, and raised his cup to me.
“Your health and good fortune.”
He tilted his head to avoid meeting my eyes, as Priamos did, as though they were identical clay mannequins cast from a single mold, one a bit more worn than the other.
“I am agog to hear of the war in Himyar from the man who ended it,” I said. “All who marched with Priamos speak reverently of your mercy.”
“I do not think of myself as merciful,” Abreha said. “I have fought too many battles and killed too many men, and will again if driven to it.”
Even their voices were alike.
Abreha turned and handed his drink to the cup bearer, and placed his hands on his knees. He sat there, still and at ease, and I could almost believe it was Priamos waiting for me to speak.
“I do not understand,” I said slowly, “why Caleb did not inspire the same loyalty in you as he did in Priamos. He trained you as his translator, did he not? What difference was there in his treatment of you?”
“My loyalty lies with Himyar,” Abreha said, “not with any man.”
“I understand that. But how did your loyalty change?”
“I cannot speak for Priamos,” Abreha answered quietly. “I became the man I am because I saw what Caleb did to Mikael, my father’s eldest son.”
His voice fell so low that I could barely hear him.
“Mikael was younger than Gebre Meskal is now when the command came for him to be put in chains like a bond servant at auction. I was no bigger than that bright fox kit of your brother’s get. I could remember no life before being sequestered; my brother Mikael was mother and father to me. After a week in irons Mikael had dislocated both his wrists, struggling to break free of the fetters. But even while they tried to mend him they kept him bound above the elbows.”
I had seen those crippled, twisted hands.
“Why was it done?” I whispered.
“He had tried to escape Debra Damo. He was Candake’s eldest son, rival to Caleb’s sons by lineage. No other reason that I know.”
Abreha coughed, and turned his face away. “Pah, I cannot speak of Mikael. It makes me sick to think of him.”
He stared at the flames.
“Mother of God, how I have hated being made to war against my brothers! The day our father died, Caleb began pulling his nephews out of imprisonment and training them to send against me. Hector was murdered before I ever met him. His mutinous officers imagined I would thank them for it.”
Abreha reached for his cup again.
“The men that slew Hector I sent back to Aksum. Caleb may have punished them himself. I would not accept their fealty, though they pledged to serve me.”
I did not mean to judge him. But I heard myself ask coldly, “How did you bring yourself to put Priamos in chains when you took him in battle?”
Abreha swirled his wine in its cup, gazing down into its depths, and for some while did not answer. Then he said seriously, “Let me tell you, Princess, what I saw when my young brother was brought before me, stripped and bruised and bound, after a pointless slaughter of young life that he had initiated in Caleb’s name.”
Abreha looked up, but his gaze was still directed at the fire and not at me.
“I saw myself.”
I murmured, “You are very like.”
“I did not know who he was, Princess. My first thought was that it must be some kind of sorcery. You cannot imagine. He had not slept for two days; he had just learned how his dearest companion had been betrayed and murdered; he had himself been clubbed senseless with a blunt spear at the end of his battle. And there are fifteen years between us, but when he was dragged before me it was as though I were a boy again and staring at myself in a glass. My officers had prepared him for this meeting, and he obeyed when they made him lie prostrate at my feet: naked, my arms chained behind my back—”