Priamos burst into his rare, sweet and merry laughter, like a child. “What a gifted grandson you have!” he exclaimed. “The young charmer! He’s quoting his namesake, Odysseus’s son Telemakos. Greeting you with winged words, Princess! Those are Telemakos’s first words to the goddess Athena.”
“I know.” I spoke softly.
“I meant it, though,” Telemakos said, unabashed. “Will you stay in my grandfather’s house in Aksum, Princess Goewin, and become my mother’s friend, as your brother did?”
Kidane had already made me this offer, but coming from Telemakos it suddenly made my throat close up and my eyes swim. I had come four thousand miles, in fear of my life, hoping to find sanctuary among strangers; and instead here I was offered a home by my brother’s son, as he sat at my feet clasping my hand in his, greeting me as a goddess.
“Thank you,” I answered. “Yes, I would delight to stay in your house.”
“That is all right, isn’t it, Grandfather?”
“For the moment,” Kidane told him. “The princess may decide to stay in the palace, after she meets the viceroy. She is to be married to Constantine.”
“Today?”
Kidane laughed. “Not today. Next year, when they return to Britain. The monsoon is beginning; they cannot travel until winter is over, and even then they may postpone their journey until the Red Sea winds blow in their favor. Now go away, if you are going to ask impertinent questions.”
“I will be polite. Let me get my animals, and I will come and wait with you.” Telemakos scrambled to his feet again.
“My Noah’s Flood animals,” he explained over his shoulder, in case any of us thought he might mean the colobus monkeys he had been illegally feeding.
Kidane settled by me, lowering himself onto the wide stone lip of the fountain as though his grandson’s high spirits weighed too heavily on his shoulders for his body to endure. He laid the date branch at his side and smoothed flat the embroidered edges of his white robe. I asked quickly, under my breath, “Did Medraut know about Telemakos?”
“He did not. He left us many months before the child was born.”
Telemakos returned with a canvas satchel slung over his shoulder. He knelt before me again and began to take a series of lovely wooden figurines from his bag; these he ranged across the floor at my feet.
Priamos said, “Look at those animals!”
Telemakos glanced up and gave a respectful nod. “Pass them up here,” Priamos directed. “The princess has never seen creatures like these. You will have to teach her their names, so we can take her hunting when the rains end.”
“I don’t know the Latin,” Telemakos said.
“Latin’s no use to anyone,” said Priamos. He had been trained as an interpreter. He was not boastful, but he was given to flaunting his gift for languages. He had spent the long hours aboard ship telling me stories in his native Ethiopic and in Greek, the common language of the Red Sea, that I might learn a little of his speech before arriving in his homeland. “Use Greek or Ethiopic.”
Telemakos pressed the wooden animals into my hands: rhinoceros, leopard, ostrich, ibex.
“Do you like hunting, Princess Goewin?” Telemakos asked. “My mother rides in the hunt, but she does not shoot.”
“I like hunting,” I said.
“Do you shoot?”
“Yes.”
“I am a terrible shot. I’m a good tracker, though.”
Kidane laughed at him again. “You’d be lucky, boy. The gazelle of the Great Valley are a deal faster than those fat and lazy things the emperor keeps as pets. We’ll take you along some day and see how close you get.”
Telemakos lowered his gaze without argument, and I could see that he did as much stalking outside the palace walls as he did within them, only no one was supposed to know that. I thought to myself: His grandfather has no idea what this child’s limits are.
Baboon, buffalo, elephant, oryx. Telemakos continued to hand me his procession of wooden animals. Priamos, relenting, did try to remember the Latin names for them, but even he did not know them all: zebra, giraffe.
“These are my favorite,” Telemakos said: a lion and lioness.
“Leo,” I said. “Llew, in my mother’s native dialect.”
Telemakos placed the lion on my open palm.
“That’s why Father called my brother Lleu the young lion, sometimes,” I said softly, “though his name really means the Bright One. Llew: leo: anbessa.”
I held the wooden lion before me in my cupped hand. Its painted mane was black; its carved jaw was caught midsnarl, showing white teeth.
“Caleb had to wrestle a lion to prove he was strong enough to be emperor,” Telemakos said.
“He had to catch it,” Kidane corrected.
“His lions were tame. They ate from his hands.”
“They were not tame,” Priamos said quietly. “They were chained.”
Telemakos took back his lion and put it on the floor in file beside its mate at the head of his pageant. He bent his head over the animals.
“They were tame,” he insisted.
His clear voice softened with something like adoration. “Caleb let me touch them, before you took them to Britain. He let me stroke their manes, after I was presented to him last new year. Are they still in Britain?”
“They were destroyed when my father’s estate was burned,” I said. “I’m sorry, my love. There was a battle, and my parents and brothers were killed. That is why I came here.”
“Oh.” Telemakos tapped his wooden lions with the palm of his hand, then closed the hand into a fist and laid it in his lap. He asked slowly, “Are all the high king’s children killed, then?”
“All but I,” I answered.
Telemakos held still, bent over his lions. If it dawned on him that I had just told him his father was dead, he did not draw attention to it. “You were lucky to get away,” he said at last.
“I must go back,” I told him.
CHAPTER II
Ella Amida
“PRINCESS GOEWIN. THE VICEROY sends to tell you he is at your service.”
The courtier who knelt before me was no older than I. He was dressed like Kidane, with a shamma overmantle and head cloth of closely woven linen, except that this young man’s head cloth was banded with ribbons of silver mesh.