There was a border of tall flowers along one edge of the pool; their leaves were nearly black in the darkness, and all was black beneath their leaves. I sat with my head bent, as though lost in thought, and let my eyes adjust to the dark.
Turunesh lifted the roasting pan from the burner and set the water in the fat pot to boil. The flames soared, crackling around the bottom of the jug. Their sudden flaring lit a shape beneath the leaves with a faint edge of silver, and for one second I could see that Telemakos lay there as stone himself, his chin resting on his hands and his eyes closed. I only saw him for a second. He seemed at ease lying in the soil beneath the tall flowers, and he might have been asleep; but something in the alert angle of his still head told me that he was wide awake, and listening, listening.
For a few moments I did not move my head either, so that I should not let him know I had discovered him. I had seen Telemakos take enough mild blows and rebukes in one day that I had no heart to call him out. He could listen if he liked.
“What is that smell?” I murmured.
“The coffee?”
“More like perfume. Familiar …”
“Frankincense, perhaps? There is a plantation on the hillside above this suburb. Our priests burn it as incense; your own may do the same.”
“Yes, so they do. I recognize it now.”
I sat sorting out the strange smells and sounds. The light, even breathing went on steadily behind me, scarcely perceptible. But I did not notice when it stopped. Telemakos was not there when we went to bed: I never heard him coming or going. He moved with the sure and absolute silence of a leopard stalking its prey.
In the cathedral the next morning the frankincense was overpowering. Clouds of it rose from the censers swung by the priests in their red-bordered robes; the gilt wings of the angels painted on the ceiling seemed to float in haze. Constantine stood at my side as we listened to the morning service.
The chanting, the drumbeat and rattle of sistrums, was strange to my ears. I stood looking up at the mild, wide-eyed, host that flew across the vaulted ceiling on gold wings. As the service ended and the assembly began to process out, Constantine whispered in Latin, close to my ear, “Marry me now.”
I had to bite the knuckle of my index finger, hard, to keep from bursting into laughter. It did not seem to merit an answer, there and then.
“Marry me here, in this church, before the rains end.”
No. I shaped the word soundlessly with my lips.
Constantine tilted his head, pretentious in his Aksumite beard and head cloth. “What did you say?” he whispered.
“No!” I said aloud. All the people around gave me oblique glances and quickly looked away again. I took a deep breath of the cloying incense. We followed the priests out into the misty highland morning.
In the time it took us to cross the cathedral square, Constantine and I had collected a following of what seemed like dozens of beggars: an eyeless, limbless group of mutilated men, some young, some older. They called to me in Greek and Ethiopic.
“Sister! Sister! Foreign lady, sister!”
They reached beseeching hands but did not try to touch me, not daring to come into range of the ceremonial spear bearers.
I turned frowning to Constantine and asked, “Why are the beggars all so badly maimed?”
“They are veterans of the Himyar,” he answered briefly. “I have tried to find employment and hospice for them, but there are too many. Ras Priamos’s legacy to Aksum.”
“The emperor Caleb’s legacy, surely,” I corrected.
“Of course, you’re right. Himyar embitters me. Caleb depleted his nation’s treasury and youth in conflict there, and I am left to sweep up the debris.”
I wondered what he had done. He had not held this office for more than a half year, after all. Anything he did for Aksum he might also do for Britain.
“Tell me,” I said, testing him.
“I’ve converted the old palace to an asylum for returning soldiers. I donated a boatload of my father’s tin to pay for it.”
“That is very generous of your father,” I said.
He did not answer that. We walked the rest of the way to the New Palace without a word.
We broke our fast together in a small room that was bright with bowls of flowers. I thought of Constantine’s proposal, and it made me want to laugh again. I bit my lip, embarrassed. He was trying to be courteous.
“What have you done for Aksum that you are proudest of?” I asked, trying hard myself.
“I have stopped the Beja tribes skirmishing over where their emeralds are sold, and curbed the banditry along the Salt Road,” he answered. “But I am most proud of this.”
He undid a purse by his side and passed to me a small and shining coin. It was curiously beautiful, copper daubed with gold, a broad cross imprinted with a sunburst at its heart.
“That is the new issue in bronze. I used my own tin in the minting of them. I have not enjoyed my tenure here,” Constantine confessed. “But I serve as I am able. I think I have done some little good as Ella Amida.”
“Why do you call yourself Ella Amida?”
“It was the title of the reigning negus when Constantine the Great was emperor of Rome, two hundred years ago, when Rome and Aksum became Christian.”
Constantine leaned across the table toward me. “Goewin, I meant what I said this morning. I think we should get married now. It would simplify a great deal, and it would set me free of the Aksumite regency.”
“I am not handing over my father’s kingdom so easily,” I answered.
Constantine paused. Then he took my hand and held it clasped lightly between us on the table, as he continued his gentle, obstinate persuasion. “Goewin, I shall not force you. And I don’t want to coerce you. But you have nothing without me. You have no following, no army, no great income—”
“Telemakos,” I interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“I have Telemakos,” I said. My voice sounded cold and calm in my own ears.
For several long moments he did not speak.
“What can you mean?” he said at last.
With my hand still clasped beneath Constantine’s, I let these words spill steady and quiet from some dark place in my heart:
“I have Telemakos. My father would not let the kingship pass to Medraut, not because he was illegitimate, but because he was the child of incest. Telemakos is removed from that. He is the son of the high king’s eldest son. Who would deny that he has a greater claim to the British throne than you, or even I?”