A Coalition of Lions Read online

“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?”

  Constantine said in astonishment, “Telemakos is Aksumite!”

  I leaned toward him so that we stared across the table into each other’s eyes. I held his gaze. “You are British,” I said, “and no one questions your place on the Aksumite throne. What makes you think anyone will question Telemakos in Britain? He is the high king’s grandson. I am his daughter. Who are you?”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  “You may take it as one,” I said.

  Constantine stood up and paced to the window. There was a bowl of small white highland roses sitting on the sill. He stood there a long time, still, looking down at the roses.

  He said at last, “Have you a plan that goes with your posturing threat?”

  “You let me choose Britain’s king myself, regardless of our marriage,” I answered straightaway. “Or I take Telemakos to Britain as high king in waiting, and sever our alliance with Aksum’s viceroy.”

  “You can’t do that,” Constantine snapped. “My wealth comes through my father, and I do not need the high king’s benediction to gift Aksum with it.”

  “What you do as a private citizen is your own concern. You will have no military support from your king, no treaty, no royal sanction, no ambassador.”

  “You fled Britain because Morgause wanted you dead. What will stop her from killing both you and your child minion?”

  I answered through clenched teeth.

  “He’s her grandson.”

  Constantine suddenly picked up the roses and dropped the bowl out the window. I heard the crack of ceramic on the ground outside.

  “Excuse me,” Constantine said. “I have much to attend to this morning.”

  “I, too,” I said. “I want to speak with my ambassador. Where can I find Priamos?”

  “He is in council with the bala heg. They will be in session until dark, and again tomorrow. Come back in two days, if you want to see him.” He paced to the door. “You will not mind if I leave you here to finish on your own.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Accounting

  COME BACK IN TWO days. Tell me another, I thought in fury, sitting alone over the remains of the breakfast. I pushed back my chair and stood up. The young man who had been waiting on us came forward politely. “May I guide you somewhere?”

  I thought hard, then said in precise and careful Ethiopic, “I need to find the emperor’s linguist.”

  Halen, the afa negus or “mouth of the king,” held the position that Priamos had been trained to fill. He had been Priamos’s tutor once. I had to wait for him, of course, as I had to wait for everyone, but after an hour or so he came to meet me in the Golden Court.

  “How can I help you, Princess?” Halen asked in polite Latin. “Have you need of an interpreter? I cannot leave this palace, but I can make you a recommendation.”

  “I want your recommendation,” I answered, “but not in the way you mean. Listen. You are not forbidden to talk to Priamos, are you? When will you see him next?”

  “He did invite me to lunch with him in his room,” Halen answered mildly.

  “May I join you?”

  “He was so evil-tempered a companion yestereve that I would not advise it,” Halen said wryly, and I suddenly liked him.

  “So am I, of late. No one will notice.”

  “Then meet me here again this noon, Princess.”

  Halen escorted me at midday to Priamos’s chamber.

  The room was small, but comfortably and even luxuriously furnished, high up and with a breathtaking view of the city and the distant Simien Mountains. Neither door nor window was barred, but there were guards posted outside. Halen and I stood waiting while one of these went in to announce us. As the soldier entered the room I saw that Priamos was deeply asleep, lying fully clothed, with his forearm flung across his
eyes to block out the light.

  “Wait—” I began, but too late, for the guard had already awakened him, and impassively moved to take up his station again.

  Halen stood back, and Priamos greeted me alone.

  “Peace to you, Princess,” he said, and rose to his feet. “Come in.”

  I took his hands and answered, “You’ve been lost.”

  We stood and stood, both of us staring down at our clasped hands. The sun-browned skin of my own seemed fair and pale with Priamos’s earth-dark fingers closed around them. His bony wrists were crossed with little scars that I had never noticed before, smooth and faintly shining, like the marks of burns or abrasions.

  “Halen,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder.

  Priamos looked up. His tutor stood in the doorway. Priamos turned away from me and gestured to a chair.

  “Come in, sir.”

  “I’ll go now, Priamos,” Halen said, speaking in Latin still. “Be good to the princess.”

  He turned away and left. The guards stood impassively, unblinking.

  “Please, sit. Eat, if you like.”

  On the low table by the couch a tray of food had been set, still covered with a cotton cloth but no longer steaming. Beside it was a basket of fresh fruit. None of it had been touched.

  “But it’s yours,” I said.

  “I will not eat,” Priamos said. “I only have an hour.”

  He had been asleep. What meeting could be so important or exhausting that he set aside food for an hour’s sleep?

  “What have they been doing with you?” I could not keep the anger from my voice.

  “I have been standing in interview since dawn this morning, and from noon to dusk yesterday as well. It leaves me with no appetite.”

  “What interview?”

  “Please do sit,” he said dispiritedly, with a glance at the open door where the guards waited. He was furnished with every comfort but had no privacy, and he did not want anyone to think he was being discourteous to his foreign and royal guest.

  So I sat, while Priamos remained on his feet as though he were my butler.

  “Constantine told me you are in council with the bala heg.”

  “Yes. We are discussing the resolution of my appointment in Britain.”

  “For two solid days?”

  “I left so much undone,” Priamos said, and moved to gaze out the high window. “I am not able to account for anything that was entrusted to me.”

  “You have accounted for me,” I said, but stopped. I had seen with what gratitude Constantine had welcomed him. “What have you left undone?” I asked instead.

  Priamos spoke as though reciting, still gazing out the window.

  “There was a shipment of your tin from Dumnonia, that I was to deliver here. There was the shipment that was lost last year, for which I was to arrange repayment or replacement. There was your father’s man who had resigned his post as envoy to Justinian, the Roman emperor, and Caleb bid me urge Artos to appoint someone to fill his place, as your Roman envoy is our nearest link to Britain. I had brought with me to Britain an ark filled with coins in silver and bronze, which Artos wanted to circulate, a trove worth as much as another boatload of tin, and I have no idea what happened to it…”

  He stopped to draw breath.

  “Nothing has happened to it,” I said. “After Camlan it was moved into the copper mines for safekeeping, with all the other treasury. Do you remember Caius, my father’s steward? He has charge of it.”

  Priamos turned to me. “Thank you, Princess,” he said. “That will be a help this afternoon.”

  “Must they see you this afternoon yet? What more can there be?”

  “It has surprised me how much there is. All little things I have forgotten, what has happened to the presents I brought with me for Artos, what could Artos suggest that Caleb give you as a wedding gift. Caleb’s miserable lions, I am accountable for them. Horses, Artos was to send some of his horses here, and samples of their shoes, and the queen of queens had asked for more of that liqueur you make of those little sour plums…”

  “Sloes.”

  “Yes. And this afternoon I am to report to Ella Amida the present state of Britain.”

  “Ella Amida. You mean Constantine…” I spoke slowly. “Has he been questioning you all this time?”

  “Oh, indeed not. He steps in and out. He is very busy. He has set aside much to spare this afternoon for me…” Priamos drew another long breath. “Nothing has been raised that I could not have foreseen if I had thought about it—”

  (If he had thought about anything during our voyage other than satisfying my demands to learn Ethiopic, or ensuring I was not ambushed by Saxon spies.)

  “Yet I fear it will not end till Constantine has seen me stripped and flogged in the Cathedral Square.”

  “I do not understand why he should so distrust you.”

  “Because I am so like Abreha. We were both trained as translators, favored by Caleb. And because Abreha himself killed Caleb’s eldest son, Aryat. Do you see? Everyone fears that Abreha’s brother will betray Aryat’s brother in the same way, that I will bring harm to Wazeb. Constantine is not alone in his distrust. It is not the first time I have been taxed with my failure in Himyar.”

  Priamos sighed. “Yet so much of this present trial seems so trivial. I have offered my own lands and estate in payment for the lost imports. But I cannot believe that my life and career are to end in ignominy because I—” He choked, breathless. “Because I failed to send half a dozen jars of wine to my gluttonous mother!”

  We both laughed wildly.

  “Do sit down,” I said, biting my lip at my own lunatic behavior.

  Priamos sat on the floor at my feet, finally, with his long legs drawn up against his chest and his arms clasped around his knees. He sighed again, and we sat still and silent for a few moments, apart, but drawing strength and solace from our shared laughter.

  “My mother wants to meet you,” Priamos said at last. “I took coffee with her last night. I think you will like Candake the queen of queens, if she does not scare you to death first. You might visit with her this afternoon, while I am in tribunal.”

  “I will not. I shall be there with you.”

  He began to protest, sober now.

  “I will not be ruled by you, or anyone,” I said. “I have more sway over Constantine than he cares to admit, and I will not hear of the state of Britain being discussed behind my back.”

  “What have you over Constantine?”

  I hesitated, then answered softly, “One who might be called prince of Britain.”

  It felt strange to speak these words and mean what I meant by them.

  Priamos shook his head without understanding. “The prince of Britain died at Camlan.”

  “I don’t mean Lleu,” I said. “I mean Telemakos Meder. He is the high king’s grandson.”

  “Oh.”

  Priamos shook his head again.

  He said slowly, “The boy has his own title; did you know? He is formally Lij Telemakos, which is something equivalent to young prince, a child of noble birth. He is heir to the house of Nebir. No one ever uses his title, though.”

  Then he added, “You are playing a dangerous game.”

  “I know it,” I said. “But I have no other strength. Oh! Would I were a man!”

  Priamos rubbed one hand savagely down his face from temple to jaw and across his mouth, as though he were trying to wipe his face off. “Would I were a different man,” he said passionately.

  It is not easy getting yourself into the innermost council chamber of the New Palace uninvited, but certain outrageous or persuasive people have succeeded in it once or twice. I managed at last, making the most of my title and my position as Kidane’s guest and Constantine’s promised bride. They were well under way when I came in, and there was a flurry of confusion while they set an extra chair for me at the side of Constantine’s throne. Constantine glared at me murderously throughout this disturbanc
e. The crown prince Wazeb was there as well, sitting straight and silent, as though it were a great show performed for his entertainment.

  The questions of the bala heg were fair. A few of the council must have had some sympathy for Priamos; I am sure that his brother Ityopis did, and Kidane. But it was an interrogation that fell just short of torture, and even so I think they dealt with Priamos more kindly while I was there. He stood for hours, with the patience of a lifetime’s training, before the knot of seated nobles. Not one of them remained in the room for the length of the session; they came and went as they grew weary, or had other appointments to keep. They had drink and sweets brought to them as they listened. Priamos alone remained on his feet without respite, like a prisoner.

  My presence must have made the court even more tedious: for now everything had to be asked twice, first by a councilor in Ethiopic, and then again in Latin, for my benefit, by Halen. In an exquisite additional humiliation, Priamos was expected to translate his own answers. I hated that my very ignorance made this trial more difficult for Priamos, so that in everything he said he should be doubly checked by Constantine and by the translator, the afa negus. But I could not have followed it without Halen’s assistance, particularly when they spoke of numbers: how many men were left in Cynric’s force after the battle of Camlan, what the number of cattle and the weight in gold that Cynric had offered for my bride price. I sat absorbed in concentration, working at understanding the questions on my own, leaning forward as though it would make their words clearer if I were closer to the speakers.

  Priamos had surrendered himself voluntarily to Cynric, a thing which was found to be deeply improbable, and not just by Constantine.

  “I should think,” said Danael, the one of the bala heg who seemed to be the assembly’s leader, “that after being sent home in disgraced bondage from the Himyar, you would not be anxious to become captive again; and yet you submit yourself, untaken, to the warlord who came against the king you were sent to serve.”

  Ityopis, who stayed in session longer than any of the rest, put in, “He was not sent from Himyar in disgrace. He was sent free, with Abreha’s pardon.”

  “He was sent free by Cynric, as well, and I will know why there was so much goodwill all around, in the wake of a battle that resulted in the death of Britain’s high king.”