He quickly grew bored with this circuit and began to make his way slowly through the house. His father was still so paranoid about the infection recurring that he posted guards at the outside doors to stop Telemakos from venturing into the garden; he could not be trusted to keep out of the fishpond or the stables.
One afternoon when Goewin was away, Athena cried to herself for so long that Telemakos thought there must be no one else alive in the entire city.
Oh, this awful house, he thought.
Eventually he could no longer stand to listen to it. He got up and put his head through to his mother’s bedroom: she was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with her head wrapped up in a shawl as though she were trying to suffocate herself. Telemakos assumed she was merely trying to stop her ears.
Why don’t they get a nurse? Telemakos wondered. Grandfather makes all these empty threats about sending the baby away when he wants to scare my mother, but if no one wants to take care of Athena, why don’t we just hire a nurse for her? We could afford a nurse, even if the plague quarantine has made Grandfather so parsimonious he won’t buy new lamps when we break them. We could afford a dozen nurses. I had a nurse. I had a nurse for so long I was old enough to cut my name into a piece of cedar wood for her to remember me by when she left. I did it in Greek; it was when I started learning to read The Odyssey. I must have been at least seven years old.
It occurred to Telemakos that his parents had not paid much more attention to him as an infant than they did to his sister. His father had not even known of his existence for the first six years of Telemakos’s life; his mother had continued her noblewoman’s audiences and parties and the work she did for her father, with little change in her routine after Telemakos was born. It had been made clear to him on several occasions—though not by his mother, to be fair—that he was lucky not to have been sequestered on a clifftop or in a hermitage, as often happened to unwanted royal children.
But my mother wanted me, Telemakos thought. I reminded her of my father. That’s why she kept me. And Athena only reminds them of my accident.
He followed the sound of the baby’s frustrated, abandoned screams. The nursery was next to his mother’s room, and Athena lay shrieking and sobbing in a large palm basket raised to the level of the window. Evidence of Goewin’s presence was all about the room. She had hung copper chimes in this window, also; they clinked and tinkled in the summer wind from the Simien Mountains. Big, brightly colored beads were strung across the cradle.
Telemakos leaned over so that his face was close to the baby’s and said softly, “Hello, little sister.”
Instantly she stopped crying. He put out a finger, and she held tightly to it, all of her tiny fingers wound firmly around one of his. She was able to cry tears now, and her deep gray eyes were wet, but so bright they seemed to sparkle. Telemakos stared into them and found himself incurably in love.
“Come here, hoot owl,” he whispered. “Oh, you stink. Small wonder you’re howling.”
He scooped her up without thinking about it. He slipped his sound right arm beneath her from the bottom up, cupping her head in his hand, and swooped her over his left shoulder so that his arm was crossed over his chest. She let out a whooping hiccup of a gasp as she landed. She was tight and secure against him that way, but he was not prepared for the pressure her head put on his newly healed wounds.
“Aiee.”
He gasped and sat down hard on the floor, but held her tight.
“Oh, you’re hurting me, you little slug—” He bit his lip. It was his own fault. “All right. We’ll move you. Come on—” He wanted to move her carefully, but he was so clumsy. He had to gather all his strength and then sling her from one side of him to the other. Again she let out a shrieking hiccup. She was less secure held this way, but he did not have the strength to hold her otherwise.
Her small body was still now, as if to be held against him—or anyone—was the only thing she ever wanted. After a minute or so he collected himself and struggled to his feet. He could not lever or pull himself up as long as he was clinging to the baby. He fought against his own slight body, pulled down by Athena’s added weight, and found his sense of balance all skewed as well. He made it to one knee, fell back, climbed up again, and finally staggered upright. Athena gasped and choked with her crazy little hiccups.
She was laughing.
Every giddy dive and swoop made her yelp with rudimentary laughter. Telemakos leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, triumphant and exhausted, clutching the baby against his chest. By the time he had stopped gasping for breath, his arm was aching with strain.
“I’m going to have to put you down,” he told his sister. He glanced quickly around the room. Everything in the nursery was alien to him. “I’m going to have to put you back in your bed. You’re still a stinker, but I’ll clean you up, all right? It will probably take me the rest of the afternoon.”
He did not know where any of her things were or what you did with them or how they worked. Athena began to whimper the second Telemakos let go of her; she was hysterical with fury long before he had even managed to get her dirty napkin off. She pulled her little legs up into her stomach and balled her brown, dimpled hands into tiny fists, screaming in great, long, choking waves. Telemakos fought her doggedly, absolutely as stubborn as she was.
“Do you be quiet!” he yelled at her at last. “I cannot help you any faster than this. I have only got one arm!”
“Telemakos.”
He fastened the last fold he had made, tightening the knotted cloth with his teeth. It was crude, and probably uncomfortable, but the baby was clean. Telemakos straightened and glanced over his shoulder. Goewin stood in the doorway.
“Let me help,” she offered quietly.
“Too late!”
He was slick with sweat, though he had long since pulled off his shamma and now wore only a kilt. He said proudly, “I’m finished.”
He sat down on the floor again, thoroughly spent. Goewin lifted the sobbing baby up over her own shoulder and asked, “Where in blazes is your mother?”
“Asleep.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The two of you would wake the dead.”
“She takes my opium.”
Goewin gazed down at Telemakos, who sat panting at her feet, sweating beneath his bandages. He looked away from the calculating assessment in his aunt’s dark eyes. He was too dark skinned to blanch with pain or effort, but he knew he must be gray around the mouth and that Goewin would not miss the tightness in his jaw or the slight trembling that ran all through his body.
“God blind me, Telemakos, you are the image of your father sometimes,” Goewin muttered under her breath. “Look, boy, I haven’t the strength to carry you and the baby at once. Can you get back to bed yourself?”
“In a minute.”
“I’ll tell Ferem to come and bathe you.”
She stood gazing down at him while he caught his breath. Athena still let out a racking sob every few seconds, but it was not real crying: she, too, was catching her breath. Goewin watched Telemakos with sharp eyes as he dragged himself slowly to his feet again.
“About that opium,” she said.
“She takes it because I never use it.”
“Idiot.”
“Me or her?”
“Both of you.” Goewin herded Telemakos down the hall before her. He sat down on his own bed and thought, I will be asleep before Ferem gets here.
“Don’t try to clean the baby again,” Goewin said to him. “Anyone of the household will do that, if you ask. They can’t hear her from the kitchens or the stables. It’s not a bad thing for you to help with her, but it will be a pyrrhic victory if you poison yourself in doing it. You will die, Telemakos, you will die, if you infect yourself again. There isn’t any more of you to cut away.”
She turned her back and went to find the butler.
A day later Telemakos was in Athena’s room again, swooping her up over his shoulder once more. He took her
back to bed with him, propped her against his hip, and shored her there with cushions so that she could see the sunbird at the window. Athena’s small, uncoordinated hands moved slowly, grasping for the far, bright feathers and the bright water; then her hands distracted her and she stared at them as if there could be nothing more fascinating. She tried to put them in her mouth and missed.
Telemakos gave her the sistrum that he used to summon Ferem. It looked like something that had been stolen from a church, possibly liberated from the monastery at Abba Pantelewon by his father. It was a fork of mahogany with shining silver bells threaded on wires between the tines. Athena reached for it, missed, and reached again. She moved her hands with slow deliberation, purposefully, but without skill. The fingers of her right hand closed around the sistrum’s handle as if by accident. The polished wood was the same color as her hand. It was too heavy for her to hold if Telemakos let go, but she shook it so that the bells chattered faintly. It surprised her, and she let out her funny little hiccup of delight.
“Clever girl!” Telemakos laughed also, and gently pulled the rattle away. “Do it again.”
This time she caught it in her left hand.
“Both hands!” Telemakos crowed. “Well done. Clever girl—” He faltered suddenly. “Lucky girl,” he whispered. “Well done, lucky girl.”
When the baby began to whimper with hunger, Telemakos hid her under his blankets, letting her suck on his fingers to keep her quiet while Ferem brought him a bowl of milk. When they were alone again, Telemakos fed his sister with a napkin twisted into a makeshift teat. It took at least an hour. In the evening Medraut found his children curled against each other, sound asleep.
After that they gave up trying to keep the baby away from Telemakos.
Buy The Lion Hunter Now!
A Biography of Elizabeth Wein
Elizabeth Wein was born in New York City in 1964. She moved to England at the age of three, when her father, Norman Wein, who worked for the New York City Board of Education for most of his life, was sent to England to do teacher training and help organize a Headstart program at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University.
When Elizabeth was six, Norman was sent to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, to do three years of similar teacher training. In Christmas of 1970, while Elizabeth was living in Jamaica, her maternal grandmother, Betty Flocken, gave her a self-styled book-of-the-month subscription. Over the following three years, her grandmother sent her one book every month—some of them new, some of them having belonged to Elizabeth’s mother or grandmother when they were young. Elizabeth was introduced to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and The Lost Prince; all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books including The First Four Years and On the Way Home; Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins and Ellen Tebbits; Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series; and an obscure but adored favorite, The Horse Without a Head by Paul Berna (translated from the French). The anticipation of the arrival of these books, and the newly acquired satisfaction in being able to read them on her own, made Elizabeth decide at the early age of seven that she wanted to write books, too.
In 1973, Elizabeth’s parents separated, eventually divorcing a year later. Elizabeth and her younger brother and sister moved back to the US with their mother, Carol Flocken, to live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Carol’s parents, Karl and Betty Flocken, were based.
Life in Harrisburg was a shock to Elizabeth’s system after living in Jamaica, and she found herself besieged with homesickness. Going to school in Jamaica had left her fluent in Jamaican Patois and essentially “color blind,” and the racial divide she encountered in Pennsylvania in the mid-1970s was so ludicrous to her that she found it hard to fit in. She became an easy victim—when she attended an inner city school, it was because she was white; when she lived in the suburbs, it was because her friends were black.
So of course she took refuge in books. She wrote her first “novel” in sixth grade, setting herself the challenge of producing five pages a day on yellow-lined school tablets, eventually producing a time-travel novel of over two hundred pages. At fifteen years old, she completed her next work, an epic fantasy.
When Elizabeth’s mother, Carol, died in a car accident in 1978, Carol’s parents, Karl and Betty, took in and raised Elizabeth and her brother and sister. The grandparents who’d encouraged Elizabeth’s early reading now became her lifeline. Karl introduced her to T. H. White and King Arthur; Betty staunchly supported her determination to become a writer.
High school at Harrisburg Academy was a time of healing and learning for Elizabeth, as she found herself in the most supportive school environment she’d experienced since the Quaker elementary school she’d attended in Jamaica.
After graduating as the class valedictorian in 1982, Elizabeth went on to Yale University, determined to get a degree in English to prepare herself for a career in writing.
During a junior-year-abroad program called Yale in London, Elizabeth took the opportunity to revive the friendships in, and relationship with, the United Kingdom that she had begun in early childhood. She returned to England six months after the program ended to attend a summer school at Oxford, and then spent a work-study term in Manchester after graduating from Yale. By this time, she was already working on the Arthurian legend–based story that was later published as her first novel, The Winter Prince, and her travel to England was an excuse to do onsite research. It was also during this trip that Elizabeth began learning to ring church bells in the English style known as change ringing.
A year later, Elizabeth enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a graduate degree in folklore and folklife. She completed The Winter Prince while working on her PhD, and continued bell-ringing at Philadelphia’s Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She met her future husband, Tim Gatland, at a bell-ringers’ dinner-dance in Philadelphia; he was working in the US at the time, but was based in England. In the early stages of their relationship, there was a lot of back-and-forth across the Atlantic!
In 1995, a year after completing her PhD, Elizabeth moved to England to be with Tim. They were married in Pennsylvania on New Year’s Day in 1996.
Tim introduced Elizabeth to a new and unusual interest: flying small planes. During the five years that they lived in southern England, Elizabeth was content to go along as a passenger, but their dream was (and still is) to make a trip across North America, a journey they both felt would require two pilots. Elizabeth’s flying lessons were scheduled for the summer of 1997. They didn’t happen—instead, their daughter, Sara, was born. A son, Mark, followed in 2000. At the same time, the family moved to Scotland for Tim’s work.
Elizabeth sold her second book, A Coalition of Lions, in 2002. The children were old enough to go to day care now and then, and Elizabeth started taking those flying lessons. She earned her private pilot’s license in 2003, exactly one hundred years after the Wright Brothers made the world’s first powered-aircraft flight.
Elizabeth and her family have lived in Scotland ever since, and all but the first of her published novels were written there. A Coalition of Lions continues the Arthurian story that began with The Winter Prince, but moves the action from post-Roman Britain to a sixth-century African kingdom called Aksum (modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen). The Sunbird takes the tale to the next generation, featuring the young hero Telemakos, Arthur’s half-British, half-Aksumite grandson.
Telemakos’s story continues in the duology known as the Mark of Solomon. Part one, The Lion Hunter, was short-listed for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s Andre Norton Award for best young adult fantasy in 2008. Part two, The Empty Kingdom, was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Continuing Series title in 2008. Together, these five Arthurian-Aksumite books are known as the Lion Hunters novels.
Though she has been a published author since 1993, with both novels and short stories to her name, Elizabeth’s career took off with the 2012 publication of Code Name Verity. The runaway word-of-mo
uth (and online) success of this young-adult historical novel set in occupied France during World War II took everyone by surprise, not least Elizabeth herself. The book has been nominated and shortlisted for over twenty awards in the US and the UK. In addition to making the short lists for the 2013 Carnegie Medal and the 2012 Scottish Children’s Book Award, it is an honor book for both the 2013 Printz Award and the 2012 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. It was named to over thirty best-of lists for 2012 and 2013, including the New York Times’ Notable Children’s Books of 2012, and was winner of the 2013 Edgar Award for children’s literature. The book has also been included on a number of international award lists, notably the United States Board on Books for Young People’s Outstanding International Books of 2013 and the White Ravens 2013 (chosen by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany). With each of these accolades, Code Name Verity represents Great Britain—a real honor for Elizabeth, who has lived long enough in Scotland that she officially qualifies as a Scottish author.
Elizabeth’s most recent book is Rose Under Fire. Though her ties to Pennsylvania remain strong, Elizabeth has no plans to leave Scotland anytime soon.
Four-year-old Elizabeth (atop the stroller) with her mother, Carol, and brother, Jared, in London in 1968.
Six-year-old Elizabeth at Barnegat Light, New Jersey, in July 1970.
Elizabeth (left, sitting on wall) and her father (right), with the neighbors’ children at Elizabeth’s childhood home in Kingston, Jamaica, in November 1971.
Elizabeth (middle) at a children’s garden party at her house in Jamaica in August 1972.
Elizabeth, in local school uniform, with her grandfather, painting the front gate at their house in Jamaica in 1971.
The Sunbird Page 17