The Night Language

by David Rocklin

  Philip had spent a year at war and at sea, putting his hands into the dead and dying alongside the doctor he’d apprenticed with, Marcus Baker White. White had already gone to his own death thanks to a sick and pathetic love of drink that the war only deepened. Soldiers had wrapped White’s body in a sheet before heaving his corpse over the side of the boat. That was only a day into the voyage home from Abyssinia.

  Since then, he and Alamayou had spent four months at sea, on a ship of white men returning from a campaign of killing black men—men like him, men exactly like Alamayou. Philip could feel their utter contempt every day. The soldiers of the Second Regiment had no need for two Negroes sharing the Feroze’s limited rations of food and potable water, its cramped space, and its dwindling stores of medicine.

  Seeing the Abyssinian at the fire on Amba Geshen, and last night at the rail, felt the same as the war, though Philip couldn’t put his finger on the reason. Alamayou standing at the fire, watching it consume his parents. Alamayou at the ship rail, no doubt mourning his country and his life, maybe looking for the impossible: a way out. Somehow, the sight of the only other man on board who looked like him standing alone at the rail made Philip painfully aware of how tired he was. He was bone-tired of bearing witness to the destruction of black men like him.

  Like them.

  Christ, you fool, he’d thought the night before as he watched Alamayou. Don’t be another one of their dead men. Come away from there.

  Now the sight of the empty bunk made him sick. He finished dressing and left the cabin, already breathless. If something happened to the Abyssinian prince before they reached London, the soldiers wouldn’t need him anymore. He was no doctor and his stupid pride prevented him from being their servant. With no other use, they’d surely kill him. They’d lynch him—like rumor had it was done with the Negroes in the old colonies.

  He’d be no better off than a runaway slave. They’d string him up like a chicken, sear him head to foot in tar, and leave him to strangle in the sea sun beneath a coat of pitch blacker than his skin.

  He made his way through the dim veins of the Feroze. Its bottom hull had been built in tribute to a ship that broke apart in a storm at sea some forty years before. Bearing the name of a dead man, the John Mackenzie met a terrible gale that sent veins of wind and light through its hull until it burst. Parts of it washed ashore for a month. Whole pieces of its frame that were still seaworthy made their way into the skeletons of new ships.

  He located the deck by following the salt smell and the raucous bellowing of the men putting things in crates and tying it all down while great-necked machines moved through the port water to the Feroze to lift it and take it to the decks of other circling ships. There was never silence. The sea never lost its voice. Neither did the soldiers who cursed, laughed, or cried in the corridors outside their cabins at night when they thought no one could hear.

  When he found Alamayou at the same rail, wrapped in his bunk blanket, he nearly buckled with relief. He walked over as his anger rose. “Jesus, nothing good comes of you wandering off. What is it with you and this bloody deck?”

  He put a hand on Alamayou’s forehead. It was cooler to the touch than it had been for weeks. “Fever’s breaking. What were you thinking last night? Wandering to the rail as if someone was leading you by the hand. Never seen a man so sick and still standing.”

  Why bother trying, he thought as he stood with Alamayou at the rail, where the ship shuddered most urgently as waves cut into the sea by the cargo ships swept into its hull. Him in his shell, me in mine. Most likely we part ways the moment we set foot on dry land again, and then we’ll be bound for who knows where. It doesn’t matter if he wanders off, or jumps, or stands on his head. Soon I’ll be on the street with no prospects. Best to worry about that, not him.

  He opened his mouth to tell Alamayou all that. Words Alamayou wouldn’t understand, though the tone of them ought to be clear enough. The deck of a hostile ship at open sea, and exhausted men returning from a war with his father. A man either uses his head or loses it.

  There at the rail, the overwhelming spectacle of London came. The murmurings of white men behind them, cold air, and a ceiling of sky stretching far past the landfall where railroad tracks ran the lengths of the quays, below the sooty plumes of the train engines that rose and drifted across the graineries and mills, over the slow-rolling railcars and out again to sea to shroud the forest of swaying ship masts. Farther out, the ghostly shapes of spikes, blocks, domes, and towers huddled in the quilted gray fog.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. Look at what he sees. He’s terrified. Who wouldn’t be if he never saw a white man’s city before.

  London at near dawn, viewed from the sea, was a ceaseless machine with no edges or endings. A man would have better luck searching for the end of the world.

  He softened. “London.” He pointed, making a wide sweep of the visible city with his arm so Alamayou would understand, London meant everything. “London, Alamayou. And stay off the rails, eh? I’ve had quite enough of that.”

  A soldier came to them as the Feroze pulled closer to the docks of the Royal Victorian. He wore the uniform of the Second and carried some papers. “Layard, Philip?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you speak for the Abyssinian? The prince, Alamayou?”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve had a change in fortune and prospects, is what. I’m here with him now, and no one but me tries to talk to him. That’s all it is.”

  “Be sure that I don’t care,” the soldier said. “What you take yourself to be, fit company for good men, is wrong. All wrong. You and he are unfit for white men. Soldiers, no less. But Her Majesty called for him to come back because she has a heart. That’s why you weren’t heaved overboard or sold off.”

  “England’s no slaver,” Philip said. “Not in my lifetime.”

  “A change in your fortune, like you say.” He glanced at his documents. “Once ashore, you’ll report to a coach bearing the crest of Windsor and the number twenty-two. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell the bonnie prince. Use your hands or whatever it is you kaffirs do.”

  “What will happen to us then?”

  “I don’t know what will happen, but I know what should. Tell the Abyssinian, from me. It’s a fool who crosses the world thinking there’ll be anything of home to be found. A bigger fool walks out of his own war expecting to be welcome. The chances for either of you to be included in the course of your lives, the devil’s got better odds of being christened.”

  The soldier left them on deck to fend for themselves.

  Philip studied Alamayou’s face, trying to figure out if the Abyssinian understood his circumstances. He didn’t envy the task before Alamayou, now that a city so immense as to invite madness in an orphan of a far-off war stood right in front of him, daring him to come set foot onto its hard heart.

  “You can’t understand me,” he told Alamayou, “but maybe if you listen you’ll find something you can hold onto. You’re alone. You’ve got no one. Your mother and father are dead and gone and it’s best not to think of them too much anymore. Maybe they’ll do what they ought with you, the people who’ll deal with you from here on, but it’s not much against what’s been done to you. Then you’ll just be you. Not a damned prince but a colored man like me. I’m alone too, hear? You’ll get no help from me though my heart’s good, or so I choose to believe. It’s my pockets that lay bare and that’s all that matters, eh? So don’t hope, is what I’m telling you. Hate England if you want. I suppose you’ve a right if anyone has. Just live how you can, and I will, too.”

  The Victorian docks loomed. He set his hand on the rail, next to Alamayou’s. “See that? We’re alike as two shadows. So maybe we’re not alone, really. You hear that? Not alone.”

  As he listened to Philip’s indecipherable gibberish, Alamayou watched boats full of cheering Lo
ndoners row out to greet the soldiers atop the last waves before the jut of shore. He was on the other side of the world from the only one he’d ever known. The whites were everywhere he looked, like a swarm of locusts. Beyond the visible port was some sort of horizon built of fortresses unlike anything his father could have dreamt from his tent on the plains of the Falah Saddle.

  He watched it all come, and he thought of how far away the night before seemed.

  “We need to get our things,” Philip said. “It’s time.” He held up a finger. “One thing—”

  Alamayou clasped Philip’s hand. Some of the soldiers whispered and laughed.

  “Why?” he asked Alamayou, but didn’t pull his hand back. Warmth pulsed from Alamayou’s fire-ravaged palm into his own skin.

  After a moment, Alamayou walked away, into the teeth of the white soldiers. He held his head high, as a prince, a lij, would do. Holding Philip’s hand hurt; he felt the fire in his palm even still. But it was all he wanted to take from the Feroze. Just an unbroken moment to hold skin like his own. To not be alone.

  §

  They stumbled down the gangplank to the dock of the Royal, where constables by the hundreds cleared a path from the pier to the limits of the city, forcing cheering onlookers to either side.

  At the queue for carriages they were presented with letters and ushered into a modest trap bearing the crest of Windsor and the number twenty-two. Soon they were clattering along Cumberland Terrace on the east side of Regent’s Park, passing white balconies, Ionic columns of granite polished to fine neoclassical bone, and endless blocks of sculptural pediments and arches.

  Their carriage passed the Royal Zoo and its signs depicting the animals donated by Queen Victoria for the benefit and enjoyment of her subjects. The hippo, the orangutan, the tigress, the 150-year-old tortoise sent in loving gratitude to Her Majesty by a family left standing after the plunder of the Cape of Good Hope. One colorful drawing, a rhinoceros, came beneath the bold claim: The unicorn of faerie tale come to true life!

  From the carriage window they saw a large cage with a lone elephant inside. The creature picked at the low boughs of a beech tree, releasing a cascade of leaves that whirled to the ground.

  Soon the lane ahead lay clear and the larks sang high above. A light wind tossed leaves into the carriage’s path. The day warmed and the Thames murmured somewhere to the west. The visible world transformed from open road to Dutchett and its ribbons of color bursting elms, the fetlock of the Horseshoe Cloister, the Norman Gate, and the motte upholding all.

  Windsor rose before Alamayou’s disbelieving eyes.

  He searched Philip’s face, hoping for some sleight of hand to make it understandable; the people that destroyed his country could also put immeasurable beauty and immensity into it. But Philip’s hands were silent, so he sat back in the carriage, staring at the barrel of the Round Tower.

  Where his father’s fortress was a crude extension of the mountains it stood against, this was a dream of glass and stone, the work of artists with imaginations beyond anything he’d ever known. The castle pressed up against the continents of cloud gathering up from the east. Its silhouette was an upturned key at the vanishing point of the Long Walk.

  Up on the range of rolling grasses, there was a magnificent ball, as big as a ship, tethered with netting to a basket large enough to hold ten grown men.

  “A balloon,” the coachman explained. “It rises at twilight from Chisholm Hill in the shadow of the tower. From up there ye see London. Some of ’er lights never go out. Like stars below ye. Like ye left the very world.”

  “He doesn’t understand a bloody word,” Philip said.

  “I wager ye he will when it flies.”

  The royal grounds already bustled with activity. Huntsmen walked leashed mastiffs past show horses of rare breed cantering gracefully along the paths encircling the lawns, prodded gently by men of the royal livery. Children ran out of the anxious reach of their nannies, trailing kites with ribbons for tails through the warm light.

  In the midst of the chaos was an artist sitting alone and peaceful, considering the fog and the castle while mayflies swirled above open jars of turpentine.

  Her Majesty’s Guard thundered past, startling Alamayou. He shrank against his seat until they were gone. The horses’ eyes seemed to linger on him as they went by. They held the madness of the whip that drove them.

  Alamayou winced at every whip crack. His head snapped back as if someone had slapped him. The welling red stripes were easy to see despite the dark hides of the horses. They didn’t leave his sight even when he closed his eyes. It didn’t matter how dark the skin was. When the whip’s tail struck, you could see the wound it made. You could see it for days.

  For days after he’d left Amba Geshen with his mother to go to his father’s fortress at Meqdala, everyone could see the whip marks. All the servants, all the soldiers. They knew who’d done it.

  There were so many things he wouldn’t ever speak of, no matter who asked, no matter the language. This was one. These people, they might try to know him. They might try to piece him together from the scraps at the bottom of the Feroze, but it wouldn’t be enough as there were no words for some things. So they’d come to him and ask him, tell us everything about you.

  When they did, he would be who they wanted him to be. They might try to make a monster out of him and he wouldn’t help them.

  “Horses,” Philip said. “I saw them in your country, so don’t look so surprised. They’re not new to you.”

  Alamayou turned away as the echo of the whip filled him.

  The coachman slowed the carriage to a trot. Soon the road fell away and they only saw the sky and the peak of the Round Tower. Behind, wisps of the morning fog tinseled the elms.

  They came to a stop at the South Wing. A crowd of court handlers, servants in starched black and white, and midlevel royalty waited as the carriages emptied. Hundreds more lined the horseshoe drive to toss garlands of flowers. In front was Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Louise.

  Louise came forward to peer into the carriage. She wore a black dress of luminous quality that was scaly in appearance, its buttons hidden beneath folds of heron feathers. Her lace collar sealed her at the throat. About her left arm she wore the Garter, marking her among the St. George order.

  She acknowledged Alamayou and Philip with a nod, then left. A group of court women smiled at her return as a child with curled ringlets played among the wide curtains of their dresses. She was draped in an elaborate white gown tailored to her still-boyish frame. She practiced a wedding march, her lace veil making a mystery of her face.

  Alamayou stepped into the doorway of the carriage and instantly a wall of soldiers descended upon him, pulling him out onto the Walk. Philip pushed them away. The other soldiers came at him as white faces gathered.

  “Let them be,” Princess Louise said.

  The soldiers complied. Alamayou and Philip stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for what might come next.

  “Are you Philip Layard?” Princess Louise asked. “The Abyssinian’s servant?”

  “I am, Your Highness. Philip Layard, that is. But no servant to the Abyssinian, Alamayou. We shipped together from Annesley Bay when the war was said and done. On account of our skin, you see.”

  “If not a servant,” she said, “then what brought you to the Abyssinian campaign?”

  “I was an assistant to the surgeon attached to the Second.”

  “You are English, I see. Well done for you. Tell me, how did this one come to attach himself to you in such a manner? Look at the both of you. Like two suits of the same cloth.”

  “I simply tried speaking to him,” Philip said, “and not bringing harm or hate to him. A long voyage and only each other to spend the time.”

  “So you understand him?”

  “Not as such. Not in language, but we gesture, point
, and get by with a little luck.”

  “Clearly the Abyssinian has need of you. Are you both calmed?”

  “Yes, Your Highness, and I’m sorry I wasn’t ready for the guards taking hold of us. I shouldn’t have behaved like that.”

  “Although it may be that a long sea voyage and a war explains it, be that as it may, you are English, and so for you at least, it was unacceptable to raise a hand to anyone here and we shall not witness it again.”

  “Yes, Your Highness. It won’t happen again.”

  A small audience gathered to watch. Members of Parliament, of court, the hands upon the gears of England.

  “Tell me, Mr. Layard,” Princess Louise asked, “how did you come to meet the Abyssinian?”

  “The first time I saw him, it was during the Easter attack, on top of a mountain. There was a fire and the doctor I assisted, White, found himself called to go. I went with but no good came of it. Alamayou’s parents both burned to death.”

  “Dear Lord,” one of the court women exclaimed.

  “Mind who you’re speaking to, boy,” a gentleman of Parliament said.

  “They died,” Philip continued, “and he almost did, too. His hand burned.”

  “A remarkable experience for you,” Princess Louise said. “One you were no doubt ill prepared to undertake.”

  “Nothing could prepare me for what I saw in the war, Your Highness.”

  The gentleman of Parliament spoke up. “If I may shed a bit of light, Your Highness. May I have the honor of presenting myself. John Hibbert Naismith, attaché to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, recently posted as ambassador to the newly installed governor and council of Abyssinia.”

  “May you fare better than the last diplomat, poor devil,” another Parliamentarian said, shaking his head.

  “Indeed,” Naismith said. “On behalf of the Abyssinians now at work with our good governor there, I am tasked with accounting as to the health and well-being of their prince, this Alamayou. Alamayou’s father was Tewedros, the despot. Theodore, as he is known here. You well know the history of this war. Theodore fancied himself a Christian, locked in a struggle with the Moslem countries surrounding Abyssinia on all sides. He sent word to England that he wished for diplomatic relations, and those were established. Then he asked for weaponry of all kinds and men to build and train his army so it could drive his enemies into the sea.”