“The second coming of the Crusades, sounds like,” another Parliamentarian remarked.
“Quite so. Her Majesty personally sent a diplomatic corps to express her regrets at not granting his request for weapons. He took that corps hostage.”
“And Parliament intervened,” the MP said. “Proud to say it was a unanimous vote to go to war. Sixty-two thousand men. Thirty thousand pack animals. An indeterminable number of Shoho retained locally through the tribes who saw in this expedition the end of Abyssinian rule under a tyrant. Seventy-five steamers, twenty sailing vessels, weapons. The most revolutionary of artillery. Rockets, fusillades, ordnance against which no rutted country could stand.”
“The war itself?” Naismith said. “Over in a day. Our Easter of this year. As for Alamayou, his mother, the queen Tirroo Wirk, lived apart from Tewedros on a mountain called Amba Geshen. I’ve seen the reports. A small cottage. During the Easter attack, it was set afire with her inside. Our military believe Tewedros did it for reasons that only a doctor of the mind could understand. From what little we know, Tewedros saw the imminent defeat of his army, took Alamayou to Amba Geshen as his fortress collapsed, and intended to kill himself and his family there in a fire. He perished with the queen. Our men tell us Alamayou’s own hand was pried free from his father’s. We believe Tewedros was trying to drag his son into the fire with him.”
Princess Louise’s eyes glinted. “You were there, Layard. You saw this. How ghastly.”
Philip wanted to answer her but held back. Naismith’s account sounded right, the way I saw Alamayou standing at the rail of the Feroze sounded right. Right, but hollow. Something was missing from it that he couldn’t quite grasp. It felt too vague and easily lost, like a dream that tattered into nothing when he woke up. All that was left was a feeling with nothing attached to it. No reason to be.
The feeling he’d had seeing Alamayou at the fire on Amba Geshen was the same one he’d had when he saw Alamayou at the rail the night before they landed at the Royal Victoria docks. Maybe there’d been another reason Alamayou was there, in both places and in both moments. Something not readily apparent. That was all he could name, but the feeling was enough to worry him.
He nodded dutifully at the ambassador’s account of the fire even as doubt grew in him. It wasn’t his place to say anything, especially if he himself couldn’t be sure of what had just happened at that cottage. He wasn’t going to give them a reason to look askance at Alamayou or him, royalty be damned. Still, what Naismith said felt off.
Maybe, he thought, maybe he didn’t see Alamayou’s father pull his son into the flames enveloping him and Alamayou’s mother. Maybe—he wasn’t sure, but maybe—their hands weren’t touching at all.
“It was a terrible thing, the fire,” Philip said to the princess. “See here, his hand.”
She examined Alamayou’s right palm. The scarring had healed only recently.
Alamayou pulled his hand away. Words he recognized, his own name, his father’s, and one horrible sound, fire, flew between the white faces like birds roused violently into the air. They looked at him with such pity in their eyes. The woman who’d taken hold of his hand turned to her companions as if to say, He’s damaged. He’s just another broken piece of Abyssinia.
“A terrible act indeed,” Princess Louise said. “And the Abyssinian witnessed them burn? His own parents? I cannot imagine the horrors he’s endured. Or his mother, to belong to such a monster.”
“One wonders how she survived as long as she did,” Naismith said.
“We must never underestimate the indomitable spirit of a woman,” Princess Louise said to the smiles of her audience. “And now the Abyssinian is safe, it seems. We will address your presence later, Mr. Layard. There is the Abyssinian’s welfare, of which Her Majesty is interested. But I do wonder why it is that he’s been brought here, of all places? There are homes elsewhere, where appropriate sponsors might be located for him. His story touched our mother’s heart.”
“Ah,” the Parliamentarian said wryly. “A reclamation project, is he? Much like cleaning the Thames, this one.”
“Begging your pardon,” Naismith said, “but the Thames didn’t take hostages and it didn’t start a war.”
“Nor did this young man,” Princess Louise said. Naismith fell silent. “I expect all the more interest from the queen when she hears of his ordeal. For the moment, Philip, it seems that you serve a purpose. Companionship. Do you agree?”
“I do if you tell me I do.”
Chuckling, the royals and their entourages walked off to the vast lawns of Windsor. The grounds had been prepared by legions of keepers who had uprooted trees, wrapped them in canvas, and carried them off to the far corners of the palace grounds. Paved walkways had been covered in polished wood planking. Seats had been placed across the lawn as far as could be seen, on either side of a massive structure that spanned the length of the field, some one hundred meters and as tall as the Long Walk elms. Struts and timber formed a skeleton that held its weight upright. Its silhouette was jagged and irregular.
“You there.”
A man wearing a dinner jacket with split tails, a stiff white shirt with small winged collars, and a centered bow tie, approached. “We have appropriate clothes for the two of you,” he said.
Alamayou and Philip followed him into the South Wing where servants in the Upper Ward dyed laundry to a mournful shade. Gray whorls of smoke rose above the Norman Gate, filling the air with the aroma of roasting meat.
Arriving at the East Terrace Apartments, they paused in the threshold of an empty ballroom. Pale lace ribbons hung from its timber ceiling, ivory shoots of cloth that tumbled down to the parquet floor where a group of maids silently took to them with blades. Their work curled the cloth into springs.
After passing through a series of receiving rooms where they were inspected, measured, and talked about in disapproving tones, the man they followed—a butler of some sort, Philip thought, by the haughty airs he put on—led them into an apartment. Its mauve curtains were drawn almost to a close, obscuring the view of the gardens and field, but the portraits on the walls could be plainly seen. Henry VII’s court circled them. Reliefs of inlaid marble adorned the ceiling.
They were told to undress by court tailors, who directed them to stand behind separate partitions of wood and abalone shell. The tailors pulled their sea-worn garments apart at the seams, took the boat shoes from their feet, and made them step out of their undergarments. When they stood naked, the tailors turned away in disgust.
Over the course of an hour they fashioned an Abyssinian shamma for Alamayou and hastily composed a suit for Philip of subdued brown tweed too warm for the weather, a collared shirt and wretched cravat, and pants cinched at the waist with a frayed belt.
After they were dressed, the butler returned and led them back to the empty ballroom.
At one end, a swatch of black curtain hung from suspended lines. A shield of copper plate, lined in opposing triangles by metal piping, rested against the fabric. Two feathered spears, their sabre blades crossed at the hilts, fashioned an imposing X across the shield. Cushions were placed together to form a seat.
There was a young Indian man of twenty tending to the display. He stood before a camera and motioned for Alamayou to sit on the cushions, then lit candles that had been arranged at the base of each linen strip. The candle stems were framed in small boxes of red glass. When ignited, they cast an ember glow upon the linen.
“He needs to sit,” the Indian said. His voice was gentle. “I’ll make this as painless as can be for a scared young man asked to sit still.”
The photographer slipped free from the camera cloak. A white woman, dressed not of the city but rather in a colorful shawl. “You must be Philip, and this one Alamayou. Do you understand what Alamayou is to do? Can you help explain it to him?”
“Look at him,” Philip said. “Do you thi
nk he understands?”
Alamayou brushed one of the streamers dangling against the shield, which was a fraud, in no way like the shield his father had made him use. This one was made of some light wood that felt full of air.
“What’s the point of all this?” Philip asked. “What’re these to be, fire falling ’round his head? You mean to pose him like that, fresh from a war?”
“My purpose,” she said, her voice rising indignantly, “is two-fold. To do as the royal family asks, and to create an image so others can see the young prince of Abyssinia. Is that plain enough? There’s a curiosity about him, don’t you realize? For months we’ve read of this odd prince on the way here from war. He’s more than a young man. He’s the answer to the questions of a country. On orders from Her Majesty’s emissaries, he will sit for this and you will make him understand.”
Philip went to Alamayou. “Sit.” He pointed to the pillows.
“No,” Alamayou said. “Abat.”
“You know bloody well I don’t understand you—”
“No!”
Alamayou took the pillows and threw them across the room. He pulled down the shield and stood in the wreckage, proud and defiant.
“I don’t know what ‘abat’ means,” Philip told the photographer, “but I suggest you take what he’s giving you while you can.”
Muttering under her breath, the photographer stepped back under the camera cloak. Her assistant hung a colored sash across Alamayou’s midsection and placed a necklace of lion’s teeth and beads around his neck, all the while staring at him nervously.
Alamayou didn’t stop him. His eyes lowered as he sent his thoughts away.
Under the camera cloak came the whirring of a mechanism. Alamayou didn’t understand what it was, only that he had no choices and needed to be careful. Still, he wouldn’t sit on a throne of pillows as his abat had in front of a shield meant to evoke the ones carried by all the Abyssinian dead.
The Indian knelt to him. “Are you well?”
He understood enough to return the Indian’s gaze.
“One day,” the Indian said to Philip, “he’ll look at this picture and remember his first moments here. I hope that will be a good thing.”
The Indian and the photographer finished. They crated the moment that they had stilled and took it away.
§
The butler returned. Outside, he said, was a gathering they needed to be a part of. “This is what he must say.” He handed Philip a note. “See to it.”
I was a stranger, it read, yet you took me in.
“It’s in English,” Philip said. “How’s he supposed to read it or speak it? How do I even make him understand?”
“Find a way.”
He brought them to a midpoint on the lawn, to face what looked like hundreds of white faces. Taking the note from Philip, he pressed it into Alamayou’s hand. “If he knows what’s good for him.” He left them.
“May it please Your Majesties!” The master of ceremonies stood on a far platform. He spoke into a brass tube that sent his voice everywhere. “The young prince Alamayou, brought to you from the remotest corner of the world to this safe harbor by the friendship and affection of Her Majesty the queen, and all of England. We welcome this stranger to our country.”
Alamayou stood in silence as the field filled with sights and sounds that mystified him. The dogs they’d seen from the carriage ride onto the castle grounds now raced each other in pursuit of some sort of pelt, pulled at top speed by one of the horses. Acrobats leapt over each other while juggling all manner of oddities. Rings, clubs, even swords. Men standing on wooden sticks towered above the audience. They danced an odd series of steps while below, little people no higher than his knee frolicked between their wooden legs.
Another horse walked slowly onto the field, led by a white soldier wearing a shamma. The horse was a deep brown chestnut with a white stripe across its flank. Its nose was scarred. Brightly colored ribbons dangled from its mane.
“An Abyssinian game played by the warrior class,” the master of ceremonies announced.
As Alamayou watched confusedly, the soldier demonstrated gugs, the horseback game he’d grown up watching his father’s army play. It was a warlike game where men charged at each other atop their horses, each man trying to knock the others off their mounts.
While he stared, the master of ceremonies called out, “Does the Abyssinian prince have something to say to us?”
“He doesn’t understand what you want from him!” Philip shouted back. “Let me read it for him.”
“Unacceptable. Look at him. He’s not even paying attention.”
From the box seats alongside them, a frail-looking figure stood. Using his cane, he steadied himself, waving off the servants who came to his aid. He was as young as they, perhaps seventeen, with a boy’s wispy moustache and carelessly combed hair that the insistent sun plastered to his pale brow.
“He must recite by himself,” the young man said, leaning forward to be heard. He pointed the silver tip of his cane at Alamayou. “There are eyes on him.”
“I’ve told too many to count,” Philip shouted, “he can’t speak English. And I can’t just give him the words, can I? I don’t know how. I don’t know how to talk to him and I don’t know why you all think I do!”
The man turned to speak to the others in the box.
Alamayou’s robes billowed in the wind. He held the paper out to Philip and pointed at the soldier atop his horse. “Gugs.”
“I think he wants to play,” the soldier laughed. He brought his horse alongside Alamayou and looked down at him. “If it pleases Your Majesties, since this Abyssinian can’t speak, may we see if he can ride?”
The audience clapped expectantly. In a moment, a similarly decorated horse was brought to Alamayou. Ignoring the reins, Alamayou leapt atop its back and took the blunted pole from the soldier. They rode to opposite ends of the field, then turned their horses to face each other hundreds of meters apart.
“Come then!” the soldier shouted at him, to the delight of the audience. “Let’s have a good old-fashioned English joust!”
“Leave him alone!” Philip shouted. “He’s a human being, not a damned trained monkey! Is this what you brought him here for, to make a joke of him?”
Alamayou didn’t know what they wanted from him. He could see that Philip was upset, maybe at the thought that he could get hurt. He wanted to tell him, I know this game. It’s a game of war. Men die for it. My father knew war and nothing else. I played my father at it once, with his words in my head—ride, don’t stop until one of us is dead—and his gun in my hand. Yes, I know this game.
His father had taught him gugs on the same day that he’d spoken of his own life before becoming emperor. It was the only time Alamayou recalled his father ever saying anything about himself that wasn’t doomfata, the boasting of soldiers that they were brave, that they couldn’t die.
That day, his father said that as a boy on a farm at the foot of the Entoto hills, he’d grown up loving horses. Remembering made his father smile, revealing sparse, broken teeth. In his youth he’d played at gugs and dreamt of being a soldier, but as a man he’d seen too many battles. He was tired all the time. In his dreams he smelled blood.
That was the most words he’d ever spoken to Alamayou, and the happiest Alamayou had ever seen him.
“I’m your father and I demand it of you,” Tewedros had said. “Learn gugs. Be a man for me.”
He’d led Alamayou to a deep brown horse much like the one he sat on now in front of the English. After Alamayou had gotten on that horse, his father had handed him a heavy shield. “Gugs is a game of war,” his father had said. “It takes lives.”
“I’ve seen it at Debre Tabor,” Alamayou told his father. “Men die for a game. There’s nothing more pointless.”
“Men live. They are glorified. It
belongs to them, that they do not die where other men do. Even if they belong to another as you do to your father. The gugs always belongs to the man who lives.”
He’d tried to find a comfortable position to hold the shield but felt tilted and precarious. When the horse twisted to see him, he’d sensed its resentment that the flight it was capable of couldn’t be appreciated by a boy who’d rather be on the ground drawing and staring at vistas.
His father had ridden off, halting several hundred paces away. “Ride fast, lij, and knock me down.”
“You think I won’t.”
It shamed Alamayou, the shaking in his voice. He’d tried to shut it away somewhere he didn’t know, where things could go and die inside of him. Or live, but never be seen or heard again.
He hoped such a place existed in the drifting, sailing world.
“Ride to me a man!” his father had taunted and goaded. “Trample me! Then ride away. You are free. Tell my spirit what it is to be free! Do it, coward. Woman! You’re too weak to be the son of an emperor. Come at me. Ride until one of us is dead!”
“Come on then!” the soldier screamed again across the English field. There, before the white faces, Alamayou kicked violently at his horse’s flanks, sending it hurtling headlong toward the soldier in the shamma. His speed, the sheer recklessness of his assault, stunned the audience. The distance between them disappeared.
As they flew past each other, Alamayou swung his pole, knocking the soldier off of his horse.
Alamayou brought his own horse to a halt. Leaping down, he went to check on the soldier as other men came running. Gasps rolled through the crowd.
The Night Language Page 5