Alamayou’s eyes wandered from Philip to the lawn.
“Stranger, Alamayou. Come on now. Stop being so stubborn.”
Paying Philip no mind, Alamayou pointed to the painter and the princess.
“Painter,” Philip said, resigning himself to another failure. “He is called a painter.”
Alamayou made a canvas of the air, a brush of his finger. “Painter.” He touched his chest, hoping Philip would understand. It’s a simple thing, he thought. A word. But Philip, all of them, was still too far away for him to reach. Something had to bridge the space between them.
“You?” Philip said. “You can paint?”
Alamayou smiled. “Painter.”
“Come, Alamayou. We have to tell the princess.”
They ran together from the veranda overlooking Windsor’s color bursting gardens to the lawn, where they approached Princess Louise. “Forgive the intrusion, Your Highness,” Philip said. “But Alamayou’s just now told me something! He watched you hawk-like. He says he can paint.”
“Says?” Princess Louise asked.
“Well, not in words. But he did say ‘painter’ and pointed to himself.”
“Indeed? We must explore.”
She turned to her companion. “He’s from Abyssinia. A prince, now orphaned. Doubtless you’ve heard about him. This is Edward Corbould. He’s an instructor of art here at Windsor, and a dear friend.”
Corbould was thin and gangly at the joints but graceful in the movements of his hands. His auburn hair protruded from under a sun hat, and his beard and moustache were wild and untended. He wore loose trousers and an outsize smock that, in its freely flowing length, reminded Alamayou of his ceremonial shamma.
Corbould put out his hand for Alamayou to take, but Alamayou reached past it for the nearest paintbrush.
Corbould opened his satchel and withdrew a pad of many clean sheets. He took the brush from Alamayou and replaced it with a cylinder of coal chalk, then showed Alamayou his own canvas, where he’d begun painting the tower standing against a gauzy sky of orange, sienna, and gold.
“Tower.” Corbould pointed first to the building itself, then to the drawing. “You.” He took Alamayou’s hand and together they made one soft line on the tablet’s first empty page.
Alamayou sat on the grass and set to work. It was not the tower he tried to make, but a high place and a ragged structure.
Corbould knelt beside him. “Tower?”
Alamayou shook his head. There was no way to explain what he wanted to draw, only to finish it and let them see.
Philip will know, he thought, and who can say what we might be able to tell each other by then.
“Perhaps the young man would like to visit us again,” the princess said. “He shows progress. It would appear that the tower put him in mind of something else. I know it does that to me. Reminds me of being a little girl here, climbing up the motte and kicking up a cloud of chalk dust while I was at it. Good memories.”
“That I’m most pleased to paint for you,” Corbould said.
“There’s no one else I’d rather have do it for me.” The princess smiled and turned away, her cheeks red.
Philip shifted uncomfortably. He wanted to take Alamayou and leave the princess and Corbould alone. Their conversation carried an intimacy.
“I’d like to see what Alamayou ends up creating,” Princess Louise said. “If only the other words came to him as easily as ‘painter’ did. Philip, are you familiar with the notion of action, consequence?”
Philip shook his head.
“It’s a simple thing. To my mind, there are no right or wrong decisions in life. Be it a small matter, where to take supper or where to invade, there’s only the act and its consequences. If those consequences are acceptable, then by all means. If they aren’t, refrain.”
“A perfectly applicable theory,” Corbould complimented her.
“I’ve seen some of those consequences,” Philip said. “So has he. It’s not my place, I know, but standing here, it’s hard to understand how the consequences made it worth the blood.”
“Perhaps you answer your own question. As a consequence of war, Alamayou and you find yourselves standing here. But let us think now about painting, and Alamayou’s pressing task of learning our language. Now, Alamayou, pay attention. ‘Stranger.’ Alamayou, say it for me.”
She took the coal stick away when Alamayou didn’t answer her. “Please don’t think that I’m being cruel to him for no good reason. There are things he must do to secure himself here.”
“True of us all,” Corbould said. “If he complies, we shall be here again tomorrow. If it pleases Her Majesty.”
Princess Louise took the pad next. “Stranger,” she said to Alamayou. “You say it now.”
Alamayou stared longingly at the pad.
The princess moved the pad behind her back. Its corners protruded tantalizingly for Alamayou to see.
She turned and left.
Alamayou didn’t move. “Layard,” he said angrily. “Layard, Layard, Layard—”
“Wait,” Philip said. “What an idiot I am. He doesn’t understand we want him to repeat it. He needs to be shown.”
He drew close to the princess. “Stranger,” he said slowly, then held out his hands. Princess Louise gave him the pad. He returned it to her and they repeated it with the coal.
Alamayou stood. He approached the princess. “I…stranger…” Alamayou said.
Princess Louise gave him back his tablet and chalk. “I was a stranger,” the princess said slowly, nodding her encouragement before returning to her own painting there on the lawn beside him. She pointed at the Round Tower. “I’m going to give it a go. It won’t be anything to rival Edward, but when has that stopped me?”
“Never in all the time I’ve known you,” Corbould said.
She began to paint alongside Alamayou. Bent over the tablet, Alamayou never looked up at the tower. All that he needed to see lived on in his mind, if no longer in the world.
“Stranger,” he muttered, smiling at Philip as Princess Louise nodded encouragingly. “I was.”
§
Over the next several weeks, Alamayou gave them more words. Easel. Brush. Even, ochre. Simple questions and phrases. I hungry. I thirsty. I no want to. I paint. I tell. The more he gave them, the more freedom he and Philip were granted, and soon they were exploring the halls of Windsor.
One October evening, they walked down corridors they’d never visited before. No longer in their ward, they passed chambers instead of apartments.
When they saw none of the familiar servants, Philip knew they’d come too far. “Enough wandering for today. We should go back.”
Alamayou found an immense hall that captured his attention. The room was ornately paneled in dark woods that crosshatched at the ceiling in patterns of timber beams. The drawn curtains bathed the room in unnatural shadow. What was striking about the space was simply that the room held so little. A loveseat near the cold hearth, a simple chair at the grand window nearest the door, a table with a candelabra and tapers sweating long-dried wax tears. An enormous painting hung on the wall above the fireplace.
It was the painting that Alamayou had to see. Entering the room, he crossed the empty space and sat down on the floor by the hearth to stare up at the portrait hanging on the wall above. His eyes were full of questions.
Philip recognized it at once. All the royal family had been assembled in the painting: Helena, Vicky, Bertie, Arthur, Beatrice, Her Majesty the queen, Affie, Alice, the princess Louise, and the frail prince, Leopold. They were gathered around their Albert, Prince Consort, husband and father, whose death shrouded Windsor every bit as much as the shadows shrouded that hall.
“Family,” he told Alamayou. He pointed to the prince Consort. “Father.”
“Father? Abat?” Alamayou pointed at th
e painted man. “Abat. Father.”
“So that’s what abat means. He was abat of Louise and Leopold, Alamayou. He was a prince like you.”
Philip fashioned a crown of his fingers, then rested them atop Alamayou’s head. Directing Alamayou’s attention to Albert’s crown, he said, “Father, prince. A prince like you.”
“Lij,” Alamayou said, patting his chest. “Prince, is lij.”
Philip pointed next to the queen. “Mother.”
“Mother is anat.”
“Anat. Alamayou, anat, yours.” He touched Alamayou’s shoulder. “Abat, anat. I’m sorry.” He raised his hands to show Alamayou how empty they were. “Gone.”
Alamayou was quiet then. His own hands fell silent.
He left the room, soon to return.
§
In all, Alamayou made the journey three times to the portrait room and back again to the apartment before night fell. Each time he returned, he added to the painting he’d started out on the lawn. Philip soon grew tired of him turning the canvas away so it couldn’t be seen. He settled back into his chair while Alamayou worked. After a few hours spent reading, he fell asleep.
The distant sounds of storms woke him with a start. “Alamayou, what—”
Alamayou lay on the floor at the foot of his canvas, staring at the rain-spotted window. The painting was complete.
He turned it so Philip could see.
“Bloody Christ.”
It was Tewedros’ fortress at Meqdala, perched against pillar-like mountains, and a gorge at its base. There was a white space within the gorge, a sea of pure cloud. Across the gorge was another mountain peak with a small cottage on it. The cottage was intact and undamaged, the fortress whole. It was as if there’d never been a war.
Two figures occupied the lower left corner of the canvas. They walked together toward the bottom left corner of the painting, leaving the stone fortress and the clouds behind them.
Alamayou propped himself against the unmade bed and smiled, a crooked and proud thing.
“I was a stranger,” he said, “yet you took me in. You, Philip.”
§
Philip found Simon and told him to send word. He asked for food. “Something sweet,” as if he and Alamayou belonged.
“Uppity, aren’t we,” the Lord Steward muttered. Still, the service brought sweet cakes and puree of orange, which they gorged on.
In an hour, Princess Louise arrived.
“I was a stranger,” Alamayou said in her presence, “yet you took me in.”
“Remarkable,” the princess said. “He’s come a long way already. Well done, Philip.”
“Thank you, Highness. But this you need to see.”
He turned the canvas to face her.
She traced the dry lines of the figures in Alamayou’s painting.
“I saw him, too,” Philip told her.
Alamayou sat up straight. Wary.
“We wish her to hear the words,” she said. “Perhaps, to see this. I’m not sure how she’ll take it.”
She looked at Alamayou. “It is a strange and beautiful thing you’ve done. I wonder if you even know.”
§
At midnight they walked hurriedly past the Royal Library behind five silent housemaids who kept them moving at a brisk pace. The faint light of the torchières reflected the crimson damask hanging from the library walls, cordoning off wooden shelves of books and the stone chimneypiece. There was a sameness to all the rooms. The Private Dining Room, the Chapel between St. George’s and the Crimson Drawing Room, the Red and the Green Drawing Rooms; they all lay behind shrouds of dark-hued curtains.
The circuitous route ended at the Blue Room on the south wall.
The oldest of the maids that brought them was spindle-thin. Her hair was pulled severely and separated at the scalp by a comb of abalone. She alone approached the Blue Room and knocked softly. In a moment she entered and closed the door.
Before it shut completely, Philip saw more blue damask suspended on golden cord from a ceiling of angels and a votive candle on a stand near the window at the far end.
They waited a long time, but no sound emerged. The other maids stood perfectly still, as if afraid even to stir the air.
Finally the door opened, revealing in full a room that existed out of time.
There were two beds, adjoined and identical, on either side of a small window, with a chair next to each. A carpet of gold and reddened copper shades covered the floor. A swatch of it lay at the foot of a burning fire in the hearth. Fresh flowers had been arranged in a crystal vase on a desk near the far, wide window. The sheets had been turned down. Clothes were laid across the nearest bed, a man’s dress uniform with epaulettes and gold brocade.
There was a plate on the other bed. On it sat a fresh orange studded with cloves of cinnamon. A tray beside it held a razor and brush. The scent of persimmon and cream perfumed the air.
The scrawny maid stood near a screen of wood and taut bone embroidered with scenes from a hounds’ hunt. A terrified fox, mounted huntsmen, the copse, and the fields. There was yet another window behind it, one which reflected that corner of the room partitioned fro view. In the glass they saw an image of a gently rocking chair and a woman’s hand resting atop it. Her veined, bony arm was bare of jewelry. She was older. The rest of her was hidden, as if she knew precisely where to sit to remain unseen in the glass.
The maid nodded to Alamayou. “Come forward.”
Philip touched his own lips lightly. “Stranger,” he whispered to Alamayou, then pointed at him.
Alamayou filled with fear. He couldn’t understand why he was there to pronounce words to the quiet room. Only that it mattered. It was in the eyes of all of them. The princess, the maids, Philip, especially. That it mattered to Philip made it matter to him.
For you, he thought, because we’ve come so far.
“I was a stranger,” he said carefully, “and yet you took me in.”
He waited as the reflected bit of chair rocked soundlessly.
“Prince.” He patted his chest. “Lij.”
The reflected chair came to a stop. That aged hand rose from the armrest, fingers spread, remaining in air.
“We welcome you,” a quivering voice said. It was a woman’s voice, full of weariness. “Lij.”
Alamayou turned to have her words explained. He looked for Philip’s hands to transform her voice into language.
Philip held his arms out, embracing him. “Welcome.”
As they were led away, the faintest of smiles came to Alamayou’s face. I’ll know that word always, he thought. The one that brought Philip’s arms around me. “Welcome.”
§
Philip settled himself in for the night with a book of fanciful myths and a pot of piping tea. Outside, the maids departed the corridor having finished their work, the turning of sheets and the lighting of tapers.
“Philip.”
Alamayou held the painting. Carrying it, he went to the door.
“We shouldn’t,” Philip said, but Alamayou was already gone.
Philip followed him through the halls, back to the portrait room. A bit of light danced under the closed door. Alamayou turned the knob and pushed it open, spilling a hazy glow into the corridor. He slipped inside.
The glow emanated from a fire in the hearth at the far end. It fashioned a lovely lit path down the polished floor. All else fell into shadow.
Alamayou carried his painting to the hearth. There he rested it against the wall, beneath the portrait of the royal family. A gift.
Behind them, the push of a chair. They weren’t alone.
In the dark they watched a silhouetted figure pass from window to window. In moments, the light of the fire found her. She wore a simple black robe. Her hair was pinned loosely. She wore no makeup, no ribbon or jewel. No crown.
She went to Alamayou’s painting.
Alamayou pointed to the figures he’d added. First the smaller, dark-skinned one. “Prince,” he told the queen, and patted his chest. “Lij.”
Then to the taller figure. White, male, with beard and his dress uniform, its epaulettes and golden braid. Alamayou pointed to her husband, rendered next to him in his painting. “Prince,” he said. “Lij.”
She held a hand out to Alamayou. He took it and helped her to her knees. She wanted to be close, to see.
“Gone,” she said, and touched the figure of her husband. She opened her hand like a bloom to the air. “Gone.”
In the hearth, the logs collapsed in an upward draft of sparks. Seams of flame threaded them.
“Your father,” she said.
“Your abat is gone.”
Alamayou nodded. “Abat, gone.”
“Yes.”
She gazed at her children.
“Mother,” Alamayou said. “You. Mother.”
“Yes, Alamayou.”
Alamayou knew before she did it, before she pointed at him, what she wanted from him. It was clear now, he had to find the words to give them the fire and the war, but not all of it. He didn’t know what it would mean for him when they understood that he had no one left. But he knew he couldn’t tell them the reason why.
“Mother,” she said to him.
“Mother. Anat.” He knelt next to her. “Father, abat. Gone.” He pointed to the fire, then through the window where night clouds passed over Windsor.
Philip brought her a chair from the far end of the room and helped her into it, there by the dying hearth. He left the two of them and retreated to the far corner, where he sat against the wall and watched.
Their shadows turned with the fire. Occasionally, one of their hands made shapes against the light. If words were spoken, he didn’t hear them.
The Night Language Page 9