“I saw pain in him. It was shocking. As if he couldn’t hold up anymore and his heart was breaking—which was at least proof that it existed at all.
“Below us, soldiers and slaves massed on either side of Meqdala’s gate. Even across the distance, my mother’s brightly dyed cloth was vivid. My father watched her. ‘Does she obey me?’ he asked. ‘Does she love me?’
“I told him no.
“He brought me back to Meqdala. His army surged inside our gate, stirred by his cries. The sun glinted from their knives and bayonets and rifles. They cried salafa in response to him. Make ready for war. He walked among them to the parapets, where he could see the English forces. The red lines were everywhere, across the plateau in ranks, a growing camp on the far side of the field. My father called for prisoners to be brought out from their cells. The English and the Abyssinians who collaborated. The guards pushed them to the edge of the parapet, hundreds of feet above the gorge. My father took one of the Abyssinians by the neck and pushed him over the edge of the cliff. The rest of the captives wept quietly as they watched him fall. It looked like he was flying. He pinwheeled, colliding with the rock face, then slipped into pure cloud.
“‘The rest,’ my father said. They all went over eventually. Soon thirty men were gone.
“I watched. I didn’t want my father to see me cry.
“My father came for me. He told me to whip my mother there in front of everyone. I was terrified, but I still said no. He looked at my mother and I swear, they both were ashamed of me then.
“My father brought Rassam out in chains, then ordered me to whip my mother.”
“Alamayou,” the queen interrupted him, “do you need a moment to compose yourself?”
Alamayou felt the tightness in his chest. He’d hoped speaking would loosen it a little, just enough to breathe, but it was only squeezing his heart harder.
“I’m almost done, Your Majesty.” He managed a nod.
Almost to the fire, he thought.
He blew out some air as the room began a slow spin around him. It can’t harm you, he told himself.
“My father put his hands around Rassam. Around his throat until his fingers closed. Rassam’s eyes rolled as he went to his knees. I saw the veins in them fill. The whites washed over red, like your army. Rassam tried to pull my father’s hands apart, but he was weak and my father was stronger than any man I ever saw. When Rassam’s hands fell away, I saw it in his face. He knew he was dying. ‘Don’t,’ he mouthed to me. Maybe he thought I would try to help him, because I cared about him. He didn’t understand how afraid I was. I think the last thing he saw was me, not coming to save him. Not doing anything.
“Then he smiled. It was kind, despite everything. Despite his life, and now this.
“It took a long time. When I saw it leave, that old light that left his exploded eyes, I knew it was done.
“‘Whip her or I’ll kill you,’ my father told me.
“So I did.”
He took the whip from the royals’ table as they stared. “It was bigger than this. Heavier.”
Philip watched Alamayou speak his life—his true life—back into existence. He watched in awe, that so much courage could exist in one man. He didn’t know what would happen to Alamayou now that he’d admitted to at least one of the accusations leveled against him—the whipping—and he hadn’t even gotten to the fire. Surely the royals understood what they were hearing. Yes, he’d used the whip on his mother, but not by choice. Not by some cruel, sick flaw in his blood, like his father. Alamayou was guilty of hurting her the way a soldier was guilty of murder. He had no choice, no free will. He was compelled to act by the most primitive reason there was. Do what you’re told, or die.
And there was the other admission, the one Philip couldn’t believe he’d heard. Alamayou had delivered it with his head high, with no shame. With no fear. He’d stood before the most powerful woman in the world and let her see his heart.
You didn’t have to, Philip thought. You didn’t have to go that far. It was language you didn’t need to use, and there are laws. They’ll send you back and you’ll die there, and for what? Why did you have to let them see what love looks like inside of you?
Because it wasn’t for them, he heard Alamayou’s voice say in his ear, in his thoughts. It was for you. Remember, Philip? Not alone.
I do remember. I’ll never forget.
Alamayou set the whip back down on the table. His body wavered and he asked for water. The queen ordered a service of tea and plates of cold meats, and when it came they ate in silence. Philip chewed on a piece of pheasant that tasted like dust in his mouth. He watched Alamayou at the center of the room, picking absently at a cluster of grapes. Head down, at once oblivious and keenly aware that the chamber was arranged in a circle around him. There was no place for him to disappear to, nowhere he couldn’t be seen.
“When I’d finished with my mother,” he said, “my father sent her back to Amba Geshen. He made her walk so everyone could see the marks.”
“Alamayou, you’re exhausted.” The queen set her plate down. “We can see how difficult this is to speak of. Tomorrow we can continue.”
“No. Now. I need to say it all while I have the strength.”
“We don’t doubt that you have the strength,” she told him.
At that moment, Philip would have lifted Windsor off the ground and carried it to Balmoral, had the queen asked him to.
“I went to him. He had a church, inside the gate of the fortress. It was the only stone structure there. He was inside, praying.
“I had his gun. I meant to kill him. That was the first time. There would be another. I didn’t. I couldn’t. He beat me until I passed out.
“When I woke I saw that my father had chained me to the stone of the fortress, at one of the parapets. He made me look from there to the plateau and the Falah. Your army was everywhere. The war would start soon. His aide, the afe-negus, took down his last wishes. That his body should lie atop the land for all his people to see, beneath carved, outstretched wings of angels. That he shouldn’t be buried, because he’d return to earth in time, atop a throne of many-colored pillows.
“He called down to his soldiers from the parapet. ‘This is the hand of God now upon us. If you love me as you love God, go to the English and cut their throats.’
“He ordered the gate to be opened and four hundred of his soldiers passed through. His first wave, to see what your soldiers would do. Someone inside Meqdala screamed. Someone watching their husband or son, maybe. I heard another voice, a song coming from inside the stone of Meqdala. Maybe the singer was comforting the screaming one.
“After a few minutes I couldn’t see our soldiers. It was raining hard. My father forced the telescope to my eye. I looked through its circle, at Abyssinian men exploding. It was quiet because they were so far. They ran in every direction. They looked like they were screaming, then their chests burst. Their heads bloomed. Only then did I hear the sounds of bullets. By then the soldiers already lay on the ground.
“It was over so quickly. No one on the plain moved, nothing moved but the falling rain.
“I was at that parapet all night, in the rain. My father and his generals planned. I felt your army moving on the plateau. It was a rumbling beneath me, powerful enough to make the world turn.
“In the dark I found the spike and tugged at it, to see. I thought, if I’m strong, if I keep at it without caring about its noise and if I was brave enough to fight my father off, then it was possible. Out it would come and I’d run, the spike and chain dragging behind me. I’d run down the stone steps through the thousands of slaves, prisoners, and soldiers at the gate. I’d run out onto the field where no bullets would find me and the clouds would cover my escape. The white dream would take the light away. I’d never be seen. Soon I wouldn’t be alone; others would be with me. They’d see me. They’d kno
w me. We’d all run with wildness in our eyes, and we’d shed our chains and all that would be left of us was the blood that made us who we truly were. We’d forget that there once was a place we thought was home. Home was ahead, and we’d run until we found it.
“Then my father came to me and said, ‘I mourn the death of my son.’ He unchained me, put me into the hands of soldiers, and gave me a shield and a gun. ‘I’ll open these gates again,’ he said, ‘and let the war swallow you.’ Then he left me among a thousand Abyssinians waiting to fight.
“This is what war is. I saw men waiting, crying, saying prayers. They dug holes in the ground inside the gate and buried pieces of their lives. Rings, shreds of their wives’ shammas. Some wrapped knotted blue cords around their wrists. This marked the wearer as a Christian. Whether they believed in the Christian words or not didn’t matter. They put their hope of living through the next few minutes into frayed colored threads so the English would see blue against their black skin and not shoot them down.
“In the last moments before the gate opened wide, I saw men hold the hands of other men.
“I looked up at the man next to me, a stranger, to ask why. Why did we have to do this? He dropped his shield and seized my hand. His hand was terrible, wet, and hot like my father’s had been after he’d strangled Rassam. ‘Be free, Alamayou,’ he said. Then the gate swung wide and we ran. It felt like flying, like the white dream.
“Above me, the high whistles of bullets. One whistle came low and that man I ran next to fell. I screamed but couldn’t hear my own voice. It disappeared into the war.
“Men flew everywhere. They ran and fell, opened and bled.
“Ahead I saw red flashes from the peaks. Your cannons, all the men dying between you and me, the gap closing fast and not enough men in front of me to hide anymore.
“I bolted to my right and never looked back. I reached the treeline and plunged through swiping branches. Behind one of those trees, I came across a dying Abyssinian tribesman. When he saw me, he smiled and held out his blue cord for me to take. He wanted me to have it.
“I stayed with him. He held my hand while dying. In that spot there was a quiet that I didn’t understand, and I still don’t.
“I watched his eyes empty, and I thought of Rassam, and whipping my mother. I still had my gun. I stood up and began to walk back to the fortress. I was going to kill my father, for all of it.
“Then your cannons fired at Meqdala. The roar lifted the whole plateau. I saw them streak across the sky. There were so many, and when they hit the fortress walls, everything blew into pieces. Everything collapsed. When it finally stopped, there was nothing left.
“I made it to what was left of Meqdala and looked for him. It took a long time but I found him. He was still alive. His leg had been crushed. He lay there, helpless, staring at me. I put the gun to his filthy head. I was so afraid.
“He smiled at me and asked me a question. ‘What is it like to be loved by anyone?’ He began to cry.
“I couldn’t. I helped him up. Before your soldiers had crossed the plateau, I helped him away from Meqdala, to the cottage on Amba Geshen. We came around a curve in the path and I saw the flames just starting. The pole lay on the ground. The lamp was on top of the roof, where my mother tipped it to start the fire. She was already inside, sitting on the floor. When I got there with my father, she was just fastening the chain.
“I told her, ‘We can give ourselves up to the English. We can beg for mercy. Where’s the key, anat?’ She said ‘I loved you’ to me. As if she only loved me long ago.”
He could feel sobs breaking open in his chest but he swallowed them back. Not now. Not ever again.
“She looked at my father as the fire began to fall from the roof, all around her. ‘We make poison together. Look what we’ve done. Look at all the death. Look at our son. There’s no home for him anywhere. There’s no home for any of us.’
“She held out her hand for my father. The only time in my life I saw her want him near her was in fire.
“My father was barely alive. But he went in. He fell to the floor next to her. He lay on top of fire to be with her. She took him in her arms and told him they belonged like this.
“They were both on fire.
“Then she held out her hand for me to come. ‘Show us that God made you a man, Alamayou. Not a gbra sadom, a monster. God made you like him.’ She began to scream.
“I reached for her and my hand started to burn. But it was far away, the pain. I wanted it. It was just like the men on the field. Just stepping forward, and again and again, until you disappeared. I saw how easy it could be. I saw how she was right. There was no home for me.
“I thought of it. It would be easy to simply continue, to walk in and burn like they wanted me to. Don’t stop. Be free. It was only a choice. Men made a choice when they stepped on the battlefield. They chose not to turn or run. Maybe in those moments, some of them chose to be happy.
“And then I heard noises behind me and I saw Philip. And I stayed. I didn’t go with my mother or father.
“I don’t what will happen to me now. But I hope not to go. Not until I’ve had more time to find home.
“That’s everything,” he said.
§
Philip glanced around the room as silence overtook them. The queen’s secretary put down his pen and closed his ledger. The prince stared out the window, his cane across his legs as the first time Philip had encountered him outside their apartment while Alamayou raged. The princess sat very still, her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes shimmered with wetness.
The queen seemed so much smaller than he knew she was. A ferocious, fearless monarch who sat atop an empire centuries in the making. Her lips parted to speak, but moments passed with no words. Her face was ashen.
“Leave us,” she said at last.
Seely exhaustedly translated. Alamayou looked at the queen, trying to decipher what she was thinking. Her face was dry and hard, and her eyes went to a different part of the room when he tried to meet them.
Philip stood, ready to scream and consequently be damned. That was all she had to say? Leave? Why do this, then? Why make Alamayou cut himself open and spill his entire life out for them?
Alamayou took his arm, stopping him. “It’s enough,” he told Philip.
“Enough? We don’t know anything about what happens to you.”
“Mother,” Princess Louise said. “We’ve much to discuss. Perhaps we can reach out to the solicitor and have him join us.”
“All of you, leave us.”
The queen turned in her throne to face the far wall.
Shocked, the prince and princess left their mother. Seely trailed after, and Philip next, still muttering in indignation. “I don’t understand the point of this entire charade.”
Alamayou hesitated a moment before leaving. The lady-in-waiting stared impatiently at him as she held the portrait room doors open for everyone to pass through.
The queen was facing the portraits. Her family, and next to it, the one he’d made, of himself and her dead husband.
“Come,” Philip said, and he left the queen behind, passed through the doors, and heard them close behind him.
§
Seely was too exhausted to speak for them anymore.
They returned to the apartment. At the door, Seely begged forgiveness for wanting a bath and some sleep. “Hard things,” she said as she left. “You say hard things, Alamayou.”
“I know.”
“I hope they help you.”
She left them.
Inside the apartment, Alamayou went to the basin and brought cool, clean water to his face. He felt empty, as weak as a newborn, as heavy as the stone Meqdala was built from. But he didn’t want to lie down. He didn’t want to sleep or stop. If he did, everything would stop with him. The queen, thinking of him. The princess, wee
ping for him. Philip, hearing him.
Philip was standing over the bag Simon had packed for him. This was what he’d intended to do. See to it that Alamayou could be understood and that he had the best possible chance of safety and hope for a life. Then he would leave. To what, he didn’t know. His old life, maybe. Leaving the castle would be the easy part. Then he’d chance it on the streets like he did in Lambeth, where he’d grown up. He could steal like the old days, from the vendors and stalls, then resell the pilferings for pence. Or he could make use of what he’d learned from Dr. White. The legitimate and the not so. There were women, White had told him, who needed a steady hand and a secret-keeper in their doctors when they got themselves into trouble. “What sort of trouble?” he’d asked.
“The sort that leaves secret hearts inside them,” White had said.
He’d learned how to find those secret hearts and still them. It was something he’d always hoped he’d never have to do. But if it meant his survival, he would do what was needed.
The bag was packed, the door to a new life was near. Not a soul in Windsor would care if he was gone come morning, off to Christ knew where with no hope of a life worth living.
He felt eyes on him and turned to see Alamayou watching him.
“Philip? Leave?”
In that moment Philip didn’t see Alamayou in the apartment, but at the fire. The soldiers raced around the cottage, looking for a way in, while burning knobs of debris fell around the writhing bodies of two human beings. Bent figures, ablaze and screaming, but not trying to get out.
You turned to me then, Philip thought. A man you’d never seen before and yet you wore the same expression you wear now. Fear, unimaginable sadness, and just a trace of hope, because of me.
The Night Language Page 18