A Coalition of Lions

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  I made my way back to Turunesh to wait. She handed me one of our saddlebags to drink from, and then stood with her arms folded, gazing with narrowed eyes toward the cleft in the cliff where the linteled gateway to the monastery was improbably set.

  “Brave Telemakos,” she said.

  “They would not let me take him up.”

  “I did not think they would,” Turunesh said mildly. “They were likely angered that you thought to try.”

  “I wish I hadn’t. I felt ashamed.”

  We stood back and watched the cliff face in silence. We stood so long without speaking that I did not say anything aloud when at last I saw someone starting down the cliff, but reached out to grip Turunesh by the arm and pointed.

  The climber bore Telemakos on his back. He seemed strong and sure-footed, though his cropped hair was white. He kept his face turned aside to Telemakos, nodding reassuringly toward the child who clung to his shoulders. I watched the man’s bare feet against the rock, and the chiseled edge of his bearded cheek that I could see.

  “Well, they have not sent us Caleb.” Turunesh sighed.

  “He is not even Aksumite,” I agreed. “He is too fair.”

  “Perhaps they send a foreign guest who speaks your language.”

  And then, as the man descended nearer, I sat down hard on the valley floor, gasping as though the wind had been knocked out of me. Turunesh bent over me in concern.

  “What is it? What is wrong?”

  The shock so stunned me that I could not speak. The climbers had reached the cliff’s foot and were unbinding their harness straps before I could shape any kind of words or speak them aloud. At last I managed to choke, “It’s Medraut.”

  CHAPTER X

  Cloth of Gold

  HE CAME BEFORE US, with his son bound and clinging to his back. His right hand was lifted to clasp Telemakos’s small fingers over his shoulder; with the heel of his left hand he rubbed brutally at his eyes.

  Telemakos threw me a look of wild hope and bewilderment. Then Turunesh, without speaking, helped to untie Telemakos and set him on the valley floor.

  Medraut never let go of the small brown fingers. Telemakos sat down next to me, clutching up handfuls of grass and earth with his free hand as though he could not believe his good fortune at being on the ground again. Medraut stooped by him on one knee, and with his forefinger gently, gently tilted the child’s chin up toward his own face, gazing into the smoke blue eyes with the wonder of a man seeing himself in a mirror for the first time.

  Turunesh still said nothing. She stood watching her lost lover and their son, her hands clenched at her sides, and began to sob.

  “Mother, Mother!” cried Telemakos, leaping to his feet and snatching at one of her balled fists, and half pulled back by Medraut, who would not let him go.

  Turunesh drew Telemakos close, but she could not stop crying.

  “Why are you here? How did you come here?” I was shouting. “Why did you leave me after Camlan?”

  Medraut turned toward me, still clinging to Telemakos, and wiped at his eyes again, and shook his head.

  “He doesn’t talk,” said Telemakos. “The monks said he has not spoken a word since he came to them.”

  “Ras Meder?” said Turunesh softly, and held open her hands to him. “Medraut?” He ducked away from her touch, ashamed, unworthy.

  “Why?” she asked.

  He shook his head again and sat on the sand next to me, his eyes on the horizon. After a few moments he held out a tentative arm. Telemakos threw himself at his father. They bent their heads together, white gold against white gold. Turunesh gave a cry of anguish.

  Medraut buried his face in Telemakos’s shining hair.

  “Is it true?” Telemakos said.

  “Yes, love,” Turunesh whispered.

  “Telemakos, what happened?” I asked. “What happened when you went to find Caleb?”

  “The monks brought me to Ras Meder.”

  I was dumbfounded.

  “But I told them to take you to the emperor! I said—” I stopped short, trying to remember what I had said.

  “You said lord of the land,” Telemakos reminded me.

  “Meder,” I breathed. “Medraut. Oh, my brother, you must think we came here looking for you. But we came looking for the emperor Caleb, the negusa nagast Ella Asbeha. We did not know you were here.”

  Medraut nodded slowly, understanding.

  “Come with us to our shelter, and we’ll explain.”

  He sighed, and finally let go of Telemakos. Turunesh reached to help Medraut to his feet. Then she bent over his hands, pressing them together and gently kissing them, before letting them fall.

  “Come, Telemakos,” she said, gathering herself. “Lead on.”

  Telemakos, too, snatched at Medraut’s hand and kissed it. Then he ran, and Medraut followed more slowly. I watched him from behind, saw how confidently he made his way down the hillside, saw how he favored the leg that had been broken at Camlan. And in his purposeful, uneven stride I recognized the silent merchant sailor who had walked away from us at Gabaza, the man Priamos had suspected to be tracking me down the Red Sea.

  “Turunesh!” I said, snatching at her arm. “He was on board the ship that brought us from Alexandria. He must have—he must have followed me all the way—he must—”

  He had tracked me from Camlan.

  “And so he hid his hair beneath a head cloth, and never let us see his face! We thought nothing of his fair skin; there were Grecian oarsmen onboard as well. He must have come here straightaway, after we landed in Aksum. He saw me safely to the governor’s house in Adulis, and went his way. My God, how did he trace us through the Mediterranean? We changed ships in Septem and Priamos arranged it that we left a day early …”

  I stopped, then said in wonder: “Priamos feared for me through every mile of the journey. I teased him for it. Oh, God, it is unthinkable he should stand accused of treachery!”

  Turunesh stared after Medraut as well, as baffled as I.

  “Oh, why,” she whispered, “why did he not come back to me!”

  Medraut never spoke, his steady silence awkward and unhappy. With Telemakos following at his heels he watered our horses and milked the goat. Then, ill fitted as it was to him, he borrowed my bow and loped off into the wilderness, his pace only a little irregular. He came back in the afternoon with a small antelope over his shoulders. I talked to him alone as he cut up the antelope. He worked quickly, efficiently, not looking at me. It felt as if I was talking to the face of a granite wall.

  I told him of Priamos, and of Constantine, and finally, hesitating, of my hold over Telemakos. He put down the knife and wiped his hands on the grass. He watched me, listening, but he did not nod or shrug or raise his eyebrows or do any of the little things that people do to make themselves understood. It was as though, in forsaking speech, he forbid himself any kind of communication at all.

  “Is Caleb here?” I asked.

  At last Medraut gave me a single, brief nod.

  “Will he talk to me?”

  He shook his head. It might have meant no, it might have meant he did not know.

  “Medraut,” I said, trying to make my voice gentle and reasonable, as if I were talking to Telemakos, or one of Telemakos’s birds. “Medraut, you owe me the favor of begging me an audience with Caleb.”

  He looked at me with narrowed, burning eyes. There was in his look a little of the old outrage he must have felt when Lleu used to order him about.

  I could well imagine what he was thinking: You take my son hostage, then command I grant you favors?

  “Do you know what you left me with after Camlan?” I demanded.

  He picked up the knife and set back to his work, as if this, too, were one more guilt that he could not bear. I continued relentlessly: “You left me hunted by your heartless and vindictive mother. You left me with my father’s legions and no one to lead them. You left me alone to seal and lock the iron gates on my parents’ tomb. An
d when I did that, finally, I had to do it knowing I might be sealing those gates on you as well, alive under the earth. It was not a fair decision to leave in my hands, Medraut. It should not have been my decision. I should not have had to hold myself responsible for your death.”

  He gave another single, unhappy nod, jerking meat from bone with wet fingers.

  “I have come in search of the emperor’s head cloth, to crown his heir. I need an audience with the emperor Caleb, with Ella Asbeha. I need it as a supplicant on behalf of his son, on behalf of his nephew, on my own behalf, on your son’s behalf. I know your silence is a penance; find your way around it. One diplomatic niceness from you can bring freedom for two, three, four princes.”

  He held his hands up. Stop, his hands said. Stop. I will do it.

  That night after we had eaten, he sat before the fire outside our shelter with Telemakos in his arms, as though the child were an astonishing gift that he had never expected and could not quite believe.

  Turunesh repeated suddenly, but this time out loud: “Oh, why, why did you come here, why come to Debra Damo, why did you not come back to me?”

  Medraut pulled up a handful of earth from the valley floor and let the dust trickle through his spread fingers. He held his hand there open, empty, and closed his eyes.

  “I ask nothing of you but yourself,” Turunesh said.

  I laid one of my own hands on his shoulder. He looked as though he needed steadying. Telemakos glanced up at me.

  “This is all too hard,” I said. “Let’s sleep. Then let’s share a day or so together, eating and drinking and building cooking fires, until the shock of today’s meeting is behind us.”

  “Stay with us a day,” Turunesh agreed lightly, as if she did not care whether he came or went, though her voice still shook.

  Telemakos echoed, “Stay.”

  Medraut slept with us in the stone cabin that night. I closed my eyes to the usual mad cackle of hyenas and night birds and opened them to the sound of Medraut’s voice.

  He was talking in his sleep, as he has always done.

  I knew his voice instantly, dark and musical and low, and full now of anguish and misery. Medraut spoke so softly he woke neither of the other sleepers. I think it must have been my own deep longing for home, for all things familiar, that made his quiet voice wake me.

  He spoke, in our native British dialect, of the copper mines at Elder Field. It took me some time to work out what he was talking about, because he mumbled and muttered and did not connect his thoughts. But as I lay awake listening, fascinated and horrified, I understood how he came through the caves at Elder Field. He had not meant to find his way out. He spoke of being pressed in a narrow cleft, of thirst, pain in his pinioned leg, of running water.

  I had to wake him at last, to shut him up.

  He stared at me, appalled. He must have been aware he had been speaking, though perhaps not of the content of his words. He climbed heavily to his feet and left the shelter. He was back in our enclosure as the sun rose, stirring the charcoal fire before even the goatherds were away. He stayed with us for two more nights, but he did not sleep with us again.

  He kept apart from Turunesh. She gazed after him with longing, as though from a distance. He never touched her.

  On the third day Medraut climbed back to the hermitage and did not join us again until late in the afternoon. He carried a leather bag, and shepherded us all into the dooryard of the cottage. When he had us captive and attentive, he drew from the satchel an Aksumite head cloth. As he unfolded it, with almost reverent care, I saw that it was not the simple white cotton that everyone wore, but linen woven through with gold thread so that it sparkled like sunlight on water. The three ribbons that banded it across the forehead and tied at the back were of solid gold mesh.

  It was the imperial head cloth of the negusa nagast, Caleb’s own. Medraut laid open its folds, spread the cloth between his hands, and held it up to me.

  “So simple as that?” I whispered.

  He shook his head, once, and held up a finger. Wait. He unwound the shawl from about my hair and unpinned my plaits so that they hung down my back, out of his way. Then he banded the golden cloth across my forehead, and tied it behind my head. When he had finished Medraut reached again into his leather bag, and this time brought out the simple circlet of gold that had been Lleu’s crown.

  “Ai, my brother,” I whispered.

  For a long moment Medraut bent over the slender gold band balanced gently between his hands, his shoulders hunched together tightly, as though he were being whipped.

  “Oh, Medraut,” I said softly, “is there no way to heal you of Camlan?”

  He shook his head. Then he raised the circlet to his lips and kissed it. He had failed his brother and killed his father, and there was nothing left in him for anyone else.

  He looked up. He crowned me with my brother’s crown and beckoned me.

  “What are you doing?”

  He beckoned me again, patiently. I followed him out of the hut and along the rocky path to the foot of the amba.

  “I am not allowed up—” I began.

  Medraut touched the circle of gold over my brow, and the head cloth beneath it. He touched my lips gently to stop me talking.

  The emperor’s head cloth would allow me passage.

  CHAPTER XI

  Debra Damo

  “FIX YOUR GAZE ON the portal above,” the sentries advised me at the bottom of the cliff, as Medraut adjusted the leather sling around my waist.

  Two dark faces waited for me at the portal, one aged and lined, one young and smooth. The men helped me onto the ledge that served as their gatehouse. I stood breathless with the view and the climb, as Telemakos must have done earlier, while I waited for Medraut to follow me.

  Beyond the portal was a narrow passage of rough-cut slopes and stairs between steep walls of rock. At the summit of the tortuous climb the plateau opened to a world of its own, a city in the clouds, floating serene above the valley floor. Stone houses were scattered across the wide tableland, built in imitation of the great houses of the capital, with flat roofs and high walls enclosing them. The church there also was built of geometric blocks and tiers, and I recognized it from the Red Sea Itinerary.

  We passed a small reservoir cut into the stone of the mountaintop, its edges green with moss. Higher up I could see the rim of another.

  Here: ten years ago. Priamos and Hector were chained back to back in one of these, for giving a spear to their mad brother, Mikael. Mikael was still here, somewhere.

  I walked resolutely at Medraut’s side, holding my crowned head as fixedly as a face on a coin.

  Medraut took me to a thatched shelter in a sunny garden, where men worked and weeded companionably. There was a strong scent of herbs and goat hanging in the thin air. By and by one of the novices brought us some of the fried cakes of which Candake was so fond, and honey with them, and honey wine.

  The sun was setting when Ella Asbeha joined us.

  The emperor Caleb was a small, neat man, older than my father. His hair, like his sister’s, had gone white, and his beard was cropped close around his dark, lined face. He was dressed in the simple shamma of undecorated woven cloth that all the novices wore. And yet he was Aksum in all her many climates, from her salt basins to her clear and verdant highlands to her ice-capped peaks; grudging and forgiving, generous and unyielding, constant and unpredictable, all at once.

  I thought, in that instant, that I was boldly presumptuous in pretending myself a queen only to trick an audience out of this imperial and holy man. God help me, what was I thinking in coming here, how would I ever come away from this beautiful and terrible place alive, with my soul and my mind and my freedom intact? I was ashamed to be sitting before Caleb wearing his borrowed head cloth, or even my brother’s crown. I lay with my face in my arms.

  Caleb said to me, in my mother’s native dialect: “Britannia, there is no need for that. Not from you; and not here.”

  I rose
to my knees but could not make myself stand. I was a supplicant; it seemed appropriate.

  “Are all you children of Artos so full of humility?” Caleb said, again in my mother’s tongue, and there was humor in his voice.

  “Why did you send my father your lions?” I asked absurdly, like a sphinx posing a riddle.

  Oh, he laughed and laughed, and even Medraut turned his face aside.

  “Did you come from Britain to ask me this?”

  I thought of Priamos’s introduction to his uncle: Solomon walks among us in your wisdom. “Please excuse me,” I muttered, trying to pull my thoughts together, still on my knees.

  “I sent Artos my lions to seal our coalition,” Caleb said gently. “I was not going to leave them for the viceroy Ella Amida; he has no right to them. And Wazeb will have to find his own.”

  Then Caleb addressed Medraut in Ethiopic. “Ras Meder, will you stay with us while Britannia tells her story?”

  It was dusk now, and two of the novices came by with torches that they fixed in the ground just outside the tent. An evening wind stirred across the amba, bringing with it the sound of a single voice chanting from some unseen place on the plateau. The full moon came blazing forth as I spoke, so bright you could see colors in the dark. The torches were eclipsed.

  Caleb said, when I had told him all, “So in effect you would agree to marry Constantine, if he allowed you to choose Britain’s king yourself? Whom then would you choose, Britannia?”

  His manner of addressing me was unnerving, but made clear the serious formality of his questions. I glanced at my brother and held open a hand toward him. “My father’s eldest son still lives,” I said.

  “He no longer speaks, though,” Caleb pointed out, and asked suddenly, “Whom would you choose, Ras Meder?”

  Medraut pointed to me, and Caleb chuckled.

  Then the emperor motioned one of the attendants to his side and whispered to him. The boy went running off into the molten dark.

  Caleb turned back to me. “Wait a moment for the child to return,” he said, “and I will show you something.”