“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. And 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.