“For these few days he has the unusual opportunity to speak directly to Britain’s new high king,” said Constantine, “and it is clandestine mischief to approach the ambassador first. Wazeb does well to guard his back.”
“From me?” I hissed.
I dropped his arm. I had never known such anger.
“You dare! I have given you my kingdom. You dare question my loyalty?”
When he turned to me, I struck him in the face. He stood gaping, and I slapped him again.
“You, Constantine, you, who have done so much to heal Wazeb’s kingdom for him, how can you not see what a wonder they are working, Wazeb and Abreha? There is more to politics than coinage!”
“But what risk!”
“Bother to the risk! What courage!”
We stood before the small tent that I had to myself, as befitted my station as princess of Britain. I took a deep breath and spoke calmly.
“A king need not be kind, but by my father’s sword, Constantine, my cousin, he must be able to forgive. Cynric the king of the West Saxons had no desire to bring about my father’s death. He wished me to marry his grandson, but he never wished me any ill. You will have to treat with him yourself before a year is out.”
“What on earth do you know of forgiveness?” Constantine said bitterly, then turned on his heel and left me.
CHAPTER XIV
Swifts
I SLEPT SO LATE the hunt left without me. I lifted the silk covering of my tent and stepped outside; the air was bright and cool and still. Women pounded grain across the camp, and a pair of young porters crouched near them playing gebeta in the dust. How lovely, I thought, to stop being princess of Britain for a moment. I hope they stay away all day.
I found Telemakos building a city out of bones and twigs and seedpods in the grass outside his mother’s tent.
“Mean things, to go without you,” he said sympathetically. “Ras Meder wouldn’t let them wake you. He stood in front of your tent shaking his head and waving his gold spear at them.”
I laughed. “I don’t mind. I was tired last night. Can I help?”
“You can lay a road. I’m digging a reservoir.”
His nurse and the cooks and porters must surely have thought me a madwoman, the princess of Britain at play in the dirt. But it was contenting work.
“When will Gebre Meskal wrestle his lion?” Telemakos asked, without looking up from his excavations.
“He is not supposed to wrestle it,” I said, tipping handfuls of pebbles along the road. “He is supposed to kill it with a spear.”
“He is supposed to bring back a lion to the New Palace for a totem,” said Telemakos. “What use is it if he kills it?”
“More use than it would be chained in the lion pit!”
“It does not need to be chained.” Telemakos straightened for a moment, and spread his hands open on his knees. “You can keep a thing without tying it up. You know.”
Then he shook his head and went back to digging in the earth with a pottery dish.
“Anyway, the emperor had better get going. He missed another chance yesterday, as well as last week. There were three lionesses and twice that many cubs chewing over a zebra in the rocks behind the spring, the last place we camped.”
The gravel slipped from my palms. I sat back on my heels and stared at my nephew’s shining head, bent in concentration over his miniature reservoir. “Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“I did not hear it,” Telemakos said with scorn and pride, still without looking up from his work. “I found them myself. I watched them all through the noontide, while everyone was napping. They were lazy, too. It would have been an easy fight.
“Noon is the best time for exploring,” he added. “Everyone else is too idle to chase you, and the animals are all asleep. You should come with me.”
“We are going to have to put a guard over him,” I told his nurse.
Wazeb killed his lion that morning. The hunters came striding back before noon, giddy and triumphant, with Wazeb borne aloft on their shoulders, his customary white bloodstained in their midst. Telemakos was not so wildly disappointed to have missed the grand occasion as I expected him to be; he was scornful of the killing.
I took his advice and went riding in the heat of that day. I had gone no more than three hundred yards beyond the perimeter of our camp when Priamos caught up with me.
“Peace to you, my princess.”
“You’ve been lost,” I answered, and found I was biting back tears, again, again. I looked away from him. “How do you come to be released from your post?”
“Gebre Meskal has dismissed me for the afternoon. It has been a trying morning, and he thinks I need to rest.”
His horse seemed skittish, and he had constantly to gentle it and whisper to it as we spoke. The short spear he carried against a sudden meeting with lion or leopard became a hindrance.
“Tell me of the hunt,” I said. “Was Wazeb heroic?”
“He did seem fearless, yes. He is fearless. Though so should I be with Ras Meder at my right hand. Sometimes I think your brother has ice running in his veins.”
“Sometimes I think so, too,” I said impatiently. “Tell me what happened!”
“We drove a lone male lion for something close to twenty miles before Gebre Meskal wounded him. And then our new emperor had to finish it on foot, face to face with fang and claw. Oh, your brother, I have never seen him happier.”
“I am sorry to have missed it.”
Priamos managed to control his mount at last, and we rode some way farther. Before long we found ourselves surrounded by a herd of bushbuck antelope. They moved with us at a leisurely and steady pace, so that they seemed to be escorting us. The females were plain, but the males were deep black with slashes of white at their throats, and crowned with spiral horns.