"Wait," Yevuneh told them, "until you see the boy, ah! A jewel in miniature!"
"Where is he?" Alarm rose in me. "He was to remain in our quar ters."
"Oh, tcha!" Yevuneh clicked her tongue. "Listen to the young mother fuss over a single chick. Did you bring him this far to fear he would come to harm in Yevuneh's house? Yes, child, he is upstairs, awaiting your return." Her expression turned shrewd. "Not that it will bring good news. So, tell me, did the Elders deny your plea?"
"Yes." The gathered women had grown quiet, waiting and watching with knowing eyes in time-worn faces. I began to understand that this was something like the Elders' Council. "My lady Yevuneh, what passes here?"
"I said that in a thousand years, there had been no sign that the time had come to make atonement." Yevuneh gave her gentle smile, a simple widow bearing her share of her people's thousand-year-old grief. "I spoke wrong. There is you. And that, child, is what we have gathered to discuss."
So it was that I told the story a second time that day.
'Twas different, this time. It was a pleasant courtyard instead of an audience-room, with verdant trellises shading stone benches and comfortable cushions. Dishes of honeyed sweets and melon and sesame balls were passed around, and the strong drink they call kavah, beans roasted over a brazier and ground into a fine powder, mixed with boiled water and served with ceremony, hot and bitter. Yevuneh had already relayed to them what I had told her earlier of Terre d'Ange, of the Mashiach and the birth of Blessed Elua.
What they thought of that, I cannot say. The knowledge had dropped like a stone into the depths of their shared story, and what changes it might wreak at that level were beyond my knowing. This much, I know: They wanted to hear more.
And I told again Hyacinthe's story, this time beginning it with the Tsingano boy I'd met in the marketplace, my Prince of Travellers with merry eyes and dark curls, who did not disdain the friendship of an unwanted ward of the Night Court. They sighed over his white grin and chuckled knowingly over his exploits, and nodded approval when he used the hard-won monies from his livery service to buy his mother the lodging-house in which she dwelled.
As for the Tsingani themselves and the fateful folly that had set them on the Lungo Drom, the Long Road—this they understood better than anything.
All the while I spoke, Imriel mingled among the women of Tisaar, offering sweets, serving nearly as neat-handed as if I'd taught him myself. They'd not neglected the graces in the Sanctuary of Elua. And the women sighed over him, too, marveling at his fair skin and twilit eyes, seeing in his blue-black hair an echo of the boy Hyacinthe I evoked for them.
Of Skaldia, I told little, save for the threat to our land, and how Hyacinthe embarked with us on a quest to secure the aid of our belea guered young Queen's betrothed, the exiled Cruithne prince whom she loved. This, too, they understood; and understood the anguished curse of the Master of the Straits, doomed by his immortal father's stricken pride.
"Pride," Yevuneh murmured. "Pride, and wrath. How else?"
I told of Hyacinthe's first sacrifice, how he had surrendered his place among the Tsingani, his rightful role as the heir of the Tsingan kralis, to speak the dromonde on my behalf—although I did not speak Melisande's name, for fear that Imriel would hear and understand. It did not matter. They understood, the women of Tisaar, that he had done it in honor of his mother, whose heritage he would not repudiate.
They were mothers, most of them; mothers, grandmothers, wives and widows. I saw the sheen of tears quicken in their eyes as my tale— Hyacinthe's tale—drew near its close on the shores of that stony isle. A lump rose in my own throat. I had to swallow hard to force my voice past it.
Don't you know the dromonde can look backward as well as forward?
And I told them, then, how the Prince of Travellers used his gift to take my place, offering himself as sacrifice in my stead, and what had befallen him since.
I thought I had told the story well, before. I was wrong.
There was not a dry eye in the courtyard when I finished, and mine own included. If I'd maintained control of my voice, I'd ceded it to my tears, which rolled unheeded down my cheeks. It should have been me. It should always have been me.
"Oh, my!" Yevuneh shook an embroidered kerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose noisily. "Ah, child, such a tale! And you believe— is it so?—that the Sacred Name may break this curse?"
"Yes, my lady." Seated cross-legged on a cushion, I inclined my head. "For ten years and more I have studied the matter. I believe it to be true. The Name of God may force Rahab into relinquishing the long vengeance of his wounded pride. I have found no other way."
"Are your own gods so powerless?" another of the women, Ranit, asked shrewdly. "Why then do you not set aside your heathen ways, and petition the Lord of Hosts with a pure heart? Instead you come like a beggar who dares not approach the door, beseeching alms at the gate."
"Even Adonai Himself uses mortal hands to do His bidding, my lady," I replied.
"You claim your gods have sent you?"
I spread my hands. "I do not have that right, not here. But I am Kushiel's Chosen, and Kushiel was once the Punisher of God. This is a matter of justice, and justice is his province. My ladies, I am D'Angeline. It is bred in my blood and stamped on my flesh. While Adonai grieved for His son, Blessed Elua wandered unheeded, aided only by his Companions. We are his people, their people, born of their seed. When Adonai's attention turned at last to Elua, a new covenant was made, between the Lord of Hosts and the Mother of Earth, and it is by that our lives are sealed. I cannot be other."
Another woman spoke; Semira, with eyes keen and birdlike in a wizened face. "Do you claim, then, that this Elua is the Mashiach?"
"The Mashiach?" The question startled me. "No, mother. No D'Angeline has ever claimed such a thing. Elua is ... Elua."
"Ah, but your people were barbarians. How could they know?" She nibbled unthinking at her lower lip. "There are those who claimed Melek-Zadok was the Mashiach, and the Covenant of Wisdom the first step toward the great healing of the earth that His reign will betoken, when war shall be no more, and wisdom dwell in every heart."
"There are some," another voice echoed, soft and tentative, "who say Adonai Himself will be reunited with His Eternal Bride when the Mashiach comes, and the union of Shalomon and Makeda was a forerunner of that celebration."
Silence followed on it, and I sensed that this was a women's mys tery, written nowhere in the chronicles of Habiru or Yeshuite.
"It did not happen," Semira said firmly. "This we know. Perhaps the fault lay in ourselves, for breaking the Covenant with which we were entrusted. Perhaps it was a false omen, a shadow only of greater things to come, for even in Melek-Zadok's time, there was war. This Yeshua ben Yosef of whom you speak ... I do not think peace followed in his reign, either.”
"No." I shook my head. "The Yeshuites were united in his name, and the Habiru quarrelled no more among themselves, but peace—no. Even now, they have begun to divide once more, and the children of Yisra-el seek to carve out a new kingdom with blades." Joscelin stirred at my words, and we exchanged a glance. He had played a role in that matter, though few people ever knew it, nor ever would.
"What are you?" It was Ranit who spoke, brows knitting in frus tration as she asked the same question with which Hanoch ben Hadad had greeted us. "Unprophesied, unlooked-for . . . you do not fit! Elua.' Who is this Elua, to be born of blood and tears? Who are these angels, these Companions, to defy the will of Adonai and be worshipped as gods? It is evil, I say; vile and foul. How can you say otherwise?"
"My lady." Joscelin's voice followed hers, calm and level as he gave his Cassiline bow. "I can speak to that, if you permit. I serve Cassiel, who alone among the Companions followed Elua out of the purity of his heart." He paused. "Cassiel sought to embody the love and compassion that Adonai, in his ire, forswore. This I believe to be true."
"It is a dangerous heresy." Ranit's words trembled. "Dangerous, indeed!"
"It may be," I said. "Can you be sure, who have been sequestered here for so long? I do not ask for the Sacred Name itself; only the chance to approach the altar. If I am slain or struck dumb for my presumption, so be it. Yet I must ask, and try."
"And we shall be unveiled to the eye of Adonai," Yevuneh mur mured.
"So you may," I said steadily. "My lady Ranit accuses us of heresy. Is it meet that the children of Yisra-el should hide their treasures behind the grief of Isis? I cannot answer that, for D'Angelines consider all deities worthy of respect, Elua's children being youngest-born on this earth. It is a question, my ladies, for wisdom to decide; not the wisdom of the Elders, but the wisdom of Makeda's line, to which Shalomon himself deferred. This you hold among yourselves. Is it a thing that may be made to serve base ends?" I shook my head. "I do not believe
so.
' 'For wisdom is more mobile than any motion, and extends and moves through all by purity;' " Semira whispered, quoting from the Chokmah al-Shalomon, " 'for she is a breath of Adonai's power and an emanation of the unmixed glory of the all-ruling; and because of this nothing tainted steals into her.' '
" 'For she is the brilliance of eternal light,' " I echoed, finishing the verse, " 'and an unstained image of Adonai's mercy and an image of its goodness.' So I was taught," I said, thinking of Eleazar ben Enokh, who taught me the verse, and of my lord Delaunay, who told me All knowledge is worth having. "So I believe."
A second silence followed, longer than the first. Yevuneh and the other women looked to Semira, the eldest present. She chewed her lower lip, deep in thought, and looked at me with her keen eyes. "It is a weighty matter. It will need to be debated, and not only among us. Not only among the old, but the young as well, for wisdom takes many guises."