I
LETTERS TO AFRICA
THE RED SEA HAD never seemed so wide, nor Aksum so far away.
To the Lady Turunesh Kidane, my darling mother, greetings.
I don’t think I’ve told you yet, Mother, for I am ashamed to admit it, but I am once again in disgrace for listening at doors. As punishment I am confined to my workplace for this entire season, and not allowed to see my sister, or any of the other children in the palace. Abreha Anbessa the Lion Hunter, Abreha najashi and mukarrib, king of Himyar and federator of all the Arabs of the Coastal Plains—
Telemakos used the najashi’s full formal title, just for effect. Abreha would insist on reading the letter himself before he allowed it to be sent on its long journey home.
—The najashi requires me to wear a bracelet of bells and charms that ring when I move. It’s an alarm, to warn people I am there. Grandfather and all the imperial court will say I deserve it, and that it should have been done long ago.
He had worn it for two weeks now, and already it seemed endless.
Telemakos was kept under guard in the Great Globe Room, where he had studied and slept since coming to Himyar eight months ago, and the adjoining scriptorium, where the najashi’s maps and books were kept. These rooms were on the highest level of Maharis Ghumdan, the tiered alabaster palaces supposed to have been built by Solomon. The only higher place you could climb to was the narrow parapet around the domed roof of the Great Globe Room, where the ancient water clock dripped and chimed.
Telemakos was allowed to leave the scriptorium for two hours each morning when he joined the najashi’s young spearmen for their daily practice in the training grounds. He could see all San’a city from his window, and the al-Surat Mountains that ringed the plain, but all he saw of Abreha’s vast palace were its endless flights of marble stairs, twelve stories down and twelve stories back up, taken every day at a forced march under the indifferent gaze of Abreha’s guardsmen.
Telemakos could see no end to this season of disgrace. When his imprisonment was over, he would still have to wear the alarm bells, and in case Telemakos should dare to cross him, the najashi had already written out his death warrant—truly, a death warrant, an order for Telemakos’s execution. It was real. It was sealed with the ancient star and lion signet of King Solomon and a lock of Telemakos’s own distinctive hair, inherited from his British father and pale as bone, unmistakably identifying Telemakos and no one else. Abreha kept the warrant bound in his waistband.
When Telemakos wanted to send a letter to his family, Abreha required him to read it aloud in his presence, to make sure Telemakos was not reporting Himyar’s secrets to the imperial city of Aksum. Telemakos feared and hated these sessions in the najashi’s study so deeply that the apprehension of them was beginning to corrupt his life. In spite of the warrant that Abreha carried in his sash, Telemakos was determined to send a warning to his emperor through the letters he sent to his mother, and he had a plan for doing it. But his success depended on slow patience. He would be killed if he was caught.
What madness, Telemakos thought, that my parents sent me here to keep me safe.
He had already written a letter each to his mother and his aunt Goewin and mentioned nothing. He was especially careful about anything he sent to Goewin anyway, for she was Britain’s ambassador to Aksum and must not be revealed as the emperor Gebre Meskal’s private counselor. Queen of spies, Telemakos’s father had called her. Before Telemakos’s disgrace he had written to her weekly, and he could not suddenly begin to write more often without arousing suspicion. But a fortnight had passed since he had become aware of Abreha’s treachery, and Telemakos was beginning to feel that time was crumbling to dust beneath his feet. He could not afford to wait much longer with his warning; it took six weeks, at best, for his letters to reach home.
How did I ever think it was hard being the child of an African mother and a British father? Telemakos wondered. It is nothing compared to living in Himyar and owing allegiance to Aksum. I feel as though I am being dragged to pieces by elephants.
Hide your secrets, Turunesh had told him just before he had come to Himyar. Write to me that you send your love to your aunt, and code your meaning following your greeting to her.
How do I code it? How do I write it? A letter to my mother, nothing could be more straightforward. So how do I hide in it that Abreha the Lion Hunter is plotting against his cousin, the emperor of Aksum? Dearest Mother: The najashi means to infiltrate the emperor’s navy with Himyar’s soldiers, to create a mutiny, to seize our Hanish Islands for their wealth of obsidian and pearls, to free the exiles and smugglers imprisoned there. Dearest Mother: Your neighbor Gedar is an informer and a traitor to the emperor. How do I say it? Which shall I tackle first: mutiny, invasion, or smuggling? God help me.
Telemakos wrote:
Pass on my love to my father, and to Grandfather, and to my aunt Goewin. Our little Athena would send her love as well, if she were old enough to consider such things.
As he wrote, Telemakos pressed so hard on the reed stylus that he snapped off the point. He did this all the time. The narrow strips of palm were inexpensive to write on but practically impossible for him to manage now with his single arm. Athena, nearly two years old, had learned to hold down the tapes for him.
Telemakos rubbed his eyes angrily. He could not write or speak his sister’s name without wanting to weep. He did not know how he could endure an entire season of being separated from her, knowing she was there, just one story below. At night he could hear her snoring through the pulley hole in the floor of the Great Globe Room. He could always hear her when she cried, even when he retreated to the scriptorium, even from the roof.
He slept every night on the floor, with his head hanging over the shaft to the nursery. Twice a day he could watch Athena playing, or more usually throwing tantrums, on the terrace below the Globe Room’s eastern windows. She spotted him up there once and caused pandemonium by trying to scale the balcony to get to him. When one of Abreha’s royal foster children pulled her back, Athena grabbed hold of Inas’s face with both hands and tore scratches in her cheeks.
Telemakos let the strip of palm curl up. He would have to practice his message in wax first, so that he could rub out his false starts. He chewed on his knuckles, still wondering where to begin. His fingers tasted of salt where he had scrubbed at the shameful tears: bitter, bitter.
Salt, Telemakos thought. He could start with salt. The salt smuggling was over, at any rate. It was nearly a year since Gebre Meskal had lifted the plague quarantine that the najashi had ignored. Perhaps, Telemakos thought, perhaps this old news is irrelevant enough that Abreha will forgive me if he finds me passing it along.