The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(70)

I had known of his army’s defeat, but he had kept his personal failure closely guarded. I looked away, at the fountain, at the chattering monkeys, so I should not seem to notice the shameful scars on his soul stripped bare like this.

Priamos said at last, “My uncle only called me by my name.”

“Lionheart,” Telemakos insisted. “Priamos Anbessa, he called you.”

“We are all called Anbessa, I and my brothers and sisters. My father’s name was Anbessa, and we are called Anbessa after him, as you are called Meder.”

“Lion—”

Kidane cleared hdanssa is throat ominously. Telemakos swallowed, and contained himself. He managed to say, “Welcome, most noble prince, welcome to your homeland.”

“Get off your knees,” Priamos said gently.

Telemakos moved to sit at my feet, and winningly clasped one of my hands between his own small, brown ones. “Stay with us, Princess Goewin,” he said. He said to me: “‘Greetings, stranger! Here in our house you’ll find a royal welcome. Have supper first, then tell us what you need.’” I stared down at his bowed head. He was reciting from Homer’s Odyssey.

His grandfather did not recognize it. “That is the most polite string of words you have ever uttered,” Kidane remarked.

Priamos burst into his rare, sweet and merry laughter, like a child. “What a gifted grandson you have!” he exclaimed. “The young charmer! He’s quoting his namesake, Odysseus’s son Telemakos. Greeting you with winged words, Princess! Those are Telemakos’s first words to the goddess Athena.”

“I know.” I spoke softly.

“I meant it, though,” Telemakos said, unabashed. “Will you stay in my grandfather’s house in Aksum, Princess Goewin, and become my mother’s friend, as your brother did?”

Kidane had already made me this offer, but coming from Telemakos it suddenly made my throat close up and my eyes swim. I had come four thousand miles, in fear of my life, hoping to find sanctuary among strangers; and instead here I was offered a home by my brother’s son, as he sat at my feet clasping my hand in his, greeting me as a goddess.

“Thank you,” I answered. “Yes, I would delight to stay in your house.”

“That is all right, isn’t it, Grandfather?”

“For the moment,” Kidane told him. “The princess may decide to stay in the palace, after she meets the viceroy. She is to be married to Constantine.”

“Today?”

Kidane laughed. “Not today. Next year, when they return to Britain. The monsoon is beginning; they cannot travel until winter is over, and even then they may postpone their journey until the Red Sea winds blow in their favor. Now go away, if you are going to ask impertinent questions.”

“I will be polite. Let me get my animals, and I will come and wait with you.” Telemakos scrambled to his feet again.

“My Noah’s Flood animals,” he explained over his shoulder, in case any of us thought he might mean the colobus monkeys he had been illegally feeding.

Kidane settled by me, lowering himself onto the wide stone lip of the fountain as though his grandson’s high spirits weighed too heavily on his shoulders for his body to endure. He laid the date branch at his side and smoothed flat the embroidered edges of his white robe. I asked quickly, under my breath, “Did Medraut know about Telemakos?”

“He did not. He left us many months before the child was born.”

Telemakos returned with a canvas satchel slung over his shoulder. He knelt before me again and began to take a series of lovely wooden figurines from his bag; these he ranged across the floor at my feet.

Priamos said, “Look at those animals!”

Telemakos glanced up and gave a respectful nod. “Paod.jusss them up here,” Priamos directed. “The princess has never seen creatures like these. You will have to teach her their names, so we can take her hunting when the rains end.”

“I don’t know the Latin,” Telemakos said.

“Latin’s no use to anyone,” said Priamos. He had been trained as an interpreter. He was not boastful, but he was given to flaunting his gift for languages. He had spent the long hours aboard ship telling me stories in his native Ethiopic and in Greek, the common language of the Red Sea, that I might learn a little of his speech before arriving in his homeland. “Use Greek or Ethiopic.”

Telemakos pressed the wooden animals into my hands: rhinoceros, leopard, ostrich, ibex.