The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(77)

“They struck a truce,” Turunesh finished. “Priamos was spared so that he might carry Abreha’s message back to the emperor Caleb.”

“Cynric used him in that exact way after Camlan,” I said. “He was the only one of my father’s men who knew anything of the Saxon tongue.”

“That will not help his reputation at all,” Turunesh commented, lighting the burner. “‘Have no trust in translators,’ Caleb used to say.”

She blew gently on the flames in the brazier.

“Now watch,” Turunesh said, straightening. “Let’s no longer speak of HimyarpeaNot at f. I am going to make you coffee. We’ll drink in memory of your brother. He once told me he would give away a kingdom if it meant he might share another cup of coffee with me.”

I saw her smiling over the blue and yellow flames.

“What is it?”

“A mild stimulant. It grows wild on the highland hillsides; we roast and grind the seeds, then steep them to make a drink. Your brother hated it. But he liked the ceremony. Only a woman may make coffee. Watch.”

She was busy as she spoke, deftly sorting the seeds. They rattled musically against the earthen pan she held them in; the flames of the burner whiffled and leapt. I could not ever remember being so aware of the light, quiet sounds of a garden at night.

Perhaps because I was listening so intently, perhaps because the cool highland air and rustling sycamores and bitter scent of roasting coffee were so strange to me, I heard a thing Turunesh did not hear. Behind me, below the gentle breathing of the fish, I heard the gentle breathing of another small creature. Turunesh began to pulverize the seeds in the mortar. I lowered my head, slowly, and glanced sideways back over my arm.

There was a border of tall flowers along one edge of the pool; their leaves were nearly black in the darkness, and all was black beneath their leaves. I sat with my head bent, as though lost in thought, and let my eyes adjust to the dark.

Turunesh lifted the roasting pan from the burner and set the water in the fat pot to boil. The flames soared, crackling around the bottom of the jug. Their sudden flaring lit a shape beneath the leaves with a faint edge of silver, and for one second I could see that Telemakos lay there as stone himself, his chin resting on his hands and his eyes closed. I only saw him for a second. He seemed at ease lying in the soil beneath the tall flowers, and he might have been asleep; but something in the alert angle of his still head told me that he was wide awake, and listening, listening.

For a few moments I did not move my head either, so that I should not let him know I had discovered him. I had seen Telemakos take enough mild blows and rebukes in one day that I had no heart to call him out. He could listen if he liked.

“What is that smell?” I murmured.

“The coffee?”

“More like perfume. Familiar…”

“Frankincense, perhaps? There is a plantation on the hillside above this suburb. Our priests burn it as incense; your own may do the same.”

“Yes, so they do. I recognize it now.”

I sat sorting out the strange smells and sounds. The light, even breathing went on steadily behind me, scarcely perceptible. But I did not notice when it stopped. Telemakos was not there when we went to bed: I never heard him coming or going. He moved with the sure and absolute silence of a leopard stalking its prey.

In the cathedral the next morning the frankincense was overpowering. Clouds of it rose from the censers swung by the priests in their red-bordered robes; the gilt wings of the angels painted on the ceiling seemed to float in haze. Constantine stood at my side as we listened to the morning service.

The chanting, the drumbeat and rattle of sistrums, was strange to my ears. I stood looking up at the mild, wide-eyed, host that flew across the vaulted ceiling on gold wings. As the service ended and the assembly began to process out, Constantine whispered in Latin, close to my ear, “Marry me now.”



I had to bite the knuckle of my index finger, hard, to keep from bursting into laughter. It did not seem to merit an answer, there and then.

“Marry me here, in this church, before the rains end.”

No. I shaped the word soundlessly with my lips.

Constantine tilted his head, pretentious in his Aksumite beard and head cloth. “What did you say?” he whispered.

“No!” I said aloud. All the people around gave me oblique glances and quickly looked away again. I took a deep breath of the cloying incense. We followed the priests out into the misty highland morning.