Rukaiya's own jaw clamped shut. For an instant, her young face reminded Antonina of a mule. A beautiful mule, true, but just as stubborn and willful.
The expression was fleeting, however. Rukaiya lowered her head. Her quick-moving hands, once again, were demurely clasped in her lap.
"My father taught me," she said softly. "He insists that all women in his family must know how to read. He says that's because they might be widows, someday, and have to manage their husbands' affairs."
Again, the words started coming in a rush. "But I think he just says that to placate my mother. She doesn't like to read. Neither do my sisters. They say it's too hard. But I love to read, and so does my father. We have had so many wonderful evenings, talking about the things we have read in books. My father owns many books. He collects them. My mother complains because it's so expensive, but that's the one subject on which my father lays down the law in our house. Most of our books are Greek, of course, but we even have-"
She stopped talking, then, interrupted by Antonina's laughter. The laughter went on for quite a while. By the time Antonina finally stopped, wiping tears from her eyes, Rukaiya's expression of shock had faded into simple curiosity.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
Antonina shook her head. "The negusa nagast of Ethiopia is one of the world's champion bibliophiles. His father, King Kaleb, amassed the largest library south of Alexandria in his palace at Axum. In all honesty, I don't think Kaleb himself actually read any of those books. But by the time Prince Eon was fifteen, he had read all of them. I remember, when he came to Rome, how many hours he spent with my friend Irene Macrembolitissa-sheis the world's greatest bibliophile-"
Antonina fell silent, staring at the girl across from her. Again, tears welled up in her eyes, as she remembered a friend she thought she would never see again.
Oh God, child, how much you remind me of Irene.
Memory made the decision. Memory of another woman-intelligent, quick-witted, active-whose own life had been frustrated, so many times, by the world's expectations.
Fuck it. We have souls, too.
"You will be happy, Rukaiya," predicted Antonina. "And you will never, I promise you, be bored." Again, she wiped away tears; and, again, laughed.
"Not as that man's wife! Oh, no. You'll be keeping track of the King of King's accounts, Rukaiya, and writinghis letters. He's building an empire and he's at war with the greatest power in the world. Soon enough, I think, you'll find yourself longing for a bit of tedium."
Finally, finally, the face across from her was nothing but that of a young girl. A virgin, barely sixteen years of age. Shy, anxious, uncertain, apprehensive, eager, curious-and, of course, more than a little avid.
"Is he-? Will he-?" Rukaiya fumbled, and fumbled.
"Yes, he will like you. Yes, he will be kind. And, yes, he will give you great pleasure."
Antonina rose and walked over. She took Rukaiya's face in her hands and fixed the girl's eyes with her own.
"Trust me, child. I know King Eon very well. Put aside all doubts and fears. You will enjoy being a woman."
Rukaiya was beaming happily, now. Just like a bride.
Chapter 21
Garmat didnot beam happily, when he first saw Rukaiya.
"She's too skinny," he complained. Standing in his place of honor on the lower steps of the palace entrance, he turned his head and hissed in her ear: "What were youthinking, Antonina?"
Antonina's humor was a bit frayed, because of the heat. Standing under the bare sun of southern Arabia, wearing the heavy robes of imperial formality, was not enjoyable. So, for an instant, the decorum of a Roman official was replaced by the response of a girl raised on the rough streets of Alexandria.
"Piss on you, old fart," she hissed back. Then, remembering her duty, Antonina relented.
"I checked the family history, Garmat. All the women are slender, but none of them have had problems with it. Rukaiya's mother-"
There followed a little history lesson. Not so little, rather. Antonina had expected the issue to arise, so she had supplemented Rukaiya's own account with a more thorough investigation. Happily, the girl had not been sugar-coating the truth. For as many generations as clan memory went-which, typical of Arab tribesmen, was along way backonly two women in that line had died in childbirth. That was better than average, for the day.
Her history lesson concluded, with all the solemnity of a Roman official, the Alexandria street urchin returned.
"So piss on you from a dizzy height, old fart."
"Well said," came Ousanas' whisper. The former dawazz-he still had no official title-was standing right behind them, on a higher step.
Antonina cocked her head a quarter turn. "You're not worried?" she whispered over her shoulder. Sourly: "I expected every man within fifty miles to be crabbing at me about it."
Ousanas' gleaming grin made a brief appearance. "Such nonsense. It comes from too much exposure to civilization and its decadent ways. My own folk, proper barbarians, never fret over the matter. Women drop babies in the fields, just like elands and lions."
Garmat, still tight-faced, began to mutter again. He was giving his own lecture, now, on natural history. Explaining, to a birdbrained Roman woman and an ignorant Bantu savage, the difference between passing a large human skull through a narrow pelvic passage and the effortless ease with which mindless animals He fell silent, stiffening with formal rigidity. The King of Kings was finally entering the square before the palace, where his bride and her party were waiting.
It was quite an entrance. Antonina, even after her years of exposure to Roman imperial pomp, was impressed. Axumites, as a rule, were not given to formality. But, when occasion demanded, they threw themselves into it with the wild abandonment of a people shaped by Africa's splendor.
Eon was preceded by dancers, leaping and capering to the rhythm of great drums. The dancers were garbed in leopard skins and cloaks of ostrich feathers. The drummers were clothed less flamboyantly. They wore shammas, the multilayered togas which were the usual costume worn by Ethiopians in the highlands. But these shammas were for ceremonial occasions. The linen was richly dyed, and adorned with ivory and tortoiseshell studs.
Behind the dancers and drummers came Eon's ceremonial guard. This body consisted of the officers of his regiment, and was much larger than normal. Eon had been adopted by three regiments, not the customary one, and all of them were present. Wahsi, Aphilas and Saizana, as commanders of the Dakuen, Lazen and the Hadefan sarawit, led the procession.
Here, Axum's more typical practicality made its reappearance. True, the soldiers were wearing ostrich-plume headdresses which were far larger and more elaborate than anything they would have worn in battle. But the weapons and light armor were the same practical and utilitarian implements with which the Ethiopian army went to the field of slaughter.
The soldiers were there, not so much to protect their king from assassins, as to remind the huge crowd packing the square of a simple truth.Axum rules by the spear, when all is said and done. Do not forget it.
Studying the crowd, however, Antonina could detect no signs of resentment in the sea of mostly Arab faces. The people of the desert, for all their love of poetry, were not given to flights of fancy when it came to politics. That rulers willrule, was a given. That being so, best to have a strong rule, and a firm one. That makes possiblepossible-a fair rule as well.
Antonina decided she was reading the crowd properly. All the faces she could see were filled with no expressions beyond satisfaction and the pleasure of people enjoying a great spectacle. The measures which Eon had taken, the concessions which he had given the Hijaz even more than his leniency toward the bedouin rebels, had gone a long way to mollify southern Arabia to Ethiopian rule. The marriage about to take place, she thought, would finish the job. Arabs were as famous for their trading ability as they were for their poetry and their incessant political bickering. They knew a good bargain when they saw one.